I'm all in favour of hereditary peerage.
It's a genetic lottery. Some random guy who just happens to have a great great granddad who saved the kings life gets to check democracy. He may be bright and serious. He may be a mong. But he has a different perspective and probably wants Britain to be around for another 1000 years so his great great grandchildren can wear ermine and claim a couple of hundred quid for going up to London.
Life peers otoh are the political failures, toadys and bunce-mongering scum of the earth.
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The Ann Coulter Fan Club Babylon is burning at, Wed 15 Feb 2017, 20:58,
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There is the valid issue of retaining a sense of fairness though.
I agree that a genetic lottery isn't actually that bad as selection tool, but you can't deny that to the majority of people it just seems unfair to be selected in that way rather than on some kind of perceived merit. The public need to feel confident that they're not getting screwed over and that is a difficult idea to sell with hereditary peers in this day and age.
You make an a good point regarding how we DO select most Lords currently though. It's a bit jobs-for-the-boys as it stands. Possibly it ought to just be done like Jury service... whenever a slot becomes available we could just randomly select someone from the electoral roll. The risk is that you end up with Lords with a diminished capacity to understand the issues and legislation put before them, as they're now checkout ladies from Asda instead of businessmen, politicians, cultural icons etc.
(, Wed 15 Feb 2017, 21:32, Share, Reply)
