There was some ugliness on display in the House of Lords as some rather unsavoury arguments and methods were on display as the unelected tried to prevent progress of a Bill passed by those representing the will of the people.
Nowhere was this truer than in the comment of Viscount Ridley. He is supposedly a scientist. He has made much economic comment from a far right perspective. He writes columns for right wing newspapers on that issue., He is, of course, anti-green. And he saw the attempt to pass the Cooper / Letwin Bill in a day as 'tyranny'.
Faisal Islam called him out. As I well recall, he was also chair of Northern Rock when it crashed (you could not make this up):
Never was there better evidence that some think there should be one rule for them and another for everyone else.
He made the case for abolishing the Lords most effectively.
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He certainly has.
What a joke.
HoL needs to be replaced with a citizens panel of some sort – made up of end users of Government policy – as a feedback loop back into policy making.
@Pilgrim Slight Return
I’ve been working on a piece about constitutional reform – started nearly two years ago, but brought to a halt by my need for treatment for my Low Grade Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma (finished my chemotherapy on March 12th).
In that time my ideas on replacement for the HoL have developed, and I now believe it should be called the House of Jurors, and its members Parliamentary Jurors, as a sort of expanded version of the Grand Jury concept.
It would be a delegated body, formed on a grassroots, bottom up, basis (details still to be fleshed out), whose remit would be solely one of critiquing and amending Commons legislation, its power to initiate legislation being transferred to regional Parliaments.
These would be 10 in number, with Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and London Parliaments/Assemblies being upgraded to full Parliamentary status, plus another 6 carved out of England.
If any 3 or 4 (haven’t decided exact number) of those Regional Parliaments could agree a piece of legislation, it could be remitted to the Commons for a vote, and sent to the House of Jurors for proper scrutiny.
To achieve that, it is ESSENTIAL that the House of Jurors preserve the one REAL plus of the current HoL, which is the genuine pool of expertise, skill and judgement amply demonstrated by the HoL in the current BREXIT farrago. I am working on that.
Equally, the right for the Regional Parliaments to initiate legislation would empower the regional voice, but would be moderated by the need to build an alliance of 3 or 4 such Parliaments, to ensure a more than relatively parochial concern is being addressed.
The pressing currency and urgency of the need to refashion our polity, governance and the constitutional principles underlying and shaping those means I must find time to finish what I started working on, and then put it out for some sort of peer review.
One thing I am certain of, however, is that we MUST have both a WRITTEN Constitution, and a truly Federal and regional UK polity that fully recognises the 4 Nations that make up the UK, but that also addresses the problem of the overbearing weight of England within that Federation, by introducing Regional Parliaments
This would also address England’s own lack of identity referred to elsewhere in this Blog – a lack which has sought to hide its nonexistence behind an ever more strident “English nationalism”, which is really only a form of exceptionalism and a “de haut en bas othering” of everyone “not lucky enough to be born English”, as they would say – a sentiment with almost zero foundation in, and connection with, reality.
Andrew
Thanks for that
And keep at full strength – we need you!
Richard
Andrew
I am sorry to hear of your medical misfortune but happy to hear that someone of your calibre has been thinking about this issue more than I have (I’ve just scratched the surface).
I have no argument whatsoever with your last but one paragraph although we may differ on detail elsewhere.
The BREXIT fiasco has revealed to me the twisted logic of the FPTP system – that there has to be an outright winner and everyone else’s concerns are therefore negated.
To that I say ‘Bollocks’.
That is not democracy – not one bit (look at Prof Paul Spicker’s most recent post on this idea: http://blog.spicker.uk/the-will-of-the-majority-is-not-a-democratic-principle/ ) which I think is one of the best challenges of the crappy Leave argument concerning the referendumb out there).
I look forward to seeing your ideas develop and wish you a good, solid recovery.
Andrew,
You wrote “…the right for the Regional Parliaments to initiate legislation would empower the regional voice, but would be moderated by the need to build an alliance of 3 or 4 such Parliaments, to ensure a more than relatively parochial concern is being addressed.” Doesn’t this leave Scotland precisely where it is at present: consistently outvoted on matters of direct relevance to Scotland?
I’m assuming your federal model would reserve UK-wide matters such as defence, territorial issues, macro finance, fiscal policy etc to a UK Gov. What then happens when the Scottish Parliament votes, as it inevitably will, to ban nuclear weapons on Scottish land or seas? What about oil revenues, or territorial issues like the Blair/Brown appropriation of Scottish waters into English jurisdiction? What if the Scottish Parliament votes for independence from the UK? Will it still have to get the permission of the UK Parliament to progress its decision?
That’s just a few obvious issues where Scotland could continue to be outvoted by a state which is renowned world-wide for its deviousness and has demonstrated its indifference to Scottish opinion over centuries. In other words I see interminable friction between the two governments and I’m afraid all trust in Westminster has been destroyed, just as I’m pretty sure the federal ship sailed off into the sunset long ago. Scotland has a better understanding now of how the UK works and is too far down the road to self-determination to be put back in its box indefinitely.
@ Ken Mathieson
Thank you for your comment, which I’ll take on board when I manage to find time to finish my piece.
However, I think you’ve misunderstood my intention. Of COURSE Scotland, and all the other Parliaments I envisage, will have the right to pass full and binding legislation for the area covered by their Parliament, EXACTLY as each US State is able to do so.
The need for 3 or 4 Parliaments to come together to initiate federal legislation would be for legislation binding on the whole Federation, so it’s only fair that the Regional Parliaments should have to demonstrate some general applicability for the legislation they have in mind.
And they would, in any event have the route of proposing such legislation via their MP’s in the Federal Parliament, noe known as the House of Commons.
Finally, there’s always the possibility that these 3 or 4 Parliaments might wish to see some legislation covering their areas alone – eg regulation of matters concerning the Irish Sea of immediate concern to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
In your last two points: the right to secede from the Federation would be written into the enabling legislation, and of course Scotland would have to have the right, as a sovereign Parliament, to get rid of Trident, both of which, as well as matters raised in my first post, show that I envisage more of a Confederation and a Confederal polity, than the Federal model of Australia and the United States, in recognition if the fact that, in stark contrast to the States making up the USA, and even more so, Australia, the countries and nations making up the UK federation once enjoyed a real, separate existence and statehood that they deserve to reclaim.
And as to your final point, that “the ship has sailed”, I fear that is probably true, but that a) doesn’t prevent my carrying out a “thought experiment” and b) doesn’t exclude the need for any new state to ponder deeply the nature of the distribution of power and its exercise in that state, matters I would suggest even Scotland, though far further along than England, would still need to explore as a newly independent nation and state – something I agree is likely to happen within the next decade at the latest.
Here’s Matt Ridley endorsing a Carbon Tax to encourage low carbon innovation
http://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog/the-cost-of-climate-change-policies/
Nobel Laureates Romer and Nordhaus would agree that is a sign of pro-green credentials.
Those of us who are green would not
CVarbon taxes are a failure – unless you’re a market trader who wants to find a new way to police a bet
This is all much a do about nothing. As Dr Thomas Mayer recently made perfectly clear in his lecture https://youtu.be/7l3G3-BpHc8 and as anyone with a bit of common sense has by now realised, the EU will be lucky to last beyond 2025 at this rate. And on top of this, you have Bitcoin to ameliorate the disgusting malfeasance in the banking sector of which you despair above. But alas, Bitcoin means no organisation is privileged above all others (ahem, “government”) anymore, as once hyperbitcoinization has occured and people trade in it, rather than speculate on it for fiat, taxation is not even going to be possible.
You had a good run. Modern citizens are now taxed more than peasants were in feudal times, and even then,the governments are still not solvent!
History will surely look sadly on this state of affairs. How could they have been so ignorant and gullible? Thankfully, things now get more clear every day. Soon the peasants will see that to benefit a society, its money should stay in society, and not be put into the government.
…
With r spect, some of us live in the real world and you clearly do not
Maybe you would like medieval standards of healthcare too? Perhaps just for your inferiors.
Perhaps pre-medieval law enforcement too. Just robber barons.
I don’t know anyone who has put anything into bitcoin. Who would trust cryptocurrencies?
Yours without respect
A peasant
Thinking the EU is about to collapse is wishful thinking, if not delusional. It isn’t as there is far too much political capital tied up in it and it is also very successful at keeping the peace and promoting trade, free movement etc amongst the people of Europe. As for Bitcoin, well! There is a fixed cap on how many bitcoins there are that is built into the software. So how will that work out? Presumably you recognise the world population is still growing, we all wish to be better off however you define that, yet you advocate a capped money supply (and indeed one where we would all be working in some infinitesimally small fraction of 1 bitcoin since I believe the cap is somewhere like 20 million coins (or even if it is 200 million or 2 billion it is still tiny – just Sterling has 2 trillion pounds in existence). So growth of some sort combined with fixed money supply can only be accommodated by either the money circulating ever faster or by permanent deflation (falling prices and wages). That will result in a permanent depression, the impoverishment of anyone in debt (the loan stays the same and does not deflate), and the gross enrichment of the lenders (they still claim the face value of any bond, mortagage, personal loan, etc. So much for your egalitarian bank / state free future!
And by the way do you think whoever the original creators of bitcoin were did not walk off with billions of dollars worth of profit from selling off the millions of bitcoin they got for free and later sold off?
Thanks Tim
And well argued
Richard has pointed out the gaping hole in the bitcoin argument elsewhere (no legal system to enforce contracts). But regarding the EU
The EU is a group of 28 countries with different interests trying to find compromises to co-exist. The compromises are not always the best possible. There are always forces trying to push things in directions they would be better not to go.
But if you take away the EU framework, do you go back to settling disputes by force?
What are 70 years of relative peace worth?
What is the Good Friday Agreement worth?
It has been pointed out elsewhere that 26 of the 28 EU countries have suffered one or more of Nazi occupation, Soviet occupation, military dictatorship or being a colony of a foreign power.
There will be a lot of effort into making the EU last beyond 2025.
You seem to be labouring under the misapprehension that Mayer was talking about the EU. But he was talking exclusively about problems caused by the euro. Such problems are well known not new. And I note he dismisses crypto-currencies as irrelevant.
Although he did not spell out his proposed solution in much detail it seemed to involve a debt jubilee for the debtor countries and the creation of ‘competitor’ currencies to enable those countries to abandon the euro.
It seems to me he has said nothing to support your point of view at all.
bitcoin”
You lost me just there….bitcoin is nothing more than a currently (barely) legal scam….so I’ll just carry-on believing the rest of your blather is part of same….
Yes, I watched some of the Lords debate and thought it made a good case for it to be abolished.
For some years Ridley has called himself a lukewarmer, i.e. climate change is happening but it is not going to be too bad. That puts him into the crazy category as far as the science goes, but because he is a Lord he is a dangerous crazy. He was never a scientist, just wrote some popular science books. His book “The origin of virtue” is actually worth reading.
Back in the day, when I still read The Times, I was always amazed at how utterly wrong Ridley tended to be in his op-eds about most things, whether scientific or economic.
His educational background would indicate he’s a very capable Zoologist but he appears to be one of those people with the mistaken believe that just because you know a lot about one thing, you also have stunning insight into other areas. I found myself disagreeing with pretty much everything he ever wrote about anything and some of his arguments were laughable at times.
In every case, he started with his right-wing viewpoint and picked and chose “facts” to attempt to prove his point whilst ignoring or dismissing inconvenient truths. And that’s just on scientific topics. The less said about his economic views, the better.
Remarkable brass neck that he feels able to opine on anything economic since the Northern Rock debacle under his aegis.
George Monbiot apparently knew Ridley when they went to Oxford studying biology. Monbiot has challenged Ridley’s comments on biology, especially on the environment, and has claimed that he seems to have learned almost nothing. The Germans have a good word for people like Ridley, who are trained in one field but who branch out, pontificating in areas where what they say is moronic. It is Fachidiot, which the French translate at specialist idiot. In Ridley’s case, it could probably be argued that he doesn’t know what he is talking about even in the field he studied, biology.
I have to say that some of the exchanges I saw between HoL members the other day were actually so banal that I was even more embarrassed by our behaviour over BREXIT than I already was.
Honestly!
Whether or not you like Viscount Ridley, Richard, I find it slightly disturbing to see you adopting the ugly language of the “will of the people”. A bill passed by the House of Commons no more represents the unified common will of a single amorphous mass of the British “people”, stripped of their individuality, than does the “Leave” vote of 17.4 million people in the Brexit referendum.
I was being deliberately ironic
Correct answer there would have been whoosh, Richard
The EU outlasting 2025 ? One hopes so for many reasons given above. But one objective should be ditched, and that may even ameliorate some Brexiteers. “Ever Closer Union” is too dangerous to pursue. Just let the EU be the EU and drop the pretentions to ‘more’ and ‘mightier’.