Monday 4 August 2014

Here's To The Peers

Any Peer, of any age, who wishes to stop attending the House of Lords has always been free to do so, and will therefore no longer be paid.

A retirement age is very bad idea.
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6 comments:

  1. Anonymous4 August 2014 at 20:43

    The Daily Mail sums this up beautifully "This House of Cronies Shames Us All".

    The Mail writes; ""For Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg, life is complicated by the fact that one of the millionaire party donors he had in mind for a peerage has been arrested by the Serious Fraud Office.""

    ""But you can bet your life that – for all his ‘principled’ objections to the Upper Chamber – this arch hypocrite will still have no trouble filling his own six allocated places.""

    ""Ed Miliband, meanwhile, wishes to ennoble the ex-Eastenders actor and Labour MEP Michael Cashman – who has already pocketed vast sums of public money during 15 years on the Brussels gravy train.""

    ""How very, very depressing.""

    ""A healthy democracy requires a powerful second chamber to keep check on a Commons which, increasingly, is packed with professional politicians who have never held a job in the real world.""

    ""But, since the hereditary peers were swept away, the Lords has become little more than a retirement home for failed politicians, over-the-hill party hacks and (often pretty dodgy) party donors.""

    Indeed.

    Bring back the hereditary peers. And kick out the cronies.

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    Replies
    1. David Lindsay4 August 2014 at 21:03

      All of this could just as easily have been done with the hereditaries still there, and it very largely was. There has never been an upper limit on the membership of the Lords.

      Most of the hereditaries only came in to vote Conservative Governments out of tight spots with the politically aware Life Peers, Law Lords and Lords Spiritual.

      Delete
  2. Anonymous4 August 2014 at 21:40

    Patrick O'Flynn is calling for an elected second chamber because Ukip have not been given any seats in this one.

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    Replies
    1. David Lindsay4 August 2014 at 21:47

      There is a touch of sour grapes, yes. UKIP will be wanting PR next. But abolishing the Lords has always been the logic of Thatcherism.

      No argument advanced against trade union barons (just as much a part of the organic Constitution by the 1970s) could not also be advanced against hereditary barons. The New Right was and is fiercely opposed to an explicitly Christian witness in politics. And so on.

      This is just as true of the monarchy, of course.

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    2. Anonymous4 August 2014 at 21:53

      Who needs anyone as common as the Queen or the Lords when we can have the present Cabinet?

      You are so right, the hereditaries were almost literally bussed in every time the Tory front bench were going to be defeated by the people who were there every day and knew what was going on. Most of those were lifers and bishops.

      To the aristocratic mind it was rude to ask what they were voting on so most of them had no idea and just did as they were told. It's a public school thing, I suppose.

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    3. David Lindsay5 August 2014 at 00:13

      "Almost literally"? Then as now, I like to think of a Whip driving a bus around London, picking them up.

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