HoC Climate change committee

Politics.co.uk notes the appointment of chairmen to the select committees of the UK's House of Commons. This one is striking...

Energy and climate change committee - Tim Yeo (Con)

Yeo has easily made the transition from the environmental audit committee, which he chaired in the last parliament, after that committee's chair passed to Labour hands. He beat Philip Hollobone despite declaring an impressive range of interests, including a non-executive directorship of Groupe Eurotunnel, a non-executive chairmanship of AFC Energy and a consultant role for Regenesis.

It is very hard to look an anything that goes on at Westminster without getting a faint whiff of something unpleasant.

Monckton to overthrow government..

...or something like that. Lord Monckton is apparently to be the new deputy leader of the UK Independence Party and politicalbetting.com is wondering if global warming sceptics will now all leave the Conservative Party.

Select committee allocations

Spy Blog reports on the allocation of House of Commons Select Committee chairs to the different parties. Both the Environment and Science/Tech positions are to be filled by Conservatives.

Please let it not be Tim Yeo.

Election coming

There's an election coming here in Blighty and I find the whole thing thoroughly depressing. This cheered me up briefly though.

Subsidised trough

Some more useful information from the Freedom of Information Act: prices at the Strangers Bar in the Palace of Westminster.  Sample prices for a pint of beer include:

Fosters £2.10

Guinness £2.20

You can't help but wonder if this generous pricing policy is the cause of the quality of the legislation they send our way.

How to be speaker

Here's an amusing little picture. The graph is for the candidates for speaker of the House of Commons and examines the relationship between their expenses - specifically their total Additional Costs allowance for the last five years - and the number of votes they received in the first round. This is the only correlation I can test because it's the only chance people got to vote for the whole field.

Does it look like there's some sort of a relationship there? Looks to me as if money can't buy you love, but unless you are willing to get down and dirty then you're just seen as goody two-shoes.

The trougher-in-chief

So John Bercow is the new speaker. The man who is going to restore our faith in the ancient and venerable institution of Parliament.

The man who had the largest additional costs allowance claims in parliament in pretty much every year since he was elected.

They just don't get it, do they?

Marge

Margaret Beckett is now apparently the punters' favourite to become next speaker.

Her parliamentary majority is 5,657.

Could be an interim speaker then.

Ralph Lucas on constitutional reform

A slightly off the wall, but rather interesting, idea from Ralph Lucas (Lord Lucas to you):

Why not move the seat of government entirely to the Lords?

We'd elect MPs, as now. They'd choose the PM, as now. But the PM would then receive an immediate earldom and move up to the Lords, forming his ministerial team there.

This would achieve the separation of the legislature and the executive that so many are talking about, leaving the Commons as a true legislature, holding the government to account and controlling the finances - and with no legislation at all required to achieve it (though doubtless Lords reform would follow swiftly).

What is the state?

It looks like a fraud against the British public from where I'm standing:

Kinnocks have six state pensions

BBC stars are paid twice

Card fraud probe targets 300 detectives.

These chickens will come home to roost eventually.

Is this for real?

Kreepy Gerald Kaufman's excuse for claiming £220 for two grapefruit bowls: he has diagnosed himself as having obsessive compulsive disorder and so he has to have them.

This has to be a joke....

.....doesn't it....?

Conspiracy theorising

1. Yesterday Lloyds TSB reported that they are to repay £2bn on their bailout money (the economy has turned).

2. Yesterday again, Gordon Brown, survived a meeting of the parliamentary Labour party which might have been expected to unseat him. Perhaps Labour MPs felt the economy was on the turn.

3. Today, Lloyds TSB accounced that it is to close down all of its Cheltenham and Gloucester branches.

Could it be that these news items are in some way linked? Institutional investors in Lloyds may have needed persuading that the time was ripe to repay the bail-out. The government is, of course, the majority shareholder in the group. Could it be that government agreement to the closure of C&G was the price the investors extracted? It is certainly odd to find a company making major stock exchange announcements on consecutive days. Even odder when you notice that the good news preceded Gordon Brown's moment of truth, while the bad news came later.

If this is right, then C&G would effectively have been closed down in order to allow Brown to take some good news - the repayment of the bail-out - to the House of Commons yesterday.

Interesting thought, isn't it?

An indictment

It really says something about our parliament that two of the four candidates to be the next speaker appear to be tainted by the expenses scandal.

Do they think we've forgotten?

Another MP we might want to be rid of

A little nugget from Hansard:

Dr. Julian Lewis: To ask the hon. Member for North Devon, representing the House of Commons Commission for what reasons the information on hon. Members' expenses which has been leaked was not processed solely on paper, prior to scheduled publication by the House authorities in redacted electronic form.

To some hon. members, it seems, the problem is still that we know what they were up to, rather than the fact that hon. members had their snouts in the trough. Not the kind of MP we want in the House.

What constitutional crisis?

Several commentators have referred to the Snoutgate scandals as being a "constitutional crisis". I don't get it myself. It's a crisis only if our constitutional institutions can't deal with the problems they are being presented with. As far as MPs' expenses go though, they seem to be taking the whole thing in their stride. Guilty MPs are being deselected or are standing down. Where they aren't jettisoned in one way or another, they will surely be dealt with by the electorate, and their parties will suffer the consequences more widely. It's working very well as far as I can see.

So where's the problem? Sure, if the BNP win a majority at the next election, that would be a crisis, but I don't really think that's an issue when there are more salubrious alternatives around for all shades of political opinion - even for libertarians like me.

We might have had a problem if our parliamentarians were chosen by proportional representation - then we might get the crooked pols back via party lists, but fortunately we don't, and we should keep it that way. Quite why the left is trying to change us to a system that is less likely to let the electorate get rid of crooked politicians is beyond me.

This is not to say that our constitutional arrangements are any good. Far from it. Just that we need to take things slowly and carefully. It would be a pity to throw the baby out with the bathwater.