UK Voting time - Abolishing peerages in the Lords?
May 4th, 2005 by HenVoting time tomorrow in the UK. I’m dismayed to see that one of the issues that the major parties seem to agree on is lessening or abolishing the existence of hereditary peers in the Lords. The House of Lords is the upper house of the UK parliament, and the last decade has seen an increasing move to replace the members of the Lords with an entirely elected body.
I’ve no huge desire to get political as the two primary choices in the UK election are equally undesirable and the third choice lacks the charisma of his predecessor; however…
While it’s all well and good to throw out privilege gained due to birth and not merit, people really need to look at what they’re replacing them with. Yet another group of voted in political cravens, moving us from a system in which the two houses had different central desires to a single house made of two parts, both with the same habits and urges, namely to get re-elected and make money.
Given the absolute corruptness of the US political system (except that few here seem to think it is corruption for companies to give donations to political figures for votes), having an upper house for whom money is less important seems like a good thing. Admittedly there are peers who are down on their luck, so the solution may be for the House of Lords to be replaced by the House of Richest British-persons.
Finally on the Lords topic, it seems that the wrong people are making the decisions here. N political parties are agreeing to throw out an older form of government and replace it with N political parties. Bit of a conflict of interest eh?
I’m also dissapointed that English devolution (Cornwall/Yorkshire/Lancashire/Northumberland etc) is not on the agenda. It’d make colouring maps in lots of fun and I’d love to see border control on the M1.
May 9th, 2005 at 9:18 am
That’s a damn good point about hereditary peers. I suppose the current political parties feel they would gain control over the upper house: same process, same result. Probably hunting is the most obvious example of the commons losing control. Like, who cares about hunting with dogs anyway? 2 dozen hunters (half the upper house) and 2 dozen animal rights lobbyists!
Has to be said, there was no element of choice about this last election. Both Howard and Blair were practically unelectable and the lib-dems never stood a chance of getting in. Might as well throw your vote away! Still, Mr Blair got the equivalent of his nose bloodied with his majority slashed to just over a third of what it was.
The Peoples Republic of South Yorkshire! Yay! But, hang on a second! Isn’t this what local government is about anyway? Why add yet *another* layer of government? It’s already bloated and inefficient, imagine the result of large-scale devolution.
May 12th, 2005 at 8:11 pm
Most herediatry peers were removed from the Lords a few years back. The bulk is now made up of political appointees - so we have “appointed political cravens” rather than “elected political cravens”. Most get their appointments for services to their political party, rather than any great service to the country. Whats so good about that? At least with someone elected, they have to pay some attention to the electorate.
My pet theory is that the second chamber should be elected with a few special rules. Number one, you’re only allowed to serve one term in the second chamber. Number two, if you serve in the second chamber, you can never stand for election in the first. Number three, if you’ve been elected in the first chamber, you can’t stand for the second. This would mean the second chamber would NOT have any career politicians - an interesting experiment eh?
Devolution to the regions in England is a “smoke screen” to hide the mess they’ve made of devolved powers to Scotland and the injustice of the situation where Scottish MPs vote on matters that affect England and Wales, but not Scotland. The worst example of this in the last parliament was where student fees was passed only with the help of Scottish MPs - but in Scotland their assembly decided against them, so they’ve stuffed us with a policy they weren’t happy with for themselves. What we need to be fair is devloved powers to an English assembly. But the powers that be, realize this would be the first step in the break up of the UK. The north east recently held a referendum on whether to have a regional body - but it was badly defeated which has left their devolution policy in a mess.