{"id":1442,"date":"2007-01-02T09:19:21","date_gmt":"2007-01-02T09:19:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jcm.org.uk\/blog\/2007\/01\/02\/why-is-jeffrey-archer-still-a-peer-and-another-meme\/"},"modified":"2007-01-08T23:39:29","modified_gmt":"2007-01-08T23:39:29","slug":"why-is-jeffrey-archer-still-a-peer-and-another-meme","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/2007\/01\/why-is-jeffrey-archer-still-a-peer-and-another-meme\/","title":{"rendered":"Why is Jeffrey Archer still a peer? (And another meme)"},"content":{"rendered":"

A question that has been asked innumerable times, I know, but if dangerous driving is enough to lose you an MBE<\/a>, merely a symbolic honour, surely convictions for perjury and perverting the course of justice should be enough to prevent one from being a member of the [tag]House of Lords[\/tag], an honour which brings with it actual power?<\/p>\n

And then, thanks to Martin Stabe<\/a> (bastard…), below the fold lies another meme – five things you didn’t know about me<\/strong>:
\n
\n1) I am surprisingly poorly travelled for someone so interested by other countries (largely due to lack of money over the last decade or so, but also due to my dear parents’ pathological fear of flying, which ensured that all childhood holidays were UK-based). I have, however, paddled in the Pacific Ocean on both its eastern and western shores, and seen the sun come up over Siberia from 35,000 feet. Which was nice.<\/p>\n

2) I have, in my time, applied for jobs with all three major UK political parties. The Lib Dems offered it, but wanted me to join the party, so I declined. The Tories were less fussed with party membership as long as I signed a confidentiality pledge, so I accepted. Labour never replied.<\/p>\n

3) The first interview I ever conducted was with Sir Harry Secombe<\/a>, while the first famous person I ever met was Spike Milligan<\/a> (due to my older brother being friends with one of the younger members of the Milligan family, and so us getting invited to tea a couple of times while Uncle Spike was around). Despite this, I’m not a particular fan of The Goon Show<\/a>.<\/p>\n

4) In my youth I used to be a crack shot, competing in target-shooting competitions at a national level, but got bored with always getting perfect (or near-perfect) scores, so gave up at the age of about 14. Someone from the same shooting team as me apparently went on to captain the United Kingdom under-21s – even though I was a better shot than him… Thanks to the experience, I have fired a vast array of firearms, including a Smith & Wesson Model 29<\/a> (aka Dirty Harry<\/em>‘s Magnum, “the most powerful handgun in the world” – even though it isn’t) to an M240<\/a> machine gun.<\/p>\n

5) Despite having been keen on orienteering, white-water kayaking, rugby, windsurfing and mountain biking when I was a teenager, the most dangerous thing I’ve done in the last ten years is walk home through Somers Town at 2am while both drunk and wearing a suit. I have also, somehow, managed to avoid ever breaking a bone, my worst injury being a mild concussion caused by a flying head-butt.<\/p>\n

There – wasn’t that fascinating? As I’m meant to nominate five others to do this (even though I think it’s already done the rounds), I’ll go for Pigdogfucker<\/a>, The Virtual Stoa<\/a>, the Blogger formerly known as Kitty Killer<\/a> (who managed to quit blogging for all of a week, by the look of things), Rafael Behr<\/a>, and Boz of the rather good French \u00c3\u2030lection 2007<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Next post less tedious, promise…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A question that has been asked innumerable times, I know, but if dangerous driving is enough to lose you an MBE, merely a symbolic honour, surely convictions for perjury and perverting the course of justice should be enough to prevent … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1442","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-constitution","category-nosemonkey-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1442","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1442"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1442\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1442"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1442"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1442"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}