Friday, February 26, 2016
Cameron’s Plan To Slash Democracy – MPs Down, Lords Up
A question to ask Mr Cameron today:
“How is your plan to cut 50 MPs but add 40 Lords a/ democratic or b/ money-saving?”Four years ago, Liberal Democrats, Labour and Conservatives all promised to make the House of Lords elected – but Labour and Tories teamed up to stop the changes. That’s why voters still can’t hold peers to account or throw them out. Today, the news breaks that the Prime Minister wants to stuff the Lords with forty new cronies at the same time as slashing the number of MPs (for whom we get to vote) by fifty.
The House of Lords already has hundreds more members than the House of Commons – and all Lords have seats for as long as they want them, usually for life. Personally, I’d give more power to the regions and only then cut MPs’ numbers once there’s less work for them to do, but anyone who thinks democracy matters at all can see Mr Cameron’s plan is the wrong way round.
There should be no cuts to the Commons until the Lords is cut to the same size, and no more unelected peers appointed at all if the Parliamentarians we can at least theoretically vote to get rid of are being removed.
The Tories claim they want to “cut the cost of politics,” but this isn’t about reducing the numbers of politicians – just swapping out fifty MPs for nearly as many new Lords instead. The difference is, even after the Tories do their best to choose which voters are put into which constituency boundaries to try and get as many Tories elected as they possibly can, they’re still scared to death that voters can still choose not to vote Tory after all. So now they plot to just stop us pesky voters from getting in their way. That’s why Mr Cameron plans to swap MPs who voters have power over for Tory crony nodding dogs in the Lords – who no voter has ever had a say on.
One to file under ‘You couldn’t make it up’ (but now the Tories have absolute power on a third of the vote they think they can get away with anything).
Sourced from today’s The Times Red Box bulletin:
“In for a peerage
“Yesterday we had news of David Cameron's plan to cut the number of MPs from 650 to 600 to help to ‘cut the cost of politics’.
“Today comes an extraordinary story in The Times [paywall] about how Downing Street is preparing to create up to 40 new peers after the EU referendum.
“Sam Coates reports that it means the PM will be able to reward supporters of the Remain campaign, while trying to prevent embarrassing defeats in the upper chamber.
“Legally all such stories must include this fact: The Lords is already the second biggest legislature in the world, after the Chinese politburo.
“And there was me thinking Cameron wanted to take back powers from an unelected, unaccountable elite who threaten the supremacy of British democracy.”
Labels: Conservatives, Lords, Newspapers
Sunday, July 07, 2013
Arrogant, Patronising and Discriminatory: Some of Shirley Williams’ Greatest Mistakes
“Equality is not the same as sameness” was the arrogant war-cry of the Apartheid regime and, shamefully, now of Liberal Democrat Queen Mum-equivalent Baroness Shirley Williams. Reports by Pink News and Lib Dem Voice of grandstanding homophobic actions are finally bringing into the open the unpleasant side of her that many of us have had personal experience of over the years.
There are many things to admire about Shirley Williams, but her ‘commitment to equality’ isn’t one of them. It’s an extremely narrow one: proposing only her own programme of equality for women; and only the ‘right sort’ of women. It’s a great shame but perhaps unsurprising that she’s become so conservative in her years as an unelected, unaccountable peer that no-one can ever vote out. It goes back a lot further and wider than merely leading the charge in the House of Lords to put the gays in their place and propose legal special privileges for – surprise – only people like Shirley Williams.
Shirley Williams – Bully
I’ve never said this in public before. I’m writing now in part because my ever-declining health means I’m unlikely ever to seek any position again within the Lib Dems through patronage or election. I’m obviously spurred by her being not just a quiet fellow-traveller with the House of Lords bigots but appointing herself chief of the anti-equal-marriage legislators. And I regret not having thought about this over the last few months and supplied testimony to the Lib Dems’ independently-led enquiry on internal party processes. Because there is no way on Earth that I would ever trust any internal process led by Shirley Williams. She is the most arrogant and biggest bully I have ever encountered within the party, and the one who was most open about their prejudices and about acting on them.
What particularly sticks in my mind is not just her very prominent and active legal homophobia but her deplorable attitude to young people – patronising, hostile and going out of her way to block their progress within the Lib Dems. I remember particularly vividly her spiteful, patronising and ageist attacks on all the young women who disagreed with this self-satisfied grandee during the party’s debates over sexist shortlists, where any woman with the temerity to disagree with her exact decree of what should be was put down in such ageist and indeed sexist terms that any similarly haughty male Lib Dem peer would have been excoriated for.
I have direct, personal experience of Baroness Williams’ bullying ways, too. When I was young and very active in the party I encountered occasional prejudices and put-downs: certainly, when I was over a decade younger than anyone else elected to the Federal Policy Committee, I was often looked down on and had to work much harder to prove myself. Despite having been very out at all levels of the party I’ve ever been involved in, back when that was surprisingly rare, I’ve experienced very little homophobia (usually discreetly), more often having had people sneer because I had no money and, for example, had to hitch-hike to meetings (at which I didn’t wear a suit). But the overwhelming number of times I saw people try to put me back in my box was for ideological reasons – which was fair enough, as long as we both had an equal say and I could beat them, too.
The biggest exception to all this was back in 1999. Who else but Baroness Shirley Williams was in charge of
Believing that the average age and background – and views – of peers should change radically, I and several other (at the time) young people (at the time) put ourselves forward and, of the original fifty, three of us were elected to the panel in our twenties. I have never, ever, been so patronised and discriminated against in the party as by Shirley Williams on that occasion: she made it very clear that she was against the plebs having a vote for Lords selection at all, and that she would do everything in her (considerable) power to prevent any young person being given a place, whatever the mere party members had voted for. It was less an interview than a lecture. She wasn’t openly homophobic to me at the time, but after the second time I’d mentioned my partner with the word “he” and she’d talked about “she” I decided not to bother correcting her again, as there was clearly no way she was ever going to get it.
Afterwards, I met up with another of the three, a young woman who also had never been so bullied and humiliated by anyone in the party as by Shirley, again primarily because of Baroness Williams’ quite open and arrogant ageism. It’s the only time I’ve seen a woman in tears at their treatment by anyone in the Lib Dems.
But she was both a young person and a woman who had the temerity to disagree with the great Shirley, so no doubt Baroness Williams would claim that she treated her ‘equally’ with her longstanding mates who were on the list… Just not the same.
So that’s Shirley Williams: a very, very narrow commitment to equality, for only ‘her’ chosen sort of women. Her latest arrogant moves for legal special treatment for her own special interests and people of her own background, her own interests and her own opinions shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who’s seen her commitment to equality for the Great and Good – but not for people who are not the same – at work over so many years.
How Do You Want To Be Remembered?
Update: Inspired by Baron Tony Greaves’ quite staggering degree of self-unawareness on the Lib Dem Voice thread – a Lord accusing a blogger of “using his privileged position… to pursue his personal hobbyhorses” and describing his fellow unelected, unaccountable, unbearable grandees as “good Liberals” for using the law and their ultra-privileged personal prejudices to grind my relationship into the dirt, as they have for many years, I ask a simple question. You might put it, politely, to any Lib Dem peers of your acquaintance.
Imagine a “good Liberal” of, say, the middle of the last century who had an impeccable record in progressive opinion and legislation save that, for reasons of moral concern, and religion, and tradition, they just weren’t comfortable with black people and white people marrying and strained every sinew in their later years to prevent the heinous sin of mixed-race marriage, because “Equality is not the same as sameness”.
Is there any way on Earth that we would remember their legacy as a “good Liberal” today?
How do Liberal Democrat Peers want their legacies to be remembered?
Former self-styled radical Tony Greaves appears to be going out of his way to prove the point that taking a place in a ‘democratic’ legislature from which no mere mortal has the power ever to remove you rots your brain into ‘going native’.
Labels: Bigotry, Gay, Liberal Democrats, Lords, Personal, Shirley Williams
Saturday, February 09, 2013
What Is the Point of the Church of England?
What an unfortunate week for former oil baron and newly unelected baron Justin Welby to become the last Archbishop of Canterbury. The week he screamed ‘Gays! Know your place!’ and ‘Ex-kings! Know your place!’ The week that the Church of England looked more like a useless and vindictive relic than any week since, oh, the last one (‘Women! Know your place!’). With the established church wielding vast power and money but refusing to do its few jobs as a minor nationalised industry – births, marriages, deaths – how long before the country says ‘We know your place – the scrapheap’?
I don’t imagine that unelected Lord Welby will be any worse than his predecessor as Archbishop of Canterbury, that hypocritical, canting bigot-fancier Rowan Williams, but he faces a church in an even worse state of decay. Church attendance continues to decline, while the only issues on which the Church of England speaks with passion – or shrill desperation – and consistency are as the BNP’s vicars on Earth.
The Church of England is on the wrong side of history, but still screams with privilege – not to mention power and the love of money. The only thing the establishment of the established screams louder about than upholding vicious evil bigotry is upholding its holdings. The less influence it has on society and the less interest anyone has in it, the more they hold onto their unearned goodies.
No-one votes for their bishops, who must on pain of death never be women or gays, but they get to sit in their palaces and in our Lords to literally lord it over the rest of us.
Major church decisions are made not on theology or faith, but on what will get through Parliament and retain their cash and comfy red leather benches.
While other churches without all the state money and power can choose who they perform services for, the established church is meant to be the nationalised industry that has to do the cheap and cheerful ceremonies for anyone who asks. But though their talk is cheap, can anyone call them cheerful? Not when they put up snobby block after snobby block to prevent people they disapprove of from calling on their increasingly narrow ‘love’.
This isn’t just a lazy bunch of pampered bigots trying to get out of doing any work for their power, wealth and prestige. It’s shrivelling the pitiful excuse for a moral sense that the established church still pretends to, their very establishment nature gnawing away daily at Christianity in this country while they blame everyone else for it.
Does anyone – does even any bishop saying it – not cringe as they bear false witness about their vicious campaigns of hate? When thirty seconds’ online search on Hansard proves the bigot bishops liars who screamed against and voted against every liberal move on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights that they now mendaciously claim they always supported, just no further? That they now ‘support’ the civil partnerships that they warned were the end of the world?
No wonder they screamed so much about civil registrars not having to perform civil partnerships – the ones they loathe and fear but feel compelled to lie about now approving, and which they made sure had nothing to do with religion? They protect evil bigots who want to take all the money but not do the job. Can anyone be surprised, when that’s exactly what the Church of England itself does, writ large? Has anyone on Earth previously had a special law passed in order to ‘protect’ themselves from doing the only job they’re meant to do?
And does anyone think for a moment that anything will get easier for them?
More ‘redefining’ marriage:
Many of the bigot bishops will surely be praying for a swift end to the monarchy. Not only is it a constant reminder to everyone in the country to point and laugh at the church founded on the one holy aim of Henry VIII having a divorce (and more) explicitly forbidden by the same Jesus who never mentioned gays pretending that their never, ever redefining marriage is the pretext for their bigotry, but it’s only a matter of time before we have a gay or bi heir to the throne who wants to marry their same-sex partner.
With the monarchy falling in public esteem at a far slower rate than the crash-diving established church, there would be no faffing about with abdication next time. Imagine the public outrage if the Church of England tried to insist that the princess or prince could not marry and could not become monarch because of the bishops’ bigotry. No; once again, the reality of money and power would collide with the Church of England and it would suddenly find that it could accommodate a change in the law when the alternative is having to take a vow of poverty and political impotence.
The bigot bishops might, with straight faces, say that all is needed is a special exceptional law, so that the Queen or King can marry someone of the same sex but no-one else can. Oh, sorry, I apologise. I’m being too cynical. That would be like the Church of England having a woman Supreme Governor but saying that, at the next rung down, women bishops were icky and silly flibbertigibbets that no right-thinking man could tolerate. No, wait – bad example.
This week, of course, Richard III’s body was dug up in Leicester. He was a Catholic King, whose power base was at York and who wanted to be buried in York Minster. Obviously, the only question should be whether to honour his spiritual or his temporal wishes, and bury him either in a currently Catholic cathedral or in York Minster, with a possible outside bet of Westminster Abbey to honour a monarch. Equally obviously, the Church of England insist that he’s theirs to do with as they wish, that they refuse to have him at York, and that he’s to be kept in Leicester. Where he was dragged by the Tudor usurper with a slim claim to the throne whose son founded their usurper church with a slim claim to Christian tradition. No wonder the Church of England want to keep him as close to under the car park as they can.
Jesus is an embarrassment to them, too. He called the Church his Bride and he the Bridegroom; Justin Welby in his private prayers must no doubt scourge himself for those many more than thrice public denials before the cock, every time he insists that he’s only the deity’s civil partner.
The only job the Church of England has that most people see in their everyday lives – and even then only at infrequent points in them – is officiating at births, marriages and deaths. And they’re so determined to avoid doing even that tiny thing for the people of England to justify their money and power that they’ve had a special law passed exempting them from their only point.
There’s no point to the Church of England for lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender people.
There’s no point to the Church of England for women generally.
There’s no point to the Church of England for honest believers.
There’s not even any point to the Church of England for the monarchy.
Beyond the point of no return, it’s time to disestablish the Church of England. Obviously.
This is the only point at which I regret that the Liberal Democrats are in coalition with the unstable Tory coalition of half rudderless Cameroons, half ungovernable loonies, and not with the 1980s Conservative Party of Mrs Thatcher. If she were the Prime Minister we were dealing with, then we’d be able to break up the last and most failed of the nationalised industries. The Coalition could disestablish the whole wreck, sell off the vast wealth and use the money to help the people left in the cold by the church’s gold-plated empty words, and let every local believer-franchise decide on its own genuine theology rather than have to present one-lie-fits-all compromises for Parliamentary approval.
Win-win, surely? But, as obviously as it’s time for them to go, the Church of England will no doubt carry on as a zombie establishment on the wrong side of history for another century. How much more harm will it do before it’s put out of our misery?
I don’t imagine that unelected Lord Welby will be any worse than his predecessor as Archbishop of Canterbury, that hypocritical, canting bigot-fancier Rowan Williams, but he faces a church in an even worse state of decay. Church attendance continues to decline, while the only issues on which the Church of England speaks with passion – or shrill desperation – and consistency are as the BNP’s vicars on Earth.
The Church of England – Moral Evil Moderated Only By Love of Money and Power
The Church of England is on the wrong side of history, but still screams with privilege – not to mention power and the love of money. The only thing the establishment of the established screams louder about than upholding vicious evil bigotry is upholding its holdings. The less influence it has on society and the less interest anyone has in it, the more they hold onto their unearned goodies.
No-one votes for their bishops, who must on pain of death never be women or gays, but they get to sit in their palaces and in our Lords to literally lord it over the rest of us.
Major church decisions are made not on theology or faith, but on what will get through Parliament and retain their cash and comfy red leather benches.
While other churches without all the state money and power can choose who they perform services for, the established church is meant to be the nationalised industry that has to do the cheap and cheerful ceremonies for anyone who asks. But though their talk is cheap, can anyone call them cheerful? Not when they put up snobby block after snobby block to prevent people they disapprove of from calling on their increasingly narrow ‘love’.
This isn’t just a lazy bunch of pampered bigots trying to get out of doing any work for their power, wealth and prestige. It’s shrivelling the pitiful excuse for a moral sense that the established church still pretends to, their very establishment nature gnawing away daily at Christianity in this country while they blame everyone else for it.
Does anyone – does even any bishop saying it – not cringe as they bear false witness about their vicious campaigns of hate? When thirty seconds’ online search on Hansard proves the bigot bishops liars who screamed against and voted against every liberal move on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights that they now mendaciously claim they always supported, just no further? That they now ‘support’ the civil partnerships that they warned were the end of the world?
No wonder they screamed so much about civil registrars not having to perform civil partnerships – the ones they loathe and fear but feel compelled to lie about now approving, and which they made sure had nothing to do with religion? They protect evil bigots who want to take all the money but not do the job. Can anyone be surprised, when that’s exactly what the Church of England itself does, writ large? Has anyone on Earth previously had a special law passed in order to ‘protect’ themselves from doing the only job they’re meant to do?
And does anyone think for a moment that anything will get easier for them?
Two Predictions For Within the Next Ten Years – More Marriage, Fewer Lords
More ‘redefining’ marriage:
- Once people have got used to same-sex marriage, as they did civil partnerships, with surprising speed, it will seem more and more absurd that there are two separate sets of laws for the same institution. Within a couple of Parliaments’ time, there will be a Marriage Bill, simply equalising the laws to bring them into the understanding of most people not stuck in the wrong century.
- Same-sex partners will not be singled out to be penalised in their pensions. Carrying on the constant redefinition of marriage that English law has practised across the centuries, more antediluvian legal hangovers from the days of wives as property will be removed. For one, female partners in mixed-sex marriages will no longer uniquely have the defence that they’re wilting, helpless Victorian victims of brain fever when they conspire with their husbands to break the law. Not that any woman with a brain and a career would ever shelter behind such a humiliating sexist pretence these days.
- Mealy-mouthed bigot MPs who pretend that the only reason that they vote against people having any sort of marriage to a partner of the same sex is a never-before-spoken commitment to absolute letter-of-the-law equality will lose their last fig opportunistic fig leaf, when they’re no longer able to bleat ‘I would truly, honestly be all for the horrible stomach-churning gays if only the law specifically mentioned adultery and non-consummation for them, which means that I’m pretending not to know that “unreasonable behaviour” includes both and that for me the only thing about the gays is THEIR TERRIFYING[ly tempting] SEX AND WHY DO THEY GET SO MUCH OF IT AND SURELY MARRIAGE SHOULD INSIST THEY CAN’T GET EXTRA!’
- And, perhaps most importantly, all religions will get the right to marry or not marry any consenting adult otherwise free to marry under the law. Except the Church of England, the only church for which all reason (and all they get in return for it) says should, alone, as the nationalised church of everyone, by law have to marry anyone who asks, which will instead shout and scream that it needs a special law, again, to excuse it from performing its only public duty. While still getting paid.
- Almost certainly from a Labour Government that wants to vote through out of spite something they voted against out of spite. But I’m not a shitty hypocritical toe-rag like every Labour MP, so next time they say ‘Only Labour can deliver (because we’ll gang up and vote against everything we pretend to believe in to stop anyone else doing it)’ I will grit my teeth and support their move on principle, even though they don’t have any.
- And does anyone think that, given another few years of the Church of England’s decline, they’ll keep the failed sop to Conservatives of holding onto their unelected block of Bishops voting for evil bigotry and without anyone able to vote them out?
- Though it’s much more certain that the wing of the Church concerned with grabbing unaccountable power and which doesn’t give a toss about tradition if it gets in the way of that will mount another panicked rush to say ‘OK, we’ll give in on women – eeeww – as long as we keep the power we don’t deserve and keep the gays in the pit we say they deserve’.
The Monarchy – An Embarrassment to the Church of England (or vice versa)
Many of the bigot bishops will surely be praying for a swift end to the monarchy. Not only is it a constant reminder to everyone in the country to point and laugh at the church founded on the one holy aim of Henry VIII having a divorce (and more) explicitly forbidden by the same Jesus who never mentioned gays pretending that their never, ever redefining marriage is the pretext for their bigotry, but it’s only a matter of time before we have a gay or bi heir to the throne who wants to marry their same-sex partner.
With the monarchy falling in public esteem at a far slower rate than the crash-diving established church, there would be no faffing about with abdication next time. Imagine the public outrage if the Church of England tried to insist that the princess or prince could not marry and could not become monarch because of the bishops’ bigotry. No; once again, the reality of money and power would collide with the Church of England and it would suddenly find that it could accommodate a change in the law when the alternative is having to take a vow of poverty and political impotence.
The bigot bishops might, with straight faces, say that all is needed is a special exceptional law, so that the Queen or King can marry someone of the same sex but no-one else can. Oh, sorry, I apologise. I’m being too cynical. That would be like the Church of England having a woman Supreme Governor but saying that, at the next rung down, women bishops were icky and silly flibbertigibbets that no right-thinking man could tolerate. No, wait – bad example.
This week, of course, Richard III’s body was dug up in Leicester. He was a Catholic King, whose power base was at York and who wanted to be buried in York Minster. Obviously, the only question should be whether to honour his spiritual or his temporal wishes, and bury him either in a currently Catholic cathedral or in York Minster, with a possible outside bet of Westminster Abbey to honour a monarch. Equally obviously, the Church of England insist that he’s theirs to do with as they wish, that they refuse to have him at York, and that he’s to be kept in Leicester. Where he was dragged by the Tudor usurper with a slim claim to the throne whose son founded their usurper church with a slim claim to Christian tradition. No wonder the Church of England want to keep him as close to under the car park as they can.
Jesus is an embarrassment to them, too. He called the Church his Bride and he the Bridegroom; Justin Welby in his private prayers must no doubt scourge himself for those many more than thrice public denials before the cock, every time he insists that he’s only the deity’s civil partner.
Not Today, Not Tomorrow, But, Inevitably, Disestablishment
The only job the Church of England has that most people see in their everyday lives – and even then only at infrequent points in them – is officiating at births, marriages and deaths. And they’re so determined to avoid doing even that tiny thing for the people of England to justify their money and power that they’ve had a special law passed exempting them from their only point.
There’s no point to the Church of England for lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender people.
There’s no point to the Church of England for women generally.
There’s no point to the Church of England for honest believers.
There’s not even any point to the Church of England for the monarchy.
Beyond the point of no return, it’s time to disestablish the Church of England. Obviously.
This is the only point at which I regret that the Liberal Democrats are in coalition with the unstable Tory coalition of half rudderless Cameroons, half ungovernable loonies, and not with the 1980s Conservative Party of Mrs Thatcher. If she were the Prime Minister we were dealing with, then we’d be able to break up the last and most failed of the nationalised industries. The Coalition could disestablish the whole wreck, sell off the vast wealth and use the money to help the people left in the cold by the church’s gold-plated empty words, and let every local believer-franchise decide on its own genuine theology rather than have to present one-lie-fits-all compromises for Parliamentary approval.
Win-win, surely? But, as obviously as it’s time for them to go, the Church of England will no doubt carry on as a zombie establishment on the wrong side of history for another century. How much more harm will it do before it’s put out of our misery?
Labels: Bigotry, British Politics, Corruption, Gay, History, Lords, Religion
Monday, October 15, 2012
New and Improved
For some people, it’s ‘Danger: high voltage’; for others, ‘This won’t hurt’, or ‘For the children’. For me, the most threatening three-word combination in the English language is ‘New and Improved’. Usually, it heralds that sinking feeling when you return from your local Giant SupermarketTM to find your favourite korma sauce, scotch eggs or even shower gel suddenly cheap and tasteless, with whatever it was you liked about them jettisoned to cut costs.
After five decent-ish years with Waitrose Broadband, Richard and I returned from Brighton to the new and improved John Lewis Broadband. Can you guess what happened next?
I remember the shopping around we did after several terrible ISPs to find Waitrose Broadband, and it had mostly worked for us since, the odd problem and the odd oh-dear-we’ve-gone-over-our-download-limit-and-it-costs-how-much? aside. But it couldn’t last. They’re winding up the service into a new one. Improved, of course. And who are the new providers for our forced upgrade to an alleged cheaper, faster, unlimited service?
John Lewis Broadband, the epitome of respectable reliability, actually supplied if you look carefully at the small print by Plusnet, which claims to be good, honest broadband from Yorkshire. What could possibly go wrong?
Everyfuckingthing.
Us having made the shift in early September and them having taken a few weeks to action it, despite promises (warning signs there), we got home from Conference to eight days of zero internet and increasingly weary phone calls to find out what the hell was wrong. And they don’t even play Heaven 17 on hold.
As it happened, Richard had become very ill while we were away at Conference in Brighton, and once he’d recovered just enough to drive us home, I came down with it and was, as my rather too frequent saying goes, much more ill than usual. So things were quite fraught to begin with (and not being able to get online to NHS Direct. Obviously).
Imagine, then, the timbre of our phone conversations when we rang them three times on our first day back, for a total of two and a half hours, including the 45 minutes on hold after which they just hung up and made us go back to the start.
Imagine doing that – ringing them every single day for the next week for between one and three hours – each time having to slowly explain the problem all over again to a new munchkin, and do exactly the same tests because obviously it must be us, and not them… Until they admitted that they’d detected 2361 rejected (by their end) attempts by our correctly programmed (by us) router to connect, not all of them manual but by God it felt like it, and that it was in fact their fault after all.
They just couldn’t identify that fault correctly. Worse, they kept making promises. Here are just a few of them that we made a note of:
Imagine my genuine gobsmackery when, at long last, on merely the ninth day, this turned out to be the truth.
We’ve now had a connection back for a week, and I’ve caught up with most of the things I wanted to catch up with; it’s remarkable how something as simple as being internetless makes me feel crazed, depressed and as if I’d been exiled to Flatland. And I’m still physically very washed out, but mostly only as ill as normal.
Now I just need to gather my strength for the bills, and to ask, ‘Shouldn’t you be paying me?’
On the bright side, during our week of never-ending phone lies, at least we weren’t at the Labour Party Conference in which they attempted to rebrand themselves as Nineteenth Century Tories. Well, I can see a direct line in my own party and philosophy from the ones who were opposed to the Tories in the Nineteenth Century and are still, despite everything, far less conservative than Labour, so I can’t say I was impressed. Still less that it wasn’t even genuine Disraeli, who despite being an utter shit at least paid lip service to “One Nation” meaning that everyone had to get on: only the hollow marketing exercise that is today’s Labour Party could rebrand as One Nation founded on class war and hating the rich and not spot the contradiction in that.
But what do you expect, with Ed Balls boasting on the Today Programme that thirteen years of disastrous Labour Government left literally no economic problems at all? Or with Ed Miliband calling the Lib Dems “accomplices”, an accusation so ‘brave’ (as Sir Humphrey would say) that it would be a delight to see Mr Miliband’s face when charged as an accomplice to the Labour Government’s illegal war, illegal war crimes, illegal rendition, illegal collusion with Murdoch, and mostly legal but amazingly stupid total financial collapse. Accomplices? Bring it on, Inspector Knacker.
None of which meant there will ever be any chance of me switching to New and Improved Labour.
This morning, to come briefly up to date, I see that the Tories are out to demonstrate that they have not improved, and that they’re still at their old tricks. With the Conservatives having teamed up with Labour to protect the interests of the Tory Nineteenth Century and stop democracy coming to the Lords, the Lib Dems told them they could go fuck themselves over their preferred changes to Parliamentary Boundaries. This morning, it’s reported that the Tories have a brilliant idea to get the Lib Dems to change our minds: no, not actual democracy. That would be madness.
That Tory plan in full: ‘We’ll slip you a few million quid, and you change your vote. Deal?’
That’s not new (and certainly not improved). It’s exactly the way the crooked Tory Government in the Nineties – and the crooked Labour Government in the Noughties – were open for business, but unlike the other two, Lib Dems have never been for sale. If we move an inch on this, I’ll eat my blog.
After five decent-ish years with Waitrose Broadband, Richard and I returned from Brighton to the new and improved John Lewis Broadband. Can you guess what happened next?
John Lewis Broadband Plus Plusnet Equals No Internet
I remember the shopping around we did after several terrible ISPs to find Waitrose Broadband, and it had mostly worked for us since, the odd problem and the odd oh-dear-we’ve-gone-over-our-download-limit-and-it-costs-how-much? aside. But it couldn’t last. They’re winding up the service into a new one. Improved, of course. And who are the new providers for our forced upgrade to an alleged cheaper, faster, unlimited service?
John Lewis Broadband, the epitome of respectable reliability, actually supplied if you look carefully at the small print by Plusnet, which claims to be good, honest broadband from Yorkshire. What could possibly go wrong?
Everyfuckingthing.
Us having made the shift in early September and them having taken a few weeks to action it, despite promises (warning signs there), we got home from Conference to eight days of zero internet and increasingly weary phone calls to find out what the hell was wrong. And they don’t even play Heaven 17 on hold.
As it happened, Richard had become very ill while we were away at Conference in Brighton, and once he’d recovered just enough to drive us home, I came down with it and was, as my rather too frequent saying goes, much more ill than usual. So things were quite fraught to begin with (and not being able to get online to NHS Direct. Obviously).
Imagine, then, the timbre of our phone conversations when we rang them three times on our first day back, for a total of two and a half hours, including the 45 minutes on hold after which they just hung up and made us go back to the start.
Imagine doing that – ringing them every single day for the next week for between one and three hours – each time having to slowly explain the problem all over again to a new munchkin, and do exactly the same tests because obviously it must be us, and not them… Until they admitted that they’d detected 2361 rejected (by their end) attempts by our correctly programmed (by us) router to connect, not all of them manual but by God it felt like it, and that it was in fact their fault after all.
They just couldn’t identify that fault correctly. Worse, they kept making promises. Here are just a few of them that we made a note of:
- Switch your router off for 65 minutes and it will reset, after which you will be able to connect. No, that was a lie.
- We have reset your details at our end and it will be ready in the morning. No, that was a lie.
- Our faults team has identified the fault and I have actioned a modify order that will apply the fix and have you fully online in exactly 24 hours. No, that was a lie.
- That modify order was incorrect, but I have actioned a new modify order that will have you online in the morning. No, that was a lie.
- It is your fault after all – our faults team has identified that you can’t receive Broadband on your number. In that case, can we have a full refund for all the money we spent on what was therefore imaginary Broadband from you for the past five years? No, because that was a lie.
- We will ring you within 24 hours because I have personally made sure it will be corrected with the faults team and my line manager. No, that was a lie.
- I apologise that you’ve had to ring because we failed to call you back, and I won’t lie to you, I can’t fix it myself because I can see that they’ve been making the change you need on our server and for some reason our server won’t accept it, but I will call our faults team if you will wait on hold for just two minutes. Seventeen minutes later: no, that was yet another lie, probably not best for our blood pressures after using the words “I won’t lie to you”. At least on that particular day we were only on the phone for 47 minutes, because we were weary and fatalistic rather than icily polite in a furious way.
- And, of course, when I staggered out to our local library (which, being a Labour-and-Labour-Splitters Council, randomly blocks most of the sites I read) in a vain attempt to plough through hundreds of emails that were backing up, finding daily “Your broadband service is ready” emails from John Lewis Broadband. No, that was, very demonstrably and supremely aggravatingly, a lie.
Imagine my genuine gobsmackery when, at long last, on merely the ninth day, this turned out to be the truth.
We’ve now had a connection back for a week, and I’ve caught up with most of the things I wanted to catch up with; it’s remarkable how something as simple as being internetless makes me feel crazed, depressed and as if I’d been exiled to Flatland. And I’m still physically very washed out, but mostly only as ill as normal.
Now I just need to gather my strength for the bills, and to ask, ‘Shouldn’t you be paying me?’
New and Improved Labour
On the bright side, during our week of never-ending phone lies, at least we weren’t at the Labour Party Conference in which they attempted to rebrand themselves as Nineteenth Century Tories. Well, I can see a direct line in my own party and philosophy from the ones who were opposed to the Tories in the Nineteenth Century and are still, despite everything, far less conservative than Labour, so I can’t say I was impressed. Still less that it wasn’t even genuine Disraeli, who despite being an utter shit at least paid lip service to “One Nation” meaning that everyone had to get on: only the hollow marketing exercise that is today’s Labour Party could rebrand as One Nation founded on class war and hating the rich and not spot the contradiction in that.
But what do you expect, with Ed Balls boasting on the Today Programme that thirteen years of disastrous Labour Government left literally no economic problems at all? Or with Ed Miliband calling the Lib Dems “accomplices”, an accusation so ‘brave’ (as Sir Humphrey would say) that it would be a delight to see Mr Miliband’s face when charged as an accomplice to the Labour Government’s illegal war, illegal war crimes, illegal rendition, illegal collusion with Murdoch, and mostly legal but amazingly stupid total financial collapse. Accomplices? Bring it on, Inspector Knacker.
None of which meant there will ever be any chance of me switching to New and Improved Labour.
This morning, to come briefly up to date, I see that the Tories are out to demonstrate that they have not improved, and that they’re still at their old tricks. With the Conservatives having teamed up with Labour to protect the interests of the Tory Nineteenth Century and stop democracy coming to the Lords, the Lib Dems told them they could go fuck themselves over their preferred changes to Parliamentary Boundaries. This morning, it’s reported that the Tories have a brilliant idea to get the Lib Dems to change our minds: no, not actual democracy. That would be madness.
That Tory plan in full: ‘We’ll slip you a few million quid, and you change your vote. Deal?’
That’s not new (and certainly not improved). It’s exactly the way the crooked Tory Government in the Nineties – and the crooked Labour Government in the Noughties – were open for business, but unlike the other two, Lib Dems have never been for sale. If we move an inch on this, I’ll eat my blog.
Labels: Conservatives, Corruption, Customer Service, Labour, Lords, Personal, Technology
Sunday, March 18, 2012
So, Farewell, Then, Rowan Williams
With his big beard, Rowan Williams looks the ideal Archbishop of Canterbury.
Well, that’s the nice bit over with.
I’ve never been a member of the Church of England – both my youthful Christian tribes rather looked down on it as something wishy-washy in between – but I’ve always taken an interest in its politics, not least because the House of Lords is stuffed with unelected bishops who boss the rest of us around and seem mainly to come out of the woodwork to hate the gays.
I remember when Dr Williams was appointed, to the joy of ‘liberal’ Anglicans and those who expected a thoughtful academic. I’ve watched the disappointment as he’s given in to every conservative demand and pushed his church further into homophobia and against modernity. And his kindly, otherworldy bufferish image, looking exactly like the Church of England as so many imagine it, has been a handy screen for the hate and bigotry that’s increasingly animated its public pronouncements.
So I’m glad he’s going. I’d rather have a sneering bigot that doesn’t make a pretence of reasonableness (though I’d rather have a bigot of any stripe not get an automatic place in Parliament, and free the Church of England to make its own decisions by disestablishing the lot. But that’s another story).
But I snorted at his going back to academia. Because everyone always says what a wise and thoughtful intellectual he is.
Bollocks.
Perhaps he is, when actually an academic and held to peer-reviewed standards. But I’ll always remember his ‘intellectual’ pronouncements as Archbishop of Canterbury, giving long speeches full of mendacious empire-building and supported by covering fire from vicious spin-doctors.
Always remember that Rowan Williams was a politician, sitting in the Lords, making political pronouncements, and advancing his own agenda through lies and spin.
Next time someone gives him reverential deference because of how otherworldly but wise he is, please have a read of my in-depth fisking of one of his most infamous speeches, in which he tried to wind back centuries of the Rule of Law and pile up his tribal privileges: Rowan Williams In Detail: Deceitful, Demented or Naïve to the Point of Idiocy?. I think it’s still one of my best articles. And I think it shows him up for the devious, rotten authoritarian he is.
And, obviously, no-one with my name would wish childishly that the “smart money” is right and the Bishop of Coventry gets the nod, so that his name is constantly put on screen as the country’s main cheerleader for homophobic medievalism.
Well, that’s the nice bit over with.
I’ve never been a member of the Church of England – both my youthful Christian tribes rather looked down on it as something wishy-washy in between – but I’ve always taken an interest in its politics, not least because the House of Lords is stuffed with unelected bishops who boss the rest of us around and seem mainly to come out of the woodwork to hate the gays.
I remember when Dr Williams was appointed, to the joy of ‘liberal’ Anglicans and those who expected a thoughtful academic. I’ve watched the disappointment as he’s given in to every conservative demand and pushed his church further into homophobia and against modernity. And his kindly, otherworldy bufferish image, looking exactly like the Church of England as so many imagine it, has been a handy screen for the hate and bigotry that’s increasingly animated its public pronouncements.
So I’m glad he’s going. I’d rather have a sneering bigot that doesn’t make a pretence of reasonableness (though I’d rather have a bigot of any stripe not get an automatic place in Parliament, and free the Church of England to make its own decisions by disestablishing the lot. But that’s another story).
But I snorted at his going back to academia. Because everyone always says what a wise and thoughtful intellectual he is.
Bollocks.
Perhaps he is, when actually an academic and held to peer-reviewed standards. But I’ll always remember his ‘intellectual’ pronouncements as Archbishop of Canterbury, giving long speeches full of mendacious empire-building and supported by covering fire from vicious spin-doctors.
Always remember that Rowan Williams was a politician, sitting in the Lords, making political pronouncements, and advancing his own agenda through lies and spin.
Next time someone gives him reverential deference because of how otherworldly but wise he is, please have a read of my in-depth fisking of one of his most infamous speeches, in which he tried to wind back centuries of the Rule of Law and pile up his tribal privileges: Rowan Williams In Detail: Deceitful, Demented or Naïve to the Point of Idiocy?. I think it’s still one of my best articles. And I think it shows him up for the devious, rotten authoritarian he is.
And, obviously, no-one with my name would wish childishly that the “smart money” is right and the Bishop of Coventry gets the nod, so that his name is constantly put on screen as the country’s main cheerleader for homophobic medievalism.
Labels: Bigotry, British Politics, Gay, Lords, Meddling In Things That Are Nobody's Business But Your Own, Religion, Speeches
Wednesday, March 07, 2012
Things To Remember About Labour #5
The Labour Government promised Lords reform. They delivered a House of Cronies stuffed with Labour appointments, and ignored House of Commons votes to set up a fully elected Upper Chamber.
Labour got rid of most of the peers who held seats by hereditary inheritance (by an amazing coincidence, overwhelmingly Tory) but only replaced them with swathes of new Life Peers holding seats by time-serving political inheritance (by an amazing coincidence, overwhelmingly Labour).
So they replaced no democracy with no democracy, and rewards for favours to kings centuries ago with rewards for favours to Tony Blair and Gordon Brown in office.
Then, five years ago today, the House of Commons voted for a wholly elected Upper Chamber (as well as backing, by a smaller majority, an 80% elected / 20% appointed Upper Chamber). The Labour Government opposed both of these votes before they took place, but I was foolish enough at the time to think that, the votes having taken place, the Labour Government would act on them. Of course, they didn’t. They flat-out refused the democratic will of the Commons to extend the democratic will of the people.
Who can explain why this anti-democratic decision was made? Except that the Labour Party made so much money by selling peerages that it would have left them many millions short had people been forced to stand for election rather than just pony up, no questions asked.
M’learned friend tells me that the Labour Party was not officially selling peerages, as the police investigation presided over by now-Lord Blair (no relation), who was then by an amazing coincidence given a peerage by the Labour Government (quite a strong relation), didn’t prove that they did. It’s merely that, as I noted yesterday, by another amazing coincidence, every single person giving Labour a million pounds got a peerage or knighthood in return.
Labour spokespeople, with no breath of shame for their lies and hypocrisy, attacked the Coalition Government for ‘creating the largest number of peers at once that the Lords have ever seen’ in the first new set of appointments after the General Election. Before taking that seriously, you should remember two facts. That the previous Labour Government, over their time in office, loaded up the Lords with by far the largest number of peers in history in order to stuff a Labour lead into the Upper Chamber… And that the majority of that ‘largest number of peers at once’ created shortly after the last election were outgoing Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s resignation honours, using his last power of patronage to fill up the unelected House with even more Labour cronies after the Labour Party had been thrown out of the elected House by the voters.
A hundred and one years ago, the Liberal Government passed the Parliament Act, beginning the process of subjecting the Lords to democracy. Now that we’re back in government after a small interregnum, the Liberal Democrats are getting back on with it. Even though Labour are – surprise – still looking for ways to sabotage the process, along with some former Liberal leaders who’ve gone native now they have cushy jobs for life (Lord Steel, be ashamed), though by no means all.
The media coverage of Lords reform keeps stating that only the Liberal Democrats are interested in an elected Upper Chamber – as if no-one else could object to retired politicians, bribing businesspeople and never-elected bishops being able to boss all the rest of us about with no chance of us poor plebs ever getting rid of them. Of course this just assumes, probably rightly, that the Liberal Democrats mean what they say when they put something in their manifesto, and that the other two just pretend to be interested in democracy at election times but are really lying through their teeth.
So here’s something for both the Labour and Conservative Parties (and too-cosy Lib Dem peers) to remember. This is what the three main parties promised to get elected:
So to say that this is only a Liberal Democrat thing not only ignores how the whole House of Commons voted five years ago, but assumes that only Lib Dems tell the truth and that the other parties are liars.
Any Labour and Conservative politicians reading, why not prove that wrong?
Labour got rid of most of the peers who held seats by hereditary inheritance (by an amazing coincidence, overwhelmingly Tory) but only replaced them with swathes of new Life Peers holding seats by time-serving political inheritance (by an amazing coincidence, overwhelmingly Labour).
So they replaced no democracy with no democracy, and rewards for favours to kings centuries ago with rewards for favours to Tony Blair and Gordon Brown in office.
Then, five years ago today, the House of Commons voted for a wholly elected Upper Chamber (as well as backing, by a smaller majority, an 80% elected / 20% appointed Upper Chamber). The Labour Government opposed both of these votes before they took place, but I was foolish enough at the time to think that, the votes having taken place, the Labour Government would act on them. Of course, they didn’t. They flat-out refused the democratic will of the Commons to extend the democratic will of the people.
Who can explain why this anti-democratic decision was made? Except that the Labour Party made so much money by selling peerages that it would have left them many millions short had people been forced to stand for election rather than just pony up, no questions asked.
M’learned friend tells me that the Labour Party was not officially selling peerages, as the police investigation presided over by now-Lord Blair (no relation), who was then by an amazing coincidence given a peerage by the Labour Government (quite a strong relation), didn’t prove that they did. It’s merely that, as I noted yesterday, by another amazing coincidence, every single person giving Labour a million pounds got a peerage or knighthood in return.
Labour spokespeople, with no breath of shame for their lies and hypocrisy, attacked the Coalition Government for ‘creating the largest number of peers at once that the Lords have ever seen’ in the first new set of appointments after the General Election. Before taking that seriously, you should remember two facts. That the previous Labour Government, over their time in office, loaded up the Lords with by far the largest number of peers in history in order to stuff a Labour lead into the Upper Chamber… And that the majority of that ‘largest number of peers at once’ created shortly after the last election were outgoing Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s resignation honours, using his last power of patronage to fill up the unelected House with even more Labour cronies after the Labour Party had been thrown out of the elected House by the voters.
Democracy Is For Government, Not Just For Election-Time
A hundred and one years ago, the Liberal Government passed the Parliament Act, beginning the process of subjecting the Lords to democracy. Now that we’re back in government after a small interregnum, the Liberal Democrats are getting back on with it. Even though Labour are – surprise – still looking for ways to sabotage the process, along with some former Liberal leaders who’ve gone native now they have cushy jobs for life (Lord Steel, be ashamed), though by no means all.
The media coverage of Lords reform keeps stating that only the Liberal Democrats are interested in an elected Upper Chamber – as if no-one else could object to retired politicians, bribing businesspeople and never-elected bishops being able to boss all the rest of us about with no chance of us poor plebs ever getting rid of them. Of course this just assumes, probably rightly, that the Liberal Democrats mean what they say when they put something in their manifesto, and that the other two just pretend to be interested in democracy at election times but are really lying through their teeth.
So here’s something for both the Labour and Conservative Parties (and too-cosy Lib Dem peers) to remember. This is what the three main parties promised to get elected:
“Replace the House of Lords with a fully-elected second chamber with considerably fewer members than the current House.”Liberal Democrat General Election Manifesto 2010
“We will work to build a consensus for a mainly-elected second chamber to replace the current House of Lords, recognising that an efficient and effective second chamber should play an important role in our democracy and requires both legitimacy and public confidence.”Conservative General Election Manifesto 2010
“We will ensure that the hereditary principle is removed from the House of Lords. Further democratic reform to create a fully elected Second Chamber will then be achieved in stages. At the end of the next Parliament one third of the House of Lords will be elected; a further one third of members will be elected at the general election after that. Until the final stage, the representation of all groups should be maintained in equal proportions to now.”Labour General Election Manifesto 2010 – which, you may have noticed, was the only one that still wanted to rig the Upper House so that, whatever the voters decided, it would still have an entrenched Labour plurality for fifteen years!
“We will establish a committee to bring forward proposals for a wholly or mainly elected upper chamber on the basis of proportional representation… In the interim, Lords appointments will be made with the objective of creating a second chamber that is reflective of the share of the vote secured by the political parties in the last general election.”Coalition Agreement between the Conservative Party and the Liberal Democrats, May 2010
So to say that this is only a Liberal Democrat thing not only ignores how the whole House of Commons voted five years ago, but assumes that only Lib Dems tell the truth and that the other parties are liars.
Any Labour and Conservative politicians reading, why not prove that wrong?
Labels: British Politics, Coalition, Conservatives, Corruption, Labour, Liberal Democrats, Lords, Things To Remember About Labour
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
Lib Dem Peer Shocked That Lib Dems Hold To Their Principles (As He’s Changed His)
I see that Lord Lee of Trafford (a figure of such great repute that I’m sure you’ve all heard of him) is threatening to resign his Liberal Democrat duties because the party is threatening to fulfil a democratic promise that it’s held steady to for a century. That of abolishing his cosy job for life (but no personal interest, of course).
Anyone would have thought that this might be some cautionary tale about how even the Lib Dems have treated the Lords just as some sort of patronage-a-go-go by doling out peerages to every time-serving Tory who happens to join us after their career is over in the pathetic hope of encouraging more defections, rather than thinking of the Second Chamber as a serious part of Parliament that might need people in it with Liberal principles that might make legislation more Liberal and not more conservative.
And that the moral of the story would be that unelected patronage running part of our laws sucks, whoever appoints the old cronies to their jollies, and that therefore Lord Lee is accidentally making the precise case as to why he and all his peers should be abolished – even the good ones.
But, no, that would be madness talking.
Anyone would have thought that this might be some cautionary tale about how even the Lib Dems have treated the Lords just as some sort of patronage-a-go-go by doling out peerages to every time-serving Tory who happens to join us after their career is over in the pathetic hope of encouraging more defections, rather than thinking of the Second Chamber as a serious part of Parliament that might need people in it with Liberal principles that might make legislation more Liberal and not more conservative.
And that the moral of the story would be that unelected patronage running part of our laws sucks, whoever appoints the old cronies to their jollies, and that therefore Lord Lee is accidentally making the precise case as to why he and all his peers should be abolished – even the good ones.
But, no, that would be madness talking.
Labels: British Politics, Corruption, Liberal Democrats, Lords
Wednesday, March 07, 2007
House of History
Wow!
I’ve actually been astounded by a Parliamentary vote – and in a good way. When MPs voted by a margin of 38 for the ‘House of Lords’ to be 80% elected, I cheered, expecting no better and prepared to tolerate the compromise (welcoming the annihilation of options from ‘just 60% elected’ down). But then, only ninety-five-and-a-half years late, the House of Commons has just voted to have the ‘House of Lords’ wholly elected, and by a stonking majority of 113. This has to call into question Jack Straw’s decision to leave it with the name ‘House of Lords’. But then, seeing Mr Straw’s deathly puce face as the unwelcome tide of democracy poured through the House and swept away his own preferred option (by the largest margin!), he may not be long for this world anyway. Particularly not if Mr Blair is still in a ‘firing mood’ in his dying days.
Ironically, this most hideously authoritarian control freak of a Prime Minister will now find that the legacy defended by his apologists – the rest of us, of course, will remember him for Iraq – will consist of two significant enlargements of democracy, about one of which he was lukewarm and with the other one to which he is actively opposed: the Scottish Parliament and Welsh and Northern Ireland Assemblies (good luck today, Alliance!), and an elected second chamber. Despite Mr Blair’s opposition to the idea, he’s probably more responsible than anyone else for the vote. The appearance of sleaze around the accusations levelled against him of cash for peerages might be what tipped the vote so heavily against the power of patronage filling seats in Parliament ever again.
Still, the Lords may still vote against democracy, he must be hoping.
Yes, I’m afraid I’ve been hypnotised into frittering away my afternoon watching BBC Parliament instead of carrying on with the serious business of writing Doctor Who reviews…
Steve Webb’s impeccably titled Webb Log has the full results (oh, and the BBC).
I’ve actually been astounded by a Parliamentary vote – and in a good way. When MPs voted by a margin of 38 for the ‘House of Lords’ to be 80% elected, I cheered, expecting no better and prepared to tolerate the compromise (welcoming the annihilation of options from ‘just 60% elected’ down). But then, only ninety-five-and-a-half years late, the House of Commons has just voted to have the ‘House of Lords’ wholly elected, and by a stonking majority of 113. This has to call into question Jack Straw’s decision to leave it with the name ‘House of Lords’. But then, seeing Mr Straw’s deathly puce face as the unwelcome tide of democracy poured through the House and swept away his own preferred option (by the largest margin!), he may not be long for this world anyway. Particularly not if Mr Blair is still in a ‘firing mood’ in his dying days.
Ironically, this most hideously authoritarian control freak of a Prime Minister will now find that the legacy defended by his apologists – the rest of us, of course, will remember him for Iraq – will consist of two significant enlargements of democracy, about one of which he was lukewarm and with the other one to which he is actively opposed: the Scottish Parliament and Welsh and Northern Ireland Assemblies (good luck today, Alliance!), and an elected second chamber. Despite Mr Blair’s opposition to the idea, he’s probably more responsible than anyone else for the vote. The appearance of sleaze around the accusations levelled against him of cash for peerages might be what tipped the vote so heavily against the power of patronage filling seats in Parliament ever again.
Still, the Lords may still vote against democracy, he must be hoping.
Yes, I’m afraid I’ve been hypnotised into frittering away my afternoon watching BBC Parliament instead of carrying on with the serious business of writing Doctor Who reviews…
Steve Webb’s impeccably titled Webb Log has the full results (oh, and the BBC).
Labels: British Politics, Lords, Republic
Thursday, August 10, 2006
Of Course We Should Elect the Lords!
It’s ‘Lords Reform Day’, which leaves me in a quandary. No, not about whether to elect our second chamber (puh-lease!), but about what possibly to blog other than “Of course Parliament should be elected in a democracy! Are you a fuckwit, or what?” So, for fun, if you see a Lib Dem MP looking very sober and smug about how ludicrous it is that senior offices in the land should still be filled by the cronies of Prime Ministers and the descendents of the cronies of kings, just ask, “So you’d abolish the monarchy, then?” and watch them turn puce.
Only one Lord should still be about, and the hereditary principle in his case is a bit of a contentious issue. He’s got a new suit today (not bad, nasty breast pocket), and a new companion. You can distinguish her from a suspiciously similar-looking character because this one’s got a pineapple on her head.
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Only one Lord should still be about, and the hereditary principle in his case is a bit of a contentious issue. He’s got a new suit today (not bad, nasty breast pocket), and a new companion. You can distinguish her from a suspiciously similar-looking character because this one’s got a pineapple on her head.
Labels: British Politics, David Tennant, Lords, Republic
