Told You So.

It's exactly 10:15 on 9/5/12 and I'm up and about.

Edited at around 10:55 on 9/5/12 to add:

At a little under 10 minutes that was a very short Queens Speech. Written by the Prime Ministers office and delivered by the Queen the Queens Speech is basically the Head of Government and the Head of State getting together to announce which bills will be getting voted through Parliament and signed into law over the coming Parliamentary year. The 2010 Speech contained lots of bold ideas such as the Health and Social Care Bill, the Welfare Reform Bill and plans to allow for a referendum on switching to the Alternative Vote system. The 2012 Speech was a much more stripped down affair full of bland platitudes rather then any legislative meat. For example we now know that the Queen doesn't intend to make crime worse and intends to engage with the world's emerging nations while introducing 19 new laws doing things like re-branding the National Audit Office and the Serious and Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) and allowing charitable donations collected on the street to qualify for Gift Aid tax relief which is a different sort of tax relief for charities that the 2012 Budget will do away with.

A cynic might suggest that the Speech deliberately avoided anything controversial to avoid questions about on what authority those laws are to be introduced. After all the government certainly hasn't taken it's authority from the electorate. They did though throw in a little bit about reforming the Family Courts such as the Court of Protection to better serve the interests of children in the care system.

Edited again at around 11:35 on 9/5/12 to add: The Queens Speech did also include the House of Lords. Reform Bill which if passed will see the unelected House of Lords replaced with an elected chamber similar to the House of Commons which obviously sounds very controversial. However the Conservative Party already know that it won't make it through the House of Commons and most certainly won't make it through the House of Lords. Therefore it was only chucked in to make the Liberal Democrat part of the coalition feel included. That and of course it will get Britain's Parliamentary Chambers discussing Britain's Parliamentary Chambers rather then doing any actual work.

In other news I've totally just worked out the Chicken on the Pitch incident in Monday's (7/5/12) Blackburn Rovers game. A few weeks back the Mail on Sunday newspaper ran a behind the scenes look at the bookmaker William Hill's in play betting operation. Part of that article explained how since a cat ran on to the pitch during a Liverpool v Tottenham game in February William Hill had been running a market on what the next animal to run on the pitch during a soccer game would be with a unicorn being an outside bet at 1000-1.  On Tuesday (8/5/12) William Hill held their Annual General Meeting in which shareholders rejected the Chief Executive's pay deal. Today (9/5/12) Blackburn are being rocked by the leak of an internal letter. Therefore the Chicken on the Pitch incident was a way of testing out whether or not I knew about the Mail on Sunday article about William Hill and promoting discussion about whether or not William Hill should be more careful about who they talk to.