Peter Jones

Mind your language | 22 May 2010

The weirdest sentence to me in the coalition agreement between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats was this: ‘It is also likely there will be a grandfathering system for current peers.’ I had no idea what grandfathering was.

issue 22 May 2010

The weirdest sentence to me in the coalition agreement between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats was this: ‘It is also likely there will be a grandfathering system for current peers.’ I had no idea what grandfathering was.

The weirdest sentence to me in the coalition agreement between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats was this: ‘It is also likely there will be a grandfathering system for current peers.’ I had no idea what grandfathering was. Could it be like mothering or babysitting? On looking it up, I discovered that a grandfather clause was a device used in the southern states of America to prevent black people from voting. ‘It is proposed [in Maryland] to remodel the Constitution so as to exclude colored men from voting,’ says an illustrative quotation from 1903 in the Oxford English Dictionary.

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