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| Srl | Item |
| 1 |
ID:
092643
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| Publication |
2009.
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| Summary/Abstract |
All fashionable political talk is of an elected House of Lords. Doing this smart, new unthought-out thing, says Edward Pearce, means dissolving the reliably rebellious upper house regularly rejecting bad bills from Tory and Labour governments, for a House as submissive as the Commons. Second-line politicians will replace the difficult individual people, soldiers, doctors, academics, scientists, assorted and distinguished experts who, by lucky muddle, go there today.
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| 2 |
ID:
107212
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| Publication |
2011.
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| Summary/Abstract |
Pearce argues that honours do not deserve the earnest linguistic toil of the virtuous PAC. Starting with the peers, he observes that when William the Conqueror/Bastard distributed land stolen with violence to his armed band, it was the simple loot from which ancient chivalry, honour and nobility flows. Such lords developed under the more civilised early Whigs, like Walpole, into rent for sending steady support from owned boroughs into the Commons. Witness Bubb Dodington and his three and a half seats in Weymouth, made a Viscount in the name of one of its suburbs.
Harold Macmillan would sack a minister with the wheedling consolation 'A Little something to wear under your tie'. By inventing the Life Peerage, he helped the slow subversion of elected government by creating unelected, often powerful ministers with no relationship to country or people, candid nominees of the National Leader. The one virtue of the post-Macmillan upper house lies in the disloyal, which is say minimally or not all party-attached people of talent reliably voting against ministerial requirements. As for the insignia of all honours, their bars, discs and ribbons are kept on cards in Palace drawers like so much paste jewellery.
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| 3 |
ID:
099089
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2010.
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| Summary/Abstract |
Party names have been collected since 'Whig' and 'Tory' meant 'Scotch rebel' and 'Irish bandit'. 'Conservative' began as a catch-all on the right when one did not use the word 'right' in politics, struggled with 'Unionist' until Ireland got away and was a euphemism for 'Tory' before the Americans used it to describe howling extremists. 'Labour' meant skilled men in best suits and school teachers with elbow patches, and now has the resonance of Nineveh and Tyre.
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| 4 |
ID:
111665
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2012.
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| Summary/Abstract |
Alec Salmond's SNP, old politics and fingertips, won a landslide. The Lib Dems, free to confine the Tory plurality, chose the wooden spoon of office.
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| 5 |
ID:
112092
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| Publication |
2012.
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| Summary/Abstract |
The word'democracy' to be distinguished from the thing'democracy.' Removal by the Italian parliament of a corrupt and scandalous Premier for a respected, honest technician and a form of civil service government does not infringe the second category. Referendums give strength to a handful of already overmighty rich men controlling media outlets. Witness Fox Radio and TV and the poison of Glen Beck, also the virulent nationalism of the Murdoch and Desmond papers. Note the fifty plus year lag in enfranchising women in Switzerland, a self-evident democratic advance held back by 'the voice of the people' in successive referendums. Government should be free from populism and be run by educated, intelligent people both in parliament and the Civil Service. 'Yes Minister,' however amusing, has done us a disservice. I would trust a senior civil servant above a press lord any day of the week. Witness the good sense of the Upper House in its current informed and experienced composition. The Lords blocked Tony Blair's plans to by-pass Habeas Gorpus, refusing authoritarian government to an elected Premier with no sense of the rule of law or constitutional principle.
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