Of lords, ladies and gentlemen

Of lords, ladies and gentlemen

Congratulations are in order to former Bangkok Post journalist Natalie Bennett who has been made a House of Lords peer and is now named Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle. Natalie, or rather Lady Bennett, who had been the leader of the Green Party for several years, was given this title in former prime minister Theresa May's resignation honours list last week.

An Australian by birth, after leaving New South Wales, Natalie worked as foreign news editor of the Post for about four years in the late 1990s. During her time at the newspaper, Natalie was known as being very efficient. One senior editor described her as a "fabulous no-nonsense gimme-the-facts sub-editor with an Aussie accent you could cut with a knife".

After leaving the Post in 1999, she went to England where she worked on the Guardian Weekly. She got involved in politics, joining the Green Party, and became its leader in 2012. Natalie made the headlines in England in 2015 when she silenced prime minister David Cameron and the Labour leader in a 2015 television debate by challenging them to shear a sheep faster than she could.

I can safely say Natalie, now living in Sheffield, is the first Post employee to become a member of the House of Lords, although we will have difficulty picturing her in those ceremonial ermine robes.

Busy doing nothing

Over the years the House of Lords has regularly come under fire for its non-democratic nature, none of the members being elected. Prime targets have been the hereditary peers. Things have improved this century but you still get embarrassing tales.

When Lady D'Souza stepped down as speaker from the Lords in 2016, she praised the hard working peers but admitted "there are, sad to say, many, many, many peers who contribute absolutely nothing, but still claim the full allowance. (300 pounds a day). This prompted the unflattering headline in the Sunday Times: "Peers Paid for Doing Nothing".

One baroness reportedly claimed the equivalent of 20,000 baht a month in travelling expenses when all she did was walk 200 yards (183 metres) from her house to Parliament. There was also a notorious case in 2017 when one peer kept the taxi running while he dashed inside to pick up his daily allowance, before getting back in the cab for more pressing duties.

I am sure the new Lady Bennett will be very much in the hard-working category. Noting the advanced age of many peers one member admitted the Lords is "the best daycare centre for the elderly. They have nice meals subsidised by the taxpayer and can have a quiet snooze in the afternoon in the chamber or in the library."

To think I had always assumed Thailand invented inactive posts.

Watchdog or poodle?

A big critic of the Lords in the old days was Labour prime minister Clement Atlee who commented: ''The House of Lords is like a glass of champagne which has stood for five days." When Conservative prime minister Arthur Balfour was in power, in the Commons he defended the House of Lords as being "the watchdog of the nation". Liberal leader David Lloyd George responded that it was simply "Mr Balfour's poodle".

Oscar Wilde's views on the upper house were made clear in his satirical play Woman of No Importance, in which one of the characters states: "We in the House of Lords are never in touch with public opinion. That makes us a civilised body."

Family tree

Many years ago there were a number of intriguing newspaper advertisements appearing in Bangkok announcing British lordships for sale, giving the holder of the title a crest of arms and ancient feudal rights.

Unfortunately you had to cough up about one million baht for the privilege. So that put an end to my dreams of a lordship, although Lord Crutch of Crunkley would have had a certain ring to it. I recall my dad paid a "fiver" for something which claimed to trace our family lineage. There was a ripple of excitement when we discovered an ancestor once owned a country estate in the south of England. Unfortunately it was back in the 16th century, so any fanciful thoughts of a life of luxury went out the window.

Not so lucky

One of the most intriguing tales concerning a British lord is that of Lord "Lucky" Lucan, the ex-Etonian and professional gambler who got in a terrible mess. He fled his Belgravia flat in 1974 after allegedly murdering his 29-year-old nanny, mistakenly thinking it was his wife.

After the killing, he was only seen once, a few hours later at a friend's house in Sussex, and his car was found at the nearby port of Newhaven. The commonly accepted theory is that a distraught Lucan committed suicide by jumping off a ferry in the English Channel, but as his body was never found, there has always remained an element of doubt. This was enough to spark a series of conspiracy theories most of which had Lucan fleeing to distant lands. There have been "sightings" in every continent, but as far as I know, none in Thailand. If he was still alive he would be 84.

Hot seat

Finally one suspects the sub-editor from the Wiltshire Gazette and Herald had tongue firmly in cheek when he wrote the following headline concerning a fire, "Peer's Seat Burns All Night, Ancient Pile Destroyed".


Contact PostScript via email at oldcrutch@hotmail.com

Roger Crutchley

Bangkok Post columnist

A long time popular Bangkok Post columnist. In 1994 he won the Ayumongkol Literary Award. For many years he was Sports Editor at the Bangkok Post.

Email : oldcrutch@gmail.com

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