Blog posts tagged "House of Commons"

November 15, 2010 8:58 am 28 Comments

It’s been a hot news period. Aung San Suu Kyi’s release from house arrest and the freedom of Paul and Rachel Chandler from their kidnap ordeal in Somalia. So spare a thought for the future governance of the United Kingdom...or not.

February 8, 2010 11:11 am 41 Comments

Jon Snow blogs on the aftermath of the expense scandal and the call for real reform in the Houses of power.

June 23, 2009 11:07 am No Comments

I had to go down to the Commons yesterday to interview David Miliband. The Foreign Secretary was stranded in his office, held up by the election of the Speaker. I am blessed with a Commons pass – largely so that I can evade the bolt cutters of the Metropolitan police and park my bike on [...]

June 22, 2009 3:58 pm No Comments

I am at the apparent end of a tussle with the Financial Services Authority (FSA). Or I think I am. Last month it was revealed that 51 individuals had effectively failed to pass muster as “competent” to hold key positions in Britain’s financial services industry. Or to put it more politely, these individuals had “withdrawn” [...]

June 18, 2009 12:38 pm No Comments

On one level he is the fall guy of the expenses scandal. But on another, some see Michael Martin as the agent of his own undoing. Look no further than the absurd scenes enacted yesterday as he processed through the Palace of Westminster. Did anyone ever think of cutting that frock coat so that some [...]

June 10, 2009 12:49 pm No Comments

Gordon Brown will signal today whether the political classes “get it” when it comes to combating the expenses scandal in parliament. “Getting it” extends well beyond expenses to full-blown reform of our system of governance, as I have written here before.

May 27, 2009 11:09 am No Comments

Boris Johnson’s brush with a near-death accident on his bike in London’s Limehouse district (see video below) throws into sharp relief the experience we cyclists endure every working day. I am, like Boris, a jobbing cyclist. I use the machine every working day of my life – to, from, and at work. Several times a [...]

May 20, 2009 10:10 am No Comments

I first set eyes on Gordon Brown at Edinburgh University in 1970. We were both involved in student protests in our respective universities and I’d been invited from Liverpool University to give a talk to him and his fellow protesters on the campus in Edinburgh.

May 18, 2009 3:55 pm 59 Comments

There has still been no explanation forthcoming as to why, amid all the other expenses details to have emerged from the Commons, only one named MP’s expenses seem to have been shredded. It has been reported that other MPs’ expenses were also shredded. But I can only find the name of one MP to whom [...]

2:57 pm No Comments

I am reliably informed that when new peers arrive in the House of Lords, there is a kind of informal induction process. Baroness Helena Kennedy of The Shaws tells me that when she arrived in the house, a peer came up to her and almost immediately opened the question of “second homes”.