Idiotic proposals for House of Lords reform (rant)

[TheFireGod]

Damn I wasn't aware that the HoL had that many people , surely breaks the common mold that the upper houses in bicameral legislatures composed of less than the lower house.

 

[unloadonme]

If I were going to reform the House of Lords, I'd do it by repealing to existing laws and not by enacting any new ones. the two to go would be the Life Peerages Act 1958 and the House of Lords Act 1999. Simple.

The whole point of the House of Lords is that they should be unelected. They do the right thing without having to keep an eye on opinion polls and political masters. Hereditary peers were just right for that. The life peers are a ghastly bunch of has-beens and no-hopers and there's no appetite in the country for more elected politicians. It's not completely undemocratic, because the elected House of Commons always has the final say.

 

[ChickenGuy]

^ I was wondering when you'd appear. I thought you might say how proud you are of me.

(for being against a Lib Dem proposal, for stopping voting for them, and also for being thoroughly Euro-sceptic)

I don't, however, believe that reverting back to a fully hereditary chamber is the best way forward. If you just have a monolithic bunch of crusty old upper-class dukes and earls and viscounts, that's only going to reflect one very narrow world view, one that is very priveleged and arrogant, and one that is extremely hostile to 'common' people and the 'great unwashed' masses. That's hardly a very representative or broad and encompassing system.

Keep it the way it is I say but stop the party machinery from stuffing the chamber with ideologically political hacks from the Commons.

 

[unloadonme]

^ I was wondering when you'd appear.

You missed me? I've been away for a week or so.

I don't agree with your generalisation abut hereditary peers. They really do come from all walks of life and many even support the Labour Party.

 

[bankside]

The genius of hereditary peers is that they are unaccountable to anybody else.




That means they're free to do the right thing without kowtowing to Mr. Murdoch's newspapers, or some trade union rabble-rouser, or the ill-informed popular opinion of the day. It gives them a solid platform from which to actually do the righ thing. Everybody agrees they do, but we run around wringing our hands about their "democratic legitimacy."

They have all the democratic legitimacy they need, given that the House of Commons - the people's house - has the upper hand in every regard. The best proof of that is not just a thousand years of developing tradition leading us to the present Westminster system of goverment, but the fact that the House even has a right to vote on the existence of the Lords.

They pose no threat whatsoever to democracy, and when the mob gets ahead of itself in the Commons, the Lords actually provide a safeguard to liberty.


We're messing around with the same bullshit in Canada and it is just as transparently stupid.

 

[Kulindahr]

If I were going to reform the House of Lords, I'd do it by repealing to existing laws and not by enacting any new ones. the two to go would be the Life Peerages Act 1958 and the House of Lords Act 1999. Simple.

The whole point of the House of Lords is that they should be unelected. They do the right thing without having to keep an eye on opinion polls and political masters. Hereditary peers were just right for that. The life peers are a ghastly bunch of has-beens and no-hopers and there's no appetite in the country for more elected politicians. It's not completely undemocratic, because the elected House of Commons always has the final say.

The only thing I really like about the Life Peerages Act is the measure to allow ladies to sit in the House of Lords. The appointment power has no limit and seems to me to be more of a way for the Prime Minister to manipulate the composition of Lords.

O had to look up the 1999 Act. Offhand, my impulse is to say to alter it in three ways: one, guarantee that 144 hereditary peers will always pass on their seats; two, create a pool of all other hereditary titled nobles, which will rotate through to fill another 144 seats; three, limit the number of Life Peers to another 144. One exception: former Prime Ministers who have accepted titles are counted in these numbers.

 

[Kulindahr]

The genius of hereditary peers is that they are unaccountable to anybody else.


That means they're free to do the right thing without kowtowing to Mr. Murdoch's newspapers, or some trade union rabble-rouser, or the ill-informed popular opinion of the day. It gives them a solid platform from which to actually do the righ thing. Everybody agrees they do, but we run around wringing our hands about their "democratic legitimacy."

They have all the democratic legitimacy they need, given that the House of Commons - the people's house - has the upper hand in every regard. The best proof of that is not just a thousand years of developing tradition leading us to the present Westminster system of goverment, but the fact that the House even has a right to vote on the existence of the Lords.

They pose no threat whatsoever to democracy, and when the mob gets ahead of itself in the Commons, the Lords actually provide a safeguard to liberty.


We're messing around with the same bullshit in Canada and it is just as transparently stupid.

Ah, the splendour of the worship of democracy!

Reading what chickenguy said, then this, I had another idea: all recipients of the Victoria Cross get created earls and get a seat, also not counted for the numbers I set above.

Thinking of those numbers, and feeling anarchic, when a new Life Peer gets appointed, if he wants to sit in Lords he has to challenge a sitting member to a duel.

 

[unloadonme]

The only thing I really like about the Life Peerages Act is the measure to allow ladies to sit in the House of Lords.

There are also hereditary peeresses in their own right. They could (before 1999) sit in the Lords under the Peerage Act 1963 quite independently of the life peerage legislation.

Peerage Act 1963 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia