The Queen's Speech

Today the Queen gave her speech to both houses of parliament, setting out the forthcoming plans of the Coalition for the year ahead. 

As expected, reform of the House of Lords was on the list.

This bill is being hailed as a 'power to the people' type of legislation, but nothing could be further from the truth, as this bill will allow the speakers of both houses to select a private committee that would "elect" part of the house of Lords.

The vast majority will be elected by a public vote, similar to the House of Commons, resulting in party politics in both parliamentary chambers. The clear intention is to remove blocks to the passage of government legislation in yet another clear anti-constitutional decimation of the separation of powers.

Also featured in the speech was the Government's Banking reform bill, which is largely being misrepresented as Glass Steagall type legislation, though nothing could be further from the truth.

Rather than the legislative requirement to split retail and investment departments into completely separate businesses, the proposed legislation creates a "firewall" - a notional separation of functions within what remains a single corporation. The government claims this will protect the retail arm from the actions of the investment arm, but of course in practice it will be impossible to regulate and police.

The Children and families Bill would appear on the face of it to be an improvement, offering more flexibility for fathers with better options for paternity leave and ensuring improved access for divorced fathers. However, one key ingredient of the proposals is the speeding up of the adoption process.

The main reason for this seems to be the need to reduce the cost of holding children in care. However with the corruption within Social Services, the family courts, and particularly the so-called "expert" witness system, the dangers of miscarriage of justice increase massively as a result of this bill.

The Queen also announced the government's intention to snoop on our private calls and emails, along with establishing a National Crime Agency, Britain's FBI. The National Crime Agency will be the subject of a future report.

Laughably, the government is planning to introduce an Electoral Registration and Administration Bill, creating an individual voter registration to cut down fraud. The present registration scheme is a household one.

Will this stop fraud? Unlikely. Instead, we would suggest that the purpose of this legislation is to further the profiling of our population, so that the ministers can tell who votes for whom, and, over time, identify the swing voters. A sign of changing times, since, at one point, the public vote was considered his private choice, like so many of our liberties that have already been legislated against.