It turns out we can go on like this.
I'd written an entire post on the new working peers list announced today, only for Blogger to decide to log me out when I came to publish it and lose the whole thing in the process, so here's an even worse, albeit more succinct version.
Our entire way of doing politics is discredited by the cesspool of patronage and corruption otherwise known as the House of Lords, and all of the parties are equally complicit. The Conservatives however directly campaigned on the basis of this being a year for change, and of how we couldn't go on like this. As far as today's appointments go, with 5 of the new Tory Lords on the list having between them donated nearly £5,000,000 to the party, and "Sir" Gulam Noon, a Labour nominee having given almost £750,000 since 2001 to his party's coffers, it's more than apparent that the status quo is in fact absolutely tickety-boo. It also means we have 142 more Lords than elected MPs, and that's before 50 constituencies are abolished by the time of the next election in the name of equalising the number of voters in each. It's quite some democracy we have, isn't it?
Our entire way of doing politics is discredited by the cesspool of patronage and corruption otherwise known as the House of Lords, and all of the parties are equally complicit. The Conservatives however directly campaigned on the basis of this being a year for change, and of how we couldn't go on like this. As far as today's appointments go, with 5 of the new Tory Lords on the list having between them donated nearly £5,000,000 to the party, and "Sir" Gulam Noon, a Labour nominee having given almost £750,000 since 2001 to his party's coffers, it's more than apparent that the status quo is in fact absolutely tickety-boo. It also means we have 142 more Lords than elected MPs, and that's before 50 constituencies are abolished by the time of the next election in the name of equalising the number of voters in each. It's quite some democracy we have, isn't it?
Labels: Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition, corruption, House of Lords, House of Lords reform, Labour, loans for peerages, politics
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Bloody annoying when blogger strikes like that but I wouldn't bother about it. The post pretty well sums things up - except that, in truth we never did have a democracy worthy of the word.
It's just that things have got so damned in-your-face these days that I'm surprised anyone bothers with the pretense any more.
The system is frankly un-reformable. Demographics, resource constraints and a host of convergent nasties make eventual collapse as inevitable as it will be ugly - TPTB having prepared well for it over it over many years now. Orwell's 1984 was just 25-30 years before it's time, that's all.
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Sabretache |
Saturday, November 20, 2010 5:40:00 pm
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