Live data from Hacker News

Britain is ejecting hereditary nobles from Parliament after 700 years

apnews.com

71–80 of 413 posts

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

#71

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

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

#72

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.

> You could argue the House of Lords did the same

It can still do the same thing without hereditary peers. A slow-moving, conservative (in the classical sense) upper chamber is a classic in bicameral systems, it is not specific to the House of Lords.

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

#73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No idea why this was down-voted > Oh sweet summer child. And Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.[1] [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

You need to have a very cynical worldview already to find my comment boring; as in; no information content. I really don't think most people are there yet.

> You need to have a very cynical worldview already to find my comment boring; as in; no information content.

Boring does not mean no information content. But the part of your comment about comment voting was boring and noise.

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

#74
post #27

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

It's simply a fact that common law jury trials are time-consuming and expensive and cause long delays and bottlenecks in the justice system.

Different common-law countries have addressed this issue in various ways. Restricting jury trials for more serious offenses (in this case for more serious charges - ones that could potentially result in a sentence of more than 3 years) is one way than many common law jurisdictions have taken.

It's not ideal but it's infinitely better in my mind than the practice used in the US to reduce jury trials. To avoid the cost/expense of a jury trial, public prosecutors threatens to press for a large number of charges or some very serious charges - carrying the potential of very long sentences - a sort of Gish-gallop approach.

Even if the chances of successful prosecution is relatively small for any one of the charges, the defendant is forced to take a plea-deal to avoid the risk of spending years or decades behind bars. Thus the defendant ends up with a guilty record and often a custodial sentence without any access to a trial or the chance to present their case at all.

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

#75
post #64

The irony is that, on a technicality, the hereditary peers were the only members of the Lords who had to win an election to get their seats. > Under the reforms of the House of Lords Act 1999, the majority of hereditary peers lost the right to sit as members of the House of Lords, the upper house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Section 2 of the Act, however, provides an exception from this general exclusion…

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 running democracy for so long.

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

#76
post #49
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…

> It's simply not as clear or coherent as a written one.

No. As you have surely seen, the US written constitution just gets contorted to "clearly" mean whatever it is the partisan Justices decided suits their current purpose. The effect is extremely corrosive - they even decided it means their guy is above the law.

I agree that using a better voting system (STV) is a meaningful benefit and worth replicating elsewhere, but I don't agree that having a written constitution is better. I think Ireland would be in roughly the same place if it had the same arrangement as in Westminster in that respect.

For example when Ireland wrote a constitutional amendment saying abortion is illegal under basically any circumstances, the people the Irish were electing would also have voted against legislation allowing abortion, but by the time the poll was held to amend to say abortion must be legal, the legislators elected were also mostly pro-choice. So if there was no written constitution my guess is that roughly the outcome is the same, in 1975 an Irish woman who needs an abortion has to "go on holiday" abroad and come back not pregnant or order pills and hope they're not traced to her, and in 2025 it's just an ordinary medical practice. Maybe the changes happen a few years earlier, or a few years later.

Edited: Clarify that the abortion prohibition was itself an amendment, as was the removal of that prohibition.

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

#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.

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

#78
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.

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

#79

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…

Extraordinary, and disgusting, to see monarchism touted by literate professionals in the 21st century.

The "point" of hereditary peerage is, from the perspective of the nobility, to preserve privileges with only self-interested regard for the welfare of the public—which very obviously resolves into tyrannical despotism at the earliest opportunity!

Utterly unconscionable to carry water for the literally medieval political economy that brought us, eg the calamitous 14th century.

Countless—countless—examples of the hideous cruelties of hereditary nobles abound since the institution's inception. You'd have to be a blind pig to ignore the myriad failure states. My God, man, do you want your children to be slaves??

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

#80
post #58
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In fairness, this is not unique to Britain. For America read "4" instead of "5".

Are there unelected hereditary nobles somewhere in the US that is entitled to having a seat in congress and can vote against laws being passed? Nope. I don't think so, not even the length of the term is the same.

And yet all of your objections apply to us in equal measure. Almost as though hereditary nobles don't have much to do with them.
Post reply on HN