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It’s one of the anachronisms of British Government that when you are in the House of Commons (the law-making chamber) you don’t refer to it by it’s normal name. Instead, convention demands that you call it “this place” and the House of Lords (the revising chamber) “the other place”.<\/p>\n
Just occasionally I have reason to be proud<\/a> of the way our eccentric system works. Having observed the workings of the many bastardisations of the Mother of Democracy, it often seems everybody else got the modern version, capable of dynamism, without fancy dress, efficient, contemporary and sleek, whereas we watch bizarre rituals couched in language so dated that even the well-educated struggle to follow, propping up a system which seems calculated to retain Government as the preserve of the elite, maintained by the elite, for the elite.<\/p>\n Yesterday, I gave great thanks for our cobbled-together, semi-reformed, conservative House of Lords, as it stood up against the so-called “terror” laws being proposed by the Labour government for which I voted. These laws would have meant that no evidence need be produced to restrict someone to house arrest, with tagging, monitored communications, no internet, supervised visitors. <\/p>\n Basically, this vote was against giving politicians the power to determine who gets locked up.<\/p>\n The UK’s highest court, the Law Lords, recently threw out the Government’s case to keep foreign prisoners indefinitely without trial in Belmarsh prison, UK’s Guantanamo,<\/a> as it clearly restricts their human rights. By taking this stand, these people may have just preserved your<\/i> right to be shown the evidence for any crime of which you stand accused, and be given thereby the chance to defend yourself. I hope so. <\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.britishcouncil.org\/mediacentre\/graphics\/bhkqc.jpg\")
This rejection of the UK Government’s plans following on from that ruling was comprehensive, well argued, and substantial, thanks to the stature of the people who stood up for all our rights. Baroness Kennedy (my pin-up for March) quoted Martin Luther King – the passage about doing what is right, rather than what is politic, as they all voted for their consciences. Tony Blair’s own mentor Lord Irvine, who first employed him in Law, even voted against him. <\/p>\n