- I'm sure you'll all be fascinated to know that I've just signed up for this:
"I will 'blog for victory' on the 10th of August by writing a post about the need for House of Lords reform, and link to the Elect the Lords campaign website but only if 20 other bloggers will too."Although having done so it's entirely possible that on the day I may end up arguing that we need to go back to a hereditary upper chamber and that democracy's overrated. Despite having had to write a briefing paper on Lord's reform when I was working at the Commons I still don't really have an opinion. All I do know is that the current system is a piss-poor worst of both worlds scenario.
5 Comments:
I'll blog about it, but don't think I could link to an Elect the Lords site though. Who wants another bunch of elected pigs, all slavishly toeing their party line, and only interesteded getting their snouts in the trough?
I always though that the virtue of the House of Lords, as was, was that they weren't elected and thus that they could look at the longer term. And the great thing about the hereditaries was that they owed no allegiance to anyone.
Also, the Upper House is quite cheap (compared to the Commons) and they did tend to try to stop some of the sillier laws going through (until NuLabour started weilding the Parliament Act at them).
Bugger! So you two are probably going to produce something similar to me, but backed up with intelligent reasoning.
I always used to be in favour of a fully-elected Upper House, but I think I preferred the 1997 version to what we have now. Bearing that in mind, I suspect the reason I signed up to write something is that I believe it needs at least some kind of reform, even if not what the people behind the "Elect The Lords" website would necessarily agree with.
Ah yes, neil, but if you use facts rather than just intelligent reasoning and naked reactionary prejudice, your stuff will be one step ahead of what I write...
glad I'm not the only one - needs reform but don't exactly agree with ETL.
I gimped out of the pledge because I didn't feel I could link to the elect the lords site under what I would write, but being a reformy blog, I signed up someone else from the office to do it. That reminds me, I should probably tell him...
So let’s see. They wanted 20 to write, of the four that I know about (including me) all four are intending to write something along the lines of bring back the hereditaries. Or at least let’s not have an elected Lords. Hhm. this could be an interesting blogging exercise really, couldn’t it?
Post a Comment