If you’re thinking along those lines, a better solution might be this: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=310125
Sorry, I am doing software update this morning, on dial-up. In four hours I might have bandwidth to follow links.
You know, I would very much like to see a breakdown of what the various Lords do (did) for a living. I have to admit that lots of them seem to be idle rich.
Just done some Googling. The very fact that it is virtually impossible to get a list of members of the House of Lords with biographies, or a breakdown by life experience etc. is grossly undemocratic. What other chamber of a democracy could that be said of?
A jury.
This is simply not true. Because they were not elected, the Lords were free to vote with their consciences. They chose to prefer the Conservatives much of the time, but didn’t always.
Now for my thoughts on the matter.
If the Upper House is elected, then the Parliament Act can no longer apply - because the basis of the PA is the rule of the people and the Commons would no longer be the only voice of the people. Establishing equality of the Houses is a non-starter: we went through that 100 years ago and the Parliament Act had to be introduced.
An unelected House also has the political advantage that the PM can promote or retire ‘deserving colleagues’ to it.
We currently have the benefit of the Lords Spiritual, Judicial, and Military - basically reach a certain rank and you become a Lord - and I think these are a net benefit.
I’d like to see both the above kept, but for the remainder, the bulk of the Lords (and the Lords would be a much smaller place), I’d actually like to invoke the precedent of the jury and of ancient Athens and see them randomly selected, pro rata on the tax they pay - say every £1,000 of tax you pay gets you one ‘chance’. This would have several advantages: it would encourage people to pay their taxes in the first place, the more successful people would be more likely to be selected (because they pay more tax), but a significant proportion would still be those who have to rely on common sense and the horselaugh test rather than acute intelligence. Appointments would not be permanent - a Royal Commission would weed out those who don’t contribute (q.v. Roman Senate).
OK, now have at it! 
It was simply true. Before reformation the Conservatives had a massive inbuilt majority among the hereditaries. They were called the backwoodsmen. In Tory Government times the composition of the normal working peers- those who attend regularly- was more evenly balanced, though still with a Tory majority. If Tory legislation was really threatened, the Tory party could call upon their rare attenders- the backwoodsmen- to come up from the country and save their legislation. The same force could be used in times of Labour Government to veto democratically passed legislation.
Good riddance to that system.
That is not logical. The First Chamber (The House of Government) would clarify who would run the Government and would give clear decisions (that is the only value of our first past the post system) A second chamber having the power to reform, delay and finally cause an election is useful, especially if it is kept beyond political bribery, is truly representational and uses its powers in a limited fashion. Maybe it should take a 2/3 majority in that house to cause a government to fall. Maybe the People’s House should also have other limits: a one term limit for the People’s House to avoid professionalism creeping in, people who had run for elective office or received national government appointment to a Quango or similar in the past ten years should also be excluded. The essence of my scheme is that it allows for a strong government in the Government House but limited by the checks of the People’s house. We just don’t have that now.
This IMHO is the main problem with our current system- the PM has too much patronage. This is now being stopped under our current temporary system.
Small nit pick- there are no Lords Miltary. Certain Judges sit as of right as do certain office holders in the Church of England.
Separation of Powers argues strongly against the existence of Judges in any Legislature.
Multi-cultural issues come into play with the Lords Spiritual. Why should the bishops of one minority religion in most of the UK (minimal Anglican presence in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland, and even a minority religion in terms of attendance in England) have seats in a legislature when Roman Catholics, Methodists, Presbyterians, Jews, Hindus, Moslems, Buddhists and Jedi Kinights do not.
My suggested House of the People is aimed at overcoming this- not all people would be willing or able to serve. A non-politicised house is a halfway house.
This is a truly amazing suggestion- a sort of super poll tax where Nicholas van Hoogstraten (BBC NEWS | UK | Hoogstraten freed after legal battle) would get thousands of votes, and I (a non tax payer) would get none. How bizarre. Oh, and BTW my contribution to the country at the minute is raising to pre-schoolers and teaching voluntarily in the local school and providing free training for nurses and carers of people with Learning Disabilities- obviously this disqualifies me from the political process. :smack:
I think that there may lurk inside you a democrat, but he’s hiding well. 
Of course that is part of the problem. I do not trust democracy. If we had democracy in US we would have (well fill in the blank with almost nutty idea you like). The central problem of modern government is not that it ignores the desires and wants of the masses, but rather that it caters and panders to them.
It is important that the majority rules, but only within strict limits. In the US these limits are structural. You have to fool half the Representatives and half the Senators, and dupe the Supreme Court too. In the UK, it seems the majority was once a bit hamstrung by Lords, but now that is no longer true.
If anything the problem in the UK is that everyone is at risk from the Government of the Day.
So you think its a great idea to have a right wing reactionary bunch of unqualified inbreds as some sort of moderating influence upon a body that have been elected in an open and free election ?
Why ?
And exactly how were they forced to vote for the Conservatives? They weren’t. They voted out of their own free will.
Are you suggesting that he’s a greater rogue than some members of the Commons?
They voted of their own free will, ok. But they were specifically selected to be right-wing tory land-owning autocrats. It would be surprising if they voted any other way.
Would you feel the same way if the House of Lords was made up with a group of other people voting of their own free will. Now lets see, we’ll select this group of people from Qualified Social Workers, the readership of The Guardian, members of Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth, and the Peace Union.
Now they can vote of their own free will. Well, blow me down, they seem to be supporting Labour, Lib Lab and Green Policies.
Its all fair though because “They voted out of their own free will.”
No. I’m suggesting that the amount of tax you paydoes not necessarily mean that you should have a concommitant amount of say in the Government. Wealth and tax generation are a poor guide to representation. I’m surprised you suggest it and would like to see it justified and defended by you as a reasonable approach under a variety of constitutional and treaty obligations.
If you want to give a political force multiplier (like they need it) to the rich and/or intelligent, see here: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=352334
The House of Lords has been, for well over a century, completely subordinate to the will of the majority party in the commons who could have flooded it with hundreds of political appointees for a trivial expenditure of administrative effort. The reason it is conservative is because historically British society has been conservative. The fact that the Lords has favoured ‘Tory’ or ‘Conservative’ viewpoints is neither here nor there - if Tony Blair give hereditary peerages to the entire readership of Socialist Worker and Class War, then the political composition of the Lords would change utterly, but it would not make the institution any different or any better. The Lords either makes sense irrespective of the beliefs of its members or it does not.
Having a second chamber that can act as a counterbalance to the momentary passions of the primary chamber is a common arrangement which has a lot to reccommend it. I don’t think the Lords was or is a particularly good arrangement though, since even though members are beyond the reach of the party whips it can be easily packed, and the appointments are far too arbitrary.
I also don’t think that slanting the system to prevent ‘professionalism’ is such a great idea - it takes time for people to get to grips with complex jobs, and a chamber full of neophytes would be at the mercy of the civil service, lobbyists, and more experienced politicians.
Absolutely wrong, the House of Lords has not been subordinate for well over a century, given that the Parliament Act was passed in 1911, in my book that makes it 95 years.
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/L1911.htm
You will also note that the power of the House of Lords was restricted more to the form that we would recognise today in 1949, this makes it even less and you even more wrong.
http://www.parliament.uk/works/parliament.cfm#parlacts
The second act was necessary because the term of each government was reduced and the time that the House of Lords could delay a bill would have effectively meant that that controversial bills would have not made it through the House of Commons.
The only reason that the first parliament act was passed was that the House of Lords had vetoed the Old Age Pensions Act and Parliament was dissolved so that the election that followed was effectively a public referendum on this piece of legislation.
When the new Government was formed, with the Liberals winning on that issue alone, the bill was again presented to the House of Lords which tried to veto it again.
This was too much and Asquith put a presented another bill to drastically cut the power of the House of Lords who then obviously made noises about vetoing this bill too.
It was only the threat from the then Monarch to flood the house with Liberal Lords who would have the same voting opinion as the House of Commons that both bills were passed, and it is only from this date that you can truly state that the House of Lords is completely subordinate to the House of Commons.
Even though the House of Lords has had much of its power reduced, effectively, their delaying power combined with filibustering in the House of Commons meant that controversial bills could run out of time, and although this power was used sparingly, it was always issues upon which the right wing of British politics disagreed that this elaying power was excercised, the House of Lords has never co-operated with the left wong polticians in order to delay a right wing government bill.
Its this partisan aspect of the House of Lords that makes it undemocratic.
You have to remember just what makes an Aristocrat, their inherited titles which are largely based upon whom their parents were, and absolutely no other qualification.
The laws of inheritance ensure that the House of Lords is almost exclusively male.
We are not a feudal society and the House of Lords is the last vestige of that, it cannot be considered part of a modern democratic state.
Wrong on all counts. You’ve heard of Tony Benn, haven’t you? There were plenty of other Labour-voting Lords. And there’s Lord Nelson, who used to be a policeman. And then there’s Lord Erskine-Murray who lived around the corner from me; I went to school with his son.
As of the abolishment of the hereditary peers, this no longer applies. It’s more like the Roman Senate, and if we can get past the cronyism and patronage - on all sides - I think that on average we’re the better for it.
My, how remarkably pleasant. Are you always like this or do you reserve it for use as a debating tactic?
You might want to look into the circumstances surrounding the 1832 Reform Act.
Just because various laws were passed to formalise control of the Lords does not mean they created that control.