The House of Lords

I actually don't think a lot of the House of Lords. As far as I can see it's just full of a load of unelected, jumped up, self opinionated twats like Prescott and Mandleson who are mainly there for the jolly. Or maybe in the light of recent courts cases, for the perks. Or the titles...

Anyway, Cleggy has been given the task of reforming it and just to prove that it's much easier to make sweeping policy statements when you know you have no chance of being in government, a right pigs' breakfast (no pun intended) he's making of it.

There are currently 792 members of the Lords. Yes, I did say 792. That's more than the number of MPs in the lower house. I think anyone would agree that that's a trifle excessive. Cleggy intends to prune this down to 300. And some of them would actually get to be elected. Wow!

Apparently his plan is that 240 of these would be elected using the Limp Dumps favourite method - proportional representation. I think the hope is that once the public see how well PR works, we'll want to use it for MPs?

However, they would be elected for a period of 15 years. Yes, I did say 15 years. This is clearly quite ridiculous. And even better, they will be replacing the existing members over three elections starting in May 2015 - so the full effects won't be in place for thirty years.

Apparently, the remaining 60 members would be drawn from a group of 'experts' such as permanent secretaries and defence chiefs. Then there will be another 12 bishops appointed for reasons that, quite frankly, are totally beyond me.

Unsurprisingly, when Cleggy presented these proposals to the house, they lauged at them. I'm frankly unsurprised. Here's my thoughts on the matter :

Why do we need the Lords at all? It's essentially a revising and advising chamber. That could be just as easily done by expanding the committee system and drafting in experts as needed.

If we insist on keeping it, 300 seems a reasonable figure but disband the thing altogether and elect all the members in one go for 5 years, just like the lower house, and hold the elections simultaneously. Get it all out of the way in one go. And use PR because it gives a better party spread.

And dump the bishops because they're irrelevant to the process of government.

There. Job sorted. So if I can see through all the bullshit, why the hell can't Cleggy?..