Losing members…

Lord Norton

Since the House of Lords Reform Act 2014 was enacted, over eighty peers have utilised its provisions to retire from the House. This is now the most extensive route by which the House loses members.  However, we still lose members through death.  Last year, nine peers died.  This year has seen a somewhat greater loss. …

Loss of Sir Peter Tapsell

Lord Norton

The House of Lords has lost a number of members through death over the past few months.  The Commons has also just lost a former senior member in the form of Sir Peter Tapsell.  He was Father of the House of Commons from 2010 until his retirement in 2015 and came across as the grandest…

Good News for the UK and the World

Lord Hylton

Christian Healing UK is bringing together a range of organizations and advisors on healing, across the denominations. It follows the example of Jesus, the Christ, God’s Messiah.  He devoted much of his public ministry to healing  those in need, whether in body, mind or spirit. Christians founded the first hospitals and now have a leading…

Positive thoughts for the holidays and media “silly season”

Lord Hylton

All too often, aggressors and those who want to establish illegal “facts on the ground” take advantage of the month of August, hoping that their misdeeds may escape notice. Against this background I will try to outline some positive thoughts, which might germinate during this time: 1:  Stop the execution of juvenile offenders: Young people…

THE DIVORCE (FINANCIAL PROVISION) BILL 2017

Baroness Deech

   There are about 110,000 divorces in England and Wales annually, and financial orders are made by the court in about one-third of them. Some are negotiating their own settlements, induced by the unpredictability of judges’ determinations. The divorce decree itself has become a largely administrative process, but the division of income and property between…

Worse than Windrush

Baroness Deech

There is to be an annual Windrush Day. Noting the acclaim for the contributions made by the Windrush generation, and the remorse over the way they were treated, put me in mind of an earlier generation of immigrants: the Jews, fleeing for their lives from Central Europe to Britain in the 1930s. In the face…

Turkish Elections

Lord Hylton

These are being held under a State of Emergency.  This gives the Government almost unlimited powers of arrest and control, at a time when it already dominates the media.  The People’s Democratic Party (HDP) is the third largest party in the Parliament, but has been demonized as a collaborator of terrorists.  This accusation disregarded the…

Self-Determination for the Palestinian People

Lord Hylton

I spoke on this in Lord Steel of Aikwood’s debate on 7 June. As far as I know, I’m the only person to make the point that Israelis have long enjoyed full self-determination.  Palestinians have been denied this rightand te large number of Palestinian exiles living in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and elsewhere, have never been…

The Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal

Lord Hylton

This body is composed of seven distinguished judges from Europe, who are independent of governments.  The Tribunal was founded in Bologna (Italy) in 1979. It took evidence in March in Paris about two specific charges against Turkey:  that war crimes had been committed mainly against the Kurdish population of Turkey, between June 2015 and February…