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What happened?

The top article in the UK at the moment concerns the comments made on IRC yesterday over the House of Lords. I shan't repeat it all over again, but I will just go through the concerns it raised and what the immediate fallout of this has been.

Why was it such an problem?

The TUP has in the past campaigned vigorously for the abolition of the House of Lords and at one point succeeded. However, the House was later reinstated following another vote in the Commons.

I, and many others, fought extremely hard in getting the House of Lords back and I am now again working extremely hard, also with others, to get it back on its feet. The fact now that Party Presidents vote on Lords is an issue because the House of Lords is supposed to be for politically unbiased members (or at least as unbiased as they can be given the fact most are in parties). The comments made echoed fears of that bias creeping into the House of Lords.

In an extraordinarily magnanimous move, Karacticus resigned from the Lords approval committee, something which I do not think is necessary but nevertheless wholeheartedly applaud.

In short, I fear a biased House of Lords, dominated not by experienced and dedicated players, but another scene of political in-fighting and turmoil which reflects the in-game rankings page.

The wider picture

Party politics is growing. Its influence and damage both direct, but more importantly collaterally, is growing. I have ranted on about the unimportance of Right vs. Left on erepublik before and it can not be underestimated.

I had a discussion last night on IRC with a prominent member of the PCP. I suggested cooperation, which they were open to. However, what that meant to them was not meeting in the middle, or putting aside RL political philosophy which has no place in erep, it meant trying to persuade me why they were right and I wrong.

A wise man once (repeatedly) said, no democratic party is 100% correct. If it thinks it is then it has failed in being a political party because it has failed to listen to the people; it has only listened to people who agree with them.

But party politics is here to stay for now it seems. The FDP is keen to not let one party dominate the rankings ladder, and so the House of Commons and Premiership, without a vocal and dedicated opposition. It is not a critique of performance, but a separate view, that may or may not agree with the administration, on what should be done in different situations.

What should be done in this situation?

Well, in normal circumstances I wouldn't want to jump into reforming the House of Lords (again) act so quickly. It seems too knee jerk to do so. But there is little else that can be done to minimise the influence of partisan politics on the nomination process to the House of Lords other than to amend that process.

A reform has already been proposed on the Act for another issue (criteria for nominees to the House of Lords).

As it stands the Prime Minister, the 5 top PPs and 3 lords vote on nominees to the House of Lords. To stop the nomination process turning into the party political bitch fight, there are number of things that can be done.

Some suggestions that have come out of the discussion threa😛

- When voting on your own party members, you should abstain (in fact you should always abstain when voting on an issue in which you have an interest, but this is of course not always practical so such a sweeping rule is untenable).
- Limiting the number the number of nominations per committee member to only 2 a month.
- Allowing the House of Commons pick Lords.
- Allowing the House of Lords pick Lords but give the House of Commons a veto.

All of these come with problems of course, but to establish a greater set of checks and balances it will limit the influence of any one person or group.

We all want a stable government. We all want to enjoy the game. We can not therefore all get our own way.

Whichever option we follow, it is now thoroughly being discussed and I'm certain we will come to some consensus.

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Feel free to PM me for instructions concerning getting onto IRC (which can also be found in forums) or for any other reason

Shadow Minister of Home Affairs
Scipio