Miscellaneous things

[undyingking]

This interested me:

The Washington Defense of Marriage Alliance seeks to defend equal marriage in this state by challenging the Washington Supreme Court’s ruling on Andersen v. King County... The way we are challenging Andersen is unusual: using the initiative, we are working to put the Court’s ruling into law. We will do this through three initiatives. The first would make procreation a requirement for legal marriage. The second would prohibit divorce or legal separation when there are children. The third would make the act of having a child together the legal equivalent of a marriage ceremony...Absurd? Very. But there is a rational basis for this absurdity. By floating the initiatives, we hope to prompt discussion about the many misguided assumptions which make up the Andersen ruling.

Hmm. Good luck to them I guess, but it does seem a kind of crazy way of going about it. I'm not sure that drawing attention to a legal system's absurdities really does shame it into improvement. But maybe Washington is different.

I am in DIY mode at the moment. Not a natural state of being for me, but there's such a lot that wants doing around this house. I just now fitted a curtain rail in the office, which normally is nothng much -- but this is a small dormer window so the rail had to be bent into a tight U-shape. Cue much swearing and wrestling, but it's up now, and hopefully T will make some curtains shortly. Then people who have to crash in there will no longer have to stick sheets of cardboard up at the windows!

More significantly though, the cellar staircase is nearing the crunch point. I've got as far as measuring up, designing and asking for quotes for the replacement stairs. Frankly I'm slightly daunted by this job. Particularly as most of the work will have to be done from within the cellar, and once you demolish the old stairs, there's no easy way of getting back out until you've finished building the new ones. Hopefully there'll be no point at which a ladder can't be deployed, but if I'm wrong about that, I'll have to swiftly lose about two stone in weight to fit through the coal hatch.

On an unrelated note, there's been a bit of talk lately about the future of the House of Lords, and Jack Straw's funky new plan for the next stage of reforming it. I guess not many people in the real world care very much about this sort of thing, compared to eg. the abysmal horrors of having to possibly pay more road tax, but I do: I find it offensive that our laws are still being passed and vetoed by a bunch of people whose ancestors let the King sh*g their wives, the hereditary peers. Most of them have gone now, but there are still quite a few left. Why?? The only explanation I've heard for them not having the boot already is that they wouldn't like it. Well, tough.

The bigger group now of course are those who bought places by funding the political parties, the life peers. Clearly some life peers are appointed on perceived merit rate rthan depth of pocket, but there's enoufgh of the others to somewhat discredit the institution. I've seena  couple of arguments advanced for why we should still keep some kind of life peer system whereby at least some people are appointed to the upper house rather than elected. (1) That way, you can ensure that some of the members are competent and skilled, rather than just vote-grubbing placemen; (2) If they were all elected, that would undermine the authority of the House of Commons.

Now for a start, these two arguments are contradictory. If all-elected members aren't good enough to run the upper house, then why should the all-elected House of Commons be seen as any better? Leaving that aside, though:

1. Elected politicans are not saints, for sure, and often not even decent people. Maybe you do believe, like Plato, that a bunch of wise philosopher-kings would do a better job of running the country than the rabble who tend to get elected. But if really you're opposed to the whole idea of democracy, that's a different argument I think. I don't think it's intellectually respectable to be a little bit anti-democratic -- in favour of it in some places but not others. Either you want to throw the whole system out, or else the upper house has as much claim to be democratically composed as the lower house does. It is better I think if it's not all the same sort of people as the Commons, and there's all sorts of options for different democratic bases for electing it that would achieve that aim.
2. Why shouldn't it have equal authority to the Commons, if it's composed in as democratic a way (possibly more so)? I can see that the Commons itself might not like that, but that doesn't affect the principle. Plenty of other places have bicameral legislature without bickering over which of the two is more important. It seems to me purely a question of adjusting procedure.

Anyway, that's probaly enough rambling, those of you who got this far without falling asleep. Have a good day!

Comments

[caffeine-fairy.livejournal.com]

I find the Defence of Marriage Alliance little short of terrifying

require that couples married out of state file proof of procreation within three years of the date of marriage or have their marriage classed as “unrecognized;” </>

[dr-bob.livejournal.com]

I think there are a lot of strengths in having a House of Lords that is partly non-party political. My preference would be to have a part elected (by PR), part selected house, where the selected section is based on professional expertise that would be of value to scrutinising legistlation. So the Law Sciety might get 5 seats; the Royal Society might get 5, The BMA or GMC might select 5, UK sport might select some and so on. There could even be a place for a small group of hereditary peers. The House of Commons could then change the seats given to different organisations, and the selections could be staggered over longish terms to give continuity to Lords.

But then I also heard a quote about it - If you ask 300 MPs what their idea for House of Lords reform is, you get 300 different answers.