Word: woolsack
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...junk," his words rang like alarm bells. Leaping to his feet, Lord Leatherland cried: "I should hate historians of the future to say that Lord Gardiner was the man who said that Magna Carta was junk." The Lord Chancellor was appropriately chastened. Rising from his comfortable woolsack, he said: "I withdraw the word junk." There is no thought, however, of withdrawing the repeal proposal...
...Lords as "one-sided, hereditary, unpurged, unrepresentative, irresponsible, absentee." Plans to emasculate the upper house are just as common today as they were in Gilbert & Sullivan's lolanthe, in which the Lord Chancellor complained: "Ah, my lords, it is indeed painful to have to sit upon a woolsack which is stuffed with such thorns as these." Anachronistic as it may be, the House of Lords demonstrated last week that it can still make a thorny nuisance of itself...
Heath did not quite make it. From the overstuffed red woolsack,* the Lord Chancellor announced the vote: "184 lords are content, 193 lords are not content." The government had lost by a margin of only nine votes, far fewer than predicted. Shaken, the Lords opposition leader, Lord Carrington, immediately indicated that Conservatives would let the order through without delay if the government reintroduces...
...filled with wool from Britain and Commonwealth nations, the woolsack traditionally symbolizes the landed gentry that forced King Edward III (1312-77) to concede power to Parliament in return for tax revenues...
...interpret the laws of Britain. As the government's chief legal adviser, Gardiner is a top-level Cabinet officer. As head of the legal profession, he appoints judges and Queen's Counsel (senior barristers). As Speaker of the House of Lords, he perches on the symbolic Woolsack, also presides when the Law Lords (selected lawyer members) act as Britain's final court of appeal. Besides all that, he is guardian of all British infants, idiots and lunatics...