Anti-mask wearers

[Borin' Baggie]

[quote pid='203068' dateline='1596396743']
I imagine he’s very much against unelected elite cronyism. Thankfully those chosen are the right type of elite Brexit supporting elite cronies that will be joining the bastion of elite, unaccountable ruling classes in the modern, forward looking House of Lords.

I'm torn between the need for accountability and the Hellish prospect of even more politicians. The Upper House in its current form is anachronistic and the very definition of cronyism.
[/quote]

Such a shame that the Tories blocked Lords reform during the coalition eh?

Really should have been the day that the Lib Dems shoved two fingers at them and crossed the benches as it showed the Tories were more concerned in maintaining the system they had created than fixing it.

[Protheroe]

As I said BB, what do you replace it with? The 650 elected to the HoC aren't much cop, and you want more?

[Borin' Baggie]

A partially elected, wholly by list PR, second chamber with 15 year terms (three election cycles), extra provisions for specialists to be appointed by the government to obtain ministerial positions and significantly fewer members.

Being partially elected ensures fair representation within the Lords and prevents stacking but also enables specialists to be able to retain their positions in order to scrutinise bills, PR ensures that bloc voting is more difficult to prevent stacking on bills, 15 years encourages a long term approach, ministerial discrepancies allows for competent individuals to help run government departments at the behest of the Prime Minister instead of government loyalists. All these reforms in conjunction with a cut in members restricts cronyism.

This was pretty much in line with the Lords reform bill that the Tory backbenchers blocked in violation of the coalition agreement. Labour voting it down as they wanted agreed with every facet except it not being wholly elected (seriously, what was the point in that?) didn't help either of course.

[JOK]

 Thankfully those chosen are the right type of elite Brexit supporting elite cronies that will be joining the bastion of elite, unaccountable ruling classes in the modern, forward looking House of Lords.

What, such as:
Ken Clarke, (staunch Remainer)
Ian Austin, (Labour, Remainer)
John Woodcock, (Remainer),
Kathryn Clark (Corbyn Supporter, Remainer)
Ed Vaizey (Remainer),
Jo Johnson, (supporter of a second referendum and resigned the whip)
Nick Herbert, (Remainer, leading campaigner for same sex marriages)
Sue Hayman, (Remainer )
Prem Sikka, (Guardian columnists; say no more)
Tony Woolley, (Gen. Sec of the Unite union. Who in 2018 said He’s “not sought a peerage and will not accept a peerage”!)
Michael Spencer, (Remain voter and advocate of equal female job opportunities)
Neil Mendoza, (Philanthropist, advocate for the arts and sits on the boards of various charitable Trusts)
Philip Hammond (resigned rather than serve under Johnson, lost the whip due to his pro E.U. Stance.)
Frank Field , (Labour.)
Ian Botham, (Ruling elite?)
Evegny Lebedev (WTF){although he does own one left and one right leaning paper so , I suppose he is balanced}

Are all these the “Right type of elite Brexit supporting cronies” you allude to?
 
Before you say those Labour types lost the whip or resigned over their support for Brexit, that was simply because they rebelled against Corbyn and voted for May’s Brexit Lite. They were all Remain supporters in the Referendum campaign. You shouldn’t fully accept the Guardian and Independent’s skewed and asinine view of ‘Brexit Supporting’.
 
All will be joining the 263 Labour / Lib. Dem Lords and the 356 Cross Bench / non affiliated/ religious and other odds and sods,  (619 total) and 242 Cons. So, you should be content that the Lords contains far more of the ‘right type’ of elite cronies than Conservatives.
Just to make my view clear; none of them should be there. The second chamber should be half the size, elected and made to sit in the chamber to earn their money not just sign in then sod off.

[Protheroe]

A partially elected, wholly by list PR, second chamber with 15 year terms (three election cycles), extra provisions for specialists to be appointed by the government to obtain ministerial positions and significantly fewer members.

Being partially elected ensures fair representation within the Lords and prevents stacking but also enables specialists to be able to retain their positions in order to scrutinise bills, PR ensures that bloc voting is more difficult to prevent stacking on bills, 15 years encourages a long term approach, ministerial discrepancies allows for competent individuals to help run government departments at the behest of the Prime Minister instead of government loyalists. All these reforms in conjunction with a cut in members restricts cronyism.

This was pretty much in line with the Lords reform bill that the Tory backbenchers blocked in violation of the coalition agreement. Labour voting it down as they wanted agreed with every facet except it not being wholly elected (seriously, what was the point in that?) didn't help either of course.

But all we end up with is more politicians. If the last 20 years hasn't convinced you that the pool of talent is woefully shallow then I don't know what will.

I agree with you on PR if there are to be any elections to an upper house.

[JOK]

A partially elected, wholly by list PR, second chamber with 15 year terms (three election cycles), extra provisions for specialists to be appointed by the government to obtain ministerial positions and significantly fewer members.

Being partially elected ensures fair representation within the Lords and prevents stacking but also enables specialists to be able to retain their positions in order to scrutinise bills, PR ensures that bloc voting is more difficult to prevent stacking on bills, 15 years encourages a long term approach, ministerial discrepancies allows for competent individuals to help run government departments at the behest of the Prime Minister instead of government loyalists. All these reforms in conjunction with a cut in members restricts cronyism.

This was pretty much in line with the Lords reform bill that the Tory backbenchers blocked in violation of the coalition agreement. Labour voting it down as they wanted agreed with every facet except it not being wholly elected (seriously, what was the point in that?) didn't help either of course.

But all we end up with is more politicians. If the last 20 years hasn't convinced you that the pool of talent is woefully shallow then I don't know what will.

I agree with you on PR if there are to be any elections to an upper house.

Surely a goodly proportion of them are politicians anyway (or were). Assuming you believe in the need for a second chamber B1, who would you have in it? How would they be chosen?  
I believe the first step to be taken is to remove the bishops. I was going to suggest the Hereditary Peers too but perhaps just drastically cut them down for now. (until looking up how many there were elected I never thought there were 90 Hereditary peers in the country let alone just in the Lords)
PR might be good idea for the second chamber first, for a few decades, so the effect and outcomes could be analysed to, perhaps, move to a system for G.E.

[baggy1]

A partially elected, wholly by list PR, second chamber with 15 year terms (three election cycles), extra provisions for specialists to be appointed by the government to obtain ministerial positions and significantly fewer members.

Being partially elected ensures fair representation within the Lords and prevents stacking but also enables specialists to be able to retain their positions in order to scrutinise bills, PR ensures that bloc voting is more difficult to prevent stacking on bills, 15 years encourages a long term approach, ministerial discrepancies allows for competent individuals to help run government departments at the behest of the Prime Minister instead of government loyalists. All these reforms in conjunction with a cut in members restricts cronyism.

This was pretty much in line with the Lords reform bill that the Tory backbenchers blocked in violation of the coalition agreement. Labour voting it down as they wanted agreed with every facet except it not being wholly elected (seriously, what was the point in that?) didn't help either of course.

But all we end up with is more politicians. If the last 20 years hasn't convinced you that the pool of talent is woefully shallow then I don't know what will.

I agree with you on PR if there are to be any elections to an upper house.

Surely a goodly proportion of them are politicians anyway (or were). Assuming you believe in the need for a second chamber B1, who would you have in it? How would they be chosen?  
I believe the first step to be taken is to remove the bishops. I was going to suggest the Hereditary Peers too but perhaps just drastically cut them down for now. (until looking up how many there were elected I never thought there were 90 Hereditary peers in the country let alone just in the Lords)
PR might be good idea for the second chamber first, for a few decades, so the effect and outcomes could be analysed to, perhaps, move to a system for G.E.

I'm the other boring one  , this one is on BB

[JOK]

A partially elected, wholly by list PR, second chamber with 15 year terms (three election cycles), extra provisions for specialists to be appointed by the government to obtain ministerial positions and significantly fewer members.

Being partially elected ensures fair representation within the Lords and prevents stacking but also enables specialists to be able to retain their positions in order to scrutinise bills, PR ensures that bloc voting is more difficult to prevent stacking on bills, 15 years encourages a long term approach, ministerial discrepancies allows for competent individuals to help run government departments at the behest of the Prime Minister instead of government loyalists. All these reforms in conjunction with a cut in members restricts cronyism.

This was pretty much in line with the Lords reform bill that the Tory backbenchers blocked in violation of the coalition agreement. Labour voting it down as they wanted agreed with every facet except it not being wholly elected (seriously, what was the point in that?) didn't help either of course.

But all we end up with is more politicians. If the last 20 years hasn't convinced you that the pool of talent is woefully shallow then I don't know what will.

I agree with you on PR if there are to be any elections to an upper house.

Surely a goodly proportion of them are politicians anyway (or were). Assuming you believe in the need for a second chamber B1, who would you have in it? How would they be chosen?  
I believe the first step to be taken is to remove the bishops. I was going to suggest the Hereditary Peers too but perhaps just drastically cut them down for now. (until looking up how many there were elected I never thought there were 90 Hereditary peers in the country let alone just in the Lords)
PR might be good idea for the second chamber first, for a few decades, so the effect and outcomes could be analysed to, perhaps, move to a system for G.E.

I'm the other boring one  , this one is on BB

Just Testing!     I blame my rapidly advancing years.

[Borin' Baggie]

A partially elected, wholly by list PR, second chamber with 15 year terms (three election cycles), extra provisions for specialists to be appointed by the government to obtain ministerial positions and significantly fewer members.

Being partially elected ensures fair representation within the Lords and prevents stacking but also enables specialists to be able to retain their positions in order to scrutinise bills, PR ensures that bloc voting is more difficult to prevent stacking on bills, 15 years encourages a long term approach, ministerial discrepancies allows for competent individuals to help run government departments at the behest of the Prime Minister instead of government loyalists. All these reforms in conjunction with a cut in members restricts cronyism.

This was pretty much in line with the Lords reform bill that the Tory backbenchers blocked in violation of the coalition agreement. Labour voting it down as they wanted agreed with every facet except it not being wholly elected (seriously, what was the point in that?) didn't help either of course.

But all we end up with is more politicians. If the last 20 years hasn't convinced you that the pool of talent is woefully shallow then I don't know what will.

I agree with you on PR if there are to be any elections to an upper house.

There's over 800 politicians in the House of Lords already, just because they have a fancy title doesn't make them not politicians.

And the talent pool issue would address itself if they gave a higher salary, MSPs and AMs earn more than MPs without a ministerial department. Not having 800 members taking allowances out would make that easier.

---

Surely a goodly proportion of them are politicians anyway (or were). Assuming you believe in the need for a second chamber B1, who would you have in it? How would they be chosen?  
I believe the first step to be taken is to remove the bishops. I was going to suggest the Hereditary Peers too but perhaps just drastically cut them down for now. (until looking up how many there were elected I never thought there were 90 Hereditary peers in the country let alone just in the Lords)
PR might be good idea for the second chamber first, for a few decades, so the effect and outcomes could be analysed to, perhaps, move to a system for G.E.

List PR for the upper house, literally just vote for a party with MPs allocated via the Webster system.

I believe in the need for a second chamber as you need to scrutinise bills and as much as I don't like the Lords they're damn good at that. The supremacy of the Commons is already enshrined in the constitution.

I think the Bishops should be kept in but in but they would be selected based on religious demographics as set out in the Census so as to remove the influence of the CoE.

The parties could select 2/3s of the new Lords to retain based on the current political makeup and elect the last third, in 5 years time that drops to 1\3 and then after 15 years all the list peers have been elected.

Regarding the voting system for the Commons, I don't think there needs to be testing. The Commons needs to maintain a link to the constituencies which the Lord's does not, we already have two potential systems: STV (which hasahas been "tested" in Ireland for the last 100 years as was the purpose of it being used there in the first place not to mention the old University constituencies using STV) and AV+ (which was recommended by the electoral commission). Pick one and implement it, I'm fed up with how undemocratic the Commons has been, the Lib Dems getting 23 seats with 27% of the vote and UKIP getting 1 seat with 12% is disgusting.

[fuzzbox]

But all we end up with is more politicians. If the last 20 years hasn't convinced you that the pool of talent is woefully shallow then I don't know what will.

I agree with you on PR if there are to be any elections to an upper house.

True about politicians, but it's a dangerous argument to say democracy doesn't work because the electorate just vote arseholes. Otherwise, you might just as well just go down the dictator route. 

The real problem is how do we get democracy to work and stop arseholes getting voted in?

Unfortunately, I have no idea, but I'm certain just giving in and accepting an unelected House of Lords isn't the right thing to do.

A commons full of liars and incompetents is an embarrassment but so is an unelected upper house. We shouldn't give in and accept either.