I have already explained that I really don’t mind.

However, just in case you really really want to cast your vote for this blog in the Total Politics annual beauty parade, this is what you have to do:

The rules are:
1. You must vote for your ten favourite blogs and rank them from 1 (your favourite) to 10 (your tenth favourite).
2. Your votes must be ranked from 1 to 10. Any votes which do not have rankings will not be counted.
3. You MUST include at least FIVE blogs in your list, but please list ten if you can. If you include fewer than five, your vote will not count.
4. Email your vote to toptenblogs@totalpolitics.com
5. Only vote once.
6. Only blogs based in the UK, run by UK residents or based on UK politics are eligible. No blog will be excluded from voting.
7. Anonymous votes left in the comments will not count. You must give a name.
8. All votes must be received by midnight on 31 July 2010. Any votes received after that date will not count.

So I’m not asking you to do it, but I really won’t mind if you do……

I have already explained that I really don’t mind.

However, just in case you really really want to cast your vote for this blog in the Total Politics annual beauty parade, this is what you have to do:

The rules are:
1. You must vote for your ten favourite blogs and rank them from 1 (your favourite) to 10 (your tenth favourite).
2. Your votes must be ranked from 1 to 10. Any votes which do not have rankings will not be counted.
3. You MUST include at least FIVE blogs in your list, but please list ten if you can. If you include fewer than five, your vote will not count.
4. Email your vote to toptenblogs@totalpolitics.com
5. Only vote once.
6. Only blogs based in the UK, run by UK residents or based on UK politics are eligible. No blog will be excluded from voting.
7. Anonymous votes left in the comments will not count. You must give a name.
8. All votes must be received by midnight on 31 July 2010. Any votes received after that date will not count.

So I’m not asking you to do it, but I really won’t mind if you do……

I am not looking for any recognition, as you know these things don’t matter to me at all and I am profoundly disinterested in where this blog comes in the annual Total Politics ranking of political blogs, so I really am not asking for you to vote for me or my blog ……..

but ……..

should you be so inclined (and I repeat I really, really don’t mind one way or the other), this is what you have to do:

The rules are:
1. You must vote for your ten favourite blogs and rank them from 1 (your favourite) to 10 (your tenth favourite).
2. Your votes must be ranked from 1 to 10. Any votes which do not have rankings will not be counted.
3. You MUST include at least FIVE blogs in your list, but please list ten if you can. If you include fewer than five, your vote will not count.
4. Email your vote to toptenblogs@totalpolitics.com
5. Only vote once.
6. Only blogs based in the UK, run by UK residents or based on UK politics are eligible. No blog will be excluded from voting.
7. Anonymous votes left in the comments will not count. You must give a name.
8. All votes must be received by midnight on 31 July 2010. Any votes received after that date will not count.

So I’m not asking you to do it, but I really won’t mind if you do……

Ken Clarke, the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice, has said that Bloody Sunday inquiry conducted by Lord Saville has been a “disaster in terms of time and expense” and got “ludicrously out of hand”.

I doubt whether there will be many people (apart from the many lawyers who have done extremely well out of the process) who would disagree with the sentiment that the inquiry has taken an extraordinary length of time and has therefore been monumentally expensive.

However, Ken Clarke’s timing is interesting.  His comments were made just 48 hours before the report was due to be published.  Is this part of a process of softening-up, so that, when David Cameron does introduce the report, the Coalition Government is able to distance itself from the inquiry’s twelve years of deliberations and the conclusions it has reached?

This afternoon Downing Street announced the appointment of 55 new Peers, which when added to the three new Peers appointed by David Cameron as Government Ministers, makes a total of 58.  When they all take their seats (plus the two newly “elected” hereditary Peers), there will be 767 members of the House of Lords.

The announcement today is in fact an amalgam of three lists:

• a list of “working” Peers, nominated by the political parties, that has been working its way through the system for some time.  This comprises sixteen Labour; ten Conservatives (including one of the new Ministers); and six Liberal Democrats.  This list was completed well before the General Election and should have emerged months ago.
• a list of ex-MPs who were not standing in the General Election – the “dissolution” list, which traditionally appoints former senior Ministers and leading Parliamentarians to the Lords.  This comprises thirteen Labour; six Conservatives; three Liberal Democrats (one of whom – Richard Allan – retired five years ago and now works for Facebook); and one Democratic Unionist (Ian Paisley).
• one individual appointed as a Cross-bencher in recognition of having held a significant post in public life (Ian Blair).

I am told that the out-going Prime Minister had been sitting on the list of “working” peers for some time, along with the nomination of Sir Ian Blair, who was sacked by Mayor Boris Johnson/resigned the Metropolitan Police Commissionership to pursue other opportunities in October 2009.

Still to come is the normal “resignation” list of nominees by the outgoing Prime Minister (Tony Blair’s list is also still outstanding) and a list of peerages for any senior ex-Ministers or Parliamentarians defeated in the General Election.

This, of course, also excludes the “gerrymander” list of 100-200 new Peers that the Coalition has promised itself to avoid any risk of being voted down in the House of Lords.

Despite the extra Peers announced today, the Coalition’s case for bolstering its position remains extremely weak.

When the new Peers are in place the make-up of the House will be:

• 204 Conservatives
• 239 Labour
• 80 Liberal Democrat
• 218 Cross-bench and others
• 26 Archbishops and Bishops.

The coalition will have 284 members of the House out of a total of 767.  This is 37% of the House and is in practice a working majority as the Crossbenchers and the Bishops do not vote in a bloc (usually splitting on either side of the argument) and in practice they do not attend and vote as frequently as the Party representatives.

The outgoing Labour Government never had more than 30% of the membership of the House and was virtually always defeated if the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats voted together.

And the accepted principle had been that the Government of the day should not have a working majority in the House of Lords.

There is, of course, another reason why there should be no more Peers appointed for a while after the announcement today.  The House is now bursting at the seams.  In the Chamber it is frequently now standing room only and the Liberal Democrats have encroached onto the Bishops’ benches (encircling any Bishop present).  A note has gone round to many Peers telling them that they can’t have both a desk and a locker.  And it won’t be long before Peers have to share coathooks.

A constitutional outrage by trying to gerrymander the second Chamber is one thing; sharing coathooks is quite a different kettle of fish.

• more young people attending university than ever before
• more than doubled the number of apprenticeships starts, with figures for 2008/9 showing 234,000 started an apprenticeship this year compared to 75,000 in 1997
• in 1997 more than half of all schools saw less than 30% of thier pupils fail to get 5 good GCSEs including English and Maths; now only 270 schools fail this benchmark and we are guaranteeing that no school should fail this mark after 2011
• we have increased school funding to support the delivery of higher standards: between 1997/8 and 2009/10, total funding per pupil has more than doubled from £3,030 to £6,350 in real terms – an increase of 110%
• the Northern Ireland Peace Process

Baroness Manningham-Buller, the former Dame Eliza and Director-General of the Security Service (MI5), gave the Mile End lecture in the House of Lords a few hours ago.  Her topic was “Reflections on Intelligence” and I understand that the text of this will shortly be available on the Parliamentary web-site.

In the Q&A after the lecture one Jack Bauer enthusiast asked her about torture.  She was unequivocal in her reply:

“Nothing – even saving lives – justifies torture.”

She’d earlier made some comments about US “waterboarding” activities at Guantanamo Bay and she added the caustic comment:

“The sad thing is that Cheney, Rumsfeld and Bush watched “24″.”