Thursday, March 08, 2007

[lords destruction bill] last obstacle to eu removed

In some of the most slanted language this blog have yet to read in a major news source, Adrian Croft, of Reuters, wrote:

MPs voted on Wednesday for a historic shake-up of the tradition-bound Lords, saying all or most of its members should be elected instead of appointed as most are now. If put into practice, the vote could transform the influence and image of the centuries-old Lords, which is at the centre of a storm over suspected illegal political funding.

It is not at the "centre of a storm". Certain people who are in the chamber are at the centre, not the institution and the Lords itself, as an entity, has absolutely nothing to do with it. This attempt by the controlled media to create an exasperated mood of 'how much more are we to put up with' is precisely what the Nazi regime created over the Jews. Same tactic.

And there is one of the main thrusts of the funding scandal and why it saw the light of day. The role of the Lords was such a crucial obstacle to Tony's masters but this vote, coupled with the EU constitution legislation, forced into existence irrespective of referenda results and public opinion polls, shows what we're up against. I come back again to Martine Martin's words:

I will argue that point to the death. I've never read an argument yet for this that stands up in any way. To say that an unelected second chamber is somehow "inappropriate for the 21st century" reeks of an incredibly superficial understanding of democracy and our parliamentary system in general. As we know, any banana republic can have elections. They're meaningless compared to all the other nuances of a political system created in order to remove the potential for corruption or abuse of power.

This blog has already put forward proposals on the reconstruction of the Lords which would have accommodated any genuine concern over abuses but that's not what this latest vote is about. It's about nothing more nor less than the reconstitution of a once noble House as a rubber stamp for an autocratic ruler who, in turn, is subservient to his EU masters and then, by definition, to the Finance they themselves serve in Bavaria and Paris.

People of Britain, please wake from the slumber you've been lulled into. If you do not protest this vehemently, your last rights as citizens will have passed irrevocably out of your hands. You've been fragmented - some chasing the cash-for-peerages, some chasing other scandals, some still concerned with Iraq and rightly so, rightly so.

But to ignore this threat to democracy because it's not the flavour of the month or because you have a natural distaste for toffy-nosed aristocrats is to fail to see the thorn in the side of Blair and his masters that this House has been. Now that thorn has been extracted.

4 comments:

  1. I agree that the Lords needs to have an elected element but having it mostly elected is bad for democracy I think. The Lords have been an obstacle to the totalitarian nature of the government for years. Having it elected is just going to create a clone of the Commons which will damage the system of checks and balances.

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  2. I think your point about the EU is valid. As usual the MSM will catch-up with this when it is too late.

    greta post.

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  3. Any changes made to the Lords in the 21st century cannot but change it to 100% elected. But it needs to be done properly. The role of the Lords should stay the same - to analyse bills and to send them back to the Commons for amendment.

    In many ways, being elected should enable the Lords to be even better at their job, since the Parliament Act must surely be repealed - so as long as the right people go in (which it relies on now, as well), the Lords will continue to do the same job it does, but with even more clout to oppose totalitarianism or even just electoral dictatorship.

    Done well, a fully elected Lords will be extremely beneficial to Britain and her democracy. Done badly, and will just cost us a lot of money, and achieve nothing except another layer of politicians.

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  4. 'Fraid I agree with YDKM and CUS here, Thunderdragon. Experience, say in Australia, has shown that an elected upper house cannot exist outside the party framework and therefore is subject to control by the party of majority, i.e. the PM. A non-elected body is certainly more conservative but preserves the old values better.

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