No geek
is an island

News Quiz regular Jeremy Hardy paid an emotional tribute, calling her “the wittiest and brightest person working on TV or radio panel games”.

The report of the Power Inquiry, to which I submitted written evidence last year, is now available online.

I’ve had a read through the Executive Summary (the whole report is 311 pages) and there’s lots of good stuff.. Those of us who’ve long recognised the need for constitutional reform will not be surprised by many of the sensible recommendations: elections to the House of Lords, lowering the voting age, codifying executive powers. It doesn’t go quite so far as to call for proportional representation for the Commons, but recognises that first-past-the-post has had its day.

Some of the recommendations are rather vague. “Limits should be placed on the power of the whips” isn’t a particularly helpful statement. The reason whips have power is because backbenchers want to stay on the good side of their party leader, in whose gift are (shadow) ministerial posts. The report recognises this but makes no useful proposal to deal with it. Other recommendations are strangely naive. “A new independent National Statistical and Information Service should be created to provide the public with key information free of political spin.” The Office for National Statistics and the National Audit Office will be wondering what they did wrong.

There is one absolute clanger of a recommendation regarding Lords reform:

To ensure that this part of the legislature is not comprised of career politicians with no experience outside politics , candidates should be at least 40 years of age.

My jaw dropped when I read that. In a document which calls for the age at which people can stand for the Commons to be reduced to 16, this is an extremely odd suggestion. Well meaning, certainly, but woefully misguided (and I can hear James Graham muttering the word “gerontocracy” as I type). Apparently David Cameron is old enough to be considered a potential prime minister but too young to sit in the second chamber.

What message does it send to young - or even youngish - people, telling them they are not suitable for one of the two chambers of the national legislature? It is naive to think that this age limit would rule out career politicians: the previous twenty years could be spent in local politics, in the House of Commons, or in political research jobs. If the public doesn’t want political careerists to be elected (just as if the public doesn’t want 16-year-olds in Parliament), it’s the responsibility of the public not to vote for them. That’s how a democracy works.

Trying to rig the system to fill a legislature with the “right sort of people”, however well-intentioned, is utterly undemocratic. An elected House of Lords is an important step forward. Barring half the population from standing for it would be ludicrous.

I have got myself a free account on Skype, the famous internet telephony thingummy, but I’ve only got a handful of contacts on it. Feel free to add me if you have it - my username is willhowells but searching on my name brings me up as the only result.

I haven’t been able to test it with anyone else yet so no idea if it’s as good as it claims. Because I’ve still not got over my cold, my voice isn’t really up to speaking for more than a few minutes, but I’d be interested to try it out.

Marple has been suspended from ITV1 for four weeks, it was announced today. The Adjudication Panel of the Standards Board for Television took the action following a complaint from the Agatha Christie Society, which described the series as “deeply offensive”. The complaint cited Geraldine McEwan’s awful acting and a string of hammy guest actors.

A spokesman for ITV said the decision was disgraceful. “Millions of people tune in to Marple every week. If they don’t want to watch it, they can turn it off. The three members of the Adjudication Panel don’t even have TVs.”

The chairman of the panel, Colonel Masterson Grange, said it had decided on a ban because Geraldine McEwan had failed to apologise for her performance.

Midsomer Murders will take the role of Flagship Sunday Night Whodunit while Marple serves out the sentence.

Oh dear. For the second night running I’m watching BBC One’s Just the Two of Us. I’m not even taking half an hour out for The IT Crowd because I watched it online yesterday.

Despite the title, Just the Two of Us is not a new version of a 1980s Nicholas Lyndhurst sitcom (Pat Troughton was in the first series, by the way, but then he died). It’s Strictly Come Dancing but with songs. I suspect that any of the “celebrities” who went to stage school have an advantage. It’s hosted by “real life couple” Tess Daly and Vernon Kay. I wonder if they’re contractually obliged not to split up for the duration. I guess celebrity’s usually pencil in a date with Hello! months in advance these days.

One-and-a-half hours of the Friday night schedule this “entertainment” show is. At least if it was an actually music programme à la Jools Holland the singers would be able to sing.

For the record, Nicky Campbell’s singing hasn’t soothed my sinuses. I’m coughing painfully, have no sense of smell and have run out of Ibuprofen. Oh, and the bread’s gone moldy. I’m going a bit spare and will take myself to bed soon before I start posting even more incoherently. I’ve had chicken and vegetable soup. Not sure how it tasted.

I listened to a bit of Any Questions earlier as the Huhnemeister was on. I had to turn it off, though, as I find it unbearable. At least Question Time comes with colourful pictures to distract from the inanity and a marginally preferable Dimbleby.

Anyway, yeah, goodnight…

As a good “citizen journalist“, I took notes at the Edinburgh leadership hustings to type up later. I don’t think that’s going to happen - I’m still full of cold and not up to long posts. Stephen and Richard were there and have written good summaries.

Two aspects of the hustings I will mention. The first was the turnout. The room was so full that the Dyanmic Earth fire regulations meant there had to be an overflow room and the candidates repeated their speeches to the people who couldn’t get in the main hall. In an age of apparent political apathy, it was great to see so many people - some of them not even party members - turn out to hear politicians speak.

The second thing that I noticed at the hustings was that it wasn’t a pro-Ming rally. I had, perhaps naively, assumed that Ming’s home town would be lined up behind their local candidate, but there seemed to be a good split of supporters in the room, along with many people who were undecided. I felt that Chris Huhne’s speech won the biggest round of applause, which came as a pleasant surprise. Ming did his “I’ve got a speech but I’m not going to make it” turn, which seems somewhat less sponataneous when you’ve read other reports of it - he did it again last night.

The candidates were pretty well matched when it came to questions and I suspect that, as the hustings have gone on, they’ve adopted some of each others policies and turns of phrase to fill in gaps of their own. None of them scored a knockout blow, although I was pleased to see that Huhne has started reference Ming’s U-turn over Iraq. Huhne stickers appeared to be shifting well after the event.

I went to help me decide how to cast my second preference. Cracking a few jokes and being fairly genial, Ming was good enough to convince me that he does deserve to be my second choice. Simon did well on the day, but he did nothing to convince me that my concerns about him are unfounded.

Having voted, I worked out today that I could offset my disappointment if Huhne loses by betting on both Simon and Ming. I may not have got the best odds available, but with Simon at 16-1 and Ming at 3-2, I’ve placed my bets in such a way as to ensure a profit if Chris loses. And if he wins, I’ll be too pleased to notice.