I was delighted to discover a new drinking establishment very near me last week – it’s new to me, anyway – the Crown Hotel in Cricklewood. There are two bars, the busy front one and the pleasanter hotel bar at the side, with comfy sofas and real beer – which is why it appeals to me. It has speakers and music, which is a drawback (I like pubs to sound like pubs – of people and drink, not music) but otherwise it’s lovely. They even have newspapers for you to read.

sarflondondunc/CreativeCommons

And talking of the Crown (good link, eh?), last week the Queen opened Parliament, and gave her speech. It’s important not to confuse the Queen’s speech with the Queen’s Christmas broadcast – although, annoyingly, the British often do. MPs are elected all at once for a period of up to five years. But each year in November, a new “session” of Parliament begins, Her Majesty comes to sit on her throne in the House of Lords to open the session and tell Parliament about the legislative plans of her government. She doesn’t run the government of course – the speech is actually written by Gordon Brown and his colleagues – but she does appoint ministers, all government is carried on in her name and legislation becomes law only when she gives Royal assent (last refused by Queen Anne in 1707), which is why she has this ceremonial role.

UK Parliament/CreativeCommons

The ceremony tells you a lot about British history and the constitution in fact. The Queen comes to the House of Lords, not the Commons; no monarch has entered the House of Commons since Charles I in 1642 – and you may remember what happened to him. She sends her servant “Black Rod” to summon MPs to come to the Lords to hear her speech – symbolically they shut the door on him initially to show Parliament will assert its independence (a principle developed further in the United States as the separation of powers) but in due course Gordon Brown and the rest stand at the back of the Lords chamber, behind the massed ranks of peers in their ermine robes. The order of precedence effectively reverses power relations here: those who really govern are due least deference and fawning. That’s the way we like it. The BBC has a video of the Queen’s speech, and you can also see a BBC news report about the speech and a piece about it on the BBC’s leading current affair show, Newsnight.

UK Parliament/CreativeCommons

Otherwise, I was at the Calthorpe Arms on Gray’s Inn Road (a fine traditional local with decent Young’s ale) when I heard the news that Herman van Rompuy (who?) is to be the first “President of the European Council” now that the Lisbon Treaty is in force, and that Baroness Ashton (who’s not very well known here either) is to be the EU’s High Representative, or “foreign minister”. No one really knows how powerful these posts will be, though the fact that European leaders have chosen the low-profile Belgian prime minister rather than, say, Tony Blair (who was widely thought to be in the running) suggests the Presidency will be a coordinating rather than a leadership role. Cathy Ashton’s appointment has been received with some puzzlement: she does have some international experience, having been EU trade commissioner for a year, and no one doubts her competence. But hers has been a truly astonishing career, in which since 1997 she has reached the dizzy heights of the international stage by pure patronage and international haggling, without the need ever to stand for elected office. Oddly, in the very democratic United States, this might seem normal: Condy Rice was never elected to anything of course. And we’re used ourselves to unelected people sometimes holding powerful positions, like Lord Mandelson, who’s effectively deputy Prime Minister (he was previously an elected MP, at least). But to some of us, Baroness Ashton’s meteoric, never-elected progress seems slightly strange.

rjw1/CreativeCommons

Brown, now. Not Gordon Brown but Harry Brown, a British film in cinemas here now, and starring Sir Michael Caine (gosh, we’re keen on these titles, aren’t we?) as a old Royal Marine who once served in Northern Ireland but turns vigilante to rid his South London estate of drugs ‘n’ thugs. I’m not sure if it’ll be seen by many people outside the UK. It’s been screened at film festivals in Toronto and Santa Monica, and on its cinematic quality it certainly deserves to be seen. I’m uneasy though about the film’s social message: its view of London and youth crime is bleak in the extreme and it encourages a despairing, panicky view of “broken Britain” that I reckon we could do without. You can see the trailer here. If you do get to see it, notice how important the pub is in the story. I wouldn’t fancy drinking there myself, mind.

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