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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

#191

Post by tshaddox »

s_dev wrote: post #49
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.

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…

Note that even though the U.S. has a Constitution, the entire U.S. government is still, like the UK, highly reliant on inexplicit norms many of which go back hundreds of years before the U.S. was founded. They’re both still English common law systems.

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

#192

Post by edgyquant »

michaelt wrote: post #160
kennywinker wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d go further. To bypass the deadlocked congress, obama used executive orders in new and expansive ways. That ratcheted things up. Now trump is using executive orders even MORE expansively, to do things that are patently undemocratic and unconstitutional (federalizing who can vote, ilegal tariffs). The kludges and hacks are causing a crumbling of democracy, not just mediocre law.

> To bypass the deadlocked congress, obama used executive orders in new and expansive ways. That ratcheted things up. While I agree - this has been an issue long before Obama. Any reasonable country should be able to decide on the legality of abortion through the normal political process - the public deliberates, they elect representatives, the representatives hammer out the fine print and pass legislation. But in th…

It’s more like Americans did decide, that it was illegal and judges decided they could use legal tricks to make it legal (which in turn meant as soon as they didn’t have the majority the opposite could occur.)

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

#193

Post by edgyquant »

canarypilot wrote: post #139
kennywinker wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d go further. To bypass the deadlocked congress, obama used executive orders in new and expansive ways. That ratcheted things up. Now trump is using executive orders even MORE expansively, to do things that are patently undemocratic and unconstitutional (federalizing who can vote, ilegal tariffs). The kludges and hacks are causing a crumbling of democracy, not just mediocre law.

Yes, and, Bush-Cheney were the modern forefathers of pushing the unitary executive theory, building on the work of Reagan after a 90’s shaped lull. Reagan took ideas from The Heritage Foundation, who returned in the ‘24 elections pushing Project 2025. A natural endgame and roadmap for the movement of power to the president, that is being followed as approximately as any political roadmap ever is. Remember that each t…

Unitary executive is popular and doesn’t have to mean an imperial presidency. Actually the most popular version, albeit not the one you hear about the most, is the libertarian idea that the executive should have little power at all and almost no bureaucracy to command.

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

#194

Post by tshaddox »

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.

> It’s also very brittle and one charismatic populist away from unraveling

All sufficiently large governments (really all organizations of any kind) are necessarily like this, from the most successful attempts at open societies to the most autocratic. They all require constant vigilance both to perform their intended function and to preserve themselves into the future.

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

#195

Post by edgyquant »

JamesTRexx wrote: post #171
SanjayMehta wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Government needs to be less.

Government needs to be for all the people, and not just for the 1% with wealth and power. Not more or less.

This seems to go against human nature. Government is always for the 1% and in the rare case it isn’t it simply just creates a new 1%

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

#196

Post by SoftTalker »

michaelt wrote: post #160
kennywinker wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d go further. To bypass the deadlocked congress, obama used executive orders in new and expansive ways. That ratcheted things up. Now trump is using executive orders even MORE expansively, to do things that are patently undemocratic and unconstitutional (federalizing who can vote, ilegal tariffs). The kludges and hacks are causing a crumbling of democracy, not just mediocre law.

> To bypass the deadlocked congress, obama used executive orders in new and expansive ways. That ratcheted things up. While I agree - this has been an issue long before Obama. Any reasonable country should be able to decide on the legality of abortion through the normal political process - the public deliberates, they elect representatives, the representatives hammer out the fine print and pass legislation. But in th…

In the American system as originally founded, most of these things were intended to be decided by the states.

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

#197

Post by hunterpayne »

trebligdivad wrote: post #182
alexpotato wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Note that this change is not getting rid of the Lords; it's just getting rid of Hereditary piers - i.e. those passed down through generations. We'll still have Lords who have been selected by previous governments within their lifetime; so they still provide that speed bump; but do it in a way that means they were at some point chosen by an elected body.

Not sure how you think this will improve things. None of these people are elected. They likely got these positions by doing political favors. They are likely even more out of touch with the electorate. They are even more likely to make decisions based upon ideology instead of practical quality of life considerations. Seems to me this just centralizes power even more in the hands of a few. And that's the last thing the UK needs right now.

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

#198

Post by protocolture »

skissane wrote: post #70
protocolture wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Why does the House of Lords need to be replaced at all? Most countries are gridlocked enough with one chamber of parliament. Depends how it is designed. The australian senate, before 2015 or so, used to contain enough fun cooks that legislation had to get broad support to make it through. It was a pretty decent check against the beige dictatorship. But since they updated the voting rules to prevent the cool minor pa…

> The australian senate, before 2015 or so, used to contain enough fun cooks that legislation had to get broad support to make it through. It was a pretty decent check against the beige dictatorship. But since they updated the voting rules to prevent the cool minor parties from holding the balance, its just been a massive rubber stamp Current numbers in Australian Senate: Government 29, Opposition 27, Crossbench 20,…

"Crossbench"

The Greens voted with the LNP to change the senate voting rules, pulling the ladder up behind them. They are just a third leg of the major parties.

Wheres my Australian Motoring Enthusiast? Wheres my Shooters Farmers and Fishers rep? Even the "Libertarian" (formerly Liberal Democrats) party had the occasional flash of brilliance.

Paymen was voted in with the ALP and probably wont rate reelection.

The only halfway decent crazy crossbench we have right now is Lambo, and shes only good like 45% of the time. Lidia thorpe can be good quality but shes like Paymen, and wont be reelected solo.

Heaps of these crossbenchers are only there thanks to Climate 200 funding, which will vanish the second that bloke achieves his goals or gets bored and wanders off.

>I can’t see how this is by any reasonable definition a “rubber stamp”

Labor shops everything to the LNP or Greens, and chooses the one they can more easily bully into compliance. LNP does the same when they are in power.

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

#199

Post by hunterpayne »

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…

The hereditary peers were elected and that's what is being discarded? So before at least the voters got some choice and that's going away? Amazing...

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

#200

Post by glaucon »

sb057 wrote: post #27

Also in the pipeline: elimination of jury trials https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cm2x01yne13o

The first sentence of the cited article makes clear the matter at hand is not "elimination of jury trials" but "a plan to abolish some jury trials". The proposal is an attempt to reduce the time which those who are accused must wait for trial.

FWIW the majority of all criminal cases in the UK are dealt with by either a single judge, or three judges[1]. This is hardly surprising as assembling a jury is vastly time consuming and for minor criminal matters is hard to justify.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summary_offence#United_Kingdom

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