Sorry that things went a bit quite there fir awhile. I think I'd better use the coming of spring and some decent weather with a few updates.
Here we go:
You may remember this post about the arrest of the Iranian sugar workers Union members, well it appears that four of the convicted members have been released however the Unions president Ali Nejati is still in prison the IUF is once again asking for letters of solidarity to Mr Nejati in the hopes of keeping the pressure up. You can send one here.
Next up we have the Power 2010 Power pledge (of power), has finally been narrowed down to the main Five though apparently they'll still try to raise awareness on some of the other issue's. But the big Five are as follows, 1) Introduce a proportional voting system. Good good, this should help revitalise politics in this country. 2) Scrap ID cards and roll back the database state. Also very good, the Governments absurd insistence on these costly measures to appear tough on terror whilst eroding are civil liberties is really grating on my nerves.
3) Replace the House of Lords with an elected chamber. Err I'm quite indifferent on this one, I'd really rather have seen the other Second chamber proposal go through, that of a chamber drawn up via professions and such.
4) Allow only English MPs to vote on English laws. Again I can't muser up much enthusiasm for this one. England is already the most powerful constituent of the Union anyway so it seems kind of unnecessary and just another attempt to resurrect English nationalism.
5) Draw up a written constitution. Ah now this is more like it, If I'm not mistaken the UK is one of only three nations to not have a Codified constitution which leaves us at the mercy of the scruples of a large majority in the Commons, the others without a codified Constitution are Israel, and Australia I think.
And finally we have Greece, it seems that in response to the Government going ahead with there cuts, the Greek people have responded with a General strike (the second since in February alone).
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It's nice to see another hold the unpopular view that an elected 2nd chamber is not the be all and end all. In my opinion, such a reform looks likely to make the 2nd chamber instrumentally worse not better. It's one of my many unfinished blog posts.
ReplyDeleteWell to be honest my main gripe with the an elected lords is that I really don't see the point, the people are probably going to vote the same way they vote for the Commons thus weakening accountability.
ReplyDeleteThough I was surprised to see the other option, of a second chamber drawn up by professions was actually on there but only had a mere 2000+ votes.
A shame we could have had are very own Soviet.