Read: Clegg’s Lords Reform Bill
What is the point of reforming the House of Lords and making it elected if the Bishops will remain?
Attorney General Warns Press Over Rebekah & Andy | Media Guido
UKIP Pros and Cons | Allister Heath
“The Double Income No Kids Existence” | Alex Deane
David Nicholson to Quit NHS Next Year | HSJ
We Don’t Have Gatsby-esque Inequality | Tim Worstall
Dave Will Still Win in 2015 | Toby Young
Activists Should Ignore the Sneerers | Jacob Rees-Mogg
NHS Can Kill Tories | James Kirkup
Dave Lets Labour Take Credit For Gay Marriage | FT
UKIP Set to Out-Poll Tories | Telegraph
UKIP Spokesperson Slaps Down BBC | The Commentator
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Ai Weiwei in China fighting the taxman…
“Under totalitarian rule, no one is protected by law. We will all be the same helpless victims. When a country insists on its lies, it’s time for an artist to bring forth change.”
Ah! Monika says:
Google-eyed-Dave
I would raather read Labourlist.
“rather”
What a fucking waste of time. It should read……
Point 1: Get rid of the fucking useless bishops
Bishops from only one denomination, I think.
Only reform required, limit the number of members to 300. All must attend regularly.
Reforemd HoL must be subordinate to the HoC and not an alternative source of power for Limp Dumbs. Hence election not required and would even be counterproductive to elect them as they would think themselves to have a mandate from the electorate.
Pointless, it’s all pointless, there is no point in making a point in this pointless government.
Not exactly pointless. The Lords are costing us a bloody fortune – not as much as the Commons though — reasons to be cheerful!
Not really, as it stands they get a free dinner and a return ticket for turning up for the day. In Nick’s plan they get about £50 grand each per year tax free. This IMHO is not progress
They get £300 tax-free per day for showing up at the moment. Assuming they show up for 150 days (30 5-day weeks) per year, that’s £45,000 tax free. Clegg’s plan won’t make much difference here or there – but then, Lord Pantsdown et al have probably leant on him.
Clegg is beefing up their packages in the hope he will get onto the gravy train in the future. These twats are deciding on their future income stream.
How come LibDems care about pointless things yet have no views on important things?
The Bishops need to remain to advise on buggering choirboys.
Phone me.
The public has unanimously told the Lib Dumbs that it does not want AV in a referendum last year.
Arrogant Clegg does accept the will of the people so he has pressed Cameron not to put the HoL reforms to the public by referenda because he would lose again. Weak Cameron has done what Clegg has told him.
Write to your MPs to tell them that the public’s wishes are more important than a minority fanatical Lie Dumb party who wants the UK to become a region of the EU super state and Clegg wants to change the British culture because he does not like it. Hence more EU, gay marriage to change the Christian religion, no family tax benefits, mass immigration continues; all done with a view to change our culture. People need to stand up against Clegg.
Well dear, the second chamber is quite an important issue – it sometimes stops the likes of certain labour/tory PM’s trying to pass appalling legislation eating away at personal freedoms.
We demand an equal amount of Pagans, Druids, Imams, Raabi’s, Soothsayers, Mooncult Priestesses & other assorted nut jobs who believe in invisible sky pixies.
Its only fair – why should just C of E Bishops get access to the full £50k in expenses?
*cough*
*harrumph*
I should also be there to keep an eye on the Mullahs.
And Sultanas, err.. and while you’re at it a couple of burghers wouldn’t go astray. One shall fetch one’s coat.
What is the point of reforming the House of Lords and making it elected if the Bishops will remain?
What is the point in reforming something that ain’t broken anyway?
And what is the point in Nick Clegg?
Nick Clegg’s my human shield. When I grow tired of everyone hating me, I take a break by wheeling Nick into the open and let everyone hate him for a bit.
To remove the bishops would probably involve tearing up what’s left of the constitution of the Kingdom of England
You call it ‘England’, I call it “EU Region: Arc Manche”, comprising what used to be called England and Northern France.
Haw haw haw haw!
Toodle pip.
It would essentially require the Church of England to be dis-established….people have been burnt at the stake; queens beheaded;civil wars fought ;governments and Minsiters have fallen;wars fought and Kings executed or deposed for less…even Cleggie and the LibDems are shy of trying to remove the Bishops from the Lords
Disestablishment. Sounds like a good idea to me. Let’s try democracy instead.
Well, it’s the Tories who want to keep the bishops, not the Lib Dems.
And why’s that? They all attend with their imaginary friend.
Gordon Brown?
Voted for by the people and no person who has been an mp would be a good start
100 years in the making…
Pandering to religion what a wuss
Every week we a headline “libdems angry at tories” or “libdems claim U turn as victory” or even “libdems will not vote with goverment”
Just a suggestion, a nice white picket fence around the libdem benches, a sign in pastel colours with Winnie the poo, poo sticks and butterflies, On the sign maybe “lala land home of the libdems” maybe a few prams stuffed with toys for them to throw about, and of course the pixie hats, chief pixies like clegg etc could have bells on Ding a ling, ding a ling as noddy said
I think it goes both ways.
First suggestion on parliamentary reform that would receive public support.
Give them each a dummy. Dummies sucking dummies
There is no point. And that IS the point. More tilting at windmills instead of getting on with the real job.
Must…resist…bashing..gag…
Try bishoprics Jim – sounds a lttle more intelligent- the dire sees and says of our caped crusaders
Go ahead, Jimbo. You know you wanna. No sense holding it in. That just causes more problems than it solves. Better out than in, I say…
“Better in than out,” said the Bishop to the actress…
See what I mean? I feel so much better as a result!
Don’t Choke the Chicken!
There, I said it.
Sorry one problem, men in pixie hats could make bryant horny
Stop bashing the bishops and bash C legg.
Bshing the bishop is a famous old tory pass time
Liquid Lunch?
Even Jimmy passed on that one you sad old queen.
Even Jimmy?
I regard Jimmy as a bit odd.
A bit? You don’t know the half of it.
Don’t go getting fractious with me.
My rod and my staff will comfort me ? Question of semantics perhaps.
Never bashed my bishop. Always handled it with due care at attention around employees during office hours which probably accounts for it still functioning perfectly even now in my 70s.
Nick doesn’t know how to bash the Bish.
I think most boys learn that quite early.
“Clause 5 provides that electedmembers of the House of Lords are to be elected by an open list system in GreatBritain and a single transferrable vote system in Northern Ireland.”
So this could go very badly wrong for the LibDems… Given the way the Public vote for the EU elections UKIP could have a sizeable number in the Lords and noone in the Commons.
Further to Guido’s point on the Bishops… what’s the point in having 90 “appointed” Lords at all when the Public are being asked to vote for Lords. The appointed should merely put themselves forward for election…. why don’t they open up the Lords Spiritual to other Faith Groups???? Could have a Buddhist and Sikh Lords spititual instead of Archbishop of Cantebury now that’s revolutionary !!
Anyone with imaginary friends (ie God botherers) should excluded
+1
These are the last people who should have any say in the running of the country.
The only way any politician or functionary ‘runs the country’ is straight into the buffers.
I think it’s time for Liz to call Dave n Nick round to the palace and bash their heads together. Why are these two young upstarts trying to destroy centuries of tradition for some political gimmick? Next thing they will be sending our budget to Brusels for approval.
I will support this because I have no history or affinity with the great and established institutions of state in my parents host country.
Paxo should ask Clegg if he, Clegg, has read this Bill.
And… can he read? When he read it how many times? (Paxo’s job is quite easy really)
Chloe Smith will answer this question and many other questions on Newsnight this evening.
Good Afternoon chaps.
There is no point at all.
If you look for logic in politics your head will explode
Will criminals be banned from standing?
Yes, of course. Part of their sentence will be to always walk on their knees.
LMLO
I’m not walking on my knees.
We don’t see you very much these days Jeffers. Why’s that?
I nip across the river, sign in for my £300 british quids per day attendance allowance for attending, ie, signing in, I then bugger off and do my own thing. So you would have to be quick to notice me.
Keeps me in Krug you know, pip, pip. Eat your heart out proles!
” Who will rid me of these tiresome politicians?”
So Northern Ireland gets STV but the rest of the Disunited Kingdom gets the D’Hondt formulae (which you need a degree in mathematics to understand). Even this will be too much though. I expect it to be killed off, then Clegg and Cameron can congratulate themselves on another successful charade carried out on British people. Clegg must still be laughing at all the Lib Dems who he managed to maneuver into accepting the sidelining of PR for the House of Commons.
Lets reform the Commons instead starting with the Clegglet.
How have we come to this, we are faced with Financial meltdown the EUs answer is to give themselves more Authority
Yet this stupid excuse of a Polictician whitters on about
Lords Reform
Gay Marriage
Leveson
We DONT care Cleggy really we dont, we care about our finances, our jobs , our Childrens education, the NHS and our Country.
So Dave and Nick care for their country?
Homosexual Marriage
Force the Queen to shake hands with the man who murdered her Uncle
Do away with the Lords and replace them with corrupt politicians
Increase public spending and taxation
Force the poor of Britain to subsidise the Indian Space project
Cover our beautiful countryside with Windmills
Encourage the formation of the EUSSR
Fund Charities with taxpayers’ money
Build a train line so that BBC staff can get back from Salford a few minutes earlier
Pay Gordon Brown to stay away from work
Bishops in the Lords.
Lords in the Bishops.
I propose Michael Gove.
+1000!
Seconded
Why do media outlets insist on calling the 3p fuel thing a tax ‘cut’. It’s no such thing. It’s temporarily shelving a proposed tax increase. Real tax cuts increase the spending power of the individual, this just maintains the status quo.
Well I’m favour of a smaller reformed HoL whose members are elected rather than appointed.
Look at the corrupt place that it has become. The whole barrel of apples is rotten to the core – sugar-foulkes-prezza-uddin-martin-coe etc
Obviously they need to find a way to ensure that the Commons retains supremacy but beyond that the whole decaying edifice wants chucking away and starting afresh.
As long as what you replace it with is better….I fear that these proposals will not do that and probably make the situation very much worse not better
And just how, please, is this going to make anything better for anyone – or at least anyone normal, by which I exclude the existing politico-chatterati? An extra £13.6m a year (their estimate at today’s prices, so almost certainly wrong) plus £85.7m FFS every time there’s an election (ditto for accuracy) for a shiny new gravytrain for the second-raters who couldn’t get into the bit of parliament that actually has supremacy.
There’s a lot in the bill about how people would be disqualified from membership (although they missed out the bit about being a member of a political party), but nothing about what candidates should have done with their lives in order to be qualified.
Sad thing is, this bill will create the sort of club that even Groucho Marx wouldn’t have wanted to join, so no-one of any calibre will bother.
I have to agree.
Who is on you list of good eggs to be appointed? I’m having trouble thinking of many.
Well, you could start by having a bloody good look at the 183 crossbenchers. They’re not all perfect (John Birt’s still eluding the men in white coats, for example), but there aren’t many of them who didn’t reach the top of their particular ladder – as opposed to a greasy pole. And they got into the HoL because of their individual merits, not as a result of their party’s fortunes.
It strikes me that if you want to streamline the House of Lords, you could do a lot worse than just kick out 150 of the more egregious offenders (I’ll happily chair the judging panel) and leave everyting else largely as is.
What is it about politicians that they think they can overturn a thousand years of delicately evolving constitutional precedent and not make things indescribably worse?
I am going to rename my great work in honour of both houses:
“Watching The Defectives”
Parliament to music!
Piss off Clegg, its bad enough knowing who to vote for as MP, MEP and local councillor than have yet another unnecessary election to satisfy your political aspirations.
“What is the point of reforming the House of Lords and making it elected if the Bishops will remain?”
To piss off the Catholics.
Ha ha ha
These Church of England Bishops have no place or ruigt to be in the House of Lords Should be kicked out on their collective backsides
This is the 21st century the last time I looked
http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m6ab6oNMvz1rzgesao1_1280.jpg
A little something I knocked together which I think sums up the whole country.
No, wait, damn: Forgot a Penny v Starkey box!
That’s it. I’m no longer reading this blog. I was completely against reform. But this hostility to the Bishops from Neo-Guido and readers alike shows me I’m in the wrong place.
Cheerio.
There are 100 Senators in the US Senate for a country of 340 million people. 2 Senators for each of the 50 States.
There are over 800 Lords in the House of Lards for a population of 55 million.
All Unelected. When will the English people do something. At least get out and protest
bring back the hereditaries. They were less bullying and thieving than all the bliar “baronesses”
Getting rid of these supersitious sky-fairy mongerers should be the main reason for reform.