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Lords complain of ‘poor wine’ and ‘too much salmon’ in the ‘disappointing’ taxpayer-subsidised food and drink served to Parliament
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/exclusive-house-of-lords-complaints-food-drink-taxpayer-subsidised/
I take calls from people every day who have mere pounds or pennies in their accounts, and for whom a simple payment delay could mean a potentially inescapable debt trap. The Lords could do with being forced to spend a month or so in their shoes. Tories too.
Yeah... I'm gonna need some UK person to tell me what I'm looking at here :P
Not a UK person, but some context: The House of Lords is an unelected branch of the government in the UK, primarily composed of the nobles (dukes, marquesses, earls, viscounts, and barons), with a strong side contingent of the upper echelons of the state church. These people of significant wealth and influence are complaining about the cost and quality of the taxpayer subsidized food and drink in their exclusive restaurants and clubs.
Wow, that's pretty crazy. An unelected chamber seems bizarre, doesn't it? Aren't the British appalled that such a thing even exist in a modern nation?
Sorry for the basic questions but it turns out I'm extremely /r/outoftheloop.
"The nobles" that @MimicSquid refers to is perhaps a little misleading. Most of the Lords today aren't hereditary peers (I think it's about 10%, and they are elected by the rest of the house). There are religious appointments - Archbishops get an automatic seat and so on - but traditionally they don't actually do very much and they're a fairly tiny minority. The majority of the House is made up of "Life Peers", people who have been appointed by the government - from all sides of the political spectrum. Governments usually create a few peers each year, but they also die off or retire so while the Lords is big (700+ peers iirc) it's not ridiculous. They also don't all turn up for stuff.
You can get a peerage for service to the country in political, military, social, educational, scientific or whatever. A peerage is a step above an award like an MBE or a knighthood. It's not a directly elected position but it is one created by an elected administration.
So yeah, they are, technically unelected. But elections haven't really served us very well either. The current implementation of "democracy" clearly isn't working fantastically at the moment. It's too easy to game, as demonstrated by the constant fuckin' gaming of the system by the (usually) right wing/conservative side of things.
I'm in the UK and I like having a part of parliament which doesn't have to worry about keeping it's electorate happy, because plenty of that electorate just does whatever Rupert Murdoch tells them to do and that's very, very bad for society.
It's worth noting that the Lords can't make laws, but it can force reviews and rewrites of laws proposed by the Commons (the elected house), and often does help curb the more egregious excesses of power (usually by the right wing when they're in power, but far from exclusively). They also do things like oversight - of themselves, the commons and the government itself; investigative and speculative committee works, on topics which are a little wider-ranging and/or longer term or complex than day-to-day parliament would normally be concerned with.
On balance I like the House of Lords. They're slower and more patient and less popularist that the other place. They get less done but they're an important part of having a wider view and of keeping the systems accountable.
Sure, there are a sprinkling of entitled rich old white dudes who see themselves as far more important than ordinary people and complain that the sandwiches aren't on plates but where don't you find those old rich white dudes stinking up the place? That will change with time.
Wow that's awesome, thank you for the very interesting info.
I mean the Queen is technically still the unelected Supreme sovereign. British taxes are collected by HMRC, that's Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs.
Like the Royal Family, the Lords is a weird vestigial relic of the country's heritage, that essentially has no power now after both a series of acts from parliament and just customs (the Lords also well know that if they started exerting what powers they have left, there'll be more restrictions applied or maybe even the revocation of the system, and they'd very much like their free sandwhiches and wine).
It certainly seems bizarre to my sensibilities, but my countries' culture has several idiosyncrasies centered around the rejection of the British and how they did things. As far as the other question, I'll leave that up to someone who's actually from the country in question.