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July 8th, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda
By
Lord Ashdown
18:11 EST, 7 July 2012
|
18:12 EST, 7 July 2012
Change: Paddy Ashdown wants a modernised Lords
The case for reforming the House of Lords is simple enough. In a democracy, those who make the people’s laws should be the people’s representatives. Not appointees of the Prime Minister, nor the descendants of the male favourites of past kings, nor those of the female ones they went to bed with.
We send our young soldiers to other people’s countries to die for democracy – and kill for it too. Yet we haven’t got it in our own country. With the rest of the world on the streets calling for democracy, we Lords can’t be bunkered down in our golden chamber, resisting it.
More than 50 per cent of these appointed peers come from London and the South East, while only 25 per cent of the people do. How can we take decisions for the whole country when we represent only a tiny portion of it? There are seven times more peers aged over 90 than under 40.
At 71, I am a positive stripling! How can such a gerontocracy represent our whole vibrant nation? And once a Lord, forever a Lord. At present you can never be removed. Even if you cheat or go to jail. How can we help bring new standards to politics when we can’t even kick out the criminals in our own numbers?
We think we are facing an economic crisis. But we are also facing a political one. The people have lost confidence in politicians – and with good reason. The gap between government and governed has grown dangerously wide. If we will not refresh our democracy we could see it under threat. How can the Lords be excluded from that process?
The Lords has two jobs to do. Revise the laws that come from the Commons and hold the Government to account. The first we do well, the second not at all.
We are graciously permitted to go round with a golden poop-scoop clearing up the legislative mess left by the House of Commons elephant.
But when it comes to holding the Executive to account, we are incapable of doing it. How can we hold the Government to account when we are the creatures of its patronage! If the Lords had been able to do this job properly, we would never have had the Poll Tax or, I fancy, the Iraq War.
If ever there was a time for a strong democratically based second chamber to buttress our democracy, it is now. Whatever view you take of the Cameron/Clegg proposals, nobody can seriously call them ‘ill-considered’. They were preceded by a Royal commission, four white papers and three joint committees. Every party called for it in their manifestos at the last Election.
Plans: The Liberal Democrats want to cut the House of Lords from 800 members to just 450
The Cameron/Clegg reform Bill does not ‘trash’ the Lords, as some claim – it retains the best of what we have now and discards the worst. The more democratic ‘new Lords’ will remain different from the Commons – they will be more separated from the short-termism of a five-year electoral cycle and less likely to kowtow to the whips and the media.
The Commons will remain more powerful and finally able to get its way if it insists. Which means more democracy, but no deadlock. That’s proper democracy.
Attack: Lord Carlile last week called the plans a ‘shambolic, ill-considered and naive venture’
Some write of the ‘amazing expertise’ in the Lords. They are right to do so – we have some eminent, independent figures there. But they are far outnumbered by the retired, the rejected, the defeated and the sometimes dead-beat from the Commons.
My colleague Alex Carlile, who wrote in this paper last Sunday, is not a Lord because he is a great legal eagle (which he undoubtedly is), but because he is a former Lib Dem MP. I should know. It was me who recommended him for a peerage.
Anyway, expertise will not, as he claimed last week, be ‘lost’ in the new Lords. Quite the contrary. The present Lords has 80 active ‘crossbench’ experts among our 800 appointees. The new Lords will have 90 appointed experts out of 450. So the influence of non-party ‘experts’ on Lords decisions will go up!
Alex also argued that the reformed Lords will be ‘decided in the tribal atmosphere of party committees’. Actually, the electoral system proposed will actively discourage this and leave the ultimate choice to the voters. At present the voters don’t get a choice at all – it’s only the Prime Minister’s choice that counts.
If we don’t reform, then the number of Lords could well rise from 800 to more than 1,000. All of whom can draw their untaxed allowance of £300 a day – for life. Cost? £18.7 million and counting.
Some say our priority should be the economy. And so it should. But Parliament can do more than one thing at a time. Others ask, ‘Why reform now?’ Because we have to refresh our democracy to put politics in touch with the people. Because the Lords can’t be exempt from that. Because the Lords can’t hold the Government to account while we are its creature.
Because while everyone else is having to cut, the Lords is only set to get fatter. Above all, because in a nation proud of its democracy we should be ashamed that a part of our Parliament remains an undemocratic leftover from a bygone age.
I came into the Lords to see it become a chamber created by the will of the people, not the patronage of the politicians. This week the Commons will get its chance to do this. They should take it. This is the people’s business which has been delayed too long.
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Paddy Ashdown,you’re prepared to sit in your “Golden Chamber” and deny democracy to the British over our EU membership,doesn’t that pain your party.Also Mr Ashdown,whenever I see you on TV, you appear smug and self-satisfied,you have the air of someone who is incapable of being wrong,a cat that got the cream demeanour,it’s very unattractive.It’s just a matter of months now before the Lib Dums sink without trace,roll on.
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“The House of Lords” not what it used to be, now more like “The Rogues Gallery” People in it who are really not worthy of the position.It does need reforming for the better we do not need 750 People being paid large amounts of money daily,there are far too many retired Politicians, jobs for the Boys picking up a nice little fee along with their Gold Plated Pensions, It seems whilst other services are being cut we are paying these People more. They have served their time in Parliament have been paid well for it, done nothing outstanding for the Country in fact quite the opposite, maxed out on expenses, created havoc and left the rest of us paying the price. It should not be a place where People who have committed offences are there for life it is the Highest House in the land and should be treated with the ultimate respect. Honesty, Integrity comes to mind which is something a lot of these People seem to be lacking in.
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This is pious claptrap of the highest order Paddy, an elected upper house along PR lines is the ONLY way to save your risible party. People like Clegg and Alexander know that they have only two hopes left, a seat in the upper house under PR, or attempting to defect to the tories. A last chance saloon before wipeout at the next election.
– Derek, Plymouth, 8/7/2012 ——————————–Defecting to the Tories! Crikey that’s like finding yourself floating on the high seas and asking for a concrete lifebelt.
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I fully support a functioning house of lords. Firstly (according to the DM) it will cost £150 million pounds a year more to sustain the senate/lords hybrid. Also, this is a major change in the probeulotic process of the country. Surely we should be given a referendum on the issue rather than just leaving it up to the House of Commons (who haven’t fought for the interest of the public for nearly 30 years)? The Lib Dems do not want a referendum on the issue. Lord Asdown talks about democratic uprisings throughout the world, however, changing the upper house should be taken to a referendum for the people to have a say, which his party will not allow! Somewhere between this and the Lib Dem”s Europhilia, makes me believe that they and their former leader are avid opponents of democracy.
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My advice to all the people in the world apparently pleading for democracy is not to bother. They’ll only end up paying taxes to an elected government that will take their money and ignore them. They may even end up in the EU without any chance of leaving it. And they’ll be constently pontificated at by failed politicians like Paddy Ashdown who is now talking about democracy without appearing to notice that democracy demands a referendum on the EU. Or more democratically just an abrupt exit. Then there are all the policies enacted and enforced by governments without troubling to bother democracy by asking the people if they want them. After which the people complain but are dismissed as unenlightened and ignorant despite being the ones who have to live with the results and can see the damage. As for the house of lords. It sort of worked for 4 centuries then Blair stuffed it with cronies. Now it’s broken. The only way to fix it is to cull out the cronies.
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From now on, he should be addressed as MR Paddy Ashdown! How does that sit with you, Mr Ashdown?
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PADDY GIVE US A VOTE ON THE EU
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This is pious claptrap of the highest order Paddy, an elected upper house along PR lines is the ONLY way to save your risible party. People like Clegg and Alexander know that they have only two hopes left, a seat in the upper house under PR, or attempting to defect to the tories. A last chance saloon before wipeout at the next election.
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Open up the full plans for Lords reform – have a referendum and let the people decide – now thats democracy.
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We don’t have a proper democracy anyway, look how we have been denied any say on being taken deeper and deeper into the EU. The House of Commons has been taken over by a rich elite in all parties, who play the power game because they dont have to work for a living.
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