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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

#231

Post by cryptonector »

glaucon wrote: post #201
tomatocracy wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is, the reason for the delays and inefficiencies is not really juries. It's mostly much more mundane things like the prison service not sending defendants to court at the right time, translators not turning up when they are supposed to, buildings which are falling apart, technology not working properly, and court time being double-booked. It's an administrative failure, not a problem with the system. Alongs…

The plan is not to "remove trial by jury" but to "remove trial by jury for some types of offense".

Yeah, ones that can yield imprisonment. Not OK!

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

#232

Post by hunterpayne »

xp84 wrote: post #111
kimos wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ambe…

Do you not understand why PR isn't a state? Seems like you don't. Support for PR statehood is only about 50% (on the island). That largely has to do with the fact that their taxes would increase if they became a state. Additionally, they would have to switch to English (along with Spanish) which makes things a lot more complicated. They are already US citizens and can move to anywhere in the US if they want to vote in federal elections (and half of them do but mainly for work). They don't want independence either. So the current limbo state is actually desirable to them.

Even if the citizens of PR wanted statehood, you have to get both parties to agree. This means probably 2 states at the same time (one red, one blue). Since there isn't another potentially red state (Alberta but that's probably never going to happen) to join, that's hard to do. Look at US history, statehood has always worked this way. It has nothing to do with whatever you are implying.

PS The 27th amendment was 1992, probably during your lifetime. You would expect the rate of new amendments to slow overtime so the average of a new amendment about every 15-20 years seems about right.

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

#233

Post by hunterpayne »

laughing_man wrote: post #153
williamdclt wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> duopolies in the US and the UK for better or worse, the duopoly is disappearing in the UK. Both Tories and Labour are getting passed by Reform and the Greens

But it's not that the duopoly is disappearing. It's just that the previous two parties are being eclipsed by two different parities. That's occurred previously in both the UK and US.

The last time it happened in the US was 1856 and its only happened 2x in US history. The US democratic party is the oldest existing political party in the world. For reference, the UK is actually only about 90 years older than the Democratic party.

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

#234

Post by cm2187 »

skissane wrote: post #132
cm2187 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, the assumption is that the non hereditary peers are somehow more representative, but all they represent is being friends of the PM of the time. It's a historical oddity of questionable usefulness. Meanwhile the house of commons can wipe out any civil liberty with a majority of 50% plus one vote. It is remarkable how a system that seems so unstable and prone to abuses of power has served the longest continuously…

> Yeah, the assumption is that the non hereditary peers are somehow more representative, but all they represent is being friends of the PM of the time There is an informal understanding that the government gives a certain number of life peerages to the opposition and minor parties, subject to the government being able to veto individual appointments they find objectionable. So it literally isn’t true that everyone ge…

So the correction is “friends of the PM, and a few other key politicians”. Still a club of people who represent no one. And more problematic, are accountable to no one.

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

#235

Post by runako »

bartread wrote: post #41
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.

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…

The USA's written constitution should not be used as an exemplar of written constitutions in general because the founders didn't even enforce it the day after it was ratified. It took a civil war to even turn towards the words as written. The document itself was more aspirational than a reflection of how the founders intended to live and govern.

As a result of all of that, we have developed a culture of sophistry around simple words. We pretend the Constitution binds us, but in practice the structures that govern the country are much more opaque and therefore more difficult to change.

(This is why every so often we have to ratify a new amendment codifying rights that are clearly enumerated in the articles of the Constitution or in an earlier amendment. At some point, the sophistry tips over and we have to amend it to say what was plainly written in at some earlier point.)

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

#237

Post by seanhunter »

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.

The Lords doesn’t actually have the power to veto bills thanks to the Parliament act. They also have a principle of ultimate legislative priority under which they defer to the commons in matters where the commons puts its foot down. They generally act as a revising body rather than outright attempting to defy the commons.

   > Under the Parliament Acts 1911 and 1949 it is possible for a bill to be    presented for Royal Assent without the agreement of the House of Lords, provided that certain conditions are met. This change was seen by some as a departure from Dicey’s notion of sovereignty conferred upon a tripartite body.
https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-...

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

#238

Post by justonceokay »

queuebert wrote: post #189
xp84 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ambe…

New and shiny is not always better. Science has spoiled us in the last century, but it has little to say about how a good government should operate. Many of us have a popular set of ideals that we think are superior and have attempted to overlay those on every aspect of modern life, but they have little to no data behind them and are ultimately just beliefs that make us feel good. As such, there is no reason to expec…

It’s true. In the long arc of history I have no doubt that our current government systems will be considered childish

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

#239

Post by InvertedRhodium »

JCattheATM wrote: post #207
glaucon wrote: post #206

If you're not British please don't assume that "ejecting heriditary nobles" from the upper house of parliament is automatically going to increase the quality of governance. For more than a century the majority of those who sit in the House of Lords have been "Life Peers", appointed by a politician and without any heriditary aspect. They include such towers of statepersonship as : Evgeny Lebedev (Russian businessman,…

> many of those appointed to Life Peerages meet the goal of having significant life experience This is a poor justification for what still amounts to an unelected ruling class.

Honestly, I look around the world and don’t see much, if any, practical difference.

The US has had two presidents that were direct relatives, I can’t believe that’s by pure chance or some kind of genetic skill at being president.

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

#240

Post by wongogue »

cbeach wrote: post #170
deaux wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Centre-left doesn’t mean the Left. It just means it’s to the left of the other centrist party (Tories). Just because they lean left doesn’t mean they are the Left, Radical Left, Commies etc
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