Yesterday we congratulated four Liberal Democrat members who had been given honours in the New Year list. Thanks to Mark Pack we can now add two further names.
John Housley has been awarded the British Empire Medal in this year’s New Year Honours List, in recognition of his services to the community in Chapeltown. He has served as Chairman of Ecclesfield Parish Council on three separate occasions over a long period of service as a councillor.
David Lerner, an active member of Liberal Democrat Friends of Israel, has also been awarded the British Empire Medal for services to the Jewish community in the London Borough of Harrow.
Congratulations to both of them along with thanks for all they do for their communities.
Do let us know if we have missed any others.
* Mary Reid is a contributing editor on Lib Dem Voice. She was a councillor in Kingston upon Thames, where she is still very active with the local party, and is the Hon President of Kingston Lib Dems.
Follow @libdemvoice.org on Bluesky
Like us on Facebook
Subscribe to our feed
Sign-up for our daily email digest
"The old savage England": D.H. Lawrence visits the Stiperstones
Church Green video
Thinking of standing for election or re-election next year? Helpful questions to consider
Endometriosis and acetylation
Nonconformistradical
Henry
Daniel Walker
David Raw
7 Comments
I congratulate those awarded honours in the new year list. However I do wonder if it is time we stopped automatically awarding top honours to civil servants who are just doing their jobs? Despite many good intentions, the house of Lords keeps getting more and more nominated people despite this body having no democratic legitimacy. Shouldn’t parties work together now to build a democratic second chamber fit for the 21st century?
@David
I agree the House of Lords has no democratic legitimacy but, sadly, the Liberal Democrats give it some degree of legitimacy by nominating individuals to be made members of the House of Lords. I really wish we would take a principled position on this matter and refuse to nominate anyone – just like the SNP and the Scottish Greens.
Since the House of Lords has at present a fundamental role in passing legislation are those who wish LibDems not to nominate peers implyig they prefer to leave passing legislation to other parties?
I’m not writing about what people might wish to happen but what would happen until the law could be changed – which might be very difficult.
@Nonconformistradical
The House of Lords is mainly a revising chamber that proposes amendments to proposed legislation, but any amendments have to be accepted by the House of Commons for it to be part of the final legislation that is sent for royal assent. So, not being part of the House of Lords is not preferring ‘to leave passing legislation to other parties’ – it is leaving proposing amendments to other parties, but since those amendments then return to the Commons, we would still retain our full rights and influence at that point. I would suggest that we would be in a far stronger position to argue for the abolition of the House of Lords if we were to take a principled stance on this matter.
I thought the Liberal Democrats wanted a reformed House of Lords, not its abolition. In the meantime it would not be right to have no members of the party sitting there and attempting to influence the views of the other members. The name of the second chamber could be changed to something like the Senate to emphasise its new status as a democratically elected body. The main problem with the current body is the totally excessive number of members and the way in which they are appointed by the Prime Minister just as they were formerly appointed by the monarch.
As part of the transition to a more adequate second chamber, Parliament could dispense with the titles – Lords and Ladies etc. – and members could use their “real” names. This would hopefully encourage those who felt that they could make a contribution to a revising chamber without feeling the need for a status outside the parliamentary estate.
Time to get rid of the ‘Empire’ bits…… antiquated and colonialist.