Labour In Vain No More

I am rather sceptical, both about any need for the statutory right to request flexible hours (you could always request anything you liked), and about reserving these things to people with small or disabled children. I hold the latter position, not even though, but rather because, I am pro-family. You don't have to have small or disabled children to have pressing family commitments. And I was brought up since the age of 13 (when my youngest brother was only eight) by a widowed mother who worked full-time and had no extended family within hundreds of miles.

Rather, we should be tackling the economic system that requires even married mothers of school-age children to work full-time merely in order to maintain a basic household income. There are good things that could come out of the crash, and this is certainly one of them. But instead, we now have an entire Department of State dedicated to doing whatever global capital in general and the CBI in particular say, until recently even complete with Digby Jones as a Minister.

We need a Labour Secretary as well as a Capital Secretary, just as we need a Commonwealth Secretary as well as an EU-Under-The-US Secretary, and just as we need a Secretary of State ("for the Regions" if you absolutely, absolutely must) for the North of England, the Midlands, the West Country, East Anglia, the Highlands and Islands, the Borders, and North, Mid and West Wales, as much a counterweight to the devolved bodies for the Central Belt (and the North East of Scotland on a good day) and for South Wales as to anything in Whitehall.

These are positions that, while those holding them would be full voting members of Cabinet, the Crossbench Peers could fill by election at the start of each Parliament from among members of either House nominated by, as it were, the key stakeholders: the trade unions; the governments of at least those other Realms and Territories having the Queen as Head of State; and the relevant local authorities.

There may well be other such positions, with other such stakeholders. Any suggestions?