The House of Lords Constitution Committee is required to report to the House on Bills of constitutional significance. The Committee’s practice is to publish a report once a Bill arrives in the House. However, the constitutional significance of the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill, which has just been introduced in the Commons, is such that the…
Please act on this appeal from an impartial humane source. Remind your MPs and MEPs: The situation in Gaza has reached its lowest ebb outside of periods of military attack and should now be considered a humanitarian emergency. Over the past 10 years, Gaza has suffered a decline of living standards since Israel imposed a…
Sapatan Village near Semdinli, Hakkari Province, SE Turkey – This is a village of some 2000 people in SE Turkey, not far from the frontier. One Turkish special operations police officer had been killed (probably by PKK insurgents) on or just before 6 August 2017. On that day, probably in the early morning, the whole…
I have been opposed to executions ever since I became involved with cases of miscarriage of justice, many years ago. The struggle against capital punishment goes on across the world, though rather slowly. Some of you may have heard BBC 5 Live’s programme on 8 August. This had an interview with Kris Maharaj and his wife,…
Antony Loyd is a veteran war correspondent, who has reported from Bosnia, Chechnya and Iraq. Following the expulsion of ISIS/Daesh from the city of Mosul in Iraq, he has described the killing of some prisoners by Iraqi forces and the beating and brutalizing of others. Please see his 3-column article in The Times for Saturday…
Each session, the House of Lords not only re-appoints its investigative sessional select committees (communications, constitution, economic affairs, European Union, international relations, and science and technology), it also appoints ad hoc committees to examine particular topics during the course of the session. It used to appoint one a session, but it moved in the 2010-15 Parliament…
The Netherlands rail incumbent, NS, has been fined Euro 40m by the Dutch Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM) for abuse of dominant position in the regional tendering process. ACM found that NS has submitted a lossmaking bid in order to shut out competition on the regional tendering process. The other bidders were not able…
I have written on previous occasions about Poland’s slide towards authoritarianism and its reversion to its past system of dictatorship (sometimes there is little to choose between the fascist and communist regimes, especially from the perspective of the oppressed). http://lordsoftheblog.net/2016/02/18/poland-is-the-problem-continued/ and http://lordsoftheblog.net/2016/01/23/poland-is-the-problem/ The situation is now even worse, to the extent that it would not…
Despite all the talk about the importance of maintaining our membership of the European Convention on Human Rights, it is increasingly seeming to be a dead letter in other European countries. Here is a very brief rundown. It is sad that space does not permit coverage of yet more appalling situations in member states of…
