Some interesting news from Telegraph columnist Alex Singleton regarding Mr Howard Flight.
And it throws up an interesting question about the House of Lords. Old Howard is standing in his living room here doing his best to show off how rich he is by cramming in all his art, including his wife, who must be wearing that dress for a bet... (I’m sure he won’t mind my saying that. He believes in straight speaking, and he probably thinks that I’m some hideous little prol who shouldn’t be allowed to breed for fear of contaminating the blood line, or whatever.)
Anyway Howie, as I like to call him, has been being courted by the United Kingdom Independence Party, who were hoping that he would be elevated to the Lords so that they could manage to get another peer into the House by stealth. And Lo, because Dave can’t take back what has been given by Letters Patent (letterae patentes), will just have to let him go forward as a working peer, only to find that he won’t be working for Dave. Still Dave can always put another one in to make up the numbers. In fact he may have to put two in, one to make up for Flighty, and one to make up the numbers.
And it throws up an interesting question about the House of Lords. Old Howard is standing in his living room here doing his best to show off how rich he is by cramming in all his art, including his wife, who must be wearing that dress for a bet... (I’m sure he won’t mind my saying that. He believes in straight speaking, and he probably thinks that I’m some hideous little prol who shouldn’t be allowed to breed for fear of contaminating the blood line, or whatever.)
Anyway Howie, as I like to call him, has been being courted by the United Kingdom Independence Party, who were hoping that he would be elevated to the Lords so that they could manage to get another peer into the House by stealth. And Lo, because Dave can’t take back what has been given by Letters Patent (letterae patentes), will just have to let him go forward as a working peer, only to find that he won’t be working for Dave. Still Dave can always put another one in to make up the numbers. In fact he may have to put two in, one to make up for Flighty, and one to make up the numbers.
And so it will go on, and if (hum) and when (hum again) the Lords next stage of reform comes in and a few hundred more are elected, they’ll have to get a bloody great portacabin out the back to put them all in. (Only of course, it will have to be a portacabin of very special construction, for blue blood and ordinary people’s portacabins don’t go together at all.
Nick Cameron, or Davie Clegg... (whichever, I can barely tell them apart these days), has said that those Lords who are in the House at present will be allowed to stay there till they die. (Interesting fact: it is illegal to die in parliament on the basis that if you do, you have to be given a state funeral, and that costs money.) So if the 750 odd stay until they die, and the lot make more peers and then we elect 400... at some stage the whole place may just burst. And wouldn’t that be a shame...
Wikid!
ReplyDeleteHa ha... Nothing of any import leaked so far?
ReplyDeleteTris,
ReplyDelete"a bloody great portacabin" Jeez, what did you have in mind?
PS: I like that dress - it matches my eyes on a Monday morning.
ReplyDeleteNothing seems to be too ridiculous for these people, it’s a way of life! Flight is a great example of that. Blotted his copy book with the Tories by being too right wing and ridiculous before he even set foot in the building. Let’s hope he waits until he has donned his ermine before he makes a fool of UKIP (mart you they are used to that aren’t they! Wonder if they will ever make their minds up who is gonna lead them).
ReplyDeleteBaroness Warsi is 39 so she has a long and fruitless but expensive career ahead of her as a Tory placeman.
Was there not also some nonsense about electing them for a huge period of time like 10 years. Just like the French President: ah those undemocratic French. Oh no sorry that was seven years and they reduced it to five in 2005. Dam those French for being more democratic that the English (oops British), it’s just not cricket!
Erm, I guess, when I said 'a bloody great portacabin' what I really meant was....'a bloody great portacabin', but with Ermine carpets and priceless paintings along its walls, subsidised restaurants and bars selling good plain English cooking (if that's not some sort of oxymoronic paradox). Dunno how else to describe it.
ReplyDeleteI knew that dress reminded me of something.... but even at that it's hardly appropriate for Lady Flight. More like Lady Fright if you came upon her unexpectedly in the dark!
tris,
ReplyDeleteAh, so you did not mean bloody in the true sense of the word? Big shame as Spooks would say.
Hee Hee! I have no intention of coming across Lady Flight in the dark, unexpectedly or otherwise. That nose could split a hail-stone.
Hum Munguin... I think they were suggesting 15 years. As if anyone had ever heard of anything so stupid...well OK, the job for life is even more stupid, and not being elected at all is even more stupid, and putting in ones that the public has just rejected is even more stupid, and pretending that they are aristocrats and calling them your lordships is even more stupid, oh yeah and any suggestion that they are in any way, shape or form noble is positively moronic.
ReplyDeleteOK... Maybe I was wrong there.
So maybe, given that it is a British solution to democracy, suggested by a government with only one clever person and a whole pile of PR men and their friends in it, I suppose it is quite democratic.
Don't mind me I'm rambling...
As for the French. Terrible lot really (foreign too I’m told)> yes Jacques decided that the “septième” was too long for a president, which indeed it was. So he vowed that, if they elected him he would reduce it to a “cinqième”. And, when he was duly elected we waited and waited, and he served his 7 long years, and promised that if they elected him again he would defo, no mistake, introduce a 5 year presidency, so he did, just to prove that he did occasionally tell “la virité... and to spike the guns of poor little Emperor Sarkozy, who is only getting a short emperorship... Poor WEE git.
(It was the Americans that said that about him...thin skinned, emperor-like and a short arse!)
OK, I added the last bit.