Abolish The House Of Lords?

[Bobbisox1]

Or reduce them?
These people are unelected and sit sleeping in lovely upholstered leather chairs, have a ‘ smoking’ room, have the best of the best meals and the best ales and spirits all subsidised from the tax payer.....
Whilst not far away on the Thames embankment , lies dozens of homeless people ,

[youngmafbog]

I'm with TTT (First post)

[Apc2604]

And no more Lord and Ladyships. Call it something different too. It needs to be seen as a safety guard that the House of Lords is meant to be. And no political allegiance to any political party (not publically anyway!)

[Zacs-Master]

'get rid of all but the ones that are experts in their fields which would would reduce their numbers greatly , the ones left could then tackle certain things like Medical matters and legal matters'

Could be applied to Answerbank. Should weed out a few ad-nauseam CB posters anyway.

[Canary42]

But we'd miss you Zacs

[Peter Pedant]

// the ones left could then tackle certain things like Medical matters and legal matters//

hmm I wrote to dead leg Lord Deshant previously Leonard Alexander posonby goodbody smythe (sir) and said
sir, you are a one - you pioneered elections for the GMC 1970 and here you are thirty years later pioneering legislation to discenfranchise them! DO you have any sense of irony you old fool or is it a short memory?

and the now dead Lord Deshant wrote back
my Lord please ! and not Sir!
I am a medical lord and that means I have agreed to pioneer steer but not change legislation introduced by the current govt.
which I do very very well in my medical opinion
go awa y and be governed sir, we do it your very best interests!

so there you are Bobbi
you now know what medical lords do

[Canary42]

Do we need the HoL ? Well, the problem with a democracy is that the majority can totally disregard/exploit/beatup the minority, which is hardly fair (we saw that with the Brextremists trying to suppress the Remoaners' riight to free speech for example).

I understood the HoL was there to prevent this imbalance (not saying whether it's effective or not, that's a different argument possibly).

But the present arrangement does seem to outrageously reward some fairly lazy duffers, so I do think we need a different selection/qualification method.

I don't think an Industry/Commerce Bigwigs panel is the answer, the CBI seem pretty influential already.

I would like to try a random selection from General Public for a trial period, with service being limited to a year (with sabbatical leave from job and guaranteed return, a bit like maternity leave). We could then review it after a few years. It does need careful thought - e.g. do we exclude anybody (similar to jury duty for example), is it compulsory, etc etc.

It would IMHO be an interesting experiment.

Thought ?

[steg]

Aye an elected upper chamber with boaty mcboatface, Churchill the dug, the ghost of Screaming lord Sutch, oor wullie, muhammad Akbar, the leading candidates.

Could you trust the public to vote in better

[Bobbisox1]

Hi Steggers, always a pleasure seeing you :0)

[andres]

Just got back to this. Thanks bobbisox .

[Bobbisox1]

You’re welcome Andres

[david small]

The Lords are entrenched so deeply into the system. Like limpets with friends. You’ll have to prise their privileges from their dead cold hands.