Been a while...

I kind of drifted away for a bit because of work and the essay, and now I have to start exam revision, but the good news is I got a good mark on my second essay so I'm back on track again.

My essay's conclusion was that parliamentary systems are marginally preferrable to presidential ones. More flexible, more accountable, less prone to destructive conflict. But presidentialism still held up pretty well, but in different ways.

I am now reading up on rival assessments on the health of British democracy.

Go me.

The cost of the House of Lords

From Lords' Hansard:

House of Lords: Cost
Statement

"The Chairman of Committees (Lord Brabazon of Tara): Following a mistake in a Written Answer by HM Treasury on 26 November (WA 336), a number of reports have incorrectly stated that the overall cost of the House of Lords in the 2007-08 financial year was £305.4 million or £423,000 per capita. In fact, the current running costs in the 2007-08 financial year were £121.5 million or £168,000 per capita. The total cost of the House, if capital expenditure is included, was £152.5 million or £211,000 per capita.

The corrected Written Answer in the online version of Hansard gives a slightly higher total figure of £153.5 million, because it includes the cost of funding the British-American Parliamentary Group, the Inter-Parliamentary Union, the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association and the British-Irish Inter-Parliamentary Body."

_____________________________

The total annual cost of the Lords is roughly a third of the cost of the Commons. In the 2006-07 financial year, the cost per member was £108,000 in the Lords and £682,000 in the Commons.

The essay is in

3,975 words, all told.

*phew*

It has been a hectic week.

I was all sixes and sevens at work yesterday too and almost forgot my wallet. Well it's done now and I am trying to be positive about it - I put in a hell of a lot of work and tried to be as analytical as possible.

If you're wondering, it was about which system was preferable - presidential rule (like the US) or parliamentary rule (like the UK, Italy, Hungary). I came down in favour of parliamentary rule. It was interesting to study!

Essay?

Okay okay I'm DOING IT ALREADY!

Justice Michael Kirby:

The Australian: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24999163-7583,00.html

"An Anglophile who helped to internationalise Australian law; a law reformer who strove to keep the Crown in the Australian Constitution; an open homosexual who revered the Anglican Church; a gay rights advocate who thought HIV should be a notifiable disease; a hyper-conscientious judge who was most widely known for everything but his judgments: a celebrity who has largely avoided shallowness, Kirby has always defied the best efforts of friends and foes alike to corral him into being one of "us" or "them"."

"Kirby was never silly enough to think that being attacked from both Left and Right was, of itself, a sign of moral virtue. In Kirby's case, he has mostly been better than his critics, not just different: better informed, more thoughtful and less judgmental."

But wait!

"As A.J. Brown recounts in his forthcoming biography of Kirby (and as The Australian reported yesterday), he almost missed out on appointment to the High Court because of his support for the monarchy."

*gasp!*

It continues:

"It wasn't Kirby's constitutional commentary that former prime minister Paul Keating objected to but the fact that he was spruiking for the wrong side. It wasn't arguments about Kirby's (undoubted) judicial competence that eventually won Keating over, but the line that his politics might be wrong on the monarchy but right on nearly everything else. The clinching argument, says the then minister Gareth Evans, "was having an adventurous spirit up against all those other f--king Tories". On the High Court, as elsewhere, Kirby was his own man, no one else's, but that plainly was not what the Keating government wanted. On Brown's evidence, the approach to selecting a judge was little different to stacking a branch."

"Kirby's forthright defence of the monarchy had shocked many of his erstwhile admirers as much as it had surprised critics who didn't really know him. The attitude of some of his crustier judicial colleagues was: "He speaks out on everything else, why not be a commentator on something that counts." Although he was then president of the NSW Court of Appeal, Kirby's view was that he "couldn't see why a judge should be barred from supporting the Constitution". "

As you can see, not all monarchists are bigoted, right-wing clods. I would say Kirby is an excellent example of an enlightened man, who values things on their merits, and not on preconceived assumptions. Like me, he's got some seeming contradictions in his philosophy which make perfect sense (at least to me!) when probed further.

Kirby also wrote the founding document of the Australians for Constitutional Monarchy (link: http://www.norepublic.com.au/), a private organisation which campaigns to retain Australia's status as a Commonwealth Realm. They have made good headway in puncturing the lazy arguments of many republicans in Australia, some of whose arguments rest on half-baked concepts of what democracy is.

"We are Australians united to defend our constitutional system of government. We hold different political views. We come from different ethnic origins. We speak for different generations. We have had different experiences of life. We defend the place of the Crown in our constitution for it has served our nation well. We reject the notion that those who defend our constitution and the position of the Queen of Australia in our constitution are less Australian or less patriotic or less contemporary than those who promote change. We believe we should not disrupt our nation with a divisive debate founded on ignorance of its history and institutions. Constitutional monarchy is the least imperfect form of government yet devised and it should endure in Australia indefinitely."

God speed, Justice Kirby!

Epic Snow!

Great Caesar's Ghost, it snowed a ton last night!


I tried to get into work but the snow is insane. The roads are icy and slippery. Cars are moving slower than people walking, and we spent a few minutes helping cars up the gentlest of hills. The Tube was working but the amount of people was insane, and the buses are down.

So we headed back and played with the snow. Sarah made a snowman:

In other news, I've done 1,800 words of my essay, which is encouraging. But I need to press on!

On the current 'Cash for votes' scandal in the Lords...

I have been pleased by this article in the Scotsman: http://news.scotsman.com/geraldwarner/Gerald-Warner-Real-sleaze-can.4934368.jp

"THE controversy over alleged corruption in the House of Lords has provided an excuse for MPs to parade their hypocrisy, clapped-out modernisers to revive the canard of "Lords reform" and commentators to display their consummate ignorance of everything to do with the institution of the peerage.

Clearly, the allegations against the four peers must be investigated and, if well founded, punished. Otherwise, the issue is fogged in spin and stupidity. This is not House of Lords sleaze, any more than l'affaire Jonathan Aitken was described as Commons sleaze: it is Labour sleaze. It is typical of Labour, having ejected hundreds of hereditary peers of impeccable character and replaced them with its own nominees, when the latter sully the reputation of the Upper House to condemn the institution instead of the perpetrators. Sleaze allegations in the Lords are rare: can the same be said of the sanctimonious Commons?

Last week, while MPs were ranting like Pharisees, the Commons Standards Committee, after a year's deliberation, finally required Derek Conway to apologise to the House and repay £3,757 out of £35,744 he had paid his eldest son; this came a year after he had been suspended from the Commons and forced to repay money given to his youngest son. The same week, Peter Hain at last apologised to the House, more than a year after he resigned as Work and Pensions Secretary over donations to his deputy leadership campaign. Just an average week on the slime-green benches."

It also goes on to explain how the Lords also have rules against such crimes, and the measures to strongly discipline those who break the rules.

I don't really agree with his view on the hereditaries - but the rest of it is true. There's been considerable clamour over what some have claimed shows the 'unaccountability' and lack of 'democracy' in the Upper House - but that kind of misses the point of the Lords, for one thing, and assumes that such corruption is impossible in an elected House. Which is evidently nonsensical, given the article above.

What's evident here is - as the article says - not the corruption inherent in the Lords (which continues to excel compared to the Commons), but the corruption inherent in human beings. The Lords has rules against corruption, and the means to punish it - but that won't stop people trying. What matters is that those that have been accused, IF they are indeed guilty, will be punished.