SOME of you might have wondered where I’ve been in the past three weeks or whether I’d been struck dumb by the recent political upheavals.

I’m sorry to report that the answer is altogether more mundane.

I’ve been on holiday in the Western Isles of Scotland – that part of the UK that makes Pennine Lancashire feel like a heaving metropolis.

A careful observer will notice that most of us in the House of Lords have swapped the side of the chamber on which we sit – everyone except the bishops who have apparently been sitting on the ‘spiritual side’ of the House for about 800 years. Which causes a problem.

They used to sit on the front two rows of the block of seats opposite us Liberal Democrats. Since we now have to sit on the government side, we are crammed on the three rows behind the bishops.

All in all there are about 25 places there if we get really cosy. A problem, since we have 72 members, of whom about 40 often turn up for question time at the start of each afternoon.

We are also soon to get nine new Liberal Democrat members, including Floella Benjamin who I remember watching every morning on Playschool with my daughter Victoria some 30 years ago. It’s a funny world.

All in all 56 new peers are due to join the House this summer, which seems odd at a time when the Coalition is promising to turn the Upper House into a democratically elected body at last.

I have to say that we really do need reinforcements on our benches as some of our stalwarts get older than they were (indeed we all do that all the time!) But do we really need 23 new peers from the ranks of retiring MPs?

How many of these people given a place in the Lords as a nice retirement present will really pull their weight?

On past evidence a few of them will pass muster.

But will the likes of Michael Howard and John Prescott really want to graft away on legislation in the Lords?

And will the promise of a properly elected House fare any better than all the others over the years?

I’ll back it but I’m not holding my breath.