Category Archives: Interest Pieces

These are just my general observations. I do not speak on any particular authority or according to any specific schedule.

The Books of Quinn and Kay

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Since getting my library card, the first two books I have consumed are Life on the Old Railways by Tom Quinn and This Is Going To Hurt by Adam Kay, the former as a hardback and the latter as an online audiobook.

It may seem odd to review both of these together, but there is some similarity – both consist of recollections of employment in a British state institution established in 1948.

I was interested in the descriptions of the institutional rank structure: On the old railways it went from Cleaner to Passed Cleaner to Fireman to Passed Fireman to Driver. The “passed” indicated that you had already completed a set amount of time in that role and were training for the next one. One diarist remarked that despite the intensely hierarchical nature of the system, movement from one rank to another was oddly informal and that the job titles were more reflective of the job you’d already done than the one you were currently doing. Pay rises, whatever your rank, did not take effect until your birthday. Kay explained the ranks of the NHS as Pre-registration house officer, senior house officer, specialist registrar and consultant. That structure had already been abolished and replaced by the time his diaries began, but the old terminology lingered for years afterwards in staff usage. He noted that the “senior” house officer was in reality still a very junior role and that promotion was purely a function of time rather than performance. This, he reckoned, was to convince the lower employees that their next upgrade was always just around the corner and so prevent them bailing out.

Another theme of both books was the sheer amount of time dedicated to the profession – railwaymen would be up before dawn to get their engines ready whereas junior doctors would would stay long into the night to keep patients alive. Neither managed to get many weekends or holidays to themselves.

Record-keeping was also important – the railwaymen recalled how every ticket, time and tonnage had to be scrupulously written up by hand (under torch or even candlelight) in enormous ledgers many of which were later sadly thrown away, whereas Kay spoke of the hospital’s attempts to digitise, with computer systems that refused to communicate with each other, blocked employees’ emails, erased recordings and ran so slowly that the patient would be dead by the time you’d selected the right medicine from the drop-down menu.

Despite the arduity, it was noted that the workers at both organisations were passionate about their jobs and generally held in high esteem – train driving was what every child had always wanted to do, while medicine was where every parent wanted their children to go (some class differences, of course). Perhaps that could also be their problem – the external prestige of holding such a position was used to compensate for (and even cover up) the stress of actually performing it.

This Is Going To Hurt was dramatised earlier this year as a critically-acclaimed BBC series. There is no TV version of Life on the Old Railways, but stories and documentaries about the days of post-war steam are ten-a-penny on most channels and online.

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Today’s virtual event was by the Foundation for Integrated Transport, and its content is adequately explained by the title.

“Car dependency” is a term used in the urban planning community to mean the inability of a resident (or visitor) to move around a settlement without the use of a personal motorcar. It is often cited as a defining (and damning) feature of suburban environments, particularly in the United States following the Second World War. As their name implies, urban planners (and urbanists more generally), tend to focus their attention on cities and dense conurbations, with comparisons made to the suburbs. Smaller towns and rural environments are often overlooked, hence the theme of today’s seminar.

Though interested in the premise, I was a little disappointed by the format – although the participants spoke to each other over Zoom, the guest attendees were made to watch it through YouTube, so other than the chatbox (only available to those who had YouTube accounts) there was no meaningful interaction with the hosts.

Off to the Libraries

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Although the COVID pandemic is not exactly over, lockdown seems unlikely to recur and so it is now practical to visit again those places which had been inaccessible for much of the last two years, including public libraries.

As I have mentioned before, the ceremonial county of East Riding of Yorkshire is divided into two unitary authorities – one for Kingston-upon-Hull and one for everything else. This includes public library systems. I have therefore gone about acquiring a card for each. Applications online were a reasonably simple process of filling in a form on the councils’ websites, though actually visiting a library in person to collect the physical card was rather as neither institution’s opening hours were exactly convenient. Oddly, both sets of online login details suddenly stopped working once I’d taken possession of the cards and I had then to go back to ask for help.

Now that they are working I can search both libraries’ online catalogue before going to pick anything up. There is a delight in finding here the tomes (particularly on heraldry) that had long eluded me on Google Books or the Internet Archive, or even the library at the university. The downside is that these are not all kept at the same location (East Riding’s in particular are scattered across a large area.) and that the reference section of Hull Central Library has been closed for more than a year.

In case one cannot attend the physical libraries at all, both online accounts include the BorrowBox service allowing patrons to take out virtual resources, though the inventory on there is quite small.

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Demise and Disarray

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The death of Elizabeth II is a time of serious grief for her family and her many peoples. It is also a time of mild confusion for public bodies, and of course Wikipedians. Here is a run-down of some of the changes that have recently been made.

The Monarch

The man long known as Charles, Prince of Wales is now King. For many years there had been speculation that he would take the regnal name George VII in honour of his maternal grandfather and great-grandfather, but shortly after his accession it was confirmed that he would indeed go by Charles III. There was a brief period when his page was at Charles, King of the United Kingdom before being changed to Charles III. There is an ongoing debate as to whether the article title should include “of the United Kingdom”. The side in favour argues that there have been many other monarchs over the centuries called Charles III from whom the present monarch needs to be differentiated. The side against argues that Charles is king of far more than just Britain, and that if you included one realm in his title you would have to include all of them, lest you imply that one is more important than another.

The Consort

Camilla Shand, at the time of her marriage in 2005, was not popular among much of the public still grieving Diana Spencer. So as to avoid appearing to usurp her legacy, she never styled herself “Princess of Wales”, instead going by “Duchess of Cornwall”. It was also suggested back then that, upon her husband’s accession, she would be styled “Princess Consort” (presumably derived from Prince Albert) rather than Queen. How true this proved to be was always a matter of public relations rather than constitutional law. By the start of this year it was clear that her reputation had recovered sufficiently to abandon that idea, and Elizabeth II in an open letter explicitly endorsed her daughter-in-law to be called Queen Consort. Currently all major media and government sources are very insistent on styling her “The Queen Consort”, rather than simply “The Queen” as other queens consort were before her. It is not yet clear if she will be described this way for the whole of Charles’s reign or if it is simply a temporary measure so as not to confuse the public while the late queen regnant is still being mourned. Again, there is dispute over whether her article title should include “of the United Kingdom”.

The Heir Apparent

In 2011 Prince William of Wales was ennobled by his grandmother as Duke of Cambridge, Earl of Strathearn and Baron Carrickfergus in the peerage of the United Kingdom. He has not ceased to hold these titles, but they are now buried beneath several others. The dukedom of Cornwall, in the peerage of England, is governed by a 1337 Charter instructing that it belongs automatically to the eldest living legitimate son of the incumbent monarch and the heir apparent to the throne, and that if these two statuses are held by different people then the title is left vacant. This means that all dukes (save Richard of Bordeaux) are deemed to have held the original peerage, rather than it being created anew each time. The Duchy of Cornwall, a substantial land-holding corporation in the south of England, is governed by the same. The dukedom of Rothesay in the peerage of Scotland is mandated by an Act of Parliament from 1469 to follow an identical succession, as are the titles Earl of Carrick, Baron of Renfrew, Lord of the Isles, Prince of Scotland and Great Steward of Scotland. The titles of Prince of Wales and Earl of Chester, by contrast, are not automatic. They are conferred by letters patent at the discretion of the monarch. It appears from news reports that Charles III has opted to do so almost immediately after coming to the throne, though I am still waiting to see this formally confirmed in the Gazette or the Court Circular. There was a short interlude in which the royal website and Wikipedia styled him “Duke of Cornwall and Cambridge”. I argued that it was poor form to include Cambridge while leaving out Rothesay, to which an anonymous user replied:

It would, but we don’t have a basis for that usage in Wikipedia practice. The hierarchy is very much What the Papers Say > legal/heraldic/formal/official names > anything that actually makes sense. I’m guessing there will be a followup announcement about his distinct style in Scotland and indeed in Northern Ireland, and maybe they’ll end up with something more logical and less clumsy. After workshopping every other possibility.

The Others

The accession of a new sovereign causes a reshuffle in the orders of precedence among the royal family. In the male order, Charles is naturally now on top. His sons William and Harry also move up, as do his grandsons George, Louis and Archie (their position before, as great-grandsons of the sovereign, was a little unclear). Andrew and Edward are demoted from sons to brothers, James and Peter from grandsons to nephews, and the Earl of Snowdon from nephew to cousin. The Dukes of Gloucester and Kent and Prince Michael are unaffected. On the female side Camilla achieves supremacy, followed by Catherine, then Meghan, then Charlotte, then Lilibet, then Sophie, Anne, Beatrice, Eugenie, Louise, Zara, Birgitte, Katharine, Marie-Christine, Sarah and Alexandra.

The styles and titles of Charles’s descendants are also upgraded (though those of his siblings and niblings are not diminished). William and Harry both gain a definitive article in their princely titles. George, Charlotte and Louis are now “of Wales” rather than “of Cambridge”. There has, of course, already been a famous Princess Charlotte of Wales, so until an alternative solution emerges their Wikipedia pages must be differentiated by the awkward use of years in brackets. Archie and Lilibet, as children of a younger son of the sovereign, now qualify as royals under the terms of the 1917 letters patent. They could now correctly be styled as “His Royal Highness Prince Archie of Sussex” and “Her Royal Highness Princess Lilibet of Sussex”, though no move has been made in that direction so far. The situation regarding the Earl of Wessex’s children remains ambiguous. Charles could, of course, amend or revoke the letters patent however he wishes, but there has not yet been any indication in that regard.

The dukedom of Edinburgh, earldom of Merioneth and barony Greenwich, which were conferred by George VI on his daughter’s fiance Philip Mountbatten in 1947, and were then inherited by Charles in 2021, have now merged with the crown. Any of them can be bestowed anew on whomever His Majesty chooses. His brother Edward has long been presumed to receive them next, but no decision has been taken at this time.

Under the Regency Act 1937 Camilla (consort) and Beatrice (fourth adult in line) have become Counsellors of State.

The office of Lord Great Chamberlain of England (not the same as Lord Chamberlain of the Household) has automatically transferred from the 7th Marquess of Cholmondeley to the 7th Baron Carrington. The former therefore loses membership of the House of Lords under Section 2 of the 1999 Act while the latter gains it. What happens to the place he already held among the ninety elected hereditary peers is still to be determined.

The Courts

The Queen’s Bench Divisions of the High Courts of England & Wales and of Northern Ireland, as well as the Courts of Queen’s Bench for the Canadian provinces of Alberta, Manitoba, New Brunswick and Saskatchewan, have all been renamed King’s Bench. The status of Queen’s Counsel in Australia, Britain, Canada and New Zealand has likewise changed to King’s Counsel, and all who hold it have had to amend their post-nominals accordingly. Only last month I created a new template for judges of the Queen’s Bench Division and had scrupulously added the specification to each of their infoboxes. Now I have had to change all of them. Still, it helps boost my edit count I suppose.

The Late Queen

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The inevitable moment I and so many others around the world had long dreaded finally arrived tonight – Buckingham Palace announced the death of Elizabeth II. It is a blessing that she survived to see her Platinum Jubilee and the end of the pandemic, but also a disappointment that she missed her centenary.

Last year, shortly after the death of her consort Philip, I blogged an extract from my grandmother’s writings, concerning the time she spent in Malta with then-Lieutenant Mountbatten. I sent a letter about such recollections to his widow. Some weeks later I received a thank-you note from Mary Anne Morrison, Woman of the Bedchamber.

I would have liked to be able to recall a more direct interaction with Her Late Majesty, but sadly my only in-person encounter was a drive-by glimpse in 2017. My time with the new monarch has been similarly brief – I once got a wave from him at the Valley Gardens in Withernsea in July 2013.

More words will come when I have had time to compose them.

Double David

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For a while now the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom has had two vacancies, caused by the retirement of Lord Lloyd-Jones and Lady Arden of Heswall in January. Yesterday it was announced that appointments had been made: Arden’s place is to be taken by Sir David Richards, formerly of the Court of Appeal of England & Wales, while Lloyd-Jones’s successor is… Lord Lloyd-Jones.

The reason for this bizarre phenomenon is found by looking at legislation relating to mandatory retirement ages. The Judicial Pensions Act 1959 set the retirement age for people entering the judiciary thereafter at 75, though it was not binding on those already holding office by then (so Lord Denning and Lord Cameron continued until ages 83 and 85 respectively). The Judicial Pensions and Retirement Act 1993 lowered this to 70, but again was not retroactive so that those who had held judicial office before 31 March 1995 were grandfathered in. Lady Arden was the last such grandfathered member of the UKSC. The last overall was Sir James Holman, appointed a judge of the Family Division (EWHC) on 18 March 1995, who retired on 28 June.

The Public Service Pensions and Judicial Offices Act 2022 (which received Royal Assent on 10 March) raised the retirement age back to 75, and this time it was retroactive, so that those already in office can now serve an extra five years, and some who recently retired at age 70 (such as Lloyd-Jones and Richards) can come back for an encore.

Incidentally, I discovered these appointments through the Twitter feed CrownOffFOIDs. The name is a shorthand for “Crown Office Freedom of Information Disclosures”. This is the Crown Office in Chancery, a small section of the Ministry of Justice responsible for the production and management of certain state and royal documents. Whether the office itself, or a private citizen, is operating the Twitter account is not clear. The output includes photographs of the Great Seal of the Realm as well as many of the different types of document to which it may be attached. There are writs, warrants, patents and proclamations of a great many kinds, including the proclamation of the present monarch’s accession, which the Tweet notes is not as physically impressive as one might have expected.

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The ‘Brexit Freedoms’ Bill and Retained EU Law

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This was another session with the Constitution Unit of University College London.

The topic of “skeleton bills” and “Henry VIII powers”, which have been highlighted a lot in recent political blogs and podcasts, was also prominent here. Although this problem is said to be particularly bad in the post-referendum era, it has been in the making for many decades. I asked the panel (at 1 hour and 35 seconds in):

“If the trend towards skeleton bills and secondary legislation gas been noticed for many decades, does this indicate a problem with the permanent government rather than the politicians?”

It was put to the panel simultaneously with two other questions. I will try my best to disentangle the answers.

Doctor Tom West said: Absolutely this is a long-running trend. The Legislative and Regulatory Reform Act 2006 had very wide powers and people called it the “Abolition of Parliament” Bill. There are all sorts of examples of this being an issue, such as the financial crisis of 2008. Ministers, once they’re no longer in power, will come clean that there is an issue – Theresa May mentioned it at an IfG lecture last week. It’s very difficult while you’re in power to give up these very convenient ways of making law through secondary legislation. Brexit and COVID have raised the profile of this problem, but it is not exclusive to them. That’s what our Delegated Legislation Review Programme is looking at – we think there’s a need for a reset of the whole system of what these powers can be used for in the first place and how they can be scrutinised. We are in the middle of developing proposals.

Ruth Chambers said: This trend towards framework bills has been going on a long time. I’ve worked on environmental legislation for over twenty years. Just to give one practical example – it used to be that when governments would state consultation requirements on the face of the bill they would be quite explicit about which sorts of people and groups the minister should consult before taking powers forward. Now the more standard construction says the ministers can consult whoever they think they need to. Obviously that has consequences – bills often lack the future-proofing edge. It doesn’t matter how many times you have that conversation with ministers while they’re passing legislation, it doesn’t quite register that at some point in the future someone else will be wielding those powers. It also has huge implications for the public – the public businesses and civil society organisations really need to stay the course and engage with the secondary legislation not just the bill.

A Note on the Leadership Race

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As Boris Johnson’s premiership draws to an undignified conclusion, a new leader of the Conservative & Unionist Party is to be elected for the third time in just over six years.

When last that happened, Professor Norton blogged about about four different types of Prime Ministers: Innovators who want to implement specific and ambitious goals of their own design (e.g. Thatcher), reformers who want to implement the goals of the party overall (Attlee), egoists who are in it for their own fame (Eden, Wilson, Johnson) and balancers who are concerned with keeping the peace between rival factions (Macmillan, May). He has not claimed these to be definitive or exclusive, but merely the labels he finds most useful. Recently he has revisited the idea.

In my view the roles of innovator and reformer are a little difficult to distinguish, as political ideas are often credited to the prime minister who enacted them even when their invention was owed to another (e.g. much of Thatcherite thinking was actually the product of Sir Keith Joseph). It might be better to merge them into one category of ideologue.That of balancer more obviously stands apart as someone less ambitious about specific goals and more concerned about overall stability. Egoist, of course, is something that few politicians would admit of themselves and which often comes across as a slur (not that it is untrue).

At present the nomination window has yet to formally open let alone close, so the field is still prone to change, but let us take a look at those declaring so far:

  • Kemi Badenoch (Saffron Walden), lately a junior local government minister
  • Suella Braverman (Fareham), current Attorney General
  • Jeremy Hunt (South West Surrey), current health committee chair
  • Sajid Javid (Bromsgrove), lately health secretary
  • Penny Mordaunt (Portsmouth North), a junior trade minister
  • Grant Shapps (Welwyn Hatfield), current transport secretary
  • Rishi Sunak (Richmond Yorks), lately Chancellor of the Exchequer
  • Elizabeth Truss (South West Norfolk), current foreign secretary
  • Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge & Malling), current foreign affairs committee chair
  • Nadhim Zahawi (Stratford-on-Avon), current Chancellor of the Exchequer

At present Sunak and Truss are perceived as most likely to make the final ballot. Sunak seems to be positioning himself as a balancer. He wants to be perceived as a safe pair of hands and broadly popular among the public. Truss is going more for the ideologue side, particularly those who had favoured a harder departure from the European Union. Both are obviously egoists at heart, given that both appear to have registered their campaign websites some time before there was any hint of Johnson’s resignation. Concerns have long been raised about Truss spending government money on her own publicity, while Sunak seems to have hired a social media specialist to improve his personal brand.

Among the other candidates, Mordaunt and Tugendhat might be considered together. Their support (and that for defence secretary Ben Wallace, who was the front-runner before he ruled himself out) seems to come from the same source – a desire to clean up the party’s image and get politics back to normal. The quest for them is less about any specific policy goals and more about cleaning up the party’s image. They are seen to have demonstrated competence in their roles so far (a rare treat in modern politics) and avoided the scandals plaguing those at the top. Their military backgrounds are likely a large part of their appeal.

Javid and Hunt are somewhere in between. Hunt was the runner up in 2019 and has stayed out of Johnson’s government, so is a champion for the opposing faction (especially Remainers). Javid is more closely associated with Johnson but not seen as a lackey to the extent that Sunak or Truss are. Both are well-established within the parliamentary party so probably seek the same safe-hands image, as well as leaning on their reputations as businessmen.

Badenoch and Braverman both have fairly low national profiles which they are probably hoping to raise. They are unlikely to win but may be securing higher offers in the new cabinet or the next leadership election, whenever that may be. The former is well regarded for her chamber and studio performance, and promoted as a competent officeholder, whereas the latter seems to be favoured more as a stalking horse for an economic sect of the party.

That leaves Shapps and Zahawi, whose analysis must be very carefully phrased. Like Hunt and Javid they both have business backgrounds, but these may prove more a hindrance than a help. Shapps has several times attracted controversey over the conduct of his companies as well as denial of operating them under pseudonyms while serving in the Commons. In late 2015 he had to resign from the government due to alleged negligence in handling bullying claims within the party. He’s even been caught editing his own Wikipedia page to remove inconvenient details. Zahawi is distrusted by some in the party for having accepted a great office of state from Boris Johnson immediately before demanding he step down. There have also been numerous concerns raised about his private business interests, and flags raised by HMRC over his tax affairs.

Without commenting on the veracity of these particular claims, it raises the prospect of another category of leader – the featherer. Like egoists, no candidate would outright admit to being one, but unlike them the goal is less to acquire personal fame and more to protect one’s personal interests – or those of a different person supporting them. This would be hard to use in an academic textbook though, since such nest-feathering typically does not become known until many years after the accession has taken place.

UPDATE (12th July)

Shapps and Javid have withdrawn, Rehman Chisti dipped his toe but shortly withdrew again. Badenoch, Braverman, Hunt, Mordaunt, Sunak, Truss, Tugendhat and Zahawi have qualified for the first round.

A Blackmailer at Frogmore

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Today’s virtual outing was with the National Archives again. James Travers, Cultural Property Manager, was promoting his new book on the “ghost” of Caroline of Brunswick, Queen of George IV.

The centrepiece of the book, and the lecture, was Thomas Ashe, whom the injured consort had commissioned to write her memoirs. His book The Claustral Palace was suppressed from publication, for it would have revealed the intimate life stories of her sisters-in-law who were confined at Frogmore House.

How much of the novel was true is unclear, but it put Ashe in conflict with the government as well as George IV’s brother the Duke of Cumberland (later Ernest Augustus I of Hanover).

Travers’s lecture was quite convoluted in its story, which combined with his soft way of speaking and some technical glitches at my end meant it wasn’t always easy to follow the plot, so reading the book itself is probably necessary to get a full understanding.

An odd way to promote oneself

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In early July, two by-elections are to take place in the upper house, following the retirement of the Lord Brabazon of Tara in April and the death of the Lord Swinfen in June. Both were among the Conservative section of the excepted hereditary peers, which means there is no partisan competition for their replacements.

Despite the smallness of the electorate, the statements made by the twelve peers to offer their candidacy have been released on Parliament’s website. Most are essentially short CVs, with nothing particularly jumping out save Lord Wrottesley’s self-description as “closet tree hugger, as reflected in my business interests”, apparently forgetting that the whole point of being a closet anything is precisely not to announce it in public.

The exception is the Earl of Dudley, who instead of giving any information about himself simply linked to his YouTube channel, technodemic. Its content comprises nothing but music videos, some featuring (I would guess) the earl himself and others made up of television clips. There is a lengthy description on the about page, but confidence is not inspired by the lack of an avatar, nor the names of some of the channels to which he subscribes.

Somehow, I don’t think he’ll win.

UPDATE (6th July)

The by-elections have been won by the Lords Remnant and Wrottesley. Dudley received no votes at all.