ANOTHER week of activity for "revolting peers" as on Monday the House of Lords defeated the government twice more on the Identity Cards Bill, followed on Wednesday by one of the most amazing votes I have seen.

This took place on the Terrorism Bill.

There is a proposal to increase the length of time that people arrested for suspected terrorism offences can be held without bringing them to court.

At the moment the limit is 14 days. The government wanted to increase it to 90 days, a proposal that raised accusations that they were tearing up 800 years of the Magna Carta (signed in 1215) not to mention their own rather more recent Human Rights Act.

In the event the House of Commons gave New Labour its first defeat in that House since Blair and Co came to power in 1997, with an amendment for 28 days winning by 33 votes.

On Wednesday, the 28 days plan came up in the Lords and a group of rather Old Labour backbenchers put forward what they called a compromise limit of 60 days.

They had the support of around 20 Tories and some cross-benchers (independents) but we had the astonishing sight of the government frontbench all the ministers and whips sitting on their seats and abstaining.

In the event the 60 days amendment was voted down and 28 days confirmed by 208 votes to 106. The Liberal Democrats, most of the Tories and a majority of cross-benchers were joined in the winning lobby by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the new Archbishop of York, who had taken his seat for the first time earlier that afternoon.

Meanwhile in the world outside Liberal Democrats continue to suffer the slings and arrows of a synthetically outraged (and often outrageous) media.

That is not to say some of our wounds have not been self-inflicted.

But I do wonder whether national journalists who set out to destroy the personal privacy of public figures should not have to declare their own foibles, not to mention their own sexual adventures, before doing so!

It is arguable that top political journalists have at least as much influence even power as opposition politicians. Perhaps, if there are to be cries of hypocrisy, some of them should occasionally look in the mirror.

Being realistic, of course, that is too much to expect. Who wants to read about journalists?