It seemed a good idea at the time. The SF Marathon starts at 5.30am, so we would stay at David's appartment in the city, and I would cycle to the start. It was, after all, only a few miles and mainly downhill. And in any case, this was only a training run: I had not trained for this marathon, had not tapered, and did not expect to do a good time. I just wanted the practice, and this was a good way to do a long Sunday run.
It all went according to plan. Cycling along Market Street, I reminded myself not to let my wheels get caught in the tram tracks, as Dave Parrish did last year. How stupid would that be, I asked myself, to crash on the way to a marathon? (You can see how this is going to end, can't you?) A few minutes later, I saw the perfect bike rack to lock to, on the other side of the road. I started to edge across, focused on waiting for a break in the oncoming traffic, until my back tyre dropped into the tram tracks and the bike went from under me. I left a lot of skin and blood from my knees, hip and shoulder on the road, and limped to the other side of the road. All this at 5am, in the dark.
Perhaps more driven by adrenaline than common sense, I started the race anyway. I was hobbling – my hip was (and is) severely bruised and my knee was bleeding, but you expect to hurt in a marathon (maybe not so much in the first mile).
At about 17 miles, I got the most severe stitch I had ever experienced: I imagine this was because I was running unevenly because of my hip; but it might have been the gel that I took at mile 15. I was stooped on the ground. A police motorcyclist offered me a lift to the medical tent at the finish line. I declined, and walked and jogged as far as Leah and Nathan, who had selflessly got up early to support the runners. I chatted to them for a few minutes while the stitch cleared, and then set off again up Haight Street, hoping that I might catch some of the runners that I had been with before the stitch began. (I did, but not until the 25 mile mark).
When I got to the finish, the crew in the finish area rushed me to the medical tent to treat my injuries. What had happened to me, they wanted to know? I told them that it had all happened before the race even began. I think they were relieved that the race was not to blame for the state I was in.
All in all, this was a horrible run: it hurt every step of the way. I was pleased to finish in 2:54:20 – not bad for a hilly course, with no taper, and carrying injuries. I reckon I can knock a few minutes off that in a serious marathon.
Whales. The whale-hunters might or might not start hunting a species that is not endangered.
The World Development Movement has a handy tool to help the ethical football supporter decide which team to support.
As I type, Tunisia is beating Saudi Arabia – according to the WDM, this is good news as it means that the 3rd most supportable team is beating the 29th most supportable, on measures such as carbon emmissions, corruption and military spending.
The Government has announced new mental health detention plans under which people who are deemed mentally ill with a condition that cannot be treated, and who have committed no crime, can be detained in Lubyanka a mental hospital indefinitely.
The Government has concluded that it will not be able to get its controversial draft Mental Health Bill through Parliament to make these changes, because of criticism of the measures from mental health experts and civil rights groups.
So instead they are going to introduce similar measures by amending the existing Mental Health Act 1983 and Mental Capacity Act 2005. The main difference is that patients who are locked up without their consent will be given a right to appeal. As things stand, Parliament will need to approve the amendments.
How much easier this will be for Ministers when the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill gives the government power to introduce these measures without having to obtain Parliamentary approval. Then it won’t matter whether Parliament agrees or not. Much more efficient, you see?
Here is me on my morning run in Boulder yesterday. This is at the top of Bear Peak, from which there are great views over the Rockies.
Unfortunately I lost Grethe’s phone somewhere down the trail coming down. But the views were definitely worth the cost of replacing it.
According to a study in this week’s Lancet, nearly 4 million people have died in the Democratic Republic of Congo as a result of the conflict which began in 1998.
Richard Brennan et al report the findings of a nationwide household mortality survey conducted between April and July, 2004. The national crude mortality rate of 2.1 deaths per 1000 per month was 40% higher than the sub-Saharan regional level – about 38,000 excess deaths per month. The total death toll from the conflict (1998-2004) was estimated to be 3.9 million.
To put that in perspective, twice as many people die preventable deaths each year in the Congo as died in the Asian Tsunami last year.
The proximate cause of the vast majority of these additional deaths is infectious diseases which could be easily prevented or treated, if security and humanitarian assistance were provided.
Dr Brennan comments:
"This is the fourth in a series of surveys since 2000 that have consistently drawn the same conclusion-Congo is the deadliest crisis anywhere in the world over the past 60 years. It is a sad indictment on us all that, seven years into this crisis, ignorance about its scale and impact is almost universal, and that international engagement remains completely out of proportion to humanitarian need. Major governments, the United Nations, the African Union, humanitarian agencies, and the international media must all play a role: improved security is essential to lower the death toll; greater political engagement is urgently required; the parties to the conflict must be held to account; and the level of humanitarian aid must be increased dramatically. The citizens of DR Congo must finally be given the chance to live their lives in peace and security, and to achieve their full potential".
On these figures, the conflict in the DRC has now taken more lives than any since the Second World War.
The rich countries could, with pitifully little effort, step in to prevent further conflict, provide security for the people of DRC, and provide the essential humanitarian support needed to end this slaughter. But we won’t.
In the comments on my post on "Who benefits from globalisation?", both Ben and Paul ask what we might do to ensure that the poor obtain a greater share of the benefits of globalisation in the future.
This is a very interesting question, worthy of a longer reply than I’m going to give it here. But here is an outline of what we might do. I’d welcome other suggestions in the comments section.
- Ensure that further liberalisation gives priority to changes that will benefit poor countries (eg removing agricultural subsidies, removing tariff escalation, unconditionally ending all quotas and tariffs on exports of LDCs, simplifying phyto-sanitary standards) rather than those which are primarily designed to benefit rich countries.
- Give priority to extending the logic and practice of globalisation to the market for labour, to complement liberalistion of the markets for goods and for capital. Even small increases in migration would be of huge benefit to poor countries. The asymmetry of our policy rhetoric on free trade for goods but growing anxiety about the movement of people verges on hypocrisy. We can’t expect others to accept our arguments on the benefits of globalisation if we remain adamantly opposed to those parts of it that we are uncomfortable about.
- Massively increase investment in global public goods, such as R&D into scientific innovation that would help the poor (a green revolution in Africa, new vaccines, solar power etc), conflict prevention and reductions in environmental degradation. By definition, the costs of these public goods should be paid by the world community as a whole, and not by individual countries; and rich countries should be investing much more of their wealth on them.
- Give more aid. We know that aid works, on average. There is remarkable consensus about how much aid is needed to meet the Millennium Development Goals, and it isn’t very much. A doubling of aid would have a huge impact on developing countries, and the cost to rich countries would be negligible within the context of public spending.
- Increase knowledge sharing. I am concerned that the gradual extenson of copyright and patents into more and more of commercial life makes it hard for poor countries to appropriate technology from rich countries and close the gap. This has been a mechanism through the ages by which the poorest have been able to catch up with the richest: my sense is that we are making it harder than ever for this to happen. I think we have to find ways to ensure that poor countries have access to knowledge itself, and to knowledge-intensive products (eg computer software, pharmaceuticals, complex machinery) at tiered prices – the R&D costs should be paid by rich consumers, and poor countries should get access to these products at marginal cost (ie almost nothing). It harms us not in the slightest for them to do so.
There is a separate question of how to pay for the measures with a fiscal cost (namely, more aid, more investment in global public goods). Paul’s comment is, I think, aimed at those who advocate new taxes (eg a Tobin Tax, departure tax). He says If you are seeking to dictate to democratically elected governments how to run their economies I don’t think you are right. I basically agree with him on that. The costs are so trivially small that governments can absorb them within their normal budget process. The cost to the UK would be about a fifth of what David Davies proposes to save with his fiscal rule – it would mean very slightly smaller reductions in income tax. Governments should decide on the case for new or different taxes on the economic advantages and disadvantages of the tax, not on the basis of the merits of the cause for which the revenues would be hypothecated. As it happens, I am not persuaded by the case for taxing foreign exchange transactions (a Tobin Tax); but I am in favour of taxing aviation fuel; both for microeconomic reasons, not because of how the money might be spent.
So that is my agenda for how we might ensure that we continue to deepen and extend globalisation and at the same time ensure that the poor secure the majority of the benefits. I’d welcome comments or other suggestions in the comments below.
Update 11 November: See Chris Dillow at Stumbling and Mumbling, who adds asset redistribution to the list of possible measures.
Microfinance is trendy. But is it just another development fad, or is there evidence that microfinance really helps to stimulate economic growth? Even if there is, should donors do more to support microfinance?
My take on this is that microfinance, provided on a commercial basis, is self-evidently good. But that does not mean that we should welcome the stampede to subsidize microfinance. There are not strong arguments – either in principle or from evidence – that this is the best way to use scarce resources to help poor countries to grow.
Here I look at six reasons why microfinance is no panacea.
Continue reading
Jacob Nielsen lists the top ten design mistakes of bloggers. It is a very useful summary for all new bloggers, and a useful reminder for the older hands.
I would add the following six tips:
11. Retain your own voice. Blogging has evolved as a form of personal expression of ideas and experience, and that gives it much of its unique value.
12. Use trackbacks to continue the conversation. These create a link in the blog you are commenting on, to your own comments. Emerging blogging etiquette demands that you only trackback to a post that you also link to in your post.
13. Use blog-reading software to read blogs. It is much quicker and more convenient than surfing from one blog to another in your web-browser.
14. Use the "excerpts" section of your blog software wisely. Many readers skim the excerpts to decide what to read. Make it self-contained and interesting. Excerpts that are intended to tease are annoying.
15. Link generously. Links are our community’s currency and our main social asset. Give credit it where it is due.
16. Bloggers hate rules. Try to codify blogger etiquette at your peril.
Hat tip: Bloggers4Labour
What Tony Blair said in Parliament after Gleneagles is not true:
On aid and debt relief, in respect of the new money aspect, I am somewhat puzzled by some of the people who have been claiming that it is all recycled money. It is absolutely clear to me that the EU commitment is additional, the Japanese commitment is definitely additional, and as far as I am aware, Canada and the US are agreeing to double their aid from their present position. Although people keep saying that there is an issue about whether it is new money, it seems to me certainly true that it is, at least the vast bulk of it.
…
If we deliver on what has been promised, yes, we can say that the millennium development goals will be met; but, obviously, we have got to deliver on it.
Here are the numbers of the additional pledges made during 2005. The UN Millennium Project estimated that in 2010, ODA would need to be $152 bn (in 2003 prices) That’s about $160 in 2004 prices.
My estimate based on DAC projections is that $114 bn had been pledged by September 2004 for 2010; which has been increased during 2005 to pledges totallying about $128bn. That is an increase in pledges during 2005 of just $14 billion. Of that, the bulk ($9 billion) is due to promises from Germany and Italy, both of whom have cautioned that their increases are subject to fiscal priorities at the time. There would need to be an additional $33 billion pledged by 2010 to reach the UN Millennium Project estimate of what is needed.
It is true that if $128 billion were achieved, this would be an increase of around $50 billion compared to 2004 levels. But at most $14 billion of that increase is additional money pledged during 2005, and it is not safe to count on about half of that.
… the ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back. I am sure that the power of vested interests is vastly exaggerated compared with the gradual encroachment of ideas. Not, indeed, immediately, but after a certain interval; for in the field of economic and political philosophy there are not many who are influenced by new theories after they are twenty-five or thirty years of age, so that the ideas which civil servants and politicians and even agitators apply to current events are not likely to be the newest. But, soon or late, it is ideas, not vested interests, which are dangerous for good or evil.
John Maynard Keynes, 1935, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, Chapter 24.
Americans call public spending that they don’t approve of "pork". Apparently the term comes from the idea of the government giving every voter a barrel of pork (smoked pork products were, at one time, shipped in barrels).
And by golly there is a lot of it here in the United States. This is partly because Congress has much more power over the budget than does the British House of Commons. The British system has a rule that only a Minister can propose increases in expenditure or taxation; it is for the House of Commons then to decide whether to grant the money needed. In the US, by contrast, Congress can insert additonal spending in almost any bill.
President Clinton was briefly given the power to veto particular items (the "line item veto"), and he used it 82 times in 1997 to delete unnecessary expenditures in 11 spending bills. The savings to taxpayers total nearly $2 billion over five years. But the Supreme Court struck down the line item veto in 1998, and now the President has to accept the pork inserted in the Budget by Congress, or send the whole thing back.
In August 2005, Congress passed, and President Bush approved, a transportation bill stuffed with pork. The bi-partisan pressure group Taxpayers for Common Sense identified 6,371 pieces of pork – at a cost of $24bn. These included $450m for two bridges in sparsely populated Alaska and $2.3m for landscaping along the Ronald Reagan highway in California. There was also funding for a snowmobile trail, a deer-avoidance system and something described as "dust control mitigation" on rural roads in Arkansas.
And that is why this porkbusters campaign is such a good idea: use the blogosphere to identify a comprehensive list of pork. Instapundit explains:
Identify some wasteful spending in your state or (even better) Congressional District. Put up a blog post on it. Go to N.Z. Bear’s new PorkBusters page and list the pork, and add a link to your post. Then call your Senators and Representative and ask them if they’re willing to support having that program cut or — failing that — what else they’re willing to cut in order to fund Katrina relief. (Be polite, identify yourself as a local blogger and let them know you’re going to post the response on your blog). Post the results. Then go back to NZ Bear’s page and post a link to your followup blog post. The result should be a pretty good resource of dubious spending, and Congressional comments thereon, for review by blogs, members of the media, etc. And maybe even members of Congress looking for wasteful spending.
Of course, one person’s pork is another person’s essential infrastructure project or welfare payment, and I’m not sure who will decide if each entry truly qualifies. We’ll have to see whether the quality of catalogue can be maintained. I’d be inclined to have a community voting system to determine which spending is the most egregiously porky.
In general, I’m an admirer of much of the United States’s system of government. But their inability to exert any sort of fiscal discipline is not an advertisement for their budget process. Perhaps the blogosphere can help to shed some light on the worst excesses and put pressure on Congress to do better?
One of the more widespread pieces of rampant stupidity is the language of trade "negotiations" in which countries make "concessions" if there is a "deal" and other countries do the same.
Let’s get this straight. Trade barriers make a country poorer and should be abolished irrespective of whether other countries have the wisdom to do the same thing. "We’ll only stop throwing rocks in our harbour when you stop throwing rocks in yours" is not the policy of a rational person.
But it is more than daft, it is cynical. George Bush said in his UN speech:
Today I broaden the challenge by making this pledge: The United States is ready to eliminate all tariffs, subsidies and other barriers to free flow of goods and services as other nations do the same. This is key to overcoming poverty in the world’s poorest nations.
And Tony Blair speaking today said:
going to have the World Trade Organisation in Hong Kong, that has got to be done properly, we have got to get a good strong deal out of that … it is the test of whether international cooperation is prepared to live up to the demands of the inter-dependent international community we live in today.
Neither the EU nor US has the slightest intention of making a significant reduction in trade barriers. These carefully phrased bluffs are designed never to be called. We will go on shovelling taxpayers’ money into the trough for agricultural and economic interests, with catastrophic consequences for the word’s poor, while blaming other countries for the lack of progress. Here’s the White House’s press spokesman speaking in April last year:
And we will be defending U.S. agricultural interests in every forum we need to, and have no intention of unilaterally taking steps to disarm when it comes to this.
We won’t get anywhere if we go on thinking of this as a negotiation. There is no analogy with disarmament: trade barriers are not something we might reluctantly give up as a price we have to pay to obtain the benefits of actions of others. They are a form of self-harm which we should cease immediately, while earnestly hoping that others do the same.
Some say that tariffs and subsidies give us "leverage" that we can use to accelerate reduction by other countries. In which parallel universe is that true? Meanwhile, back in reality, our tariffs and subsidies give other countries all the excuse they need to go on doing the same. If you really want to put pressure on other countries, do yourself a favour and get rid of of trade barriers.
I do not understand why extraordinary rendition is not causing more outrage in the UK. Read this to find out what it is like to be tortured, and British complicity.
Credit, though, to BlairWatch, who highlights a recent article in the Guardian.
And to my father, Brian Barder, who resigned from the Special Immigration Appeals Commission in protest at the Government’s attempts to use the immigration system to imprison people without a fair trial (which the High Court subsequently found to be illegal) and whose blog is an essential resource for anyone interested in civil liberties.
And to Tony Hatfield, who continues to plug away on this.
And to Stephen Grey, a remarkable journalist who has probably done more than any other British journalist to hold the Government to account (see his website, online news article here, radio transcript here, newspaper article here).
And we should acknowledge Kenneth Clarke for raising the issue in his recent speech on foreign affairs.
Apologies to anyone I’ve missed (let me know in the comments section if there are other great blogs about this.)
The British Government should not condone, tolerate, participate in or benefit from torture. Full stop.
I am not sure yet if President Bush is seriously planning to conduct his own enquiry into Katrina, or if this was just a poor choice of words.
If he does end up holding an enquiry into the events, I predict this will be his undoing. It is always the cover-up that creates the political scandal. Some evidence will come to light during this enquiry which will be uncomfortable for the administration, and it will not be properly reported. And that will, in time, be the scandal that finishes him.
You will recall that there was a flutter in blogland a couple of weeks back about the causes of the famine in Niger, triggered by an article in the Washington Post which claimed that “the rise of a market mentality” had contributed to the famine in Niger. A number of us, including Cafe Hayek, TechCentralStation, Newmark’s Door, The Globalisation Institute, Tim Worstall and me, reacted with a discussion about the circumstances in which there might be a famine but no general shortage of food, and pointing out that the solution may lie not in providing food but money to the very poor.
So it was interesting to see this article on BBC News Online, which is based mainly on an interview with Bill Easterly, making essentially the point that a number of us were making:
"It is axiomatic that flooding the market with food drives down the price for local farmers," Mr Easterly says. …
Mr Easterly and others are not arguing that the solution to perverse incentives lies in withholding emergency aid.
They contend that it could be made to work better in a number of ways, including:
- Providing compensation to local farmers
- Making sure aid stops when things improve
- Giving cash rather than food
But the most effective move would be to focus less on emergencies and more on chronic problems. Mr Easterly says this could be done cheaply in the Sahel.
Quite so.
My thoughts are with the many thousands of people who have been affected by Hurricane Katrina; those who have been killed and injured; those who are trapped and need to be rescued; those who are now refugees seeking shelter and food; those whose posessions and homes have been destroyed; and the family and friends around the world who wait anxiously for news of their loved ones.
We should pause also to reflect on the bravery and selflessness of those in the services who are working round the clock to help.
FEMA has recommended this list of charities for those who wish to give donations; see also Stygius and Instapundit. (I personally think that in a country as rich as the United States, it is the responsibility of Government, not charity, to meet the needs of people affected by disaster. Should ordinary working folk on moderate incomes give what they can so that the Federal Government can cut taxes for the very rich? I don’t think so.)
The blogosphere has already begun to discuss whether anyone is to blame: cuts in investment in flood defences; reduced capacity of the National Guard; climate change. In due course, there should also be a debate about whether it is sensible to restore the city of New Orleans at all, given its vulnerability to natural disasters, or whether, like Pompeii, it should remain a memorial.
There will be plenty of time for all that. For now, let’s focus on getting help to those who need it.
Tim Worstall wants us to believe that the EU makes worse decisions on trade policy because the decision-makers are too far from the people:
it’s a fairly basic theory of mine about how the world works that the further away from the people any bureaucracy is the worse it does. Some twit trying to impose silly rules via the parish council quickly gets reminded, in the most personal and upfront manner, of quite how silly those rules are. Local councils are similarly amenable to personal pressure….derision down the pub for example. As bureaucracies become further and further away, regional, national, continental (and in the uber example, global,) there is less and less of this correction.
I am generally in favour of the principle of subsidiarity (which is that decisions should be made at the lowest possible level) but I don’t think that the problem with trade policy decisions is that they are made by people who are insufficiently politically accountable.
The political economy of trade policy is that trade restrictions (such as tariffs and quotas) are of large and transparent value to a small number of producers, who are typically well organised and vocal. There are many more losers – namely, the consumers who pay the costs of protectionism – but though the loss is large in total, the cost to each consumer is small, and disguised in the form of higher prices.
Politicians who represent farming constituencies are generally vigorous supporters of agricultural subsidies and protectionist quotas on agicultural imports. Politicians in industrial constituencies usually advocate tariffs on imports that compete with their voters’ factories. Politicians that represent the consumers who lose out from these measures tend to give much less priority to trade issues, as their voters are relatively apathetic.
So the political force for protection is stronger than the force for liberalisation, and governments continue to implement trade barriers, even though it would be in the interest of their citizens overall to remove the tariffs and quotas.
The "democratic deficit" in this case is not that the decision-makers are too far from the people; it is that there is an asymmetry between the political pressure from the beneficiaries of trade restrictions and the political pressure from the losers.
Paradoxically, this may be a case where taking the decisions further from the political representatives of those most directly affected would be beneficial. There is a parallel with the case for creating an independent central bank (which I guess Tim would be in favour of) – there may be benefits from consciously putting these decisions in the hands of people who are somewhat removed from the political fray and who can be given incentives to pursue the broader public good, rather than having to respond to the more immediate and vocal complaints of the losers. Tim may want to believe that politicians who are more directly accountable to their voters would take better decisions; on this issue, I fear the opposite is true.
Even if Tim were right and there was reason to think we would get better trade policy decisions at lower levels of government, it is impractical. All but the most extreme Eurosceptics support the EU single market. And that in turn requires that there are no tariffs and quotas between European countries, and a common external tariff. To devolve trade policy decisions back to national governments would add a significant burden on Europe’s businesses.
This is the first of two contributions to the debate reforming the UK House of Lords. This post summarises the issues raised by various blogs who wrote about this in a coordinated effort on 10th August. A companion piece makes a novel proposal for reform. It summarises the blogs, and draws out some common themes. There seems to be a greater degree of consensus about the characteristics we want from a reformed second chamber than there is on how best to achieve it.
What the bloggers said
Phil at Actually Existing gives a historical perspective to the current position. Simon Holledge at Skakagrall gives a Scottish context, saying that Lords Reform is an essential stage in a series of constitutional reforms that may eventually bring real democracy to every part of the British Isles. Mary Reid and Matt Bowles say that 94 years is long enough to wait for reform. Jim Bliss – an irishman – is amused by the absurdly anachronistic system of governance still being employed by his former colonial oppressors
Will Howells asks why we need a second chamber at all, but that if there is one agrees with Tim Holyoake and Sara that it should be elected by some sort of proportional representation. Keith Wilson and (with some reservations) Chris Applegate support the Second Chamber of Parliament Bill.
Sandra Gidley (an MP) can’t understand why this is taking so long. Richard Allan (who used to be an MP) is perplexed that anyone would choose appointment rather than election. Talk Politics calls for a plebescite so that the people can choose how they wish to be governed. Kerron Cross, Malcolm Clark, Stephen Linlithgow and Stephen Glenn all argue that Lords Reform would be a fitting tribute to Robin Cook, who died on August 6th, 2005.
Many of the posts complain about patronage and cronyism. Carolyn Roberts asks why Andrew Lloyd-Webber has a seat in parliament. Justin of Chicken Yoghurt argues against jobs for life. Paul Davies and The Woodland Path agree.
Brian Barder (my Dad) argues that the second chamber should reflect the increasingly federal nature of the UK political system, and refers to his contributions to the Selection Committee on Lords Reform.
Only a few bloggers argued against an elected second chamber (though this is a biased sample, as this mass blogging was part of an Elect the Lords campaign.) Nosemonkey advocates reform of the Lords argues against direct election. He says that the job of the second chamber is to scrutinize legislation, that the public would not tend to elect the most expert people, and that a joint committee of both houses should make appointments. Tim Hicks replies that democracy is better than the alternatives. Tim Worstall vents his contempt for politicians of all sorts and wants something random instead. John Band at the Sharpener and Jamie at Blood and Treasure argue for a lottery to choose the membership of the second chamber. Nick Barlow thinks a third of the second chamber should be elected every General Election. Oliver Pell thinks that there is a choice between a democratic House of Lords and an effective revising chamber. Talk Politics calls for elections with a small number of appointees who would be politically independent. Stuart Parr at Wonko’s World thinks that elections are a way for party managers to increase control and argues for a hereditary chamber because it would be more random.
Cavalorn thinks that elections give an illusory sense of power, though The Disillusioned Kid, also from an anarchist perspective, supports anything which increases popular participation.
James Graham says it is important for reformers to work together, and if necessary compromise, to ensure that the coalition for reform remains united.
There were not many new ideas. Bishop Hill thinks it is a problem that all the parliamentarians are in London, and suggests a virtual parliament instead. Tim Worstall proposes a hereditary seco
nd chamber in which the person raised to the peerage does not get to sit in the house: only his or her offspring. I proposed a second chamber elected by non-geographical interests, such as vocational groups – about which more in my companion piece setting out a proposal for reform.
The New Politics Network also has more brief a round-up of blogs on House of Lords reform.
Themes
Reading these blogs and the comments on them, there were a number of common threads, though none of these was universal.
- The commentators were almost all in favour of having a a second chamber that acts as a check on the House of Commons. Only a few contributors entertained the possibility of a unicameral (ie one chamber) system. Most thought the second chamber should provide an alternative point of view, perhaps with the benefit of more expertise and experience than the lower house. Some thought it should be able to stand up to protect the rights of minorities against populism.
- Almost all the contributors felt that the second chamber should not simply mirror the House of Commons in its composition. In particular, there was a strong feeling that the second house should not be subject to the same party disciplines of the lower house. Proposals to ensure that it has a different, more independent composition, using a different electoral system, and/or changing the timing so that the second is not elected on the same timescales as the House of Commons. The desire to ensure that the second chamber was independent of the party discplines of the lower house was also a key argument for the minority of contributors who favoured either a hereditary system or a lottery.
- Many of the blogs argued that an elected second chamber could be used to broaden electoral representation. This might be achieved with some form of more proportional representation such as Alternative Vote or Single Transferable Votes. Some thought that the second chamber should reflect the federal nature of the United Kingdom (rather as the United States and South Africa both use their second chambers to give equal representation to each state or province). This might be thought to balance the perceived iniquities of the first-past-the-post system used to to elect the House of Commons.
- There was noticeably strong distaste for the patronage implied by a system of appointments to the second chamber, with a number of individual appointments mentioned as examples of cronyism or corruption. Appointments were also thought to to be problematic because they lead to a chamber that is both unrepresentative and insufficiently politically independent of the House of Commons. An advantage of appointments, however, is that they enable the second chamber to include people of real expertise and experience.
- Some, but not all, the contributors argued that the second chamber should be elected to provide it with democratic legitimacy. While some worried that an elected house might be subject either to populism (celebrities rather than experts) or simply another venue for the operation of political parties, so providing no independent check on the House of Commons, most contributors thought that legislators should have a democratic mandate.
International context
The Elect the Lords campaign has an interesting international comparison:
65 countries in total have a two-chamber parliament.
Of the 46 countries that wholly or mostly elect their second chambers, 29 are established democracies.
By contrast, of the 19 countries that wholly or mostly appoint their second chambers, just 5 are established democracies.
Of the 46 countries that mostly or wholly elect their second chambers, 28 hold direct elections (in the case of established democracies, 19 out of 29 hold direct elections).
The UK is the only established democracy to appoint its members for life terms of office. The tiny African Kingdom of Lesotho is the only country in the world with a comparable second chamber to the House of Lords.
Conclusion
The current position is very hard to defend – and none of the bloggers attempted to do so. There is a surprisingly broad consensus on the characteristics we want from a reformed second chamber. Yet there is less agreement about how best to achieve those goals. Because we do not agree on what the new system should be, we seem to be stuck with a system that nobody likes.
You may also be interested in a companion piece about my proposal for an elected second chamber based on vocational constituencies, which I believe is one way to meet many of the goals for a reformed House of Lords identified by this discussion.
My ha’porth on the House of Lords:*
1. Don’t stop here. Just because the hereditary peers are largely gone does not mean we have ended up where we want to be.
2. Elect the upper chamber in rotation – eg a third of the house every 2 years. With fixed election dates.
3. Have non-geographic constituencies. Base them on other characteristics such as occupation (doctors, financial services, retailing) and activities (churches, sports clubs, motorists, geeks) and let members of those interest groups elect people to represent them. We all have interests other than where we live.
4. Cut the crap from both Houses: no more wigs & tights, archaic processions, Black Rod, voting lobbies, "Right Honourable and Learned Friend", late nights. etc.
* Note for American readers: "ha’porth" = "my 2 cents" though the exchange rate was different in those days.
<i><b>Update 21 August: </b>I have added two new posts. One summarises the various blogs on House of Lords reform. The other sets out this proposal (bullet number 3 above) in more detail.</i>
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