Vocal Voices

At last!

We, eventually get to choose who is in there, not those picked by some former PMs promoting their mates. We also get rid of Civil Servants, Military officers, Slebs, Sportspeople, ex MPs, hereditaries and other nonentities who were well paid to just do their day jobs.

Let's cut down their numbers as well, to 250 or so, and limit their expenses to £150 per day, but only if they do they do a full shift, not just turn up for a free meal and drinks.

And reduce MPs to 350 while they're at it.

Choose? Don't make me laugh. The parties get to choose the candidates and we get the "choice" of deciding which of the pre selected candidates rules over us.

Just like the US, if you have suffice money you can buy a house by buying the candidates.

The Lords has been a useful stopgap there. You were all for an unaccountable Lords when they kept blocking Johnson. Just imagine what he might have achieved with an overwhelming majority of dependent upper chamber critturs too.

Beware what you wish for. This is simply a grab for disaffected votes and no different from the Corbyn student loan plan.

Suff wrote:Choose? Don't make me laugh. The parties get to choose the candidates and we get the "choice" of deciding which of the pre selected candidates rules over us.

Which is why the "Conservative" party is full of MP's who don't appear to be very Conservative, and why Labour parachuted North London intellectuals into safe working class seats.

I won't mourn for the Lords, but I am suspiscious about what Starmer intends to replace it with. He will be trying to get some political advantage out of it, imo.
Every change to the way that we are governed seems to result in more and more jobs for the political class and their hangers on. Metro mayors, PCC's, West Yorkshire mayor etc etc etc.

The House of Lords is top heavy, bloated, filled with political cronies, and it blocks legislation. There should be an immediate cull with a reduction in their attendance allowance and they should pay for their own lunch, as should elected MPs.

I've no particular wish for the Lords to be abolished per se, but there has to be drastic root-and-branch overhaul of how it is constituted. Giving a seat to the likes of Tom Watson tells you all you need to know.

cromwell wrote:Every change to the way that we are governed seems to result in more and more jobs for the political class and their hangers on. Metro mayors, PCC's, West Yorkshire mayor etc etc etc.

Never a truer word spoken, in my book. Now even Cornwall's getting an elected mayor!

The Chancellor has announced plans to give Cornwall an elected mayor in his Autumn Statement today (November 17). Jeremy Hunt confirmed in his address to Parliament that there were imminent plans to install an elected mayor in the county. Speaking to Parliament, Mr Hunt said the move was intended to 'make it easier for local leaders to make things happen'. Cornwall was one of four areas announced as sites for new mayors, with the others being Suffolk, Norfolk and 'an area in the North East'.

https://www.cornwalllive.com/news/cornw ... nt-7833503

Ossie wrote:Giving a seat to the likes of....xyz

... "giving" tells us all we need to know.

Nobody should be "given" a seat; that is what is so wrong. Of the 784 members 92 of them are there simply by being born - hereditary peers. 26 are Bishops of the C of E when the UK is supposedly a multi-faith nation. The other 666 (what a number! ) are all there by grace and favour either by being senior members of certain organisations or through various Monarch's 'Honours Lists' or appointed cronies and lackeys promoted by departing PMs.

When it comes to elections the parties have always had the final say on who will be their chosen candidates - it is how things work. What they cannot do is make the electorate vote for them - that's where choice comes in. We get a ballot paper and then get to make our mark for our chosen one. That is how members of a slimmed down scrutiny and revising second chamber should be selected.

It is not scrapping the Lords, as such, just making it democratic.

Workingman wrote:It is not scrapping the Lords, as such, just making it democratic.

Given that our current democracy is becoming less accountable, I can't see it helping the Lords.

I was incandescently furious at the Tory Lords going against manifesto and the will of the people. But I would not change them because there are times when you desperately need that detached view. I'll put up with it not working for me just to get the benefit when it really matters.

Suff wrote:I was incandescently furious at the Tory Lords going against manifesto and the will of the people.

Will of the people, eh? And if they ignore it for five, eight, 10 years....? And they were your Lords put there to do the will of their ultra right wing ERG friends by gifting them their positions, then they renaged. You just can't trust some people.

Sod all you can do about it without having a vote. You might then start calling for a real "will of the people" system that we do not currently have.