Lords and ladies
The House of Lords has been in the news quite a bit recently, one way and another. So in our latest poll we thought it might be fun to ask a few questions about it.
We decided to have something for everyone.
The Scottish businesswoman Michelle Mone – now Lady Mone of Mayfair – was recently made a member of the House Of Lords, and can now vote on acts of Parliament for life. Do you agree with this decision?
Yes: 15%
No: 57%
Don’t know: 28%
Voters from all parties opposed the appointment, with Conservatives (whose benches Mone sits on) only slightly disapproving overall at 31%-36%, followed by Lib Dems at 28-35, Labour at 27-44 and SNP at an emphatic 8-75 against.
The SNP is the only major party in Scotland which has no representatives in the UK House Of Lords, because it believes the Lords should be abolished and it chooses to boycott it for that reason. Which of the following is closest to your view?
ALL VOTERS
– it should stay, and the SNP should send peers to it: 28%
– it should stay, but the SNP should continue to boycott it: 9%
– it should be abolished, but while it exists the SNP should send peers to it: 29%
– it should be abolished and the SNP should continue to boycott it: 34%
SNP VOTERS ONLY
– it should stay, and the SNP should send peers to it: 15%
– it should stay, but the SNP should continue to boycott it: 5%
– it should be abolished, but while it exists the SNP should send peers to it: 33%
– it should be abolished and the SNP should continue to boycott it: 47%
Perhaps a surprisingly tight vote in at least one sense – just 52% of SNP voters support the party’s stance of boycotting the House entirely, while 48% want the SNP to nominate its own Lords and Ladies as long as it exists. But looking at the issue from another position, a whopping 80% of Nats want the upper chamber abolished with just 20% in favour of keeping it.
The Labour Party has been pledging to abolish the House Of Lords for over 100 years, but has not yet done so when in power and currently has over 200 peers in the chamber. Which of the following is closest to your view?
ALL VOTERS
– Labour should keep their peers and continue working towards abolition: 28%
– Labour should keep their peers and abandon attempts at abolition: 26%
– Labour should withdraw all their peers in an attempt to force abolition, because it would then be too one-sided to be politically defensible: 46%
LABOUR VOTERS ONLY
– Labour should keep their peers and continue working towards abolition: 43%
– Labour should keep their peers and abandon attempts at abolition: 38%
– Labour should withdraw all their peers in an attempt to force abolition, because it would then be too one-sided to be politically defensible: 19%
A resounding 81% of Labour voters want to hang onto the party’s 200-plus peers, with almost a 50-50 split on whether they should be working towards abolishing the House or not. Just 19% back the hardcore option of walking away from their £300-a-day expenses and daring the government to run it as a Tory echo chamber.
Almost twice as many Labour voters as SNP ones (38% vs 20%) are happy for the Lords to remain, while the position of the remaining three-fifths of socialist comrades could probably be best summed up as “abolish unelected privilege, but not just yet”.
Why is Osborne putting his hand through the back of her robe? He’s looking for her purse…
…I had thought the appointment of “Lady Bra-Bra” would have ended “Support” for the Lords.
The Lords is an obscenity in a democracy (as is Royalty)
I cannot understand support for either.
The LibDems have more than 10 times the number of Lords as MPs. The LibDem Lords appear to be mainly people that the electorate have rejected!
[…] The House of Lords has been in the news quite a bit recently, one way and another. So in our latest poll we thought it might be fun to ask a few questions about it. We decided to have something for… […]
Ian Brotherhood says:
15 November, 2015 at 1:07 pm
Osborne is standing in for Lord Rennard
Mone’s the epitome of everything that’s wrong with the system, and that pic is making me boak.
Quite sad from labour voters.
House of lords is an abomination.
Regarding Mone. Another great example of tory trolling.
Great use of crowdsourced money i find these results very interesting.
That’s a bit like Labour supporting the renewal of Trident so that they can disarm the world. Still Better Together? I’m alright Jack.
The photo makes one BOAK…….. Can’t you see that IDS has a happy smile .
I think abolishing it doesn’t go far enough. Bring back the maiden!
More evidence that there is much common ground between residual Labour and Tories as their underlying philosophies merge. Scottish pro democracy activists are now on a different path.
I think we should have her on the telly expressing her opinions, she’s an asset, let’s hear stuff from her
Can we not send in requests like on points of view
We could have a “Michelle thinks” spot,or “How to offend a Nation”
We’d be Independent in a week
I still find it bizarre that there are 5% of SNP voters that believe that the HoL should stay, but the SNP should continue to boycott it?
Osborne proving he is a real gentleman and can undo a bra with one hand?
Definitely not. They are part of the very thing we are trying to defeat–the Establishment. Truly, does anyone think that SNP Peers would fare any better in the Lords than our MP’S do in the Commons?
The House of Lords is an ineffectual affront to humanity. It is a monument to British ineptitude. As long as the House of Lords exists, decision making in Britain will be hadicapped by the most clumsy, dithering fools ever to walk the face of this planet, The English aristocracy.
It’s for all those reasons that I think we should keep it and I pray that one day we will be able to look across our independent border and laugh rather than despair.
In its manifesto for the general election of 1910 the young Labour party vowed to abolish the House of Lords.
It didn’t fulfill that vow during any of the six occaisions that it has formed the government in Westminster.
We can assume that the Labour Party values the power and patronage of its 200-odd unelected legislators-for-life far too much to rock the boat.
Labour and its supporters have had a taste of HoL power and fear change. Ergo, they are no longer a party of change. Ergo, they are Red Tories.
Just their way of saying
“It’s our game with our rules, so there, nothing you can do about it”
What is the logic behind the “Lords should stay, SNP should boycott” position? for the 5% of SNP supporters?
I can understand the logic from others, happy for the SNP to be ignoring a position of power, but not from the SNP. Unless there is confusion between abolishing the second chamber, and replacing it?
We all noticed the great workers republican Lord Alistair of Flip Flop? He was not the only one who misled his fellow worker for the sake of money, power and a place in the establishment.
Traitors all to their people!
Is that Drunken Hotherstall’s dad holding the banner with Darling?
Lets face it, the HoS is like everything else Labour is supposed to stand for – straight out of a Marx bros routine.
“Unlike the SNP we principles, and if you don’t like them… well, we have others!”
Too much money (and vice) ‘tied up’ in the system for them to abolish it.
Amazing number of neophobes, left,right and middle.
Pointless electing MPs,even those we don’t agree with,when their legislation can be fudged or stopped by the unelected.
Should be abolished soon as possible. There should never be Labour lords.
If you become a lord,it sounds like becoming what you were supposed to be against. I’m glad the SNP don’t send folk there.
‘Apologies’
Lets face it, their stance on HoL is like everything else Labour is supposed to stand for – (straight out of a Marx bros routine).
“Unlike the SNP we have principles, and if you don’t like them… well, we have others!”
Too much money (and vice) ‘tied up’ in HoL for them to abolish it.
It just goes to show what a sham is all is.
We have to get out of this charade.
[…] Lords and ladies […]
The “£300-a-day” expenses is a figure that gets tossed around a lot but doesn’t actually bear out in practice. Unlike MPs, peers do not get paid salaries, nor do they get index-linked pensions. Even if a peer sat for every day of parliament, and submitted receipts for that absolute maximum possible expense claim, he could only ever get at most 2/3 of an MP’s basic salary, and that’s before you add on MP expenses and pensions.
For as much as the fancy robes give metropolitan sophisticates a cultural cringe, the House of Lords is actually remarkably cheap to run – even though there are 33% more peers than MPs, the Lords is 75% cheaper, and on average an individual peer costs little more than 1/6 of an MP.
link to lordsoftheblog.net
It may be counter-intuitive but the figures bear out that compared to most government largesse the Lords is actually quite parsimonious. There may be several reasons to criticise the Lords, but expense isn’t one of them.
Lady Bravow – caught between the devel and the deep blue Tory.
I know – dreadful attempted play on words – but I’m disgusted at the muppets who get caught up in this medieval unelected expenses club thinking they have done something decent or intelligent to deserve their inclusion.
Rev can you post a contributer piece on alternatives such a senate to contrast? I think this might highlight how bad the Lords is as a second chamber.
Though you might find the same losers get into an elected chamber. Particularly if it’s a list arrangement.
“A resounding 81% of Labour voters want to hang onto the party’s 200-plus peers, with almost a 50-50 split on whether they should be working towards abolishing the House or not. Just 19% back the hardcore option of walking away from their £300-a-day expenses and daring the government to run it as a Tory echo chamber.”
Pragmatic Labour. Democratic farce as it is, at least Labour and SLabour can still wield heavy hitting power with the rest of the troughers. If they did ever lose the Lords, it’s a full on struggle just to survive north and south of border.
Another awful New Labour legacy, totally rejected by their Scotland region.
RJF says:
“the House of Lords is actually remarkably cheap to run”
… it could be even cheaper, like costing nothing if abolished.
However, I do accept that WM and the entire mechanism of government is so incredibly undemocratic that simply abolishing the HoL is just scratching the surface. A representative voting system for parliament and written constitution would have a greater impact.
So 81% of labour voters won’t act to end the Hol. See what happens if you don’t give them the chance to abstain!
LORDS. self-service chancery. the grinning assassins.
@Clootie.
“……the Lords is an obscenity in a democracy.
I agree with your statement.
However, I think the Tories, Labour, UKIP and Lib Dems are also obscenities in a democracy.
@RJF
It is NOT cheap to tun something you do not need. It is, in fact, a waste of money.
If all peers collect their £300 per day then the cost will be in the region of a quarter if a million pounds per day. Your definition of cheap is not in good taste.
Rev wrote:
“The Labour Party has been pledging to abolish the House Of Lords for over 100 years, but has not yet done so when in power and currently has over 200 peers in the chamber.”
That says all you really need to know about the Labour Party. It also says far more than the rest of the articles revelations put together. Labour liars, always have been, always will be.
Can we not just chop their heads off? like the french did.
Then house refugees instead?
HoL abolition is a tricky area for Labour.I’m looking forward to the SNP pushing for a debate and vote on abolition.We’ll then see where Scottish Labour and English Labour stand.
Just can’t help looking at the picture of the three stooges and thinking…
Thanks ‘No’ voters, thanks Very much.
May be off topic but here is another view on the House of Lords
link to exlaodicea.wordpress.com
Ot can someone tell me how if you plant bombs and kill people you are a murderer and a terrorist but if you drop bombs from aeroplanes and kill people you are not a murderer or a terrorist ?both have the same result and Obama saying these things that are happening while the world looks on well him and the world have been looking on at these same things happening in Palestine for a long time now and doing nothing also this is the same Afro American Obama who told the people of Scotland they were in effect better to remain slaves than seek freedom talk about double standards
Just another stupid pointless argument!!
We all know what this abomination is,and we all know its for the money, power and perks.
You can comment and call it what you want but it WILL remain in place while there are still people in Scotland who want or need to be governed by another country.
End of bloody story.
Cheaper to run lol,what price democracy. Of course,they,the unelected, are never lobbied or have places on boards etc,while making and breaking laws,including sometimes what the Scottish Parliament can do.
Reading this caused me to reflect on Ian Bell’s article in today’s Sunday Herald – Doping Isn’t Fair, but Neither is Sport.
The House of Lords isn’t fair, but then neither is politics. Annoyingly, the public largely, are the Dopes, for tolerating the HOL. My view is that the SNP are absolutely correct not to involve in the House of Lords.
I noted his observation on the big clubs with money buying up the best players, and so weakening their opposition. A home truth here in Scotland.
Am I the first to spot Osborne has two left hands?
Is there not a modern equivalent to DDT? That could be sprayed over London to rid us of all the parasites it is infected with.
RJF says:
15 November, 2015 at 2:46 pm
RJF
Do you really think that the “Earnings” of the members is the £300/d?
The day rate is insignificant in comparison to the entry into “trough world”.
The payments for contacts / introductions / board memberships / paid advice to company clients etc etc is the real pig swill.
Why would you want to defend it anyway?
“Labour: abolish unelected privilege, but not just yet”.
Why abolish an institution that might very well subsidise your pension one day? Something for nothing is fine for you, not for the poor who pay for the Lords.
Blair Paterson says:
15 November, 2015 at 4:15 pm
To quote Stalin:
“The death of one person is a tradegy. The death of millions is a statistic”
In the case of Thatcher and Blair it was for their fame. A good war boosts poll ratings.
#JFL at 2.46 pm
I read somewhere that the House of Lords cost £93 million a year. Not exactly cheap. However, the real reason is surely about democracy. Where else apart from the AM system of voting do you get people turning up after being rejected by voters?
I’m sure Lord Darling is feeling very proud of himself – along with all the other Scottish Labour working-class heroes sitting snugly in the house of lords.
‘A resounding 81% of Labour voters want to hang onto the party’s 200-plus peers.’
Well that just about sums it up then. The so-called party of Democracy …. the party of working people …. my backside.
The House of Lords, with around 800 UNELECTED members, is a Dictatorial embarrassment, an absolute disgrace … worldwide second only to China’s National People’s Congress with 2,987 members (in 2013). We have around 25% of members compared to China. However compare the UK with around 60 million of a population to China with a population of 1.4 billion, eh!
The only legislature in the world, other than Iran, that reserves automatic seats for religious figures …. Church of ENGLAND clergy ONLY … the Bishop of Chester topped the expenses list (2010 / 2011) having claimed over £27,000 and over £7,000 in travel expenses.
We now have more unelected individuals ruling the country than elected. Some of the unelected sit on Commons Committees that the SNP are barred from setting foot in, such as the Human Rights Committee. David Cameron has ‘enobled’ over 183 individuals since he came to power and plans to ‘stuff’ in even more of his pals, even although there is only seating capacity for 400 …. oh, I forgot the rest are propping up the bar / s.
Every last one of the donor and crony leeches cost us £125,000 plus per head per year. The House of Lords with its cheap (subsidised by you and I) bars and restaurants is referred to as the best members club in London. Becoming a member lands them with most lucrative job on the planet …. no job interview necessary, no CV required, no assessments or IQ tests carried out. They are there for life, answerable to no one and cannot be sacked. Even the disgraced peers jailed following the 2009 MP’s expenses scandal are now back in the chamber.
Some don’t even bother to turn up and if they do often don’t utter as much as a squeak or put pen to paper but still claim, such as our own home-grown Baroness Irene Adams (topped the list of laziest, greediest members – Labour of course) claimed more than £53,000 but didn’t speak in any debates or table any written questions.
Someone mentioned on here that they don’t receive a great deal of money at all however the ‘stocks and shares’ Lords are among the most powerful and privileged people in the land and use their position to line their own pockets. That’s why they are SO keen to donate …….. short term loss to make a long term massive investment.
Check out the number of ‘KNOWN’ people on the Economic Affairs Committee, with vested interests, who hand out oil, gas and fracking licenses and have the power to change legislation behind our backs.
link to scottishenergynews.com
Private healthcare – one in four Lords are on the pay-role of commercial health providers and their lobbyists and one hundred and twenty four lords have links to financial institutions. Even more have unpaid advisory positions on financial companies or lobby groups and of the thirteen members of the Lords’ Economic Affairs Committee at least four hold positions in banks. Many House of Lords peers (Labour, Libdem and Tory) plus members of the Tory party times their numerous friends and relatives are absolutely controlling EVERY aspect of this country now: my life, your lives and our futures. Get real and get them out.
link to parliament.uk
link to ianhopkinson.org.uk
Just demonstrates how confused many unionists are in their thinking. How can you vote Labour, consider yourself a ‘socialist’ and support donkeys like Mone etc. being given a mandate to halt and interfere with the democratic process?….I’m afraid there’s a long road awinding to Independence while we have these examples of cognitive dissonance in our ‘electorate’.
‘A resounding 81% of Labour voters want to hang onto the party’s 200-plus peers.’
Well that just about sums it up then. The so-called party of Democracy …. the party of working people …. my backside.
The House of Lords, with around 800 UNELECTED members, is a Dictatorial embarrassment, an absolute disgrace … worldwide second only to China’s National People’s Congress with 2,987 members (in 2013). We have around 25% of members compared to China. However compare the UK with around 60 million of a population to China with a population of 1.4 billion, eh!
The only legislature in the world, other than Iran, that reserves automatic seats for religious figures …. Church of ENGLAND clergy ONLY … the Bishop of Chester topped the expenses list (2010 / 2011) having claimed over £27,000 and over £7,000 in travel expenses.
We now have more unelected individuals ruling the country than elected. Some of the unelected sit on Commons Committees that the SNP are barred from setting foot in, such as the Human Rights Committee. David Cameron has ‘enobled’ over 183 individuals since he came to power and plans to ‘stuff’ in even more of his pals, even although there is only seating capacity for 400 …. oh, I forgot the rest are propping up the bar / s.
Every last one of the donor and crony leeches cost us £125,000 plus per head per year. The House of Lords with its cheap (subsidised by you and I) bars and restaurants is referred to as the best members club in London. Becoming a member lands them with most lucrative job on the planet …. no job interview necessary, no CV required, no assessments or IQ tests carried out. They are there for life, answerable to no one and cannot be sacked. Even the disgraced peers jailed following the 2009 MP’s expenses scandal are now back in the chamber.
Some don’t even bother to turn up and if they do often don’t utter as much as a squeak or put pen to paper but still claim, such as our own home-grown Baroness Irene Adams (topped the list of laziest, greediest members – Labour of course) claimed more than £53,000 but didn’t speak in any debates or table any written questions.
Someone mentioned on here that they don’t receive a great deal of money at all however the ‘stocks and shares’ Lords are among the most powerful and privileged people in the land and use their position to line their own pockets. That’s why they are SO keen to donate …….. short term loss to make a long term massive investment.
Check out the number of ‘KNOWN’ people on the Economic Affairs Committee, with vested interests, who hand out oil, gas and fracking licenses and have the power to change legislation behind our backs.
link to scottishenergynews.com
Private healthcare – one in four Lords are on the pay-role of commercial health providers and their lobbyists and one hundred and twenty four lords have links to financial institutions. Even more have unpaid advisory positions on financial companies or lobby groups and of the thirteen members of the Lords’ Economic Affairs Committee at least four hold positions in banks. Many House of Lords peers (Labour, Libdem and Tory) plus members of the Tory party times their numerous friends and relatives are absolutely controlling EVERY aspect of this country now: my life, your lives and our futures. Get real and get them out.
link to parliament.uk
lords/house-of-lords-expenses/
link to ianhopkinson.org.uk
So what if the House of Lords is unelected? Many sections of the lawmaking process are unelected, not least the judges who rule on it and the police who enforce it – or the advisors and lobbyists who suggest it – and the House of Lords is rather more open than any of them. If the House of Lords was a source of novel legislation then I would agree with you wholeheartedly that its unelected nature would be a big problem – but it’s not, and it isn’t. Commons primacy rightfully means that the Commons should be elected but beyond the cringe of politics nerds who think the robes are so untidy do we really want or need a Senate that’s constantly at loggerheads with its opposite chamber and engaged in a constant deadlocked struggle for patronage and influence as they both claim an equal elected mandate – while Senators are drawing big fat salaries all the while? One distinct advantage of an unelected Lords is that we can never have literal government shutdowns as has happened multiple times in the USA.
A lot of critics also fundamentally misunderstand what the House of Lords actually is. It is a technocratic chamber that exists to revise and refine legislation to ensure its better implementation, a job that it does quite well and in many cases – such as protesting Blair’s attempts to extend terror detentions without charge, or recently compelling the tax credit cuts to undergo proper scrutiny – demonstrating itself to be significantly more progressive and democratic than the elected chamber. Party affiliations are less important and peers can and are more independent because the advantage of the life term is that unlike paid-for MPs or Senators who need to toe the party line for fear of deselection, peers are not cowed by the party whip. The outrage of peers having business links is misplaced – partially because that’s very much the idea, Lords business is legalistic it’s not unreasonable to have people who actually know about an industry to study the functionality of the laws that will affect it; but also because peers don’t have the mysterious power to rewrite laws out of existence that its critics seem to think it does. For all people fume about individual peers’ expenses (but elected MPs are hardly plaster saints, are they?), the fact remains that the Lords as a whole is massively cheaper than the Commons.
Incidentally, even if Labour were to boycott the Lords there are still more Lib Dem, crossbench and other peers than there are Conservatives, so it would not make the Lords an illegitimate “Tory echo chamber” but be a futile, pointless gesture to make Labour as useless and ineffective as the SNP currently is. Which might cynically and selfishly suit the partisan supporters of this blog but doesn’t really benefit the country.
The House of Lords is an anachronism and should be completely modernised, if it is really to be a revising chamber.
However the worst aspect of it, from my point of view, is the presence of 26 Church of England bishops. All self elected .
What right have they to have anything to do with legislation for Scotland or in fact any parts of the U.K.?
They represent only their narrow religious sect and should have no say in any laws. ( Nor should any other religious sect).
@ RJF @ 11:15pm ………….
It looks as though they’ll be no convincing you RJF, lol.
House of lords; Why not get a great party going in said place, fill that Scottish Labour peer with drink & encourage him to do his party trick.
You’ll notice it’s Lady Mone of Mayfair and not Lady Mone of Tollcross or Parkhead or even Shettleston or any other east end part of Glasgow where she grew up. Maybe the poor lassie wants to forget her past and re-invent herself, much like the Labour party.
‘a whopping 80% of Nats want the upper chamber abolished with just 20% in favour of keeping it.’
As an SNP Party Member, I really want to know who this 20% of Members are who wish to retain the House of Lords?
Mark you, the Politician was never clecked who would not kick the Baw oot the Park for Personal aggrandizement! But I am proud to retain a little naivety, even as one who should know better! When you give trust to your Fellow Man it most times bears Fruit!