Earl of Onslow dies aged 73

Earl of Onslow in the House of Lords

I've just noticed this on the BBC website.

"The hereditary peer, the Earl of Onslow, has died, House of Lords speaker Baroness Hayman has announced. The 73-year-old peer had been a member of the House for 40 years and last spoke in the chamber on 29 March. A self-styled "disloyal" Conservative, he was known for his colourful bow ties and outspoken views on issues such as drugs, which he called to be legalised."

Nick Clegg is currently unveiling plans for a second chamber populated by 300 members, 80% of which could be elected. Who might get to choose the candidates, I wonder? Maybe they will be those who failed for the other place.

Lord Onslow saw humbug, spoke up against it, and was not afraid to speak his mind. I'd far rather have a 100 of him than one of Clegg's nominees! Let the dust settle on the House of Commons, with all its recent travails, before we get to pontificate on the House of Lords. Anyway, who is so desperate for this supposed reform? Most people are worried about their immediate futures.

Too many lords a-leaping - the House is full!

The serried ranks of peers

David Cameron has been told by a cross-party group of senior peers that the House of Lords is "full" and he must stop creating new members. The prime minister has created more peers more quickly than any of his post-war predecessors, having ennobled 117 people in less than a year. The trouble is that the House of Lords is now seen as a kind of alma mater for old politicians from the House of Commons. They should be reminded of the late Mr. George Howard of Castle Howard fame. "There's nothing grand about the nobility!", he once said.

It has been remarked that the influx of retirees from the other place has coarsened debate, led to rancorous tones on occasions and even led to animosities. It also means that, a couple of peers short of 800, the House of Lords is packed to the gunwales. This is crazy. The House of Lords was once almost all made up of hereditary peers. Then Blair came along - "Well, yeah, look, but!" - and got rid of all but 92. This was to assuage some kind of democratic deficit he'd imagined in a dream. No doubt as an antidote to his democratic deficits at the ballot box, by being elected on only 20% of the total electorate's support.

The House of Lords works best when it is not interfered with or abused from without. Life peers should be appointed for their expertise, advice they can give. Time-serving is not a big brownie point here. I'm in favour of the House of Lords as it is currently. It is accessible to the general public. Maybe that's why the House of Commons is suspicious? Anyone can write to or communicate with a peer. In fact, not having a constituency makes for a completely different way of dealing with political interaction. There are peers from theatrical backgrounds, farming, educational, scientific, legal backgrounds. Yes, you get that in the House of Commons, but not without a rigid party line being attached.

I think David Cameron should be wary of pushing more in. If it's some odd idea to sink the ship, he might find a mutiny on his hands before that happens. Leave well alone, sir. This ship is built to last!

Earl of Onslow is ill

Quentin Letts has a good turn of phrase usually. Spot on with is observations. I didn't know that the Earl of Onslow was very ill. He is a doughty fighter for causes, an exemplary example of a hereditary peer and a very good antidote to the type of nonentities that Nick Clegg is so very keen on replacing him with. I do hope the Earl of Onslow gets better soon.

This is what I spotted in Letts' column today in the Daily Mail.

Quietly, the Church of England has gone electronic. It has been running an internet prayer wall during Lent (sayoneforme.org) and hundreds of supplications show us a vulnerable side of humanity not often reported. If you have any prayers to spare, please say one not for me. Say it for one of our great parliamentary characters, the Earl of Onslow. He is desperately ill, but has continued with his duties and only the other day attended a committee meeting in his wheelchair.

Duty isn't much commended these days. It's more greasy poles and expansive expenses.

Update: 17/05/11 http://ardenforester.blogspot.com/2011/05/earl-of-onslow-dies-aged-73.html

Bob Diamond tipped for Barclay's top job!

So Bob Diamond (here on the left) gets to run the show at Barclays. He's been the chief bottlewasher at Barclays Capital which is an investment bank of sorts. No more merchant banks. If Marco Polo had come looking for a loan, he'd have all his sails done over in a Polo mint livery for starters. Barclays is not flavour of the month as far as the Coalition is concerned.

But HSBC is! The new Trade Minister is none other than the Rev.Stephen Green, Anglican priest (Non Stipendiary Minister, that is!) and CEO of all he surveys at the world's local bank. He will join Vince Cable as a government trade minister, presumably as a Non Stipendiary one. This means he will enter the Lords as a reverend lord sitting not that far from the right reverend prelates. It will be interesting to see who gets in first when it comes to the problems that Mammon is causing this government.

Clegg's curate's egg

Nick Clegg is going to announce reform today. No more conforming, but reforming the system. I have a gut sense at the moment that it will be deforming. Particularly with regard to the House of Lords.

This new august body will be elected by proportional representation. So presumably out go the bishops, in come the BNPeers. Out go the crossbenchers, in come the crossdressers. Out go the hereditary peers, in come the 21st century proletariat. A bunch of second division politicians who won't know whether they are to muse over government legislation or to stand their ground and confront the Commons.

Nick Clegg needs to know a bit more about unravelling the constitution and its consequences. Yesterday, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Lord High Chancellor were given pecking order mention on the first day back for MPs. We know what happened to the Lord Chancellor's position. It was gravely attacked by the closet republicans of New Labour. Is Rowan Williams going to turfed off the red benches with equal unceremonious ingratitude? Does Nick Clegg have any clue about the Established Church? I've not heard one word about it.

The House of Lords is a fine institution. It is the only second chamber in the entire world to examine legislation with such mental dexterity and service to the nation. The crossbenchers provide a whole host of independently minded peers. And each and every one of the noble lords is able to take up causes on behalf of the public. Being unelected does NOT mean they are divorced from the general political life.

What is to be the suggested replacement? Elected people! Well, I've got an MP for that. Do I want the second placed person in the constituency poll to go for the "Senate"? A slate of rejects hoping for some political crumbs. If the new chamber is to have limited powers who wants to be elected to such a chamber? So many questions. The answers aren't so good.

Jack Straw's House of Hayseeds

Jack Straw is meddling again. Not content with waiting to see what sort of House of Commons we get after the next election, he is muttering and murmuring about the House of Lords. He should leave well alone. An elected Lords in any form will be a disaster. Just a further tranche of politicians seeking the electorate's favours and friendship.

The likelihood is that the next general election will provide us with career politicians without fault or stain. Paragons of virtue with limited value in a democratic sense. I dread to think of the outcome. Never again will the House of Commons have mavericks, independent spirits or principled campaigners. We might as well have the whole House linked to a far-eastern call centre.

Now Jack Straw is a man of delusional thought when it comes to the House of Lords. He says, "A reformed second chamber could breathe new life into Parliament while protecting the fundamental primacy of the Commons". Not in a month of Sundays. A hybrid House will be a hybrid horror. Democracy will count for nothing. It is not democratic just to stuff the House of Lords with list-voted second-string politicians.

What is at stake is the loss of fine minds and those with a sense of contribution to give and a willingness to share knowledge. I cannot for the life of me think why it is wrong to have scientists, film directors, authors, playwrights, actors, farmers, diplomats, policeman et al in the House of Lords all giving some ability to revise legislaton, to impart some actual experience to aid parliamentary debate. Jack Straw, in some vainglorious attempt to ingratiate himself with the public by displaying "democratic credentials", just plays into the hands of those seeking to emasculate the second chamber.

I have no desire to have somebody knock on my door seeking election to a "revised chamber". Election for what exactly? To put my views forward? I have a MP for that and I can easily write to a peer on any subject under the sun. That's the great advantage of the House of Lords. Somebody knows about something. Yet Jack Straw, in his "Justice Secretary" role, keeps up this appalling mantra for change. "A reformed second chamber could breathe new life into Parliament while protecting the fundamental primacy of the Commons," he burbles. Hardly a change that will assist the country out of its current dire distress.

All that this will do, this crazy desire for change, will be to unleash a load of new politicians in pursuit of a reason to be there. They will squabble with MPs over who has democratic primacy, they will offer token revision of bills if they are government supporters and they will go to the cliff edge if they are not. According to Straw's plans, they will have fifteen years to do something and then go regardless.

If you want a constitutional crisis in the making, then vote for this second tier of wannabe governors. Tell Jack Straw you love the idea. My desire is for it to be left well alone. I've enough trouble worrying about the selection and election of on-message greasy pole sycophants to the House of Commons. That is the real problem facing the country. A 1984 intake in a 2010 election!

Supreme foolishness!

The New Labour disease is a vile thing, often manifesting itself in manipulation. That is in this organisation's case an uncontrollable spasm in the hands causing the outfit to mend things which were not broken. In fact, they chip bits off, then imply it needs mending. It is a terrible disease, the only cure being a GENERAL ELELECTION!! If only.....

Archbishop Cranmer has a wonderful post about this new Supreme Court thing. Please read it, it says it all.

Just as a rider, this on the "Judiciary Communications Office" website, rambling on about why their Lordships have been booted out of the House of Lords (as judges that is) -

"As members of the House of Lords, this means that they not only sit judicially, but are also able to become involved in the debate and subsequent enactment of Government legislation (although, in practice, they rarely do so). Creating a new Supreme Court will mean that the most senior judges will be entirely separate from the Parliamentary process."

If they rarely got involved and the whole system worked for 1,000 years, what mindset thought better? Oh, the manipulatively diseased mind of New Labour, of course!

Life peers no longer to get life!

Keen to keeping the meddling and the messing about with the constitution ticking away, the government has decided to include a measure in a Constitutional Reform Bill for the right of life peers to resign from the House of Lords - something hereditary peers have been able to do since 1963. This is due to go before Parliament on Monday.

The bill will also bring an end to the hereditary principle. The fourteenth Mr.Brown is keen to kick out the last remaining earls, countesses and other "heriditaries" as New Labour mockingly calls them.

It's all a mean-spirited device. I would far rather have a few lords left, like the Earl of Onslow and the Countess of Mar giving sage advice and providing pertinent points about badly-drafted bills than an elected bunch of self-serving apparatchiks. Mandelson and Brown talk about democracy but they have been the worst abusers of democracy this country has ever seen or had the misfortune to endure.

I cannot for the life of me see which life peer would want to resign from the House of Lords in order to fight an election to be able to sit in the House of Commons. The fourteenth Earl of Home resigned his title in order to become prime minister in 1963 but that was because he had no choice in holding his title. Viscount Thurso has not ceased to hold his hereditary title but he currently sits as a Liberal Democrat MP (John Thurso) because he is not one of the remaining 92 heriditary peers in the House of Lords. Life peers had a choice whether to receive the title or not.

Which life peer right now wants to scarper and stand in the general election next year? Finding one would be as difficult as searching for a needle in a haystack. The miscievous Lord Mandelson just stoked an imaginary bonfire with his usual wit. Asked last month by the Financial Times whether he might renounce his peerage and stand again as an MP, Lord Mandelson said, "It's not legally possible to do that. I am trapped. I believe it is for life." The peer, who insisted he was "teasing", added, "Of course, you could always change the law."

Well don't change the law. Leave things well alone and bother yourself with getting the helicopters to Afghanistan. Nobody is going to die because the 2nd Baron Strathclyde is the Conservative leader in the Lords but they will die in Afghanistan if the military advice is ignored for squalid political cheeseparing!

Labour lords a'leaping!

Now we move over to the House of Lords. Two Labour peers have been naughty boys too. They face suspension from Parliament for six months after being found guilty of misconduct. That misconduct was of being willing to change laws in exchange for cash. Sounds more of like an Italian parliamentary excercise than that of a peer of the realm.

Of course they say they did nothing wrong, but they were caught on camera with microphone turn up. The Sunday Times got them bang to rights! A worm would need to be a contortionist to keep up with all the wriggling that's going on at present. Both houses of parliament need a clean sweep.

It's not as though this is new. Famously Tony Hancock, in the "Blood Donor", expounds his views on whether it is right that Cliff Richard earns ten times as much as the prime minister. Lapsing into a daydream, he mutters, "I suppose it depends on whether you like Cliff Richard and what your politics are".

That was nearly 50 years ago. Tells us something about time. Cliff Richard hasn't changed much and neither has politics, it seems.

Mandy makes it it ermine!

Lord Mandelson has arrived, courtesy of the gravy train (no stops allowed!), in the House of Lords. This piece from the BBC shows fellow peers watching the proceedings in stony silence, until the obligatory roar of approval.

We will have to wait and see whether he is able to break the mould. At the despatch box he will have to cut a different cloth. However, the peers are not a herd and their instinct is not always determinable. In that he may be lucky (again!).