Guy Aitchison (London, OK): It's one of those moments when the peculiarities and contradictions of our current system are truly brought home. A group of peers have started a House of Lords blog which they're calling "Lords of the Blog". It will feature regular contributions from nine peers on the business of the House and their activities in and around the chamber. It is being organised by the Hansard Society with the aim "to help educate, raise awareness and engage with the public on a range of issues relating to the role and business of the House of Lords." They seem to be mostly crossbench or Lib-Dem peers with Lipsey for Labour and Norton for the Tories.
At the moment it's only a pilot which will be reviewed after six months but it's already attracting a few comments and may be expanded to include sections from other peers should they wish to get involved. The Lords will apparently moderate and run the site themselves. If they post regularly and engage with their readers there's no reason why it can't be a success. As Lord Norton points out in a couple of posts there's almost zero coverage of the Lords in the media and many people probably have no idea what they get up to. From what I've read so far Norton and Tyler are both keen bloggers; both are authorities on the constitution too, so hopefully they'll be some perspectives for OK to cover.
Of course, the House of Lords should not exist. But should its replacement include non-party independent minded people who can speak directly without having to look over their shoulder to see if the whip is about to cut into them? Lords of the Blog will help keep this argument alive. But will its authors permit the key full-time workers who keep the House going, the librarians and assistants, to join the blog and give it a really revealing edge, that also talks about who falls asleep? And will the Hansard organisers of the blog roll wake up to the existence of Liberal Conspiracy, Pickled Politics not to speak of OurKingdom? Anyway, check it out - it's certainly an interesting threat to the monopoly of the traditional media and much better than complaining about poor - read zero - coverage of Lords debates.
