Some Good News to End 2006

It is encouraging that Lord Dubs (formerly the Labour MP Alf Dubs) introduced a Private Bill into the House of Lords on 15 December 2006. He had queued for hours to be the first Peer to introduce a Private Bill in the new Session. I was able to speak to Lord Dubs on the telephone the day before and offered to co-operate. The Private Bill is called Cluster Munitions (Prohibition) Bill [HL] and it is a great importance to those campaigning against anti-personnel weapons. This has a connection to my paper I intend to present next year at the 14th Deafblind International (Dbl) World Conference in Perth about weapons which are designed to intentionally blind and/or deafen people. Here is a Hansard transcript of the debate on 15 December 2006. The full text of the Bill available in PDF or html format is available here. It will be helpful if readers wishing to support Lord Dubs would write to him at the House of Lords, London SW1A 0PW. The Bill was carried at the First Reading but its future is uncertain so support is essential. I have just learned that a similar Bill has been introduced into the Australian Senate on 5 December 2006 by Senator Lyn Allison. A brief description on Wikipedia is here and details from the Australian Senate website is here.