Well no – she didn’t actually. But a very interesting fact I learnt during the build-up to yesterday’s Queens Speech was that the reason the Queen’s Speech has to be agreed days in advance is because it is also written – indelibly – at least three days prior to her giving the Speech. Which means no last-minute edits and that internal wrangles over who gets what in have to be dealt with well in advance.

Because, believe it or not, tradition dictates that the speech be written on goatskin – and the ink takes at least three days to dry.

According to the BBC website, a goat is killed and some of the meat is eaten and some of its hide is used to make shoes. And then a small business in Buckinghamshire transforms the skin into vellum and a calligrapher inscribes the text in “special ink”. Not only a good pub quiz fact, but also another brilliantly British tradition. Surely other countries would at least be considering using a typewriter by now.

This Queen’s Speech comes after the longest parliamentary session for 150 years; a term dominated by a hefty policy agenda including reform of the NHS, welfare, and education. Because of this, the Queen’s address today outlined a more streamlined second term for the Coalition, with a strong focus on laying the groundwork for economic stability.

The state opening of Parliament comes at an awkward time for the Coalition. Although reports of last minute wrangling over the final contents are overstated (tradition dictates that the final text must be ‘locked down’ a number of days before hand to be prepared and delivered to Her Majesty), drubbings for the Coalition partners at last week’s local elections has increased pressure on the Government to deliver a strong and clear narrative for its second term.

The Liberal Democrats are still straining to get their voice heard in the Coalition, and like as with the Budget, the party negotiated hard to see their primary policy ask, House of Lords reform, included. However, Conservative backbenchers are increasingly concerned by the stagnant economy and squeezed living standards, and continue to deem anything that doesn’t focus on creating jobs and growth as “wasting our time”.

As such, there was something of a trade-off in terms of policy. On the one hand, employment laws will be fundamentally liberalised, making it easier for firms to hire (and also fire) workers. But to mitigate any potential accusation that the Coalition is not on the side of vulnerable people, a Children and Families Bill will be introduced, containing a raft of family-friendly measures. Number 10 was also forced to describe rumours that the Tories had managed to water down House of Lords reform in return for a delay in the boundary review as “nonsense”.

It is worth noting that, with House of Lords reform now expected to dominate a large proportion of parliamentary time in the next session, there were a number of notable policy omissions. These included a Bill on social care, the indefinitely delayed Higher Education Bill, and any movement on gay marriage. A plank of what was seen as Cameron’s commitment to the Tory modernisation project, to keep his pledge to legislate for 0.7% of GDP for overseas aid, also fell by the wayside. A failure to reach common ground on these areas will be seen as further proof that there is growing disagreement between Tory and Lib Dem factions on divisive key issues.

This one’s pretty obvious really.  A paralysed woman manages to complete the marathon in a bionic suit (an absolutely amazing feat) but London Marathon organisers refuse to give her a medal as it took her 16 days to reach the finish line.

We’d like to offer our congratulations to Claire Lomas – and we give it until the end of the week, tops, before organisers change their minds.

Claire has raised over £90,000 so far for spinal research so far – you can donate more here: http://www.justgiving.com/Claire-Lomas

This week, I’d like to draw attention to the Daily Telegraph’s excellent city briefing emails.  They’re a fantastic daily digest of all the business news of the morning, arriving in your inbox at the commuter-friendly time of 8am.  With Damian Reece recently stepping into Richard Fletcher’s shoes as main author, the emails contain a summary of the top stories of the day, market news and the best business stories in the Telegraph and other papers for that morning.  Definitely a must read for the mornings.

And just in case you’re wondering, this post has not been sponsored by the Daily Telegraph.

A: We all got a little bit more creative.

Our monthly Creativity Lunch took us to the National Portrait Gallery, in an attempt to find pictures of all 74 British prime ministers in just 45 minutes.

We failed miserably, with the winning team managing under a third of the total. However we all had fun brushing up on our history. Remember George Canning? He settled policy disputes with a duel, an idea we’re going to suggest to the Quad. How about Henry Pelham – he reorganised the calendar, perhaps in a bid to distract from disappointing local election results.

Rosie meets some elder statesmen