Posts Tagged ‘ House of Commons ’

Up the Lib Dems?

Anatole Kaletsky, former such a loyal Labourite, has seemingly abandoned his previous adulation for all things red, and instead appears to have embraced the Liberal Democrats as the “dominant part of the Left” in view of the desperately shoddy state of British socialism. I rarely agree with him, but for once I’m willing to buy [ READ MORE ]

At the crossroads

Every time I sit down to watch the news these days I get an ever stronger impression that we’re about to hit a crossroads in terms of the direction the UK can go, politically and (by implication) economically. Just today we have the news that Japan, the ‘sick man of the world’ of the last [ READ MORE ]

Gordon Brown a hypocrite? Surely not…

It seems that the appointment of Sir Alan Sugar to the House of Lords has brushed up an awful lot of Labour functionaries the wrong way, according to this article by Rachel Sylvester in the Times. Quite apart from it being an obviously gimicky move, many on the red side of the House of Commons [ READ MORE ]

John Bercow is the next Speaker

Epic Commons fail. He’s barely even a Conservative, seeing as he apparently tried to defect to Labour not so long ago… I reckon Sir George Young would have been a much better choice (and not because he went to Eton and did Philosophy, Politics & Economics at Christ Church), not least because Bercow is also [ READ MORE ]

Speakers & expenses

Oh dear – the ladies and gentlemen in our Houses of Parliament still don’t quite ‘get’ honesty, integrity, frankness and accountability, do they? Yes, MPs’ expenses have been put online, more than a year late, as the Times rightly points out, but with all or most of the other private details on the documents “redacted” [ READ MORE ]

Electoral reform in name only

It looks like Gordon Brown has really decided his days in office are numbered, even if the abject failure of the Parliamentary Labour Party to record anything but the tamest criticism of his shoddy leadership has left him pretty much safe till next May. The BBC is reporting that he is planning to announce a [ READ MORE ]

Train fares

The BBC has this article, reporting that the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee thinks that everyone, not just people who have access to the internet “and time to search”, should be able to get low-cost rail fares. The report added that, while the Department for Transport sets requirements for service frequency and punctuality, it [ READ MORE ]

Will Mr Speaker please stand down?

Douglas Carswell, Conservative MP for Harwich and Clacton, has tabled a motion of no-confidence in the Speaker of the House of Commons, Michael Martin, about which he is logging regular updates on his rather impressive blog: the original post here, update 1, update 2. There will probably be many more as it goes on – [ READ MORE ]

MPs expenses

When it isn’t smear emails offering some hard evidence of endemic Westminster sleaze, it’s what the blogs have called “troughing” – elected representatives from all shades of the political spectrum not only making one set of rules for the country and another for themselves, but also lining their pockets with multiple layers of the taxpayers’ [ READ MORE ]

The sinking ship

Everyone in the political blogosphere has already seen the polls by the Telegraph and the Mail on Sunday giving the Conservatives a 17pc and 19pc lead respectively, so I thought I’d bring them to the attention of those of my readers who don’t follow them as avidly. Specifically the figures are:  (Telegraph) Con 43pc Lab 26pc LD [ READ MORE ]

Change we need?

The recent turmoil involving Damian McBride, Derek Draper and Guido Fawkes is obviously the big story of the moment, and I was rather expecting matters to quieten down before I came up with a value-judging assessment of the whole affair. As it seems, however, the revelation by Guido, prefaced by this cryptic (and possibly in [ READ MORE ]

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