It’s difficult to explain the sudden flowering of interest in constitutional reform. It apparently arises out of the general panic in the Westminster village about public anger and contempt over the abuse of (some) MPs’ expense allowances. This has reinforced already existing disillusionment with our parliament, our parliamentary system, even politics itself. There’s no obvious [...]
I have expressed earlier my conviction that it will turn out to be a disaster for Britain if the Tories, having won the general election in a few months’ time, carry out their threat either to hold a referendum on ratification of the Lisbon Treaty if it has not yet been brought into effect at [...]
Unlike most media commentators, with their vested interest in encouraging leaks by civil servants who betray their duty of confidentiality and loyalty to the elected ministers for whom they work, I have very little time for Mr Damian Green, the Conservative MP and shadow minister. Over a period of about two years Mr Green received [...]
One of the strongest of many reasons for not voting Conservative in the European Parliament elections on 4 June or, especially, in the impending general election is the Tory threat to hold a referendum on the Lisbon treaty, something that’s not only weirdly irrelevant (Britain has already ratified the treaty) but also potentially disastrous for [...]
J and I are just back from a three-day short break in Bruges. Our Bruges pictures are on Flickr at –
http://www.flickr.com/photos/brianlb/sets/72157618576894874/. If that doesn’t load, click http://bit.ly/Q4×6v instead.
To view the pictures in a decent size, click ‘Slideshow‘ (near the top right of the screen), and when the first picture appears, quickly click the pause button [...]
The Speaker of the House of Commons, Michael Martin, made a statement this afternoon (11 May 09) on MPs’ expenses, and took a number of points of order on the subject. This must have been one of the most extraordinary performances from the Speaker’s chair in modern times.
My wife, not easily moved to semi-public protest, [...]
The Daily Telegraph has undeniably pulled off a great coup in getting hold of the details of MPs’ expenses claims and publishing them. It’s doing it in dribs and drabs, starting today, thus pre-empting the official plan to publish them all together in July, after the elections in June to the European parliament and [...]
The dry statistics of unemployment figures tend to mask the human suffering that lies behind them: men and women losing the jobs that helped to define them, in some cases with little prospect of ever finding employment again; the dire effects on wives, husbands and children, and other dependents; the dizzy drop in [...]
An interesting epilogue to the MacBride smear e-mails saga: Gordon Brown’s personal letter of apology to Nadine Dorries, the Tory MP defamed in the e-mail, has been published in full-size facsimile by the Daily Mail in an article of 15 April by Ian Drury:
A post by John Sutherland on the Guardian’s Mortarboard blog speculates about [...]
The prime minister decided last week to announce his new policy on MPs’ expenses by posting a clip on YouTube. I defy anyone to watch it through without falling about with incredulous laughter. Is it possible that no-one in No. 10 had the gumption to step in and prevent this suicidal venture into no longer [...]
