On procedure and politics

Beginning to think is beginning to be undermined

Some parliamentary reforms to look forward to in 2012

The BBC’s parliamentary correspondent, Mark D’Arcy, has an interesting look ahead  at what to expect at Westminster in 2012, with two items in particular worthy of special attention. The first will be a review of the Backbench Business Committee. I have written a number of posts about this new committee, and many readers have frequently [...]

Inside the Canadian House of Commons

I have written a number of posts explaining the role and purpose of various persons and objects in the House of Commons, but some readers want to know how the House of Commons is arranged – who sits where, who are those people at the table in the centre, etc.  The Canadian and UK Houses [...]

No backbench rebellions, please, we’re Canadians

There has been much media focus in the United Kingdom over the numerous government backbench rebellions among both Conservative and Liberal Democrat MPs since May 2010. This is regularly monitored on the Revolts.co.uk website. By September 2011, the number of Coalition Commons rebellions so far this Parliament stood at 150, a rebellion rate of a [...]

Quote of the day

“The only position that leaves me with no cognitive dissonance is atheism. It is not a creed. Death is certain, replacing both the siren-song of Paradise and the dread of Hell. Life on this earth, with all its mystery and beauty and pain, is then to be lived far more intensely: we stumble and get [...]

Recall of MPs draft bill: some concerns

The UK Coalition government has presented to Parliament a draft bill on the recall of MPs. As I have previously written, there is currently only one Commonwealth jurisdiction which has recall legislation in place, and that is the Canadian province of British Columbia. You can read about BC’s recall legislation in this post. The UK [...]

Some Interesting Links

Blogging has been and will continue to be rather light over the next few weeks due to other pressing demands that arise during the holiday season. However, I do want to share a few interesting links with readers. 1. Codifying the UK Constitution Last year, the UK House of Commons Political and Constitutional Reform Committee [...]

Search data

I do on occasion write posts based on trends I notice in the keyword search activity which leads people to this blog. I monitor this activity regularly as I do find it fascinating to see what people are searching for and also how various search engines (mostly Google, however) interpret their search terms and suggest [...]

Procedure Committee looks at e-petitions

The UK House of Commons Procedure Committee heard from Leader of the House of Commons, the Rt. Hon. Sir George Young, and from MP Natascha Engel, chair of the Backbench Business Committee (BBC) on the matter of e-petitions. You can watch the meeting here, but I will summarise below some of the key issues raised. [...]

Thoughts on “Saving the House of Commons”

Aaron Wherry of Canada’s Maclean’s magazine recently wrote a blog post proposing a series of reforms to “save” the House of Commons. Some I have previously discussed on this blog, such as changes to Question Period. Readers proposed other reforms and ideas the comments. I thought I would offer my own thoughts on some of [...]

Christina Blizzard doesn’t get coalition

I was hoping, in the wake of the formation of the UK Coalition government in 2010, that Canadian political journalists and columnists would perhaps follow events in the UK a bit more closely (or at all) and maybe even occasionally write about how the Coalition was getting along, if only to provide a contrast to [...]

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