Abolish the Lords

I can't understand all this nonsense about reforming the House of Lords - because the only sensible thing to do with this unelected second chamber is to abolish it altogether.

Why the Lib Dems believe that the Lords should be retained is beyond me - because it's full of flunkeys and political appointees - many of whom are failed and/or retired politicians.

More importantly the role often claimed for the Lords - i.e. that of refining and improving government legislation - could be achieved in a variety of other, more effective, ways.

The Scottish Parliament is a single chamber legislature, for example - along with many others around the world - yet doesn't suffer from any comparison with Westminster.

Labour had thirteen years in power - with an overall majority between 1999 and 2010 - and still failed to do anything about the Lords - other than stuff the place full of even more Labour peers.

To my mind reform is hopeless - a lost cause - abolition is the only answer.

Abolish the Lords (March 2012)

Writing in The Herald the other day - Robert McNeil poked fun at one of the most preposterous parts of the great British constitution - the House of Lords.

For some reason the Lid Dems are trying to reform this madhouse - this insult to democracy.

Instead of doing the decent thing - and demanding that their noble lordships and their second chamber - be abolished altogether.

For goodness sake there are over 800 of the buggers - getting shot of them would save the country around £10 billion a year.

Including some ridiculous boobies like Lord Michael Forsyth, Lord John Prescott and Lord George Foulkes.

Robert McNeil mentions the drink fuelled escapade which resulted in George Foulkes - a mere MP at the time - being charged with drunk and disorderly conduct in 1993.

Turning a blind eye to such events is never a good idea - because it gives out all the wrong signals - which Scottish Labour is paying a high price for now.

Whatever happened to Labour party radicalism?

Lords in a lather over future of auld Scotia

Well, that's a lie, but you know what I mean. We might see a lord as amiable, bumbling, faintly comical, effortlessly wealthy, indubitably unworldly, pleasantly pointless and peerlessly providing a poke in the eye to grey meritocracy.

You want to like a lord. You do. You want them to be benign. You hear their drawling debates late at night on Radio 4, and they seem civilised compared to the Hoose o' Commons. But, of late, the Hoose o' Lords has been getting on some Scottish wicks.

This is linked to the fact that the House of Lords has grown in proportion to its increased constitutional irrelevance. There are nearly 800 of the waffling jokers. Not one is from the SNP, the ruling party in Scotia, so no-one will speak there for independence, except presumably the chap from Plaid Cymru, or perhaps some fair-minded non-aligned fellow.

Recent weeks have seen Lords Foulkes, Forsyth, Robertson, Wallace and Steel sticking their oar in and paddling round in circles. This is an inspiring crew indeed. Lord Foulkes (Labour), affectionately known as "Fatty" or "Lard Foulkes", is famous for his measured contributions to the constitutional debate. The nation prefers to remember the time in 1993 when he wobbled forth into the night after attending an informative and educational hooley held by the Scotch Whisky Association.

Becoming accidentally entangled with an elderly female citizen, Lord Foulkes fell to the pavement and subsequently took a swing at a constable investigating the putative peer's problem with gravity. Charged with assault and being drunk and disorderly, he was fined heavily and had to resign as Labour's shadow defence spokesman. To be fair, who hasn't tried to punch a police officer after a few swallies?

Lord Forsyth (Conservative) is the popular former Scottish Secretary, who supported Margaret Thatcher's poll tax on the lieges and opposes Scotland having any powers at all, most recently writing in a London newspaper that the SNP's higher education policy was "vicious". I see. Lord Robertson (Labour) has also been getting his ermine in a twist, launching a tirade against "demented" people on the internut, presumably including the CyberBrits who are in a class of their own for vile abuse.

Comrade Robertson is perhaps best known for his inability to pronounce the acronym Nato, that being the organisation he headed from 1999 to 2004. He pronounced it: "Nado", in an inspired attempt to avoid the glottal stop. That didn't glottally stop the top socialist from going on to hold directorships in several companies such as the Weir Group and TNK-BP.

Lord Steel (Liberal Democrat) was formerly presiding orifice at the Scottish Parliament. Since then, he hasn't known what to do with himself, and was most recently heard complaining that Scotland was a one-party state, as a result of more people voting for one party than the others.

Lord Wallace of Tankerness (Liberal Democrat; do they seem ironically over-represented here, or is it just me?) has angrily claimed that a Holyrood referendum would be illegal. Mince perhaps, but I prefer to remember him for chips, a plate of which he once purchased for me in a grim northern port.

At the time, he was just an MP and I a local reporter hungry for a scoop. Perhaps he just heard the word hungry, hence the chips, provided by the plain eaterie where we met. I don't suppose Lord Tankerness eats chips now, unless with a cocktail stick.

To be fair, none of these unelected rulers has reached the bizarre standard set by Viscount Amberley who, on July 18, 1978, declared: "[This] House is indisputably Marxist and inherits the banner of the Red Army of the Soviet Union."

Earl Russell, to give him his Sunday name, said men should live in communal huts, called Britain's leaders "spiritless papal bumboys", and noted in passing: "The official rating of the human race in the northern hemisphere is: toad."

Certainly, the above-named peers appear hopping mad at the direction Scotia is taking, one that could see their institution irrelevant here and leave them only one alternative: to croak.