Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Another Labour u-turn

I got back home from holiday around 7pm this evening and settled down to reading council papers and the local newspapers from the past 10 days. A small story in yesterday's Journal caught my attention. Headlined "Queen's Speech delay sparks Labour anger", the article was about the decision to move the Queen's Speech from its normal November spot to late spring. The aim is to bring it into line with the election cycle, now that we are moving into fixed term Parliaments with elections in May every five years. The change is logical but it means the 2011 Queen's Speech will be delayed by about 6 months. The alternative would be to have two Queen's Speeches in a period of 6 months. That is just plain daft.

Labour however have come up with their predictable, manufactured outrage. The extra 6 months has another advantage in that it gives greater time to allow for scrutiny of government legislation. It would be reasonable to think Labour would be happy with that. After all, they made a gigantic fuss about the Academies Bill being rushed through before the recess and demanded more time for scrutiny. Now that they have been given more time to scrutinise legislation, they are outraged yet again. Seems there is no pleasing some.
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