Arise, Lamprecht of Cockfosters!
I was deeply hurt and upset when I discovered that my nomination for a peerage had gone missing in the post. I don’t know if it is HOLAC or Sunak who is to blame, but I too had once been in Boris’ inner circle… I even let him drive my car (a W-reg red Alfa Spider) so I am sure he nominated me but then some pencil pushing “Tzar” in Whitehall blackballed me. So, I am hereby resigning. I have had it. I have always wanted to be Lord Cockfosters (mainly because it sounds a bit like a rude Australian beer).
But on to serious matters, this whole carry-on with Boris and the honours (and use-Lizz’s to come) highlighted the fact that there are currently 776 peers… 261 Tories; 174 Labour; 83 LibDems but only 2 Greens. (take into consideration the last set of council elections and you can see that something is wrong). The upper house has truly and honestly been corrupted by politics. It almost makes one long for the days of the hereditary peers… you know the sort… the 19th Duke of Northshire, the Rt Hon Lord Augustus Theophilus Fortescue-Tottington-Hardwick who had the last grain of intelligence beaten out of him at Eton and was completely immune to the shenanigans of little yobs in the House of Commons.
The Lords could be such a good thing! 183 of these peers are cross benchers who are not there because they were mates with the string of former Tory PMs, but thankfully have been appointed on merit… people like Baroness Valentine who is a tireless champion for regeneration. The Lords should be a revising chamber full of the greatest minds in Britain, a place completely immune to the little yobs in the commons – whatever flavour they may be. A chamber where we inject some common sense and intelligence into our legislation.
We are definitely overdue on a big reform of the House of Lords and then perhaps we should take that model and start applying it to Planning Committees.
With the elections of a month ago, we saw a vast number of new administrations (I have covered it extensively so look it up if you want to know more) and new Councillors and many of them stood on tickets of stopping development. Now I am usually the sort of chap who likes politicians to keep their promises… but not necessarily on this!
We already saw the new administration in Spelthorne withdrawing their Local Plan half-way through the examination and trying to force it through the shredder (as soon as they can find one big enough to shred six years of work). But we are also seeing a lot of new Councillors on Planning Committees flagrantly disregarding the professional recommendations by their officers and turning applications down “because they were elected to do so - and bugger planning law”.
It really is time for reform… Parliament needs politically neutral experts with a say, and so do our Planning Committees on Councils!
For that idea alone, I deserve my peerage!
Until next week,
Henry
henry@theccp.net or 07736121014