Blair and Straw - the History Boys

Re: ' . . by 155 to 418 votes, a majority of 363 . . '.

Your [uncredited] source meant to say: 'a majority of 263'.

Take that aristo scum, ahem and now some unfortunate blog pimping

http://tenpercent.wordpress.com/2007/03/07/poland-damn-it-houses-ciami6-ghost-prison-blair-knew/

CIA ghost prison in poland, Blair told Polish PM to keep stchum.

This reform reminds me of the Foxhunting stuff.

ie. Get the GB public's eye off the real ball, like impeachment, and send 'em chasing off in another direction.

Elected lords sounds great, until you  remember the Iraqi government got elected,  too.  If this is HISTORIC, in the senses of a move towards something more genuinely democratic, it will be an unintended consequence !

I have no proof to hand , but i bet this lot have installed the pesticide manufacturers to regulate the use of....... pesticides.

ETC

Until that changes,  more bull.

. Ask University Lecturers!

All in favour of an elected second chamber, but I haven't had time to look up anyone addressing this problem: The Commons were able to force legislation through using the old argument that the Commons is elected and the Lords isn't, so the Commons wins. Now what will be the extent of that relationship now that the Lords are to be elected? Anyone there able to provide any discussion or links to other discussions on this matter? Are we looking a mini constitutional crisis?

Who'd be surprised is a second debate moved to a 75/25 elected/appointed loading? Like the 90 days thing, our Tone is simply trying it on. Party affiliation for elected Lords members should be banned otherwise, the elected chamber will devalue the merit of such a new chamber. Also it may be better for mid-terms to be employed here.

Yes, it would be bizarre of Bliar actually did something that seemed worthy, but like pros and cons of the seemingly nice minimum wage, perhaps Tony has already figured out how to spin it so that a new Lords will be less meaningful than we hope? As any impartial Lecturer will tell you, Blairs good at nasty things waiting in the shadows.

There are several constitutional issues around this - not least that with an all-elected Lords using PR there's a strong argument to say that the Lords would be more representative of public opinion than the Commons, and thus would have a strong case for doing more over-ruling, not less.

Personally I've not made my mind up what I like best - I don't like closed party lists and do like a degree of local attachment for my representatives and the idea of actually voting for someone to represent my area.  Since the Lords can probably get away with not being totally proportional (after all extremely long terms are being mooted - a Lords elected in 1997 would look nearly as unrepresentative as the Commons) how about electing one representative from your (largish) area every four years or so, fixed single terms of 12 years, first past the post.

Because it's desirable to have the upper house have an older demographic it ought to be possible to hold down a proper job and still be a Member.  Too many of the Commons MPs are low quality because the brightest of their generation are in business making a lot more cash.

Like I said, I haven't totally thought this through, but it's a knotty problem.  I half hope that an elected Lords would increase the pressure for PR in the Commons, which is the real end-game here.

I think at least a percentage of the Lords should be picked at random like a jury and serve for two years, fifty percent of them being replaced at the end of each year. They should be paid 120% of their current salaries.

If the Lords is to be a revising chamber then it would mean that practical experience and common sense would be brought to bear on legislation, party politics would not be all powerful, and laws would have to be written in a language simple and accessible enough for ordinary people to understand. It would avoid a lot of over-complex and grand-standing legislation.

On the contary practical experience would mean that bills were further shrouded in the linguistic uncertainty we know today.

Next, how would randomly selected peers have more knowledge than the current lords, largely selected form politcal service or success in private industry,

PR is also an unworkable system as it is more likely to produce a small majority, leading to deadlock in the house, and further use of the parliament act, making the lords just a showcase.

The committment to reform is commendable, but more thought needs to be put into it - the planned cross-party committe to investigate the issue should yield for more useful results than last night's vote.

It should also be noted that Blair played no part in furher votes after his 80% elected proposal was unsuccessful.

Well, maybe this will be Tony's legacy (and not Iraq after all). Wars come and wars go; the odd million people are always getting killed. But the British constitution has existed in roughly its present form for 300-400 years, and on the whole has done a pretty good job. Never mind that, here's New Labour: Shazzam! Boom! No more House of Lords. They don't really understand how the constitution works, or what is good and bad about it; but they are quite willing to reach in, remove a vital part, and replace it with something completely different that they just dreamed up last Wednesday. Who knows; maybe it'll go on working. Or maybe not.

First and foremost, they can't go on calling it the House of Lords. There won't be any lords in it, or ladies either. If members were appointed it could be called the House of Cronies, but the Commons prefer 100 per cent election. So what does that make it? My choice of title is "House of Commons 2.0". What on earth is the point in having two separate chambers, both of which are elected? And before anyone mentions the US Senate, please note that the USA is a federation of nominally independent states. That is the basis on which the Senate was added to the US constitution, and it doesn't apply here. Britain is about the size of one of the larger US states, although its population is equivalent to several of the biggest added together.

Why did the Commons choose 100 per cent election? My guess is that they thought it sounded good. "Elected" is a kind of all-purpose bless-word these days; no one who has been elected can do any wrong. The minority who raised the issue of legitimacy were barking up the wrong tree. Nobody cares about the balance of power between the two houses of Parliament any more, as everyone just does what Tony tells them to anyway.

Why would a group of ordinary laymen end up writing even more arcane English than parliament - a nest of lawyers?: they will need simple language in order to comprehend it.

It would have the same strengths as the jury system - and I'm only sugessting 20 0r 30% of the Lords should be done this way. It can be argued that ordinary people on juries won't understand all the high flown legal jargon, but they are practical people with everyday experience to draw on - often of far more importance than the insights a bunch of "experts" can bring to a case. They also have very good instincts.

]Next, how would randomly selected peers have more knowledge than the current lords, largely selected form politcal service or success in private industry,

Nu Labor has been notorious for producing reams of new laws which have been virtually inoperable when they've been introduced, because the people charged with implementing them in the real world have seen that they're ludicrously impractical to implement. They are the product of people largely chosen from political service and private industry.

Ordinary people can see these problems a mile off, and in a revising chamber will see that they do not survive.

I have no idea what to think of this.  Anything that commands an overwhelming majority of the MPs like this automatically has to be suspect.  Do they imagine that the democracy-suppressing party machinery that has installed them and their colleagues into the House of Commons will also allow them to capture the House of Lords? 

That said, anything that produces an alternative version of the will of the people has got to be an improvement.  The Commons -- the 'elected' chamber -- too often gets away with defining what it says as being 'the will of the people', regardless of the evidence.  Putting this concept up for question has to increase the chance we will get a voice. 

You can see scope for constitutional evolution here.  With greater democratic responsiveness and the lack of mandate for form the government, the Lords could become like the US congress; while the House of Commons could act like the US electoral college which selects the President, while forming the pool of bodies from which Ministerialships are appointed. 

I am a little concerned about the 15 year fixed terms.  What's to stop a Lord becoming an employee of business during that time in order to prepare his income when he retires? Retirees from the House could either be a great asset to civil society, or they could be a means to sell out. 

If any second house is to make a real difference, it has got to somehow be free from interence by party whips. Otherwise all we will have is another six or seven hundred useless tossers who do whatever they are told by the mad scientist, or occassionaly, not what they are told, but whatever is in the best interests of their political future.

Perhaps if they were only allowed one term and could not go into the Commons for say five years after leaving the second house, they would be less concerned about their own political future, but I suppose then they would not give a toss for their constituents who they are supposed to be representing.

Represent the interests of your constituents? Now theres a thought. Urinating into the wind springs to mind.

COWBOY BUILDERS spring to mind .

If you are a gullible mug, you'll  keep on with the same guy who fucked up your plumbing and electricity, power supply and  transport system , local policing and healthcare, and now he says it'd be cheaper to knock down your house and build new.

Arguing about the design of the new house is not the point.

Once a cowboy always a cowboy.  

OK, agreed,  the old House was built of some out-dated wrong materials, but it worked.

On top of that the builder has court cases pending against him, and he will certainly not be around to provide a guarantee of his workmanship, in any case.

I agree that the recent debate was a con and that, as cowboy builders, the present government are the last people to be responsible for its reconstruction. The present House of Lords seems to be doing a far better job than the Commons on keeping the executive in check and making present legislation at least half way sensible.

But I'll return to my argument for having ordinary people vetting such legislation as a sort of national jury. The best defence I ever read of the (indefensible) old, unreconstructed House of Lords was by GK Chesterton. While acknowledging that its members all came from wealthy and priveleged backgrounds, he argued that the best defence of them was that they had been chosen at random. By the lottery of birth. That just about the one thing most of them had in common (and which they shared with their fellow citizens) was that they were not professional politicians. That they were very clever and very stupid people. They had many interests and experiences way outside the narrow London focus of Westminster.

A national jury would do the dame thing - without the privelege of upper class birth.

After all, Classical Athens - the greatest civilization the world has ever seen - based its democracy on a lootery - legislators were chosen at random.

"Classical Athens - the greatest civilization the world has ever seen - based its democracy on a lootery..."

Were you referring to the appalling cynicism (or penetrating insight, as you will) of Messrs Bierce and Franklin?

An election is nothing more than the advanced auction of stolen goods.
- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

When the people find they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.
- Benjamin Franklin

Apologies for two freudian slips in one post - "dame" for "same" and "lootery" for "lottery." Blush

NATIONAL LOOTERY , great new term Johnf . Deserves to pass into the language.  

NU-Lab could become Nu- Loot

A Lootery of  NHS Management Consultants, a new collective noun ? 

A Lootery of IT Consultants to HMG ?

Dame me , must get serious !. 

I like your suggestions. BUT this is exactly the sort of discussion which should have taken place BEFORE having a bloody vote.

Real, not pretend consultation, would tap into the creative energies of those now outside politics.

And I will print out some Devil's Dictionary to paste on the loo door. tksvm Tom Welsh..

I did try and put my theories forward - and I'm by no means the only person to espouse them - at some earlier period of "public consultation" on House of Lords/ constitutional affairs reform some six or seven years ago.

Grand and important people from Islington came down to the various backward provinces for an evening and deigned to listen to our ideas. I expounded my ideas for all of five minutes, but I could tell by the wintry, supercilious smiles on their superior Islington mushes that my proposal dids not meet with favour, or even understanding.

Contrariwise, as frog says, "lootery" is a fabulous coinage. We must introduce it to common usage.