A year ago, I wrote this post. This year, I have a political blog to write such stuff on. Unfortunately, Bloggers "down for maintainence" announcements always give their time solely in Pacific time. Who cares about pacific time/ Mr Google, put your times in UST as well please? Bastards.

So, anyway. Elect the Lords. I promised I'd write about it, then some bastards got arrested and my mood shifted, but a pledge is a pledge. We need an effective House of Lords, preferably elected by a mixture of indirect election (for US readers, the 17th amendment was a mistake, m'kay?), sortition (that's posh for election by lot) and interest group representation. With a small number of "the great and the good", because I do think that the voice of experience can be useful, but not a whole chamber full of them.

Direct election, especially direct election by STV, would be a mistake, we need STV for the Commons not the Lords. Democracy doesn't necessarily require election, it requires citizens tob e involved and that Parliament should be representative. Billy Bragg is pushing his ludicrous Secondary Mandate idea, which, amongst other things, assumes that party preference as stated in a FPTP Commons election is our expressive preference,a nd that rational voting doesn't exist. It also goes into great lengths to excuse closed lists. No thanks Billy. Jack Straw's an arse, but we knew that anyway, right? I'll write my proper artilce on NLE tomorrow, need to sleep now.

ETA: forgot, link round up is here for those interested, there are some good posts linked already.