With only about thirty minutes to go, we were given a reprieve last night and allowed to speak for three minutes on World War 1. Big deal! This came about because the previous business accelerated and the so-called “dinner hour debate” became the final business of the evening, and the hour was elongated to ninety minutes. The…
It has just been confirmed that each speaker will have only ONE minute to speak in this evening’s important debate about the First World War. It really seems quite ridiculous, and rather insulting, that such a grave subject is now being reduced to not much more than an episode of Radio 4’s Just a Minute.…
This evening we are to have a “dinner hour debate” to discuss the 2014 anniversary of the outbreak of the First World War. At the time of writing there are 23 Peers on the Speakers List. Once the mover of the motion and the Minister replying have taken their allocation of some 20 minutes the…
Another week, another campaign by members of the public to get me to vote one way or another on a certain issue. Of course we peers welcome the views of the public, and as a crossbencher I am not whipped, I am not bound to vote in any particular way except as my conscience dictates. So…
In one ill-judged briefing last week, the Prime Minister may have set back years of progress towards a joined-up, long term, approach to conflict, development and peacebuilding. And he or his aides may have jeopardised international progress towards agreement on reflecting conflict and security challenges in the new Millennium Development Goals after 2015. While the…
The week of the recess has been dominated by media accounts of alleged “inappropriate behaviour”: a peer with female political hopefuls, a Cardinal with priests, the jury and its questions to the judge, the BBC and the fallout from Savile, the Libor traders, the Australian swimming team, the ward matron and his colleagues, and the…
I am conscious I have not had time to post a quiz recently. I thought I would catch up with one that focuses on individual members. As usual, the first two readers to supply the correct answers will be the winners. All the questions relate to current members of the House of Lords. 1. I…
I’m conscious that I have been neglecting the blog. A combination of commitments and marking has meant that what little time I have had available has been devoted to research. I am working on three research projects, or rather four but three have submission deadlines that are not that far away. All three are related to…
Iain Duncan Smith, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, invariably gives the example of drug or alcohol addiction when arguing that poverty is not just about low incomes. The other week, the Department for Work and Pensions published the findings of public polling , carried out as part of a consultation on the measurement…
