In an earlier post, on 27 October, I wrote about an American novelist who had been interviewed on the BBC’s Broadcasting House to object to the term ‘swing states’ in the coverage of the US elections and to claim that Britons were more racist than Americans. I took issue with the assertions made in the…
The present session may appear light in legislative terms given the relatively few Bills being brought forward. However, the number of Bills masks the extent of the Government’s attempts to enact legislative change. It has developed a penchant for introducing Bills that are in effect several Bills in one. I have already written about the…
Should you be running out of questions for festive family quizzes, here are a couple in the format suggested by hifranc. Who are the two peers? Peer 1: My father sat as an MP for Hull between the wars. I am the longest-serving peer of my party in the House of Lords. Who am I? Peer…
Merry Christmas. I know it is a time for rest, but for me the Christmas vacation is a time for catching up on work. It is also an occasion when I have more time to think about topics I wish to write about on the blog. The result is that you may see several posts from me…
A peer introduced a Private Member’s Bill in 2001 to provide that large stores could not trade on Christmas Day. Under the Sunday Trading Act 1994 large stores could not trade when Christmas Day fell on a Sunday, but were not prohibited from trading if it fell on another day. This Bill sought to extend…
Those of you who have been following the close contests in Strictly Come Dancing, and the epic fiasco of the semi-final, may have noticed that according to a number of newspapers I have ‘waded in’ to the controversy. I wrote a letter to the Director General of the BBC asking that the number of votes…
Perhaps we all feel pretty helpless about Zimbabwe, amongst a number of other countries of repression and violence; I certainly do! I’ve gathered from almost a year of blogging that foreign affairs are not among the most favourite topics for contributors, but I am going to have my say. Here is a huge country with…
In my previous post, I referred to the late Lord Longford’s A History of the House of Lords. In it, he refers to the post-war House and the work of the then Marquess of Salisbury, a Conservative Cabinet minister in the 1950s and an advocate of reform of the House; his pressure was probably responsible…
In an earlier post, I recounted the last occasion a member of the Lords had been tried by his peers (Lord de Clifford in 1935). I mentioned that 86 peers opted to serve in hearing the case, compared with 500 who had sat to hear the case against Earl Russell in 1901 when he was…
