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The House of Lords is becoming a joke (it's just a place an exiting Prime Minister sends their mates now), but hereditary peers were abolished in 1999. Also, th

The House of Lords is becoming a joke (it's just a place an exiting Prime Minister sends their mates now), but hereditary peers were abolished in 1999. Also, the HOL often pushes back on the more extreme legislation the MPs try to get through the House of Commons. But i agree the unelected nature of it is undemocratic. It should be replaced with a second elected house that can perform the same role of putting a check on the HOC. Full HOL reform would be a good way to start the move towards a proportional representation electoral system in the UK. Make the reformed second chamber a PR elected house and give them a slightly longer/fixed period between elections to shield them from the chaos of a general election and party politics.

djaychela 4y ago
>Full HOL reform would be a good way to start the move towards a proportional representation electoral system in the UK. Make the reformed second chamber a PR elected house and give them a slightly longer/fixed period between elections to shield them from the chaos of a general election and party politics. This is the best suggestion I've seen on HoL reform, ever. I mean, it'll never happen, but that really is a great idea, and would mean that the chamber would be clearly different from the Commons, which I've not seen another proposal making sense on this area.
dane-pgp 4y ago
> hereditary peers were abolished in 1999. Mostly abolished. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/By-elections_to_the_House_of_Lords https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/By-elections_to_the_House_of_L...
cma 4y ago
Lots of sketchy heredity stuff possible through the King/Queen: https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_prerogative_in_the_United_Kingdom https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_prerogative_in_the_Unit...
tomp 4y ago
> Full HOL reform would be a good way to start the move towards a proportional representation electoral system in the UK. Ah, another one of those “if I were a dictator” comments… UK citizens have democratically decided they don’t want proportional representation. But I guess you don’t care
- zo1 4y ago
  It's quite odd to me how we "hand wave" individual rights using the term "democratic" as if there is something intrinsic and unquestionable about it. LIke, sure 60% voted "democratically" for a decision to go one way. But what about the other 40%?
- anigbrowl 4y ago
  No they haven't. They decided they don't want ranked choice voting (known in the UK as the 'alternative vote'). Proportional representation is a different system, which the minority Liberal Democrat party and others had long argued for and quite a lot of people regarded the substitution as a form of bait-and-switch. Additionally some had reservations about the scheduling of the referendum to overlap with local elections in parts of the UK. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_United_Kingdom_Alternative_Vote_referendum#Passage_through_Parliament https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_United_Kingdom_Alternativ...
- Conscat 4y ago
  That comes off as a childish understanding of what votes in a representational democracy actually mean.
- Mordisquitos 4y ago
  > UK citizens have democratically decided they don’t want proportional representation. When was that?
  - tomp 4y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_United_Kingdom_Alternative_Vote_referendum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_United_Kingdom_Alternativ...
    - wizzwizz4 4y ago
      That wasn't about proportional representation: that was about instant run-off: it's a vote counting algorithm, not an algorithm for assigning seats. For that referendum, they picked the worst simple voting system that was better than first-past-the-post, so I'm not terribly surprised it didn't win. https://ncase.me/ballot/ https://ncase.me/ballot/ discusses these voting systems in more detail.

djaychela 4y ago

>Full HOL reform would be a good way to start the move towards a proportional representation electoral system in the UK. Make the reformed second chamber a PR elected house and give them a slightly longer/fixed period between elections to shield them from the chaos of a general election and party politics. This is the best suggestion I've seen on HoL reform, ever. I mean, it'll never happen, but that really is a great idea, and would mean that the chamber would be clearly different from the Commons, which I've not seen another proposal making sense on this area.

dane-pgp 4y ago

> hereditary peers were abolished in 1999. Mostly abolished. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/By-elections_to_the_House_of_Lords https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/By-elections_to_the_House_of_L...

cma 4y ago

Lots of sketchy heredity stuff possible through the King/Queen: https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_prerogative_in_the_United_Kingdom https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_prerogative_in_the_Unit...

tomp 4y ago

> Full HOL reform would be a good way to start the move towards a proportional representation electoral system in the UK. Ah, another one of those “if I were a dictator” comments… UK citizens have democratically decided they don’t want proportional representation. But I guess you don’t care

zo1 4y ago
It's quite odd to me how we "hand wave" individual rights using the term "democratic" as if there is something intrinsic and unquestionable about it. LIke, sure 60% voted "democratically" for a decision to go one way. But what about the other 40%?
anigbrowl 4y ago
No they haven't. They decided they don't want ranked choice voting (known in the UK as the 'alternative vote'). Proportional representation is a different system, which the minority Liberal Democrat party and others had long argued for and quite a lot of people regarded the substitution as a form of bait-and-switch. Additionally some had reservations about the scheduling of the referendum to overlap with local elections in parts of the UK. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_United_Kingdom_Alternative_Vote_referendum#Passage_through_Parliament https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_United_Kingdom_Alternativ...
Conscat 4y ago
That comes off as a childish understanding of what votes in a representational democracy actually mean.
Mordisquitos 4y ago
> UK citizens have democratically decided they don’t want proportional representation. When was that?
- tomp 4y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_United_Kingdom_Alternative_Vote_referendum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_United_Kingdom_Alternativ...
  - wizzwizz4 4y ago
    That wasn't about proportional representation: that was about instant run-off: it's a vote counting algorithm, not an algorithm for assigning seats. For that referendum, they picked the worst simple voting system that was better than first-past-the-post, so I'm not terribly surprised it didn't win. https://ncase.me/ballot/ https://ncase.me/ballot/ discusses these voting systems in more detail.