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Britain is ejecting hereditary nobles from Parliament after 700 years

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Re: Britain is ejecting hereditary nobles from Parliament after 700 years

#111

Post by xp84 »

kimos wrote: post #59
s_dev wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If cool means interesting then yes, it is cool because it's archaic and different but it's not effective. It's the equivalent of a verbal contract. It's simply not as clear or coherent as a written one. Irish democracy in contrast uses STV voting and a written constitution and is modeled between the best of what the UK, the US and France had to offer when it was drafted and is a very representative democracy with man…

I love this about Ireland because they are such a young republic. And democratic systems are a technology. Something that we understand better over time, and somewhere new can pick and choose from what is best, where it is _extremely_ hard to change existing systems in established countries.

Yes, it's in my opinion one of the great tragedies of our time that some of our established countries are so hard to change. I don't mean this as the policy needs change, everyone will differ on those. I just mean the technology of government like you're saying. Efficient and more fair ways of voting on laws and electing representatives do exist.

For example my own (US) has a political system basically frozen in amber from a time before many of the political and policy challenges of our day were not even thought of yet. And they did their best to create a change mechanism, but I think anyone being truly fair of any political persuasion has to admit that while it has prevented nearly every harmful extremist constitutional amendment (I'd say Prohibition is the main one that sneaked in), it has proven to, within the lifetimes of most living Americans, be so hard to attain as to set the status quo in stone.

The framers didn't realize that most changes would be blocked by at least one party, out of fear that it would advantage the other guys. Same reason we stopped admitting states before letting Puerto Rico in, an absolutely absurd situation.

Re: Britain is ejecting hereditary nobles from Parliament after 700 years

#113

Post by brailsafe »

kergonath wrote: post #78
mindwok wrote: post #20

British democracy and government is cool. It's not enshrined in some document they got together and wrote down like the US constitution, it's this organic thing that they've stumbled towards over the last ~800 years with small changes like this one gradually evolving them into a modern liberal democracy.

> It's not enshrined in some document they got together and wrote down like the US constitution It’s also very brittle and one charismatic populist away from unraveling like the American government. Too much depends on gentlemen agreements and people trusting other people to do the right thing. It works in a stable environment, but shatters the moment someone with no shame and no scruples shows up.

But they're cycled through much more rapidly, and seem generally more vulnerable than the dictators in the U.S or otherwise. A small concession to be sure.

It seems like a fundamental failure of government that in many cases, there are no consequences for deliberately or accidentally screwing your people. You either get murdered eventually or the country is just left to fix itself later, which disproportionately affects people with little resources.

Re: Britain is ejecting hereditary nobles from Parliament after 700 years

#114

Post by tialaramex »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #3

“…a compromise that will see an undisclosed number of hereditary members allowed to stay by being ‘recycled’ into life peers.” What? Are the membership roles and the text of this law confidential?

All primary legislation is published. But this needn't be in the primary legislation since there is no need to legislate to make it happen. It's a side deal, the government agrees to do this, the Lords agree not to get in their way.

Much, but not all secondary legislation is also published. A typical means by which Secondary Legislation is brought into existence is that a Law says there shall be some list or reference established by some particular minister, and that document is Secondary Legislation. For example maybe a Law concerning Clown Licensing says there shall be a list of Clown License Offices, and the Secretary of State for Hilarity shall write this list, that list isn't voted on by Parliament, the list gets written by some bureaucrats working for the current Secretary of State for Hilarity. This "undisclosed" list needn't be in secondary legislation either.

Re: Britain is ejecting hereditary nobles from Parliament after 700 years

#115

Post by keeganpoppen »

alexpotato wrote: post #68
endoblast wrote: post #57

When Wellington thrashed Bonaparte, As every child can tell, The House of Peers, throughout the war, Did nothing in particular, And did it very well; Yet Britain set the world ablaze In good King George's glorious days! (from Iolanthe by Gilbert and Sullivan) Gather a group of the most powerful people in the land; give them ermine robes and manifold privileges; require of them nothing other than that they meet regula…

To play devil's advocate: Some people argue that the difficulty of passing laws in the United States is "a feature not a bug" b/c it prevents the US from creating laws too quickly. You could argue the House of Lords did the same: by vetoing bills, it acted as a "speed bump" to laws that might cause too much change too quickly.

yes. just because it is unfashionable to argue in favor of aristocracy does not mean that it doesn’t have its own intrinsic set of benefits and drawbacks… the drawbacks of ultra democracy (populism, etc.) are all cast aside as the innocent folly of people yearning to be free but not knowing whereof to yearn (“it’s not a system problem, it’s a people problem, but we must no matter what condemn ourselves to people problems because anything else is anathema to “liberty”, or whatever”). but dare utter one word in favor of conservatism in the original, true sense, and it is as though democracy is an unalloyed good with absolutely no downside. like, clearly we should have a direct democracy with no senate and no house, no? anything else is just allowing the Powers That Be to patriarchy everything!

Re: Britain is ejecting hereditary nobles from Parliament after 700 years

#116

Post by cbeach »

Removal of hereditary privilege is a good thing in principle.

However, given the Labour party just gave children the vote, cancelled local elections in conservative-leaning areas, and now they're removing the (traditionally conservative-leaning) hereditary peers, it's starting to feel a lot like the Left are gerrymandering our democracy.

Re: Britain is ejecting hereditary nobles from Parliament after 700 years

#117

Post by [deleted] »

01jonny01 wrote: post #82
kergonath wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not enshrined in some document they got together and wrote down like the US constitution It’s also very brittle and one charismatic populist away from unraveling like the American government. Too much depends on gentlemen agreements and people trusting other people to do the right thing. It works in a stable environment, but shatters the moment someone with no shame and no scruples shows up.

Britain's problems are due to uncharismatic Blairite socialist.

[deleted]

Re: Britain is ejecting hereditary nobles from Parliament after 700 years

#118

Post by fc417fc802 »

kbelder wrote: post #24
theodric wrote: post #11

The point of the hereditary peerage was the same as the point of having a non-elected Senate. Now both will have been lost in the name of "democracy" - a system of government that constantly fails to do either what is the desire of the people OR what is truly in their interests. From here on out it'll just be whoever manages to connive their way into power through connections, payola, corruption, island meetups, and…

How about a chamber populated by random lottery? Like jury duty?

How about both? A chamber of life peers and a chamber of temporary randomly selected representatives.

Re: Britain is ejecting hereditary nobles from Parliament after 700 years

#119

Post by skissane »

tialaramex wrote: post #99
post-it wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The House of Lords isn't going anywhere. The majority of the chamber are life peers, functionally identical to Canadian senators.

And for many years now, even the remaining minority of hereditary peers in the chamber are elected to that job, albeit not by the general public. My guess is that all those who are actually useful will get "grandfathered in" by this legislation making them life peers so that they can keep doing the exact same job. Many life peers (who are all entitled to be there) rarely attend, so it would be kinda silly if Lord Sno…

> My guess is that all those who are actually useful will get "grandfathered in" by this legislation making them life peers

The government made a political deal with the hereditary peers-drop their fight against this bill, and in exchange the government will grant a subset of them life peerages

But that political deal is just an informal extralegal “understanding”, it isn’t actually in the text of the bill-having the bill text grant someone a life peerage would upset the status of peerages as a royal prerogative, and they don’t want to do that

Re: Britain is ejecting hereditary nobles from Parliament after 700 years

#120

Post by stevenwoo »

anon84873628 wrote: post #46
pydry wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until the UK military pledge allegiance to democracy rather than the king, the royal family is also a risk to democracy. Thailand is an object lesson in how monarchy is repeatedly used as a lever by military and business elites to overthrow democratic representation "in the name of the king". It almost happened in the UK once, too, in the same way it happened in Thailand. The reason the media is so keen on the instit…

Should have used it to prevent Brexit. Just look at the US right now to see how civil military control can go off the rails too.

I think the monarchy could have used its power to prevent Brexit, but the monarchy never uses its voice for anything controversial for the most part, that there was a valid referendum and the closeness of the vote and rancor at the time from leavers who held all the reins of power at the time might have made the partial public funding of monarchy untenable, too. Queen Elizabeth seemed particularly neutral even on Brexit, maybe Charles would have done differently?
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