(no subject)

In the wake of the Sunday Times’s revelations about certain Labour peers being for hire to amend laws for payment^[1], since it’s easier to get things changed in the Lords where the government don’t have an inbuilt majority, I suspect there will suddenly be a lot more pressure to hurry up and reform the place. One of the strengths of the Lords is that no-one can tell them what to do, but it also means that no sanctions can be applied if they are found to be up to no good. As Lord Moonie is quoted in the article as saying,

“The thing with the Lords is that there’s virtually nothing they can do with you, unless you break the law… Even if you don’t declare, there’s nothing they can do but jump up and down”.

Most peers would never dream of taking bungs to change the law, even among the wealthier Tories who make it their life’s work to evade taxes, but it only takes a few wankers to give the impression that they’re all at it. I dread to think what kind of abysmal, ill-considered proposals for reform the government will cough up in response, although that may prove to be an entirely academic exercise. I suspect that this affair will not effect whether the next administration is Conservative, but rather for how long. Then another generation will get an exciting opportunity to discover what life is like with no public services. <sup>[2]

[1]</sup> Allegedly allegedly.

^[2] You know how Boris is obsessed with getting rid of bendy buses in London because he and his friends have never used them so he’s blissfully unaware of what a benefit they are for the elderly, the disabled or the laden? Like that! Only worse!

Birthday

Anyone in the mood who wants to stop by Kennington’s South London Pacific this Saturday 31 January to mark my birthday^[1] is very welcome.

Here, by the way, is my ridiculously lovely present from flaneurette, a gloriously rendered bunting framed by a scorching fluorescence that I have worked hard to replicate on screen. “Thank you” is just utterly inadequate for something like this.

(Large version here. Also, there's this.)

^[1] Some of you will know that this is a belated celebration. That is because my actual birthday was, barring seeing lebeautemps and offensive_mango during the daytime, pretty much a write-off thanks to day two of the committee stage of the Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Bill.