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UK Parliament to be Made Redundant?
caluml writes "The Guardian is reporting that the current UK government is trying to sneak a new law though in an innocuously named bill called 'The Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill,' which would get rid of that pesky, interfering need to put laws to the Houses of Commons and Lords to approve. There is already the Parliament Act that can be used to force laws through, which was used recently for the hunting bill. " The original coverage is a bit old but the bill is still being tossed around in parliament. The text of the bill is also available via the UK Parliament website.
This wasn't snuck in, it's been around for quite some time now. It actually serves a valid purpose as well. Basically, the part that this article refers to allows a government to bypass the House of Lords (an unelected body) after a certain number of tries in a certain time period when trying to pass a bill.
Anything that goes through the parliament act will generate enough publicity for the public to kick up a fuss about it if they don't like it anyway.
Yes, let's get rid of that pesky bureaucracy.
And while you're at it, why waste time voting?
Let's get rid of that time-consuming thing...
If I lived in the UK, I'd definitely be writing my (UK equivalent) senator and representatives about now... I really can't quite imagine something like that actually getting passed, but governments are, unfortunately, not limited by my imagination.
One question is: who would actually be writing these laws that would go through without parliamentary approval, if not parliament?
SIGSEGV caught, terminating
wait... not that kind of sig.
In SOVIET BRITAIN, Britannia waives the rules!
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
I hate to be the grammar nazi, but the submitter misspelled "US" and "Congress"...
I live in the UK! How come nobody told me about this?
...don't give the U.S. government any ideas. Not that they seem to feel like they need congressional approval now, for that matter.
I want everyone to remember that we stand on the edge of oblivion! I want everyone to remember why they need us!
There's also a website that explains in slightly less dry terms than the official parliament website some of the things it would allow MPs to do. It appears to be unavailable at the moment, but check it out when it's back up.
From memory, it's basically: add or change any laws they feel like, as long as they don't raise taxes, or have jail sentances over 2 years.
And as for why the opposition parties and UK media aren't mentioning it, I have no idea.
Get your own free personal location tracker
Drat! The fates decree that this isn't one of the times I have mod points.
http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Redundancy
So this is how democracy dies...
:-D
With thunderous applause.
Sorry, couldn't resist
1. Parliament Act
2. DMCA
3. Profit!!
From an American view I'm jealous that you have more than two real political parties, but I don't get why England doesn't have her own Parliament.
Look - just pack it in! Us Brits no longer care about such things. We are all subjects, we have the Royal Family and we also have the democracy that was the model for the world, so we triply don't have to worry.
Anyhow, isn't this calling the kettle black - that dope in the White House, doesn't he have the same, so laws don't apply to his office?
Parliaments and congressii need to be above the law - it is the only realistic option for all concerned. In that way politcs is effectively abolished - nobody talks politics in Blighty, except the few leftovers that still watch teevee instead of posting to slashdot (and other sites). Same in U.S.?
we can make make laws that are more stupid than you. hahahaha hahaha .. ha.. :/
oh shit, I'm in the uk
ok, now I'm confused, do I make a USA immigration application or start learning chinese?
Didn't you guys see "V for Vendetta" over the weekend ?
Yes, but the parliament act isn't what is in question.
What is in question is this new proposed act, that allows any cabinet member to alter any piece of legislation by conducting a single vote with the minimum of debate or discussion. The parliament act is usually only used after ages of battling, so at least we are certain that MPs have looked at and understood what is being passed. With this new act, it would be very easy to sandwich scary ideas into an innoculous looking package, and sneak that through the vote. The worst case scenario is that one such scary bill would be a motion to alter this bill itself - and remove parliament from the process altogether.
Even if we trust the government not to abuse it, this is still a terrifyingly huge loophole. And in fact, the bill is currently *very* close to being passed. It only has a 1-hour final hearing in the commons, and then it's onto the Lords. And if the Lords don't cooperate, a truly malicious government can use the Parliament act to force it through....
It's that damn Magna Carta, you know.
Once you take the power from the one true Sovereign, who has been selected by God to know what is right for this country, all of this havoc follows in due course.
I say: absolve the House of Lords and the House of Commons, and revert all power to HRH Elizabeth Regina.
We'll then all get along splendidly. (Or at least untill Charles takes the thrown.)
They're going to have multiple parliaments so that if one fails they have a backup? Oh wait... that doesn't seem to be what they are suggesting.
We need something like this in Canada do. Right now we have a representative of the queen here in Canada. It is one of the most retarded and useless positions in Canada.
Why is somone who is not democratically elected, in a political office.
I swear, Slashdot will send me to an early grave if I continue to parse its headlines at such a high privilege level. Though I'm guilty of feeding this myself, I'm starting to tire of so many SKY-IS-FALLING stories (I've been around here slightly longer than my UID suggests).
I get the impression that this is kind of a rite of passage here. Would that be correct?
(I don't consider this offtopic because this is an absolute non-story. Your Moderation May Vary)
Can they do that? This seems a bit too outlandish to be true. Am I daft or would this be like the Senate trying to pass a bill that would make it unnessisary fo rlaws to go through the House?
Good thing the UK is safer now that they've virtually abolished the private ownership of firearms. There's now no chance of those dangerous and unseemly uprisings that generally happen when parts of the govornment are bypassed.
Never forget that any govornment that does not fear it citizens will eventually abuse its citizen.
Looks like the govornment in the UK is losing its fear.
I don't think I need to write to my MP on this one: he's already strongly and publicly criticised the bill for the insult to democracy it is, and indeed a group of professors of law from our local university (which, for the benefit of US readers, means a lot of very highly placed academics in the UK) wrote to a national newspaper to express their support for his opposition. I do believe in contacting my representatives, but in this case his view seems pretty solidly on the right side of sane.
As for who would write the laws, it would basically be ministers, i.e., senior politicians appointed by the current administration and generally drawn from the ranks of both houses of parliament. This is basically carte blanche for the administration, once elected, to pass its laws without scrutiny or opposition from the other political parties. Technically, IIRC, the bill does allow for a couple of hours of debate, which is just about long enough for everyone to sit down... :-(
When you consider that this bill could be used to pass several pieces of legislation that have recently proved highly controversial within the house (ID cards and draconian "anti-terrorism" measures among them) you can see how dangerous it could be.
Then consider that under our first-past-the-post electoral system, the current administration was empowered based on only 22% of the population's support. They didn't actually win the popular vote in England at all, and they have relied repeatedly on Scottish MPs to force through controversial legislation that won't affect those MPs' own constituents because it only applies in England.
In other words, this bill would essentially hand executive authority to a group of people who are not directly elected to such responsibility, but rather appointed by another group who can have as little as 1/5 of the population supporting them, and with that they can impose their will over the other 4/5 and their duly elected representatives challenge. Why would this disturb anyone?
(Then again, we live in the land of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers (RIP) Act, the Serious Organised Crime Act, The Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act and most recently the Civil Contingencies Act, which collectively have stripped away pretty much almost every freedom and right that UK citizens enjoyed prior to the current administration being elected. What more damage can they do?)
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
But what we've witnessed is that the public does not kick up a fuss about serious issues. This isn't true of just the UK, but of the United States, Germany, Canada, Australia, and most other Western nations. And when any fuss is made, politicians do not listen anyways, these days justifying their gross misconduct as being "necessary to fight terrorism".
Democracies often work best when they're highly inefficient, and there is much strife between opposing political bodies (not just parties) of similar power. The efficiency losses are more than made up in freedom gains.
The US has now installed both Roberts and Alito onto our Supreme Court with their "judicial philosophy" of a "unitary executive". That is, the president runs the entire government from his Executive Branch, the Judicial Branch just finds ways to interpret the president's decisions, and Congress is a medium to the public, to be informed of policy details when it suits the president.
Just this week, Bush signed into law a bill that was not Constitutional, because it had not been agreed in the same terms by both Senate and House of Representatives. So he "fixed it" with a "signing statement" declaring how he will execute the law. Signing statements have no force of law, or any existence beyond a recent ceremonial ritual. But now someone can bring this unconstitutional law before the Supreme Court, where Roberts and Alito can lead a decision to create a precedent for making the signing statement the executable law.
When the Senate confirmed Alito everyone knew he considers Congress optional. Now they've sent him the legal tools to make that the force of law. Why should the UK have all the dictator fun?
--
make install -not war
I think most of you are forgetting about the differences between American and UK (and at least some common wealth countries). If it's anything like in Canada these guys don't even get voted in so they're basically just a lingering monarchy, not quite a democracy. Why let some guys who don't even show up for work half the time who are just buddies with the Prime Minister get paid lots of money and have say of what real people want when they do not represent the real people.
Well, this is (theoretically) why the monarchy still exists, unfortunatly, too many people have no respect for what power the sovereign has. She can refuse to sign this bill into law, even if Parliament passes it. Too bad she probably won't as that will trigger a constitutional crisis and put the Queen into a political position which they tend to try to avoid.
God save our Queen, and Heaven bless The Maple Leaf Forever!
"The regional governors now have direct control over their territories. Fear will keep the local systems in line. Fear of this battlestation."
But seeing as the Civil Contingencies Act provides for the current Prime Minister to (a) declare a state of emergency and (b) once declared, amend any law he likes e.g. any requirement for democratic elections, this would seem redundant, unless it's the Chancellor that wants to be President for Life.
Happily, living in the UK means that I can make such claims without fear of
I missed the Hunting Law, ... was that where they made it illegal for Dick Chaney to hunt in the UK?
Remember, the Fifth of November.
On the surface this sounds like an attempt to bring back the monarchy. Not all at once, mind you, but just with a different set of people being in power.
Hexy - a strategy game for iPhone/iPod Touch
A question for our British friends: the Guardian article, at least three times, refers to the "constitutional implications" of this proposed legislation. But the UK has no written constitution (I realize there are charters and precedent and common law heritage and all that, but there is no constitution in the sense that most nations have "A Constitution" that sets out the structure of the government). As I understand it, the "constitution" (little c) of British government is (more or less) whatever Parliament decides it is; there are essentially no fundamental "restrictions" on what Parliament can decide to do. Is the article trying to imply anything more than "constitutional implications" in the sense of modifying centuries of precedent, or is it something deeper that I am not seeing? Thanks!
Why would you need a parliament after the building was destroyed at the end of "V For Vendetta"?
It's called Checks and Balances and it's why our government is still in operation (though many will argue its effectiveness). We separate the powers of law making between the senate and the house and give the president a veto. Wow, Redundant! We even have these crazy people that can even interpret these laws in crazy ways so as to fit the current times.
Recap: Bill goes through house and senate, gets signed by president then gets interpreted by judges. And who's complaining about only a second body of redundancy in England?
Nobody Even Likes Them!
Slash-for-Thought
Watching, I reflected that this was truly how democracy is extinguished. Not with guns and bombs, but from the inside by officials and politicians who deceive with guile and who no longer pretend to countenance the higher interests of the constitution
Hello, George W. Bush.
We wondered what they were doing too, so we shot at them until they left.
Worked for us, you might want to give it a try...
If GCSE History serves me correctly, didn't Hitler [1] do something like this? Some bill that granted him "emergency powers" over the Reichstag that meant he could pass laws on his own? One step closer to dictatorship we step..
[1]Note that I'm not equating Tony Blair to Hitler or Labour to the Nazis or anything, just an interesting co-incidence..
In Soviet Britain, the rules waive Britannia!
Arguing about vi versus Emacs is like arguing whether it's better to make fire by rubbing sticks or banging rocks.
Particularly pesky in this pugilannimous period, practically prone practices such as parliament should be permanently purged.
A new german identity, and maybe move to brazil.
:)
er, *cough*cough*
Eine neue deutsche Identität. Jetzt gehe ich nach Brasil.
Auf wiedersehen!
It's funny how these righties copy each other in their overlording.
Worked for us, you might want to give it a try...
Yeah - worked real good.
Welcome to the Fourth Reich, idiot.
And I didn't understand your first paragraph at all, though it kind of sounded like a gratuitous swipe at elected conservative governments.
This is why we need an elected second house. It's a convenient excuse for the Government to waive any check on its power by simply claiming that because the Lords are unelected, the Government can simply ignore them whenever it wants.
Because, by allowing the charade of Congress/Parliment to continue, we still have the illusion of Republican systems of government, when in fact, we have dictatorships.
When my kid is in school learning about how great the US is, and how we're great because we're free, will they teach him that we're not actually free any longer because of a tacit approval of abdication of our rights? No. Because we have a "congress".
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
I heard about this over the weekend and wrote to my MP this morning. Use FaxYourMP to get your message through. Text below:
Dear David Drew,
I am hoping you can reassure me concerning the proposed Legislative and
Regulatory Reform (LRR) Bill which I saw reference to on TV over the
weekend and was featured on Radio 4 this week.
My understanding is that the Bill will enable Ministers to reform
legislation without referring directly to Parliament and that MPs and
Peers will not have the ability to modify problematic proposals in the
way they do at present.
Parliamentary scrutiny is at the heart of the democratic process and
any action that weakens the powers of influence of MPs is of great
concern to me.
Please can you help clarify what the Bill will allow and whether you
will be supporting or opposing it.
Yours sincerely...
As a UK citizen myself, I look to the house of lords to uphold justice and fairness. Since the current government doesn't seem to address the wishes of the people in many cases, it has rather ironically become the role of the unelected to do their duty for the citizens of this country.
They did this 30 years ago. Just ask Gough Whitlam.
If my call is important, why am I talking to a recording?
P.S. I hate them for ending the season with such a mass change in direction.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Will I get modded down if I blame all this on Bush?
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
I'm pretty sure he meant what he said. You're trying to hijack an allusion.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
And all this time I've been harboring a secret fantasy that Britain would re-assert hegemony over her ex-colonies and re-educate them about how to run a democracy, turn a really good phrase, and finally, once and for all, instruct the English-speaking online world how to spell the word "lose" correctly.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
We Yanks have a similar thing going over here, the "line-item" veto. Executive branch would be able to veto specific parts of bills. It's eather a godsend or the End of Democracy, depending on who's President at the time.
I thought the Lords were out of the picture anyway, except as a Court of Appeals.
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
The Powers That Be in Canada, both Federal and Provincial, can already pass a law without running it by Parliament. It's called an Order in Council. Theoretically an OIC is used for little things like political appointments, but it can be used for big things too.
If anybody objects, there is always the Notwithstanding Clause (it's Section 33). It was used for Bills 101 and 178 in Quebec, and Alberta keeps threatening to use it against same-sex marriage. It's been used a number of other times too.
...laura
Not according to nationmaster. Which, 'compiles statistics from such sources as the CIA World Factbook, United Nations, World Health Organization, World Bank, World Resources Institute, UNESCO, UNICEF and OECD.'
Murders (per capita).
US #24 with 0.042802 per 1,000 people
UK #46 with 0.0140633 per 1,000 people.
Murders with firearms (per capita).
US #8 with 0.0279271 per 1,000 people
UK #32 with 0.00102579 per 1,000 people
I'm not drawing any conclusions. Those are the statistics though.
In the initial phase, UKP will be configured as a two member cluster, with millisecond failover should one member require service. In phase two, we intend to upgrade to highly fault tolerant hardware for the proposed four cluster members. Redundancy is also embodied by, or as, our paper-based down-time procedures.
I think we need a line item veto to get back to original intent personally.
Right now they combine 13,000 laws into one 7' thick book and tell the president "sign or veto it".
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
...that lack of a consitution can sometimes come back to bite you I guess.
Mind you, it's not helping the US out much, when you can stack the courts and all...
Doesn't this seem eerily similar to Article 48 and the Enabling Act, which is (in not so many words) what Hitler used to create the Holocaust?
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
The UK parliament has been redundant for a long time.
Back in the days of Margaret Thatcher, huge parliamentary majorities were won on minority votes thanks to the first past the post, 3 party system. If I remember rightly, Mrs. T held a majority in excess of 300 MPs with only 40% of the electorate voting for her. Tony Blair commanded about 35% of the vote when less than 50% of the electorate turned out.
With a three figure majority and the back-benches filled with career minded sheep, the government can get pretty much anything they want through so the new law is just icing on the cake. What worries me more is the sort of people they hang with. According to the treasury web site, the following are being flown in by Gordon Brown, the next Prime Minister, to give advice on business in New Britain:
Bernard Arnault, Chairman and CEO, LVMH
Lord Browne, Group Chief Executive, BP
Dr Jean-Pierre Garnier, CEO, GlaxoSmithKline
Bill Gates, Chairman and Chief Software Architect, Microsoft Corporation
Sir Ka-shing Li, Chairman of the Board, Hutchison Whampoa Ltd
Sir Terry Leahy, CEO, Tesco
Sir John Rose, CEO, Rolls Royce
Robert Rubin, Director and Chairman of the Executive Committee, Citigroup Inc
Lee Scott, President and CEO, Wal-Mart
Ratan Tata, Chairman, Tata Group
Meg Whitman, President and CEO, eBay
James Wolfensohn, Special Envoy for Disengagement and Former President of the World Bank
Yep, that's right. In order to improve the business environment for entrepreneurs and encourage opportunity among the lower classes, Brown is freighting in a convicted monopolist and a horde of bankers and fat-cats some of which are heads of corporations that have been criticised for predatory and/or unfair practises. Hmmmm.. Can't wait 'til the advice starts flowing. "Well everyone, what's the best thing to encourage competition in business"? Patents for everything and tax cuts for the exceptionally rich? Sure thing, no problem now that I can push it through Parliament without a proper debate. Seat in the House of Lords? Two million to you guv but make it untraceable, know what I mean?
Sick country man, a really sick country.
Hmmmmmm..... Deep fried and look like Squirrel.
The text of the bills says that "A Minister of the Crown may by order make provision for ... reforming legislation..." The commentary seems to suggest that this means forcing an immediate vote of the full House of Commons. Is that correct? I guess I don't know what an "order" is in this context.
Any Brits wish to enlighten an ignorant American on your legal terminology?
Now Blair can't sell peerages to it; he's going to close it. Well I guess that will sort out the corruption but I don't think that's what we had in mind.
*Warning* Some and/or all of this might be crap
Britain never had a social revolution like some other nations had and so never really had a defining moment where a well thought out governing body was created. What we have is merely the *current state* of a body that has been developing for almost 800 years.
In the beginning, sort of, we had kings. Think of kings as CEOs that hold 95% of the nations stock. Now kings can be great, they take speedy decisions and keep everything running nicely, but trouble occurs when you have ones that aren't really up to the job. When King John was forced to accept Magna Carta in 1215 (almost 800 years ago folks) limits were set that underpin most of out current concepts of the limitation of executive power, regulation of inheritance and taxation and separation of Church and executive. Of particular note are articles 1, 14 and 21 namely:
Article 1 - The freedom of the Church from royal interference
In the first place we have granted to God, and by this our present charter confirmed for us and our heirs forever that the English Church shall be free, and shall have her rights entire, and her liberties inviolate...
Article 14 - The creation of a common "counsel", the origin of Parliament
And for obtaining the common counsel of the kingdom anent the assessing of an aid (except in the three cases aforesaid) or of a scutage, we will cause to be summoned the archbishops, bishops, abbots, earls, and greater barons, severally by our letters; and we will moveover cause to be summoned generally, through our sheriffs and bailiffs, and others who hold of us in chief, for a fixed date, namely, after the expiry of at least forty days, and at a fixed place; and in all letters of such summons we will specify the reason of the summons. And when the summons has thus been made, the business shall proceed on the day appointed, according to the counsel of such as are present, although not all who were summoned have come.
Article 21 - The right to a trial by jury of one's peers
Earls and barons shall not be amerced except through their peers, and only in accordance with the degree of the offense.
There's plenty of other stuff in there too. The fact that John repealled Magna Carta a few weeks later gets glossed over by most commentaters. The document is not a current statute and does not "underpin" UK law. The idea of a common counsel persisted and over the next few centuries the two Houses developed slowly. The Lords represented the interests of the land-owning nobility and the Commons represented the merchant classes and villeins. Nobody represented the lowest sections of society. The Commons became the most powerful of the two in the 1700s
Before WWI, Britain had a parliamentary crisis. The elected (Liberal) Commons was unable to pass any laws as they were routinely blocked by a belligerent (Conservative) Lords. The Liberal Party drew up The Parliament Act with the intent of emasculating the House of Lords. The Lords, of course, had no intention of assenting to this and so we had the last major interference in the parliamentary process by the monarch*. King George V told the Lords that if they did not consent to the Bill then he would create as many new Liberal peers as it would take to pass it anyway. The Lords were left with no alternative but to agree and the ability of the Lords to wield any real force in UK politics vanished.
Nowadays, the Lords has no control over financial Bills. The Lords may make amendments to non-finance Bills, or reject them outright, after which the Bill is returned to the Commons for further scrutiny. If the Commons agree to the revisions then the Bill goes for Royal Assent, if the changes are rejected then it goes back to the Lords in its original form. After the Lords has rejected a Bill three times the Commons can invoke a clause in the Parliament Act that allows the Commons to bypass the Lords' assent. The Bill is then passed for Royal Assent. No monarch has refu
Travelling forward in time at a rate of 1 second per second.
Rubbish.
History has shown that whenever a rag tag army gets together during a militaristic dictatorship, it would be *behind* the dictator, and in fact often culpable of the worst of his crimes. When the at least disciplined professional troops or policemen would decline to be involved in an atrocity, a crazed volunteer bunch would be willing to lend their imaginative efforts.
The first thing such governments do is to turn people against each other. Letting people have guns is meaningless, because the gun owners are the ones who form the militias, and who gets rewarded by the government with the powers to keep the rest of the population in check. Armed mobs of civilians swept the Nazis into power, and then they organised clubs to train the youth in military tactics. Armed and anarchic mobs of students conducted the cultural revolution. Ordinary people, equipped with weapons the state handed out, conducted the Rawandan massacre. When was the last time there was a totalitarian state where the people would rebel - if only they had the guns to do so?
Until people stop being idiots who will buy into any and all propaganda they find, guns in the hands of the majority are just as likely to be tools of oppression as they are liberation.
Ahem. The original quote is from "Star Wars: A New Hope". Grand Moff Tarkin made this statement to General Tagge (leader of the Imperial Fleet) in one of the conference rooms aboard the Death Star.
Yes, I am that big of a geek. No, I didn't like Ep1 or Ep2. Let's just stay quiet about Ep3.
Regards,
Ross
This may have been covered in a comment already, but I didn't see it.
People are discussing the mechanisms in the UK and Canada to pass a law w/o running it thru parliment, and my understanding of these mechanisms is that they work much like "Executive Orders" do in the US.
The president can sign an executive order and it becomes the law of the land. It can be circumvented by Congress and the Supreme Court, but not easily.
Can't we just outsource it? I'm sure india would be happy to have back the british empire.
what we need to start doing is hanging the fuckers who stick 'em all together like that
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
+6 ABSOLUTELY TRUE...
Not only 'V for Vendetta' really sucked but that totalitarian kind of government only exists in those sick theocracies. Unfortunately, most people will naively interpret the movie literally and think it's a mirror reflection on US an UK governments...
...that Parliament was going to be blown-up on Nov. 5!
(Great movie BTW, go see it!)
Is Capitalism Good for the Poor?
This reminds me a lot of the passing of the bill that brought the Canadian Goods and Services Tax (GST) into existence. It was tremendously unpopular, and Prime Minister Brian Mulroney's government, despite having an overwhelming majority in the House of Commons, could not get the bill through the Senate*.
The rules state that if a bill fails third reading in the Senate (being passed down to the Commons for modifications after each reading), the bill is sunk, finished. After failing second reading, Mulroney found an archaic provision somewhere that allowed a sitting prime minister to increase the size of the Senate in a time of emergency, or some such wording.
Apparently, being unable to pass a terminally unpopular bill was a sufficient emergency. Mulroney stacked the Senate with just enough of his friends to pass the bill, defeating one of the checks and balances that limited the power of the Prime Minister.
Incidentally, Brian Mulroney lost the next federal election, taking his party from a record 212 seats in 1984 to just 2 seats in 1992. He was the most unpopular prime minister in Canadian history, and the only one who so completely killed his party.... a party that has recently made a comeback with Stephen Harper at the helm.
__________________*The Canadian Senate is kind of a compromise between the British House of Lords and a more modern senate. Its members are appointed by the sitting prime minister, and used to sit around the Red Chamber until they died, until a retirement age of 70 was finally set.
Find environmentally and socially responsible products on http://buy-right.net
Except for the English Civil War, though of course a lot of that was rolled back in the Reformation.
Odd no one seems to have referenced the new movie V for Vendetta yet; seems quite apposite.
...even when it's something that has nothing to do with Bush.
This thread is a perfect example. They're screaming gloom and doom about how democracy is dying in the USA...while in reality democracy is dying in the UK in the hands of the Left and nothing of the sort is happening in the USA.
Bush appoints a couple of Supreme Court judges that actually think that the US Constitution means what it says, as opposed to being a "living document" that means what the current Leftist trend says it means...and the nutty Left screams that Bush is killing democracy.
Perhaps if they feel this way, they should all move en masse from the USA to the UK. The socialist paradise is being created in the UK. No more conservatives blocking laws from passing...in fact, no more conservatives.
Those paying attention would have noticed most western nations are trying to remove many checks and balances on government activities.
Jeez, some people can't read English. It worked for us, until it stopped working.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Yes, that is the answer.
Or more practically, maybe a large group (>= 10,000?) of people could decide to make a certain year a "we don't pay taxes" year. I'd probably join em. The nerve of our government! They want our money, but won't send out a nice bill indicating how much we owe. Sure, perhaps it's prohibitively expensive to figure out the complexities of each individual's taxes owed. But then again, it's largely their own damn fault for making the tax code such a mess.
They don't even make the envelope to the IRS postage paid!
Bottom line:
I never agreed to all the services they provide.
If I'm actually paying it's just because I'm too much of a coward to stand up to their threats of imprisonment.
-------
Incite and flee.
"It is with great reluctance that I have agreed to this calling. I love democracy. I love the Republic. Once this crisis has abated, I will lay down the powers you have given me!"
Oh, and mod parent up.
You may well be right, the early modern period isn't my strong point. I generally regard all of the Protectorate's efforts as wasted with the exception of an end to Divine Right. Apart from banning Christmas, theatres and fun in general I don't know what practical differences the Protectorate made in Government. People were, for the most part, happy to get their king (and entertainment) back. Odd isn't it how it's called the English Civil War when it was a British civil war encompassing England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland. The English Civil War was between King Stephen and the Empress Maud in the 12th Century.
Travelling forward in time at a rate of 1 second per second.
There is a lot of noise in the UK online community about this. There is a campaign to stop the Bill at http://www.saveparliament.org.uk/ which also has lots and lots of information and links.
If you're in the UK, join up and help us fight!
If you're not, wish us luck...
-- "There's no explaining the things that might happen; there's now a new home for technology in fashion."
I think you mean "Restoration". But what about the revolution of 1688? Constitutional historians usually make a bigger fuss over that than over "The English Revolution" or whatever-you-callit.
Except that it is recursively applicable.
So the provisions about new offences having sentences of less than two years could be torn up without Parliamentary oversight - under the provisions of the Bill that introduced it!
And H.M. Govt. has specifically refused to make any legislation 'safe' from this - including laws like Magna Carta (1215) and the Habeas Corpus Act (1679) - meaning that pretty much every bit of law in the UK would be up for 'revision' at the whim of ministers.
British civil war encompassing England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland.
Erm, speaking as an Irishman, don't call me British. Cheers. According to Irish legend the original "brit tribe" originally came from Ireland anyway, so perhaps we had better call it an Irish civil war. Still maximum kudos on the grandparent post, it clarifies a lot of stuff. MOD GP UP!
What he can't kill, he has sex on. Trent.
Well lets face it, most of us aren't actually fit to choose who governs us anyway as we rely on the british press to decide what is good or bad for the country. This would be the same british press who decided that it wasnt worth covering this bill. With this in mind it's not surprising that the ministers want to cut them out of the loop.
I can see a number of issues arising in the next few years in Britain which there is no alternative to, but that the British people and hence our elected representatives will never allow to pass.
One example of this is going to be the Nuclear power plant building program to provide the electricity to power the desalination plants we need(Southern Britain is currently having a drought would anyone believe?)
I dont read
I am: I've just written to my local MP (who happens to be a conservative):
Fellow Brits - write to your MPs www.writetothem.com
The fact that John repealled Magna Carta a few weeks later gets glossed over by most commentaters.
I wish I had known that when I was in school and the history teacher took an assembly telling us all about how wonderful Magna Carta was and how it was the foundation of modern democracy. "Excuse me, Sir, but what about when King John repealed it a few weeks later?"
Yes. High school was a long, long time ago....
Parliament is not to be made redundant, just maybe the Lords, unelected peers... (although they do work as our checks and balances!)
I suppose to be fair to the Magna Carta it goes like this:
public class Parliament{
int year;
For (year=1215, year < 1721, year++){
If King = strong Repeal(MagnaCarta)
Else Invoke(MagnaCarta)
}
} When the rulers were strong enough to throw off their shackels they did. Not that this would ever happen today....
Travelling forward in time at a rate of 1 second per second.
I thought the folks some Americans funded for years (until 9/11 when it became unfashionable) wanted to be part of the Republic of Ireland, not in the same boat as the rest of the UK? or was this all a clever CIA plan?
Well, y'know you're more British than the English are.
"Britons" was the name given by the Romans to all the inhabitants of Britannia, Caledonia and Hibernia (Island of Winter) What is now England and Wales became Romano-British. After the legions left in 410AD increasing intrusion by Germanic tribes (Jutes, Angles and Saxons) pushed the Romano-British out to the fringes. The Cornish, Welsh and those in Lowland "Scotland" remained Britons and the rest became the land of the Angles (Angleland=England).
Therefore, by the original definition of who is "British" and who isn't, the Irish and Highland Scots are more British than the Cornish, Welsh and Lowland Scots and the English aren't British at all.
Germans go home!!
Travelling forward in time at a rate of 1 second per second.
At the time of the Cival War, Ireland was very much part of the United Kingdom.
"enacted by the Queen's most Excellent Majesty" I'm English and I've never heard this turn of phrase before. Party on Liz!
Correct me if I'm wrong, but it was my understanding that he lied about his relationship with a subordinate, in a hearing concerning allegations of sexual harrassment. In this context, lying about a blowjob is a very significant perjury. Not that I'm defending Bush, mind you.
Abolish Copyright. Restore Freedom.
The orders in question are Regulatory Reform Orders. They already exist and you can see the amount of scrutiny and debate they go through here:
/ regulatory_reform_committee/regulatory_reform_orde rs.cfm
http://www.parliament.uk/parliamentary_committees
So they can be voted down by a huge backbench rebellion, but won't get the kind of scrutiny a Bill gets. Under the old Act they can only be used in a fairly limited set of circumstances, but this Bill widens those.
In a nutshell, democracy is the modern justification for power (meaning government, i.e. organized coercion, or the existence of a special "right" to initiate force). Democracy is the new religion, if you will (power was typically justified by religion in the past), and the "god" is the voting process (this is where the faith part comes in). To be a follower, you not only need to believe that coercion is a productive solution; you need to believe that coercion is morally justified when voted upon. You also need to accept the theory that, while human nature says it is immoral and unjust for a group of people to initiate force against another group, it is somehow moral and just for the first group to delegate that initiation of force to government.
Democracy is simply a means to justify what human nature says is immoral: employing coercion, rather than voluntary association, as the solution. It's not rocket science, and there is little moral difference between pure democracy (mob rule) and the democratic republic. Under the hood, both systems accomplish the same thing: to justify power with a voting process.
I don't know about you, but given the choice between a monarchy which more or less respects most of my god-given human rights, and a democracy which more or less does not, I'd take the monarchy every time. It's the bottom line that matters, not the process, and the bottom line is that democracy (or the democratic republic) has proven to result in continuous expansion of power throughout its lifetime. Do you trust it? I don't.
The bane of poiticians' lives is people who ignore stuff as it's going through the process, ignore all attempts to consult them personally (ok so there haven't been any on this bill, but I'm making a general point), then whine after the decision has been made that they "haven't been consulted".
This Abolition of Parliament Bill has been discussed in all reasonable places you'd expect to find politics discussed (newspapers, BBC, etc) for months now. If you can't be arsed to keep up then you're one of the "silent majority" who will have been "deemed" to "agree" with the policy because they didn't complain.
(Personally I don't have to do anything more about this, having helped ensure last year that our local yes-woman Labour MP was replaced by someone who actually cares about democracy and civil liberties and that stuff, so that changes the voting figures in the right direction by two.)
Are you saying that Big Ben is actually a huge death ray?
(And yes, for the pedants, I mean the clock tower and not the bell.)
...because there were very few television sets before the World War 2. For example 200 worldwide in 1936.
You may be thinking about newsreel.
As for the "more people voted in Big brother than in the general election" line, which is often said, does anyone know whether this represents individual voters, or is it mainly due to loonies voting repeatedly?
Reduce, reuse, cycle
Divine right was mainly an affectation of Charles I anyway. Most previous kings would have found the idea pretty laughable, too.
. . . my people had the good sense to get on a boat and get the hell off that dreary island.
If you want a proper house of review (and you should) then you bloody well elect one.
Actually, the whole house of review concept was always meant to be a non-elected body.
One of the major checks and balances built into the US constitution was that the Senate was unelected. They founders thought it would be a huge error to have both houses elected--the point of the Senate was an unelected body that was separated from politics. (Which is why certain types of decisions pass through the Senate--such as the approval of judge appointments.)
All that became horribly messed up by the direct election of Senators. Since they are now directly elected, but still have powers that were granted to them based on the idea that they weren't directly elected, they've completely disbalanced the system. (The only thing that makes the Senate work as a house of review is the fact that the constituency borders, since they're states, cannot be artificially gerrymandered. It'd be cool if they were elected in a different system, a change I'm open to.)
It can happen to anyone...
Although a state legislature, the Queensland Parliament (Australia) which was bicameral had a number of problems with the review process... oddly, I don't remember ever hearing why. While the Legislative Assembly (Lower) was representitive, the Legislative Council (Upper) was appointed by the Governer who is the Queen's representative.
The Legislative Council in 1922 committed suicide and voted itself out of existance, creating the only unicameral legislature in Australia (and one of the only one's based on the Westminster system).
While some thing this has led to some progressive times for Queensland, it also allowed Sir Joh Belke-Petersen as premier from 1968 to about 1987/88 to run a virtual police state with rigged electoral boundaries, rampant police corruption and midnight demolitions by the infamous Dean bros on some of Queensland's priceless heritage architecture.
Australia's federal system has had it's share of criticism, particularly relating to synchronisation of the sitting of the House of Reps and the Senate, which in the case of the block of supply during the Whitlam government resulted in the sacking of the Prime Minister by the Governer.
Currently of course, we have the only time in history (i think) where both legislatures are held by the conservatives (which in our country are called "The Liberals"). This is a whole new level of wierdness which will probably be written into Australian history books for decades and centuries to come.
A bipartisan or even non-partisan review legistlature which serves to keep a check on the representative legislature cannot be underestimated. Whether centerists, greenies or toffs, historically it seems to have done the trick.
"Keep the bastards honest." - Don Chip
If the Commons does end up legislating to bypass the Lords, I would hope the Queen would at least exercise her powers and tell them where to stick it. Remember it's not law until she says so.
Interesting. One of our cycle of legends tell of the original tribes (or as original as they could be for that era, they basically beat the stuffing out of whoever was there before them, that goes back for a bit) and the leaders who claimed certain lands. I'm a bit hazy on the details, but a fellow by the name of Britta claimed the island to the east apparently. There are all sorts of interesting cross roots in Irish language and legend. For example, in places the Gaelic bears striking similarities to of all things, Chinese. Ni Hao, in China, is hello, or literally, Not good? Where hao is good. I know thats stretching it a wee bit, but stick with me. The Irish for "no" or not good is Ní Ha. Theres lots more like that as well.
:P
And as far as I am concerned, the UK has been ruled by the French ever since the Normans.
What he can't kill, he has sex on. Trent.
Besides, some people see an advantage of separating the Head of State from the Head of Government.
As I recall, the Texas Constitution cleverly made the Lieutenant Governor more powerful than the Governor (on the day to the day basis.) I suspect they wanted a head of state to be different from the head of government, but also to distract people from where power really lies.
Up until relatively recent times, the only parts of Ireland (unwillingly) under direct crown control were Dublin and a few of the cities. The rest of it was largely Irish controlled. Calling that very much part of a "united kingdom" is really pushing the definition of united to its breaking point.
What he can't kill, he has sex on. Trent.
But the UK has no written constitution
The peculiar thing is, while the UK government has a history of playing around with the Constitution (in particularly right now) you can make the argument that it and Canada (which also doesn't have a written Constitution, and only got a charter of rights in the early 80s) have stuck to their "unwritten" rules and precedents much more than the US has to its written Constitution.
I hypothesize the following to explain this: in the UK and Canada, parliament is the steward of the constitution, and have a duty and obligation to make sure that the customs set by that (physically fragile) constitution are retained, because it is through the maintainance of those customs that the constitution (and thereby, the state and government) endures.
On the other hand, there is no steward, per se, of the US Constitution. The document stands by itself, with its nifty and complex system of checks and balances which places three very powerful entities across from each other. No one branch is responsible for the Constitution, so the duty to uphold it is taken less seriously. In effect, people in any one branch will try whatever, with the knowledge that if they do something really bad, it will be caught by someone else in another branch.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enabling_Act
(Parliament has been slowly losing legislative control for years due to the increasing volume of European legislation which it may not override)
Just like your city council, your state legislature, your Congress can pass any law it likes.
The EC is just another representative system. Read the Federalist Papers sometime. There are good reasons for the ways the House, Senate (originally), and President are selected - to balance competing interests within We the People.
Pure popular whim doesn't make good law - this is why the House (directly elected by district) serves such short terms, because the "will of the people" is fickle and changes all the time.
The Senate (chosen indirectly, through the sitting state Legislatures) are the "best of the best", probably selected from within that body as someone who has shown responsibility and talent and is capable of taking the long view for the best interest of their respective states. The ability to take a "long view" is what supposedly justifies a 6-year term. One significant interest of the state being to keep power to itself rather than giving it to the US Gov - keeping power close to home serves the interests of the people as well. That's the idea behind federalism.
The President likewise is chosen indirectly, through the Electoral College. The EC is not a permanently sitting body - they don't come into this duty with an agenda, and there is no benefit to them (politically) to choose one way or the other, because their "office" ceases to exist as soon as they've done their single job. The EC is chosen at the particular time a President is needed, expressly for that one purpose, so they can reflect the will of the nation at that specific time in order to choose the best leader.
The Constitution doesn't state that the popular vote be used to choose electors - in the early 19th c., state legislatures picked the electors in some states.
The enumeration of electors (equal to sum of the number of Representatives and Senators) reflects the need to balance the will of the people (House) and states (Senate) in a singular office (Presidency).
At least, that's how it's supposed to work. The 17th Amendment broke the model significantly. Abolishing the EC altogether would likewise be a colossal mistake. This doesn't mean it can't be tweaked in certain ways. States still get to decide how their electors are chosen. I imagine they will leave it to the popular vote, but they could allocate them by district, as is done in Nebraska and Maine (with the "Senate" votes going to the largest plurality winner), rather than "winner-takes-all" by state. (That strategy took hold in the mid-19th when partisan politics grew stronger at the state level - party leaders [short-sightedly] wanted to deliver their entire state for the presidential candidate of their party, but of course that works against them when a rival party gains power in their state.) Personally, I think those extra two votes could be used even better. One idea: simulate PR (proportional representation) a bit. For example, if your candidate gets 10% of the vote in your 10 EV state, but not enough in any one district to win it, give him one of those votes to reflect this. Second idea: since those two votes represent the states influence in the Executive branch, have the state legislatures pick those electors (as they were supposed to select Senators). Another possibility for a "tweak" is for the number of Representatives in the House to be increased, both to bring better representation to Congress, and to mitigate the effect of the smallest states having undue influence on the Presidency. (But with states losing influence in Congress due to the 17th Amendment and in the Presidency due to this, the concept of federalism really takes a beating. We need to repeal the 17th.)
FYI, I was chosen as a potential elector by my party in 2004. I didn't get to serve because my party's candidate didn't win here. But I did put quite a bit of time and effort into learning the history of the system to understand why it works the way it does.
Constitutionally Correct
They do have a queen, but from what I hear but Elton John isn't really that much into politics.
What if the Hokey Pokey really is what it's all about?
Correct, and agreed! But the parent has a point - history does show that state-level partisanship began having undue influence in choosing Senators. If fact, it would hold up the process so much that seats would sit vacant in Congress - this was the driving force behind the 17th Amendment. (Though its leading proponent later regretted it once he saw what the actual results were.) This problem has two solutions. One, to allow the state executive (governor) to appoint Senators to fill vacancies until such time as the legislature elects a permanent replacement. Currently, governors can only appoint Senators when the legislature is in recess. Two, enact a Condorcet voting system so that state legislatures are opened up to more than two parties, as a way to avoid gridlock in electing Senators.
Constitutionally Correct
linky
His Government just blocked an amendment that would prevent LRRB being used to abolish elections, imprison everyone etc.
We have already had the Civil Contingencies aka Nazi Enabling Act which gives near unlimited powers to Ministers in the event of an emergency (eg burning down the Reichstag).
We have already had the dreadful Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act forced upon us. RIPA can force ISPs to secretly install mass surveillance equipment or imprison you if you do not release your PGP keys.
And the insidious Identity Cards Bill is hanging like a Sword of Damocles over British privacy and freedom. ID cards are just a front for an unbelievably intrusive database that would make the Stasi blush. The excellent No2ID campaign cannot persuade the House of Lords to hold this up for much longer...
Other attacks on British freedom here.
As Woodrow Wilson pointed out:
Liberty has never come from Government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of it... The history of liberty is a history of limitations of governmental power, not the increase of it.
Whether you consider it your duty to protect Britain's freedom or whether it is merely expedient because you'd like to live here, please write to your MP and join the many campaigners who are dedicating their lives to this fight.
We already have our very own Enabling Bill under the Civil Contingencies 2004 Act.
It is exactly the same, except that any future Govt couldn't use it to abolish elections.
This is, of course, where LRRB comes in...
Main comment
To be honest, the Lords will probably stop this law straight off, since it certainly isn't in their best interests. If the Parliament Act is brought in, there truly will be outcry since this is the passing of a law that will devastate civil liberties unless this law is restricted only to minute things that have little effect on the world outside of the Commons. Hopefully, Tony Blair will step down as PM some time soon, let Gordon Brown take over then a Tory government can reclaim power once the next elections come along.
If we can hit that bull's-eye, the rest of the dominoes will fall like a house of cards... Checkmate.
It looks like the executive branch of the UK is seizing power, and we're seeing the same thing here in the US. We live in a time where democracy is spreading (I'm pretty sure over half of the countries in the world are "democratic"). At the same time, though, we're seeing more and more power concentrated in the hands of fewer and fewer people in those countries. George W. Bush has unprecedented power as President of the United States, and Tony Blair will, if this bill passes, will also have unprecedented powers. Even in places where the executive branch isn't seizing power, the top levels of government are increasingly intruding into people's lives. Not to mention the blatant corruption seen in many "democracies" and now beginning to manifest itself in the older, industrialized democracies. I'm not trying to sound like a nut, but it's enough to give any decent libertarian fits. Are they still taking people at Sealand?
Do you remember the 5th November.
V is for vendetta
An Order in Council is limited to interpreting existing legislation; it can't be used to make new laws. It still has to be signed by the Governer General to be valid. Oh, and the UK already has Orders in Council too. Finally, as others have noted, the Not Withstanding clause can only be used to override the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. You still have to go through the inconvenience of having a vote in parliament.
In short, the proposed UK legislation bears no resemblance to any existing Canadian procedures.
Yes, I'm saying that the Senate should revert to the old way of being elected - by the people indirectly via their elected representatives in their legislatures. The Senate is the house that represents the states at the federal level - how does electing Senators purely by the popular will fulfill that role? Senators should not be beholden directly to the people. (That's a laugh - do you think your senators see themselves personally accountable to you? If anything, they are less accountable.) They should be directly accountable to their state's interests - meaning that the legislature and governor have something to say about it. Accountability to a small group can be advantageous.
(Incidentally, this same problem is creeping into the House as well. Since membership was capped at 435, districts have grown tremendously in size. By the ratio that the Founders thought appropriate, we'd need about 8000 in the House today. This results in Representatives who are not particularly accountable, either. Today we have technology that can make meetings of that large a group feasible. We could easily increase this limit to 1000, at least.)
It doesn't particularly matter to me if the various states have different ways of electing their Senators. It's their Senator, let them decide how to do it. Why do you want to take control away from them, when it's none of your business?
Maybe people with deep pockets were elected Senators pre-17th. But heck, those are the only people being elected now, because they are the only people that can afford to run! I think every single Senator in office today is a millionaire.
The problem is not campaign contributions. Americans spend more on potato chips than we contribute to political campaigns. "Tightening up" the system with more restrictions will not help, but will only further entrench incumbents. The best way to fix the system is to open it up - make voters free to vote for alternatives to the Duopoly (who are mostly interested in maintaining the status quo). Condorcet voting makes alternative parties into realistic options, because there is no such thing as a "wasted vote". Why do we, as Americans, believe there are only two valid points of view? We don't need to reform campaign finance, but the voting system.
Government funding for campaigns is the absolutely worst possible idea. First of all, you'd be letting the people in charge give themselves money so that they can try to stay in charge. What sense does that make? Second, I may disagree with you on every single issue, but if I were a candidate you'd be forced to contribute your money (through taxes) to me - that's unconscionable! It isn't moral nor ethical for me to take your money in this situation. This is why government should be limited to the bare minimum required to perform its essential duties - anything more and you'll encounter unnecessary conflicts of conscience as some people are forced to support things they don't agree with. It's not right to force someone to violate his/her conscience. I believe in this so strongly that I'd refuse government money if I ran for office, even if I qualified for it. This (freedom of conscience) is a big reason I joined the CP.
BTW: Notice that you do have to "qualify" for gov't money - and who sets those qualifications? The people in charge. Do you trust them to make it easy for anyone to challenge them? If you believe that, I've got a trustworthy fox that would love to guard your henhouse...
If we remove power from government (by limiting it to its Constitutional functions - what a concept!), there becomes less reason for "big money" to bribe officeholders with campaign contributions. The problem isn't the money, it's the power! People should be free to spend their money however they want. Instead, remove the incentive to bribe!
Constitutionally Correct
My MP is Jim Fitzpatrick, an individual I have very little respect for.
When I wrote to him prior to the vote on the Iraq war, he responded that he had to vote his conscience. And here was me thinking that actually, he was there to vote MY conscience, or at least, the general consensus of his constituents.
Anyway, here is his reply to a letter I sent him on this issue:
Dear Mr.XXXXX,
Thank you for your e mail. I will write to you on this. I hope to be
able persuade you that this is not a fascist administration,
Yours etc,
Jim
Yours etc, ? What is that about ?
Now Blair can't sell peerages to it; he's going to close it.
And then, once it's empty, we'll be able to conduct that long-awaited experiment and finally find out how many holes it takes to fill the House of Lords.
Downmodding is the refuge of the weak. Don't downmod, make a better argument!
No revolution? Parliament beheaded a fucking king, for crap's sake. Not too long before that, someone tried to blow up Westminster. Then there was that matter with a few rebellious colonies....
yeah, yeah, yeah
so there was the whole Guy Fawkes thing and the beheading thing and the Boston tea thing and some oath-breakers pushing their luck in the colonies but nothing really changed. The government was still the government and the downtrodden masses were still the downtrodden masses but at least they got Christmas back.
What we had was internal strife in the ruling class rather than a major social upheaval. The Peasant's Revolt in the 14th Century might have been more successful if it hadn't been led by peasants.
Britain has no National day. No "Independence Day", no "Revolution Day", and no "Bastille Day" unless you buy the "Caress of Steel" album by Rush. There's plenty of nations with "Hurray, we got independence from Britain" days but for us, sadly, there's nothing similar.
Travelling forward in time at a rate of 1 second per second.