Charlie Rangel speaks

Yesterday Representative Rangel spoke to the House of Representatives about the ethics charges he is facing. It has much food for thought for lawyers, politicians and citizens.

138 years of service, ended in a year

In the last year, three of the Senate's longest-ever serving Senators have died. On 25th August last year Senator Ted Kennedy, who had served 46 years 9 months and 19 days - the 4th longest serving Senator in US history, passed away. On June 28th the record breaker of them all, Senator Robert Byrd, died after 51 years, 5 months, 26 days in office. This week the longest serving Republican senator in history [Strom Thurmond was a Democrat for the first 9 yrs 1 month & 21 days - serving only the 3rd longest period as a Republican Senator] , Senator Ted Stevens ( 40 years, 10 days) was killed in a plane crash.

 
 

How the South was Squeezed

A friend sent me this video - an excellent graphic representation of the course of the American Civil War.

Prrinciples for Parliamentary Reform

In a recent Briefing Paper on House of Commons reform, the Hansard Society proposed Five principles to guide parliamentary reform.

1 Primacy of scrutiny - Parliament should be organised and resourced in such a way that parliamentarians can more systematically and effectively scrutinise the Executive

2 Cultural Change - MPs views of their role needs to change - and more emphasis needs to be put on working effectively in committees.

3 Procedural change and streamlining - the quality of outputs - particularly legislation needs to be improved

4 Public Engagement - Parliament must communicate with and respond more effectively to the Public

5 Strategic vision and leadership - piecemeal evolution is not enough - there needs to be a strategic vision, and the leadership to push through necessary reforms.

The paper can be read in full here.

The Victoria Tower

The Clock Tower, often wrongly referred to as Big Ben, is one of the most well known towers in the world. At the other end of the Palace if Westminster is the Victoria Tower . It is 98m (323 ft) high - with a flagstaff adding a further 22m. It was not merely built to provide symmetry to the New Palace - but was custom designed to hold the parliamentary archives. [the rules for architects who had entered the competition to design a new palace to replace the one largely burned down in the disastrous fire of 16th October 1834 stated that the palace should include "fireproof repositories for books and documents"]. Today there are 5.5 miles of shelving - some in specially temperature and humidity controlled rooms - holding the archives which start in 1497. It is estimated that it is now 80% full!

Details of the holdings can be accessed here.
Click here for a history of the Parliamentary Archive

There is an online virtual tour of the tower accessible here. A souvenir booklet to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the completition of the tower will be produced towards the end of 2010.