It is almost six months since I last blogged and I had intended to forego the self indulgence. However we are in such a disasterous situation that I feel obliged to add my twopenny contribution.

There were not many interested in politics who were surprised by the disclosures in yesterday's Sunday Times. The Lords is an anocronism and their Lordships totally irrelevent to a modern democracy. The one thing they possible had going for them was that unlike those in the House of Commons they possible had some integrity. Yesterdays allegations and todays disclosure of the actual recordings of conversation suggests that we were were totally wrong to give them the benfit of the doubt that somehow they were different to their colleagues in the lower house.

They draw up to £325 per day for signing in and out and have the benefit of the best and cheapest dining facilities in central London.

It is of some interest to me at least that The USA has a population of just over 300 million people and 100 Senators in their Upper House. In the UK we have 740 Peers, when we have a population of just over 60 million. Using the US standard we should need 20, not 740, in a reformed House of Lords.

Not only are their Lordships an irrelevance and probably corrupt but there are far too many of them.