The latest list of honours includes a 27 year old welsh activist Carmen Smith .
The latest and youngest Life Peer
Never heard of her ?
Nor has anyone else outside of the Welsh Nationlists
What has she done to be honoured ?
Sweet FA.
She has however landed a job for life which in her case could be 60 years.
A job paid for by the tax payer which while it does not have a salary as such includes generous perks and ‘attendance allowance ‘
For contributing what exactly to this country ?
I had to look up who Carmen Smith is. From what I’ve just seen and read, she doesn’t sound boring to me - she seems startlingly different to the usual HoL appointments!
At least she hasn’t been granted the position as a
“Sweetener” or “quid pro quo” by the Prime Minister or for donating to party funds, so that makes a change.
Reading excerpts from an interview with her, it seems she agrees that the House of Lords should be abolished.
“I don’t believe in the House of Lords” she said “It’s an unelected chamber and it’s not a diverse space. But I believe that we should have Welsh voices anywhere where legislation is made that affects people in Wales.”
“Until the Lords doesn’t exist we should be represented there. And hopefully the work I can do will bring more voices into that space. Perhaps make that space look different as well.”
Thanks for sharing a bit more insight into Carmen Smith. I agree, such a person is needed in the Lords - young, bit rebellious, not traditional home counties. The Lords is a strange upper chamber - a mix of the very experienced, those favoured by the party in power, the donors, the hereditary…
What is the criteria for nomination? None
Why is it life time tenure? It could be a maximum of maybe ten years.
Why is it so many people? Surely 2-300 is enough.
What do other countries have as an upper chamber?
In Canada, we have an unelected Senate which is supposed to be the “chamber of sober second thought.” Yeah, right. It’s different from the US Senate which actually tries to do work. In the past, our members had to be recalled from Mexico for a vote. Many of the members are patronage appointments. They’re not supposed to be affiliated with a party, but of course they are.
I would like to see one of the following happen to our Senate:
abolish it
become an elected body–good time to use proportional representation for a couple of election cycles.
What is the point of house of lords apart from upper class wealthy people who fall asleep while waiting for their subdidised lunches and claim huge expense for attending . I believe £300 per day from the british taxpayers . What do they do for the people , how do they make a difference in all their waffling . What are they for ?
Someone try and change my way of thinking because all i see is its a club a very posh club
My limited understanding is that there are benefits from having an upper chamber. Which different from saying the current UK set up works well and is all beneficial. Many other countries have a similar lower chamber for reviewing legislation and an upper chamber for making challenges to try to avoid bad legislation. The UK is a bit unusual in it has an unelected executive (in that the PM and the cabinet are determined by elected party and not directly by voters) and an unelected upper chamber. And that it is almost only the executive that proposes new legislation (ok, so there are limited number of private member bills). But the UK upper chamber cannot propose new legislation, which happens in some countries, it can only review legislation passed up from the lower chamber.
But I fully agree that the mix of people in the lords, the life peerages and also the total number of peers is all wrong. And its effectiveness of reviews can seem to limited.
Thanks for your reply . But what good do they do and bring to the people . What are they for . All these upper and lower chambers can flush themselfs away and wouldnt be missed . I think its all about keeping the big boys and girls together and scratching each others backs . Who is a Lord and why is Lord Sugar a lord , who gave it to him. I believe lordships are inherited and this is all very draining on broken britain . They wouldnt know about that though would they .
Tony Blair did away with the majority of hereditary Lords when he was PM but some remain . Which is IMO wrong
Why should a man have a say in Government because of what his ancestors did ?
The House of Lords is an undemocratic body, where un-elected lawmakers take part in political decision-making without democratic accountability or representation.
Life peers are also undemocratic but are appointed by the prime minister, who commands a majority in the commons,
Others are elected because of their political allegiance ie Carmen Smith .
I would like to see peers elected because they have actually done something to deserve the honour .
There seems to be consensus here that the House of Lords is too expensive, not representative, full of people who got there for dubious reasons, full of people who it is difficult to see if they can add any more to debates on legislation than you or me. And also too full of people who often seem not to do much at all - not attend, doze when there or say nothing. But the principle of an upper and lower chamber is well founded and I would argue needed.
The upper chamber should round off poor legislation, or even stop it completely.
The lower chamber are our elected representatives. The UK, like most democracies, has a representative democracy - we vote for parties and people to enact the type of things we want to see (correction - it should be that the government enacts what the majority of people want to see).
The only other alternative is that we vote for one person and they do what they like. No thanks to that. I would argue that the upper and lower chambers would be missed and what we would get is a lot worse.
Britain is so close to being a democracy it is beyond belief that it doesn’t abolish the HoL and create an elected upper house, rather than continuing to stuff it full of the ruling party’s mates.
Another missed opportunity with the refurbishment of the Palace of Westminster was to build a purpose built Parliament somewhere in the centre of the country (where land is cheaper) and have the current one as a money spinning tourist attraction.
Let’s face it the current one can’t even hold all the elected MPs (or so I read) and it is not even very old. Only Westminster Hall and a chapel survived the 19th century fire as I recall (from a school visit).
Thanks for that info. I guess one worry about also voting in candidates for an upper house is the risk of voter fatigue. But, I recall, Australia addresses this by making voting a legal requirement.
Yes, but the voting for upper and lower house are done at the same time
The Senate voting paper is very large, though no longer the tablecloth it used to be. Senate voting has also been made much simpler so it is no longer at the whim of the patry “how to vote cards” or involving numbering a hundred or more boxes.
The Senate is also the “States” house, each state elects the same number of members, this was to stop the larger states bullying the smaller states (the territories only have a 2 or 4 representatives - forget which).
