From the Lords, representing the constitutional wonk tendency (in a good way), Lord Tyler is the first of the two nominees. Paul has been leading calls for a complete overhaul of the Second Chamber for a very long time and is one of the Party’s foremost constitutional experts…

From the Commons, that rather unusual beast, a former member of the House of Lords, John Thurso. As he has already been abolished once, one wonders how he will feel about the prospects of enabling the abolition of all of his former colleagues. However, he is on record as supporting reform…

And finally, the second Lords nominee, Baroness Scott of Needham Market, of whom I have the highest regard, having married her just over three years ago. Ros has repeatedly voted to abolish herself…

There are more details in Mark’s full post. One Liberal Democrat who has also been vocal about Lords reform but not included is David Steel, whose latest reasons for arguing against the proposals for elections to the Lords were given a bit of a going-over by Paul Walter:

I felt like crying when I read his article in the Observer today. My first reaction was: “Shut up, why don’t you?” It is so frustrating to have a former Liberal party leader arguing against the coalitions’ Lords reform package.

But then you read through Steel’s arguments and you see that his position is built on sand.

Paul pokes the sand in his post here whilst on Sunday’s Marr show Paddy Ashdown also had some sharp comments to make:

It is an affront to our democracy to have a House of Lords which is appointed on the basis that you’re either a friend of the Prime Minister or your great-grandmother slept with the king. The truth of it is that we’re a democracy and power should appear from the ballot box … Of course there’ll be the old dinosaurs, the back woodsman of the Tory Party and the old guerrillas of Labour who will be opposing this, but the reality of it is that in a democracy power and parliament should devolve from the ballot box and from nowhere else

If you agree with Paul and Paddy (and with the idea of elections for the Lords) then you can always sign up to back the Liberal Democrats for Lords Reform campaign.

We need postcodes to be owned by the public – not sold to the public. Postcodes are the basic pre-requisite for allowing services to be developed that support democratic accountability.

It’s an important issue because the Royal Mail’s decision to take a hard line in enforcing its legal rights means a range of useful public services – including ones to help unemployed people find jobs and to help residents hear about planning applications near them – have been shut down. It’s a topic Labour MP Tom Watson blogged about on this site last month:

The recent decision by Royal Mail to close down the Ernestmarples.com web site shows us how our public institutions are woefully unprepared to seize the new opportunities created by the internet.

Lynne’s views are concurred with by John Thurso, the party’s Shadow Secretary of State for Business, Innovations and Skills, making this a welcome development of party policy in this area.

Overall the shape of the party’s general election manifesto in terms of issues raised by the internet and digital developments is still very much up in the air. News such as this, and scepticism in the party towards Peter Mandelson’s proposals to cut off people’s internet connections without proper process and with the assumption of guilt by default, are positive.

However, other noises are less positive – such as the summary of policy on the main party website, which is heavy on cracking down on illegal file sharing and silent on issues such as encouraging the music industry to be more imaginative in its business models and to learn from the successes of others in meeting the challenges of the digital age. Lots of stick and no carrot.

One problem is that the party doesn’t have one person in overall charge (whether formally or informally) of policy in this area. It is in effect split up between Lynne Featherstone, John Thurso and Don Foster at the Parliamentary level and at the FPC and Manifesto Group level there is a distinct shortage of people with particular interest or expertise in these areas. There are plenty of people who listen politely and intelligently, but very few who are actually pushing the party to adopt a modern set of policies in this area.

This news is then a very welcome step in the right direction – but should be followed by several more.

Astonishing in-house ‘harassment and bullying’ row leaves:
* Entire Labour Party branch suspended for over a year
* Detectives drafted in, to probe financial allegations
* Labour fearing 2010 local election disaster
* Party bosses ordering wall of silence

Meanwhile, in the Highlands, Cllr Linda Munro has decided to join the Liberal Democrats:

The Lib Dem politics in action – what I have experienced, I like, understand and trust. Over the past twenty plus years, I have had occasion to seek the support of Robert McLennan, John Thurso and more recently Jamie Stone. They have helped me deal with a variety of issues arising from meeting the life needs, of a severely physically disabled young person, living in a remote and rural area. So I have a long standing, affinity with the Lib Dems.