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August 10, 2005
Hahahaha...
Sometimes this political nonsense just gets too sick, perverted and predictable and there really is nothing left to do but sit back and laugh at it all.
When Lakshmi Mittal gave a couple of million to Labour a while back, I sort of joked (in the middle of this post) that it was only a matter of time before he was given a seat on the red benches. Well, guess what? Thanks to Chicken Yoghurt for pointing it out.
Follow that link too for some good wholesome chat about Lords reform, particularly this bit:
So far, us civil liberty geeks have had a lot to thank the present make-up of the House of Lords for, being, as it has been of late, a brake of some of the present government's more authoritarian excesses. But we can't rely on this state of affairs to last much longer. In June this year, for the first time since the Labour Party was created, the number of Labour peers matched the number of Conservative ones. New Labour still don't have an overall majority in the House, but if plans to abolish the remaining heriditary peers are realised that may very well change. The vital checks and balances that serve to rein in the excesses of a Government with a rubber-stamp majority in the House of Commons will be lost. The longer the Lords remain unelected the more we risk both houses becoming willing to pass authoritarian, unpopular and just-plain-bad legislation on the nod.
Now, I believe there are better ways to solve these problems than in the manner the Elect the Lords people are arguing for, but this is something which MVC almost necessarily supports, which is why I signed up Malcolm to fulfil the pledge to blog about it today. So he'll be back later. No doubt I'll get around to something too, but there's no rush, and I'm interested to see what all the other bloggy people are making of it. Go here for the roundup.
Posted by pauldavies on August 10, 2005
