I suppose we should all know by now, but it still seems odd to me that the positions taken up by many Peers seem so at variance with their Party, their colleagues in the Commons and with their promises to the electorate in party manifestos. In recent days Labour backbench Peers have been universally critical,…
2015 New Year message from Tony Berkeley The latest draft of the 4th Railway Package from the Latvian Presidency (see link below) makes depressing reading. It is a pale version of what the Commission started with, a blueprint to revitalise Europe’s railways, to introduce competition and efficiencies, better customer choice and private investment. Since then, Angela…
Ever had a bonkers idea, you know, the sort that arrive in the wee small hours, they seem marvellous at the time; rubber feet to stop shoes and socks getting wet, chocolate beds in case you get the munchies… that kind of thing? When we wake most of us rightly smile, then neatly fold and…
As I watched the events in Paris unfold last week; along with my horror and fears for the innocent people caught up in this callous act, I relived, in my mind, the Mumbai terrorist attack of November 2008. As I was entertaining guests in my suite at the Taj Hotel we came under attack and…
Today is a big day in a big year. In 2015 the UN will celebrate the significant if incomplete success of the Millennium Development Goals and agree a new set of goals – the Sustainable Development Goals – as the engine for development over the next fifteen years. And today action2015 has been launched around the world to mobilise groups…
The Select Committee on Communications recently published a report on Media Plurality, that is, the need to secure many different voices and owners in the news output: as we put it – “achieving a workable approach to plurality, particularly in provision of news and current affairs, is generally considered fundamental to a well-functioning democratic society,…
I have just read in the Times about the “Scandal of wasted millions spent on the Olympic Games legacy projects.” I cannot resist referring you to my post of 9 February 2014, The Olympic Outrage, predicting precisely that outcome. Now we learn that taxpayers will be giving £200m towards a football stadium for West Ham (whose…
In recent weeks images and stories of the Christmas truce in 1914 have offered us a reassuring flicker of humanity in a time of collective insanity. The Queen used her to Christmas message to the Commonwealth to speak movingly about truce referring to the Olympics and the wider potential of sport to bring about reconciliation. The truce…
For years some Peers’ strategy in the face of all reforming governments has been resistance and then snail-like reluctance in retereat. Witness the hard fought, last ditch rear-guard actions of the hereditaries to the Blair government’s removal of much of their number in 1998/99. Their watch word was always as little as possible, as slowly…
