Bye-bye appointed Lords, Hello pointlessness?
March 7th, 2007 by HenLooks like the House of Lords will be all elected. I don’t want to say that inheritance is the right way for a second house, but I don’t see any value in a second house if it has the same structure as the first one. Maybe if the voting system is different - ie) keep the House of Commons geographical and make the House of Lords completely non-geographical. People can vote for someone to go into the House of Lords from a big list of 6,000 or however many people stand for it. Otherwise it’s a waste of time and we should call it House of Commons A and House of Commons B.
March 7th, 2007 at 10:10 pm
+1!!!
Canada’s current Prime Minister wants Canada’s senate to be elected! I assume the Canadian senate is much like the British House of Lords?
In Canada the senate can delay but not stop constitutional amendments. The senate can vote down any other legislation, but it’s very rare (and the Prime Minister can get the Queen of England to appoint up to 8 extra senators in a pinch to get legislation through). They can initiate new legislation, but I think this is also quite rare. Mostly I imagine they act as 105 “concerned citizens” who don’t have to worry about working for a living. They also have some budget and media air-time they can use to shed light on any truly horrible government legislation that might pass in front of them. The wikipedia entry says they’re often good at making minor fixes to legislation.
I totally agree with your sentiment: they serve a DIFFERENT function compared to the house of commons. Electing them would just turn it into more of the same.
I, for one, hope Canada keeps the Senate around in its current form.
Interesting to hear that the mother country is having similar issues.
March 8th, 2007 at 3:42 am
How about renaming the House of Commons to the House of Media, and renaming the House of Lords to the House of Commons. Here ends the sarcasm.
Then, select people to sit in it, randomly, like jury duty, paid at least as much as they are for their ordinary work. It should not be compulsory. Each should be there for a year, but not all starting and finishing at the same time.
It should result in a lot more ‘commoners’ being able to understand politics, and hopefully take the present elected political system past its current, low, maturity level.