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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

#161

Post by SanjayMehta »

rybosworld wrote: post #126
kiba wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't really help the United States create good law. You could argue that it worsen the quality of laws by forcing kludges to be built on top of kludges. A sortition panel collecting random people from all walks of life to give feedback on law would probably improve the quality of law more than any amount of procedure and paperwork ever will. We mistaken paperwork with deliberation and quality control.

Government needs to be more Agile.

Government needs to be less.

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

#162

Post by klelatti »

cuuupid wrote: post #77

Some years ago I, an American citizen and resident, studied abroad briefly and was asked by the House of Lords to speak to them about what GDPR (a UK law!) was, how it worked, and the impact it could have. Further than ejecting nobles, they really should just overhaul the entire chamber, which is surely doing more harm than good if they need a foreign national to explain their own laws to them.

You don’t think it’s a strength that they have the courage to seek views from as wide a range of perspectives as possible, including from outside the UK?

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

#163

Post by wileydragonfly »

inglor_cz wrote: post #89
bartread wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is something to be said for your written constitution though: having the fundamental principles on which your nation is founded enshrined in that way should, at least in theory, make it a lot easier to settle arguments (though in practice, and particularly recently, that does seem not to be the case). Constitutional wrangling in the UK is always really fraught though because it's all done by precedent and is th…

Well, SCOTUS sometimes produces really weird Humpty-Dumpty explanations for very common words. Such as that growing marijuana plants in your own home for your own consumption influences interstate commerce and is therefore within powers of the Congress to regulate/ban.

Well, they used that same logic to force integration… so.. sometimes good sometimes bad?

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

#165

Post by Jensson »

laughing_man wrote: post #155
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.

There's really no way around the possibility that whatever you've written down in your constitution will be ignored in the heat of the moment, or become degraded over time.

But you don't need to put the military under the direct command of the civilian president like US does, if parliament can take military action against the civilian president and civilian action against the military leader then they have ways to deal with both.

American president is too powerful to deal with since he controls both the civilian and the military side.

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

#166

Post by Ziomislaw »

Will they do the same for hereditary monarchy?

When I was a kid I was appaled that a country in this age can have a king/queen. Then I understood that they are basically like an animal in a zoo, all for show with no actual power.

It's a dreadful fate to be born as a monarch.

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

#167

Post by KK7NIL »

inglor_cz wrote: post #94
kbelder wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not joking, although maybe not terribly serious either. I could envision a random (filtered) selection of citizens being given a veto power over legislation, as another check against abuse.

We could start by something like a randomly appointed commission to investigate, say, very expensive public projects.

I like this idea, much better suited to a "jury duty" style approach.

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

#168

Post by whattheheckheck »

Ziomislaw wrote: post #166

Will they do the same for hereditary monarchy? When I was a kid I was appaled that a country in this age can have a king/queen. Then I understood that they are basically like an animal in a zoo, all for show with no actual power. It's a dreadful fate to be born as a monarch.

The best punishment for thinking they're that important

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

#169

Post by cbeach »

Latty wrote: post #135
cbeach wrote: post #116

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.

They gave 16 year olds the vote, and 16 year olds can leave home, marry, join the army, and so on. Why should they not vote? They didn't run pointless elections by request of the very councils that were due for them, because those areas are being redrawn and would have to have fresh elections almost immediately, making the results meaningless. They also gave all the conservative hereditary peers lifetime peerages so…

> 16 year olds can leave home, marry, join the army, and so on. Why should they not vote?

That's a separate argument.

My point is Labour's change to the rules is very politically convenient for themselves. In the most recent polling, 32% of 16-17-year-olds would vote Labour, while only 17% of the overall electorate would vote Labour.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_next_U...

> They didn't run pointless elections by request of the very councils that were due for them, because those areas are being redrawn and would have to have fresh elections almost immediately, making the results meaningless.

They allowed individual incumbent councillors to choose whether elections were cancelled. This was politically convenient for the Labour and Tory parties because the Reform Party is new, and while it's polling well ahead of Labour, it doesn't have many incumbent council seats.

When a court challenge loomed, Labour quickly u-turned on the latest round of cancellations. Funny how something can seem sensible one day, and can then be u-turned at the slightest whiff of legal scrutiny.

> They also gave all the conservative hereditary peers lifetime peerages so they will keep their seats.

Can you name a single Conservative hereditary peer that will be given a lifetime peerage in Starmer's reform plan?

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

#170

Post by cbeach »

deaux wrote: post #148
cbeach wrote: post #116

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.

There is no reasonable definition of "the Left" that includes the British Labour party. The only one that fits would be "to the left of the British Conservative party", but that's as arbitrary as redefining it "to the left of Reform UK" and then starting to call the tories "The Left".

> There is no reasonable definition of "the Left" that includes the British Labour party.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labour_Party_(UK)

> Labour, is one of the two main political parties in the United Kingdom, along with the Conservative Party. It sits on the centre-left of the left–right political spectrum

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