What's in a speech?
The Queen’s Speech was widely seen as the biggest non-event in the British political calendar across the blogosphere this week. But the list of – mainly expected – bills and draft bills and the pomp of the occassion offered enough material to be picked apart at length.
An interesting debate ensured over at Dave’s Part on the subject of a bill which will allow unions to exclude members based on their political activism. Its origins lie in the instance of Aslef being unable to kick out a BNP activist. David Osler starts the debate by asking: “Could we see a situation where general secretaries are allowed bureaucratically to exclude internal opponents who belong to Marxist groups, for instance? And if so, shouldn't we flatly oppose the bill?”
As part of Kerron Cross’s sideways look at the proceedings, he notes: “Then into the House itself where BBC correspondent Huw Edwards pretended not to understand Dennis Skinner’s heckle to Black Rod about ‘who shot the harriers?!’ before pithily saying ‘well, some of those efforts work and some of them...clearly don’t’, which bizarrely was much the same thought I had had about the BBC decision to replace David Dimbleby with the clearly disinterested Edwards.”
A number of bloggers followed up a BBC/UK Gold list of the more bizarre British laws already in existence. Henry North London wonders why the Queen’s Speech could not have been used to remove some of them. Among the list: “1. It is illegal to die in the Houses of Parliament” and “6. In the UK a pregnant woman can legally relieve herself anywhere she wants, including in a policeman’s helmet.”
In an entertaining eulogy of Brown’s political vision, As a Dodo concludes: “Gordon Brown’s political vision will be scattered by a light breeze. Mourners are asked to send donations to offshore tax havens.”
A new left-wing blog launched this week, mischievously named the Liberal Conspiracy. Sunny Hundal catalogues how it was received across the blogosphere, and concludes with a rallying call: “For now it’s important we nail our colours to the mast, get conversations going and talk about issues the MSM is ignoring. That liberal conspiracy they keep saying is all-powerful, we actually need to build one.”
This also appears at www.newstatesman.com/blogs/best-of-the-politics-blogs.
An interesting debate ensured over at Dave’s Part on the subject of a bill which will allow unions to exclude members based on their political activism. Its origins lie in the instance of Aslef being unable to kick out a BNP activist. David Osler starts the debate by asking: “Could we see a situation where general secretaries are allowed bureaucratically to exclude internal opponents who belong to Marxist groups, for instance? And if so, shouldn't we flatly oppose the bill?”
As part of Kerron Cross’s sideways look at the proceedings, he notes: “Then into the House itself where BBC correspondent Huw Edwards pretended not to understand Dennis Skinner’s heckle to Black Rod about ‘who shot the harriers?!’ before pithily saying ‘well, some of those efforts work and some of them...clearly don’t’, which bizarrely was much the same thought I had had about the BBC decision to replace David Dimbleby with the clearly disinterested Edwards.”
A number of bloggers followed up a BBC/UK Gold list of the more bizarre British laws already in existence. Henry North London wonders why the Queen’s Speech could not have been used to remove some of them. Among the list: “1. It is illegal to die in the Houses of Parliament” and “6. In the UK a pregnant woman can legally relieve herself anywhere she wants, including in a policeman’s helmet.”
In an entertaining eulogy of Brown’s political vision, As a Dodo concludes: “Gordon Brown’s political vision will be scattered by a light breeze. Mourners are asked to send donations to offshore tax havens.”
A new left-wing blog launched this week, mischievously named the Liberal Conspiracy. Sunny Hundal catalogues how it was received across the blogosphere, and concludes with a rallying call: “For now it’s important we nail our colours to the mast, get conversations going and talk about issues the MSM is ignoring. That liberal conspiracy they keep saying is all-powerful, we actually need to build one.”
This also appears at www.newstatesman.com/blogs/best-of-the-politics-blogs.
posted by Owen Walker at 1:03 PM
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