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Posts Tagged ‘Parliamentary Reform’

The starting point for debating the Honours System currently, comes from the decision to remove the Knighthood awarded to Fred Goodwin during his time at the helm of RBS. Of course, RBS as we all now know collapsed into a pile of dog’s turd that had to be rescued with a £42 billion bailout by the taxpayer because of poor management.

The then ‘Sir Fred’ fought tooth and nail to hold on to a ridiculously generous pension arrangement on leaving RBS which he very reluctantly agreed to hand back half of, eventually. It is easy to vilify all Bankers but there is a case to be answered in a ‘narrow sense’ when it seems that employees of these institutions have enriched themselves greatly whilst the people who own them, the shareholders, have seen their investments fall in value. Whatever one may think, that game is surely truly up.

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I suppose and in often strange ways, we sometimes discover “the fatal flaw” in most ideas. Having started my commercial life as a designer concerned with engineering and production, there was a very amusing story about a “new mousetrap”, I will not bore you with the tale but the ‘punch line’ was quite simple:

The basic concept behind the design was obviously flawed and when called upon to deal with this, the designer instead of having a total rethink, just “improved” upon or refined his own flawed original concept. To engineers, this was all very amusing because it was something that we had to deal with on a daily basis and knew that it was far too easy to be led astray. I have an awful feeling that Scottish independence is the same…

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Oh Lord, here we go again, yet another numb nuts politician trying to make a name for themselves by “Reforming the House of Lords”, this time its Nick Clegg. One day it might occur to the inhabitants of the House of Commons that just as a Liberal Government tried and failed prior to the outbreak of WWI, so too has every attempt since and for good reasons, the Lords works as it is.

This doesn’t mean that the Lords hasn’t been changed over time, it has and in many ways as is right and proper, like all living things, institutions need to continually evolve to survive and adapt to changing circumstances. The problem with the brainless reformers from the Commons is they want “radical change” so that they can say; “I did this…I bent this to My will !” How idiotic can you get ?

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Although it was the “Comments” section of the Daily Telegraph that first got me started in writing my own blog, since the advent of comments being handled by Disqus, I don’t bother with the Telegraph that often these days. They do get an amazing number of people commenting on most articles but apart from one or two, they mainly seem to be a few shillings short of a full £ if not outright bonkers.

However, there was an interesting article by Benedict Brogan on Scottish Independence which is worth a read but has also led me to the Land of Loony Tunes… http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/benedictbrogan/100116330/the-union-is-too-far-gone-to-be-saved-by-cameron-or-miliband

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I cannot claim to be any kind of fan of the journalist Yasmin Alibhai Brown who writes in The Independent, she is one of those people like the equally awful Janet Daley in The Telegraph, that I read from time to time instead of wearing a hair shirt or sackcloth and ashes or, as a means of not just “reading the stuff I like”.

However, in reading her (AliBaba) today I was shocked by just how irrational and bigoted a journalist in a broadsheet can be, the woman is a total loon or else, personally envious of Theresa May for some personal reason or other as the start of the article demonstrates only too well, check it out, really sad : http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/yasmin-alibhai-brown/yasmin-alibhaibrown-we-must-defend-these-laws-which-protect-us-all-2368147.html

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Following the targeted assassination in the Yemen of Anwar al-Awlaki and three al-Qaeda associates by a drone on September 30^th various questions have been raised within the United States concerning the “extra-judicial” nature of this killing because two of them were US citizens.

To be fair to Americans, this is not an argument based upon whether a “US life is more valuable than any other” but in the ever litigious United States whether his “Rights under the American Constitution” were violated. Therefore the question becomes one of “Were the people who ordered and actually carried out the attack from within the borders of the USA, therefore guilty of a criminal offence ?” The drone actually being operated from a base in Nevada.

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In its own way, it is quite amusing that the ‘junior leader’ of the Coalition Government is attracting far more column inches in the Press than David Cameron himself but, one suspects that following the Local Election and Referendum results, journalists hope they smell ‘blood in the water’. I feel that providing Clegg and his Party keep their wits about them, they will come through fine.

One of the key things he must avoid is the “Do Something” approach and in a interesting article today in the Independent Mary Ann Sieghart focuses in on Clegg’s desire to “Reform the Lords” which she strongly advises him against doing, a view I certainly agree with. http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/mary-ann-sieghart/mary-ann-sieghart-if-it-aint-broken-nick-dont-try-to-fix-it-2284679.html

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Whilst I appreciate that in earning a living political journalists need to make lots of fuss about these things and most certainly some of the average members of the LibDems will be running around in a blind panic fearing carving knives about to cut off their tails, but what happened the other Thursday has little to do with Nick Clegg having been outsmarted by the Tories or making poor judgement calls.

But still the headlines proliferate as in this one from the BBC: ‘Elections will force Lib Dems to face identity crisis’ By James Landale at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-13325236

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As ever, the Independent in another half baked Editorial advises people to vote YES to changing the voting system from First Past the Post to the Alternative Vote where people vote for the candidates in order of their preference. This is not proper Proportional Representation for those who believe in that, frankly it is just tinkering with the system for no good reason. http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/leading-articles/leading-article-just-say-yes-to-voting-reform-2278567.html

In reality there is a reason which is simply that it was part of the Coalition Agreement and Nick Clegg needed to see the Referendum delivered in order to demonstrate to his own party members that being part of the Government does bring benefits and the achievement of ‘cherished goals’ not otherwise possible by them just being in Opposition. My own prediction is that the “NO’s” will have it tomorrow and the LibDems will have to accept: “Wrong time and wrong place” as a consequence.

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The saying, “War is too important to be left to the Generals” probably also applies to Constitutions and Politicians. Constitutional change is far too important to be left to the politicians, they just don’t seem to have a clue and certainly lack the intellectual rigour to suggest anything remotely workable.

This Thursday we have local council elections down here but also, the Referendum on changing the voting system from First Past the Post to the Alternative Vote. Funny how a Coalition Agreement can conjure that up when herds of wild stallions couldn’t get the greasy buggers to give us a Referendum on the EU !

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