Chesterfield Online Forum
General Category => Politics => Topic started by: therealjr on July 09, 2012, 11:37:49 PM
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-18773769 (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-18773769)
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About 44 secs into the video. Toby Prekins looks 18+ stone :))
Pin head LOL
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So let me see if I've got this right.
A majority in Parliament (388 to be exact) want to see the House of Lords reformed but not at any speed?
Or in other words the tories are hoping to delay it long enough that the need for a general election overtakes it and it gets put on to the back burner by whichever of the big parties wins?
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TBH I would leave well alone. I shudder to think what would happen if they were subject to election by the masses.
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>> Scrap the lot would seem the best plan
Unfortunately, that's not going to happen is it? So which way would you vote?
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Agree with your third paragraph.
What I would like to see, probably not going to happen :( is adding/replacing some members of the Lords with "experts" who can give a different point of view on the different issues that come their way.
But I cannot agree with the Lords being 100% elected as that would just exacerbate the problem that already exists in the Commons.
My pet hates are folks that can't be bothered to get off their arses to go and vote and the millions that take their political views from the popular press.
I suppose making voting mandatory is not going to happen either... :(
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What I would like to see is real democracy.
The Lords was originally meant to represent the gentry, landowners, aristocracy and so on, the people who had all the power before democracy.
The Commons was meant to represent the rest of us.
This was the original "them and us"
Then along came the Labour party and tried to monopolise the idea that they alone represented the masses, the working class man, thus creating a them and us within the commons. Of course, this was not correct, as the Tories also represented the masses. No one knows who the Liberals represented but for a century or there abouts we had swings between Lab and Tory in power.
But in recent years, the aristocracy have taken over the Commons, the political elite who have no idea about the real world or real people, now running all 3 main parties. And they have filled the Lords with their own cronies, but the Libs are outnumbered because their policies are so daft that no serious person votes for them so they have to look for ways of fiddling the results further. And now no one represents the masses.
THE LAST THING ANYONE WANTS IN THIS COUNTRY IS MORE ELECTIONS AND POLITICIANS.
So Yes, lets reform the Lords. Fewer of them, fixed term, not hereditary, but definitely not elected.
My favoured option would be for people to be nominated to a panel independent from politicians, maybe headed by the monarchy / Prince of Wales. People get nominated for none political reasons such as charitable work, many years dedicated to industry, etc, etc and the panel vets them before giving them the job.
But if you are serious about democracy, then lets reform The Commons.
1) Abolish the Whips.
2) Make every vote in the house, a free vote, no party allegiance.
3) Fixed terms and fixed number of times a person can sit.
4) Abolish party funding at elections, state funding anyone who wants to stand, (subject to a deposit), with a limit on how much is spent on candidates so everyone has an equal chance, including independents.
5) Have it written in law, that if parties want to put a candidate forward, said candidate MUST be chosen by a local branch of that party, not central office. They MUST also have lived in the area for a minimum of 5 years before standing.
6) Encourage cross party working relationships rather than the partisan "they are wrong we, are right" attitude to everything
7) Reduce the pay and perks so as to dis-courage the professional politician and encourage people to stand from normal working class backgrounds.
These are just a few ideas, but won't happen. Turkeys don't vote for Christmas and those politicians who say they want more democracy are lying. They just want more power for themselves.
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1 If the whips didn't put pressure on publicly the party would do it privately.
2 Many voters support th party not the individual so want someone who broadly follows tha party line
3 Fixed terms would be a problem where no majority as in 1974
4 Good idea
5 Labour party has elected candidates by one member one vote for as long as I can recall
If a candidate is not local the opposition uses it at every opportunity
6 Think there is cross party cooperation in committees just not the stuff we see on TV
7 Agree about career politicians. What were we thinking selecting that young whipper snapper Murphy?
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1 If the whips didn't put pressure on publicly the party would do it privately. Thats why every vote needs to be a free vote, and any MP pressured into voting for something they don't want would say so, as they do now. If this happened, said party should be banned from votes for 2 weeks for example.
2 Many voters support th party not the individual so want someone who broadly follows tha party line
Many would say the opposite is true. People round here support Skinner, but not new Labour.
3 Fixed terms would be a problem where no majority as in 1974
4 Good idea
5 Labour party has elected candidates by one member one vote for as long as I can recall
If a candidate is not local the opposition uses it at every opportunity
6 Think there is cross party cooperation in committees just not the stuff we see on TV
7 Agree about career politicians. What were we thinking selecting that young whipper snapper Murphy?
Just remembered another very important point. Address the "west Lothian" question. ie, an issue that only affects English constituents should only be voted on by those MPs. Its is totally unjust for a party to vote for an issue in the Commons, then when that issue is voted for in the Scottish parliament, they vote against, and the issue only gets through the commons because a load of MPs have voted for it though it has nothing to do with their own electorate.
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This is funny :)
Anne Marie Morris 'calm down dear' Cameron (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSlWzdhg-JA#ws)