International News Immigration

[Basham Wonderland]

For about 600 of those 700 years, you couldn't vote if you were poor or a woman. Do you want to go back to that?

I think most of us would suggest that it's not tearing down the system to amend some of the rules as time goes by, if they don't fit in with modern ideals and morality. And the concept of our second house being populated by people on the basis of their ancestry not their ability is one that was surely due an update.........

That's quite a silly comparison to make, come on now.

The alternative that we're (very slowly) sliding towards seems to be an elected model which is absolute shite in America, and would be just as shite here. It worked fine for 700 years.

 

[tonyw]

That's quite a silly comparison to make, come on now.

The alternative that we're (very slowly) sliding towards seems to be an elected model which is absolute shite in America, and would be just as shite here. It worked fine for 700 years.

None of the problems in America are because the second house is elected.

It's a combination of a) bizarre gerrymandering laws that allow politicians to pick their electorate, b) campaign finance laws that basically allow big corporations to spend as much as they want to buy candidates and c) operating a FPTP system (bad enough on its own) that divides the country up into absolutely colossal chunks thereby depriving most voters of any semblance of a meaningful vote.

Getting rid of an archaic hereditary system to fill that second house (not really that much less stupid than only allowing rich men to vote) has not put the UK political system on a path of terminal decline towards a US style disaster.

 

[Basham Wonderland]

None of the problems in America are because the second house is elected.

It's a combination of a) bizarre gerrymandering laws that allow politicians to pick their electorate, b) campaign finance laws that basically allow big corporations to spend as much as they want to buy candidates and c) operating a FPTP system (bad enough on its own) that divides the country up into absolutely colossal chunks thereby depriving most voters of any semblance of a meaningful vote.

Getting rid of an archaic hereditary system to fill that second house (not really that much less stupid than only allowing rich men to vote) has not put the UK political system on a path of terminal decline towards a US style disaster.

Not put us on that path, no. It's more of a "death by a thousand cuts" type thing.