{"id":15289,"date":"2014-08-04T11:27:45","date_gmt":"2014-08-04T10:27:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=15289"},"modified":"2014-10-19T09:40:29","modified_gmt":"2014-10-19T08:40:29","slug":"an-election-to-the-house-of-lords-surely-not","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=15289","title":{"rendered":"An election to the House of Lords? Surely not!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The House of Lords is a very strong contender to be the most bizarre legislative institution in the world. As I explain my <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/Britishpoliticalsystem.html\">&#8220;Short Guide To The British Political System&#8221;<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;Historically most members of the House of Lords have been what we called hereditary peers. This meant that years ago a king or queen nominated a member of the aristocracy to be a member of the House and, since then, the right to sit in the House has passed through the family from generation to generation. Clearly this is totally undemocratic and the last Labour Government abolished the right of all but 92 of these hereditary peers to sit in the House.<\/p>\n<p>Almost all the other members of today&#8217;s House of Lords are what we call life peers. This means that they have been chosen by the Queen, on the advice of the Government, to sit in the House for as long as they live, but afterwards no member of their family has the right to sit in the House. Many are former senior politicians. Others are very distinguished figures in fields such as education, health and social policy.<\/p>\n<p>A small number of other members &#8211; 26 &#8211; are Archbishops and Bishops of the Church of England. Iran is the only other country in the world that provides automatic seats for senior religious figures in its legislature.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Thanks to my colleague and friend, Lord (Jim) Knight, I have become aware that there is currently an election in process to fill a vacancy in the Lords. How come? Jim explains <a href=\"http:\/\/jimknight.uk\/2014\/08\/04\/hereditary-peers-by-election-not-a-silly-season-story\/\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Later this week, more life peers will be appointed to the Lords bringing the total of peers to around 800 when the elected House of Commons is only 650 and the plan is to cut that number by 65. Crazy!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The House of Lords is a very strong contender to be the most bizarre legislative institution in the world. As I explain my &#8220;Short Guide To The British Political System&#8221;: &#8220;Historically most members of the House of Lords have been what we called hereditary peers. This meant that years ago a king or queen nominated [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15289","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-british-current-affairs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15289","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15289"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15289\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15848,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15289\/revisions\/15848"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}