Ex-Speaker Michael Martin to get peerage
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Independent Minds
The Queen has approved a peerage for former Commons Speaker Michael Martin, Downing Street confirmed today.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown's spokesman said a motion approved by MPs asking for the service of Mr Martin to be recognised had been accepted by the monarch.
"There is a long-established convention that previous Speakers receive peerages. There was an uncontested motion that went through the House and the Queen has decided to grant Michael Martin a peerage," he said.
In a motion presented by Commons Leader Harriet Harman last week, MPs agreed to ask the Queen to honour Mr Martin "for his eminent services during the important period in which he presided with such distinguished ability and dignity in the chair of this House".
Mr Martin, who stepped down earlier this month, was the first Speaker to be effectively forced from office in centuries after he lost the confidence of MPs and was publicly urged to go by senior figures including Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg.
In a typically oblique response, the Vice-Chamberlain of the Household told the Commons that the Queen was "desirous, in compliance with the request of her faithful Commons, to confer upon the Right Hon Michael J Martin some signal mark of her royal favour".
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Comments
what a system????
Don't you just love the whole sordid honours system.
I'm speechless.
Just how predictable and how pathetic.
Millions will laugh, but I won't.
Actually peerages are just a joke they hand them around like nibbles at a coktail party
I remember when he had Galloway up on the rails, Galloway reminding him of their close friendship of 30 years, which amounted to nothing as Martin stabbed him in the back as he has stabbed all socialists since Blair took power.
Nothing stands in the way of these scumbags, friends, family, the law, honour and duty are all discardable as long as they uphold their loyalty to their masters.
Sooner or later, the people are just going to lose control, then we may see retribution, rough justice to be sure but maybe one or two of these greedy, conniving maggots swaying from a lamppost after being lynched by people militia's might serve a better warning than all of Brown's worthless promises.
And it won't be the people that are to blame, it will be the corrupt and the elite who failed to listen when the time was right, public anger is very high at the moment and all it needs now is a catalyst for that anger to spill out onto the streets.
Didn't think so.
Still, it provides a further argument for the abolition of the House of Lords and its replacement by an elected Senate.