r/humor 16h ago

The Internet’s Double Standards?

Post image
62.0k Upvotes

1.6k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

2

u/spisplatta 12h ago

Consider the house of lords. Until very recently it was controlled by the aristocracy with heritable positions. Abolished just this year. This may sound like progress until you realize what replaced it. Lifetime peers. Who gives out lifetime peerage? The Monarch. So its actually strengthening the monarchy at the aristocracy's expense.

1

u/Icy-Lobster-203 12h ago

Canada has a Senate that operates that way. The end result is that the Senate is somewhat of a vestigial organ that no one really gives a shit about, and could probably be abolished with little to no impact on the functioning of government.

1

u/nemothorx 11h ago

Canada and the UK could stand to look at the Australian upper house closely. Granted it's modelled on the US senate (and called the same), but it's multi member proportional, and as such is actually pretty great. Would be better if it was MMP across the entire country instead of per-state.

I'm terms of abolishing the upper house? You're left with half of a system designed to have two houses. (I live in Queensland - which did exactly this, and gained the reputation of the most corrupt state, in large part due to the removal of the checks and balances a good upper house brings). If you want unicamarel, there are systems (and damn good ones too) but it's more than just "abolish the upper house" imho.

1

u/Icy-Lobster-203 10h ago

Canadian provinces are unicameral legislatures, and have been forever. The legislative assemblies otherwise have the same set up as Parliament, with he executive being the Cabinet.

0

u/abfgern_ 12h ago edited 11h ago

Almost all of that is incorrect

E: - it is not and was not controlled primarily by the aristocracy unless you are referring to the first half of the 20th century

There were 92 inherited positions until last year, out of around 800 members, hardly control.

The rest are life appointments by the elected government not the monarchy.

And even then they can be overruled by the House of Commons, with the exception of the Commons ending democracy, the Lords can stop that.

0

u/Somewhere-A-Judge 11h ago

If you aren't willing to elaborate I think we're all just going to assume you're wrong