Lots of UK News This Period

What with Blair calling it quits and the Queen visiting the US, this old WCA article seemed like a natural to resurrect. It appears to be from sometime in 1998.

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WE'LL ALWAYS HAVE ENGLAND TO KICK AROUND

Ann Arbor: Ok, look; I know some of you think I'm soft on Clinton, and the Dexter Chapter of Hell's Dentists has issued death threats in retaliation for my scorning of Harley's Motorclothing Booteek. And I realize that occasionally my critical review of jurisprudence in the Detroit Suburbs ("Prosecutor Donates Brain to Science: 'I never use it anyway,' says Patterson" WCA News, March 12, 1994) may appear harsh. But I'm really not all that much of an extremist. For example, I've never (publically) suggested that the world's oldest continually-running musical comedy -- I mean, democracy might be in need of a lube and oil job. I (usually) refrain from taking shots at the British Government, per se, because:

* a) Its individual members are so much funnier than the body politic in general.
* b) Most of WCAs readership consists of Amerikun geeks, a group notoriously unconcerned with foreign affairs other than the giant sucking sound caused by US web page owners farming out development work to starving Bosnian COBOL programmers.
* c) Our own gummint has enough of its own little ways to occupy three or four of me (what a frightening thought that is).

However (you could see that word coming a mile off, couldn't you?), I'm not above straight reportage when Her Majesty's Finest start tweaking things. And so (really, I couldn't make this up), I bring you the news that Blair's Labour Government is seriously talking about bringing to an end the current algorithm for being a member of the House of Lords (which approximates P(LsubS) where L is your antecedent who sucked up succesfully to a deceased monarch and S is you, whether you are clinically conscious or not). Instead, "The Independent" tells us, under a story datelined April First, the plan is to replace heriditary peerages with randomly-selected, rotating "People's Lords."

The story cites "leaked" documents that say, in part, that "The committee looks forward to the Lords eventually becoming "a statistically perfect and genuinely inclusive sample" of the British population. It will then function as 'the ideal national focus group for test-bedding new legislative initiatives'."

It also reports on opposition to the change, including a claim that Blair "... has been spending too much time on the phone to Clinton ...", and a warning from Professor Pamella Benlott that "The British constitution is fragile. Hereditary peers have centuries of in-breeding in their blood. The fact that many Lords are congenital idiots is a subtle and unique part of the constitutional settlement with which Tony will tinker at his peril." It quotes a peer, The 27th Earl of Thanet, as threatening violence in the form of a mass uprising of the landed gentry and their "supporters" if the measure is adopted.

Is the date of the story significant? Who knows? But if not, if this plan is really under consideration, then it represents an exciting departure from hidebound convention, and one that we here in the colonies should consider very carefully. How'd you like to be, say, the Senator from North Carolina for a day?

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The WCA News Service is brought to you by the House of Drunks at the Odd Town Tavern where "peerage" is usually taken to mean the act of peering closely at your plate, trying to identify the ingredients of your tempeh burger.

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