The House of Lords broke no constitutional conventions in referring back Osborne’s vindictive tax credit cuts. The Tories and their media supporters are talking utter garbage on the question. Taking Britain’s appalling “constitution” for what it is, the arcane rules of procedure were not breached.
Ever since David Lloyd George and Herbert Asquith forced, by threat of massive creation of peerages, the 1911 Budget through and with it the start of National Insurance and the demise of the workhouse, there has been a convention that the Lords do not oppose or amend Finance Bills.
But the tax credit cuts were not in a Finance Bill. Osborne instead tried to sneak them through by statutory instrument. This is secondary legislation whereby a Minister signs off laws under powers delegated to him by primary legislation. Secondary legislation gets much less parliamentary time and committee scrutiny. If Osborne had put the tax credit proposals in a Finance Bill, as they certainly should have been – it is Osborne who was breaking parliamentary convention here – rather than sneak them under the table as secondary legislation, the Lords would indeed not have been able to stop them without breaching constitutional convention. Which just goes to show it doesn’t always pay to be a weasel.
Osborne is hoist by his own petard.
Aah, Tories say. But there is another convention that the Lords do not block secondary legislation.
They are making that one up. There is no such constitutional convention and there are plenty of examples of the Lords blocking secondary legislation. There is a huge quantity of secondary legislation, thousands and thousands of laws – ministers continually are signing off legal changes.
But the entire basis of the secondary legislation is that parliament has delegated to ministers, in Acts, powers to sign off uncontroversial matter. This can be, for example, the detail of regulations needed technically to enforce primary legislation, and the occasional updates needed. Only a very low percentage indeed of secondary legislation ever gets queried by the Lords, but that is not because of a constitutional convention. That is because most of it is dull stuff. But when the government abuses its authority and tries to smuggle vital changes through secondary legislation, the Lords not only has the constitutional right to challenge this abuse, it has the constitutional duty to do so.
I wish they would do it more often. For example, when the Labour Party used Westminster secondary legislation to cede 6,000 square miles of Scotland’s sea to England without parliamentary scrutiny.
Finally, there is a constitutional convention that the Lords do not oppose manifesto commitments on which a government has been elected. But the Tories rather carefully did not put tax credit cuts in their manifesto, and indeed in campaigning said they would not do it.
The British constitution is appallingly undemocratic. The fact that an undemocratic chamber has fended off a proposal from an undemocratic executive which gained the votes of only 37% of the voting electors, is not a blow struck for democracy. It is however a temporary victory for human decency in mitigating an attack on the poor.
It is also an achievement for Jeremy Corbyn. Nobody can truly believe that Labour peers would have been organised to do this under Yvette Cooper or Liz Kendall.
UPDATE Wings Over Scotland has a very different take on the Labour Party performance. That the Labour Party was not radical enough to go for the “fatal” option I am afraid I find unsurprising. It remains a deeply conservative institution. But I had not previously encountered the argument that 90% would lose the money from universal credit anyway, and it is stunningly cynical. But on close consideration, I cannot work out what it means. Either there must be some additional cut to universal credit, or that those who lost tax credit could have regained it on universal credit anyway. If anybody could explain that one further, I should be grateful.
Although I must have walked dozens of times past the site of Tiergartenstraße No. 4 (which gave Aktion T4 its name) shile I was stationed in Berlin, I was unaware of the address’s history at the time.
Let me correct the coding.
Although I must have walked dozens of times past the site of Tiergartenstraße No. 4 (which gave Aktion T4 its name) while I was stationed in Berlin, I was unaware of the address’s history at the time.
Once you start killing people, who can tell where it will stop?
A couple of points about Shaker Aamer:
1) Not British.
2) Obviously no saint, was clearly up to no good in Afghanistan/Pakistan.
3) Clearly dodgy as sin, but should not have been held without a proper trial.
4) Watch him closely, might do a runner with his compo payout to join ISIS, like other recently released “British” Guantanamo detainee.
As for this “Tara Hudson” character,
1) He headbutted a barman.
2) He has previous convictions for battery.
3) He is legally male.
The left attach themselves to some silly causes so they can tweet and virtue signal to each other.
Re Mhairi Black, Habbabkuk and I have a bet on as to whether, like Owen Jones, he will attain 1% status by aged 30.
Sorry for the typo, I did of course mean to write “She will attain 1% status by aged 30”.
Bloggers in a fog
Blind to one another
Closer to truth-so cold
“Action T4 was the progenitor of the Holocaust. After T4 was wound down in 1941 because of protests from church figures, notably Cardinal Galen (the project went on secretly), a lot of its staff was transferred to the Holocaust program, whose official name was Operation Reinhard. “The SS officers responsible for the Aktion T4, including Christian Wirth, Franz Stangl, and Irmfried Eberl, were all given key roles in the implementation of the “Final Solution” in 1942.” See Henry Friedlander, The Origins of Nazi Genocide. From Euthanasia to the Final Solution.”
________________
Yes Lysais that is true, when people thing of WWII and the Holocaust they tend to think of the Jewish Holocaust, because it has been far more widely publisied. What isn’t so well know is that the holocaust began with the murdering of the disabled and the mentally impaired.
It began in 1939 when the Nazi’s created a register of disabled children, Action T4 sent these unfortunate children to a hospital under the guise of giving them better care, in reality they were poisoned by the staff, usually with phenol (carbolic acid) and their deaths recorded as pneumonia.
After the war started Action T4 was ramped up and mentally impaired adults were killed as well. Their brains and organ were removed for research purposes.
It’s also less well known that Action T4 led to the forerunner of gassing people, with the first disabled and mentally impaired gassed in Poland.
Action T4 officially ended in 1941, when the staff and high ranking officials were transferred to the new death camps.
By then they were experts in killing people.
However none of it could have happened without the successful smearing campaign by the Third Reich, on the disabled and mentally ill.
A campaign I might add that is in full flow under this Tory government.
Blind bloggers in a fog flock together.
Closer to truth so cold.
Ode to whistling diplomats
Craig & Peter
Smelling a plague
Fly away Peter
Fly away Craig
Come back Peter
Come back Craig
Geddit? A little encouragement to Craig to diversify into a little Canadian verse form.
“was clearly up to no good in Afghanistan/Pakistan”
How is that clear? All that is clear is surely that there is no evidence of any kind against him.
“I too would be in favour of very generous allowances for children either paid out as allowances or effected through deductions from income tax.
Such allowances should be tapered out when the parents’ income or combined income exceeds an amount to be determined.
To those (eg Glenn) who would object by saying that this would simply encourage people to have too many children I shoud nswer by saying that he should consider the idea that having many children is also a kind of successful and useful productive activity.”
__________________________
I can’t argue with that.
“It’s not enough to train today’s workforce, we also have to prepare tomorrow’s workforce.”
US.President Barack Obama.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
China has blundered in its one child policy, not just in replenishing its workforce but also in gender balance. Out of China’s 400 million abortions 90% of fetuses aborted were female (up to circa 2000).
Chinese parents want sons not daughters the result is a gender imbalance bh men out numbering women, by more than 60 million.
China’s working population dropped last year by 3.71 million people.
@Anon1 “A couple of points about Shaker Aamer:”
Member of the Henry Jackson society are we?
RobG
“The egits who come on here and spout the Daily Mail/brain-dead propaganda crap could perhaps provide some credible links to back-up their bile.”
Forgive me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t it the Daily Mail (the blog’s favourite newspaper, incidentally) that was at the forefront of the campaign to release Shaker Aamer?
No freedom of speech in Saudi Arabia, this is one of the countries Britain kowtows too on a regular basis, what does that say about us?
Saudi blogger, Raif Badawi who has been sentenced to a 1,000 lashes and 10 years in jail for insulting Islam, has been awarded the European Union prize for human rights and freedom of thought.
Badwai received the first of his lashes in January.
So what do we think of this one.
Is global warming real. or is it a ploy to restrict third world economies from prospering and upsetting the present economic order.
Scientists claim (not Russian ones) that this years summer saw wild forest fires all across Siberia, due to global warming.
They claim Siberian soil hold in billions of tonnes of methane gas in, and global warming could see the release of the potent greenhouse gas.
Russia denies this, and claims Siberian permafrost remains fully intact.
MJ
He would not have been held had there not been clear circumstantial evidence against him. Indeed the US believed he was involved in terrorist activities. I have personally seen enough of these Muslim “charitable” activities in Afghanistan/Pakistan to know that they are mostly bullshit.
That said, and as I said, he should not have been held for so long without a proper trial. The length of his incarceration was due to his knowledge of US and UK practices that might be deemed illegal. It is a hard call to make in the face of Islamic extremism whether the authorities in charge of his detention should have acted differently, but it is not a call that you or I will ever have to make, MJ.
In any case he is in line for a massive compensation payout, which at least goes some way to countering the argument that we live in some sort of monstrous fascist state etc.
“wasn’t it the Daily Mail (the blog’s favourite newspaper, incidentally) that was at the forefront of the campaign to release Shaker Aamer?”
Even a broken clock is correct twice in twenty-four hours.
They repeat any sensationalist headline that musters the circulation. They got one right. So?
There’s nothing that says you can’t be a member of the 1% and nevertheless thoroughly decent.
In any case, it isn’t the 1% that matters. It’s the .01% that has the power, and that has flourished in recent years. And unless you’ve inherited the money, to have that much money you will almost certainly have behaved in a highly immoral fashion to get it.
“He would not have been held had there not been clear circumstantial evidence against him.”
Touching simplicity, if he really believes it.
What about a desire to hide the torture and inhuman conditions? What about an unwillingness to admit a mistake? And all sorts of other unjustifiable but typical bureaucratic reasons.
I wonder if the person who said that has ever been part of a bureaucracy. (Assuming he really believes it.)
For the attention of those on here with closed minds and cold hearts.
The private jet from Guantánamo landed at Biggin Hill, taxied slowly to a hanger and entered it. The doors were then completely closed. The commentator said that Shaker was going straight to hospital. Remember he has been subjected to torture, has been on a hunger strike and has been forcibly fed.
Clive Stafford Smith of Reprieve and Andy Worthington of We Stand With Shaker, both good men and true, spoke.
Andy Worthington blogged today:
Shaker Aamer Finally Freed from Guantánamo: We Stand With Shaker Responds to the News – See more at: http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2015/10/30/shaker-aamer-finally-freed-from-guantanamo-we-stand-with-shaker-responds-to-the-news/#sthash.DRDCszYS.dpufhttp://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2015/10/30/shaker-aamer-finally-freed-from-guantanamo-we-stand-with-shaker-responds-to-the-news/
Some of Mr Stafford Smith’s observations are reported here.
Shaker Aamer lands back in UK after 14 years in Guantánamo Bay
Last British resident to be freed from US prison thanks supporters for their ‘devotion to justice’ after touching down at Biggin Hill airport
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/oct/30/shaker-aamer-lands-back-in-uk-14-years-in-guantanamo-bay
See the video ‘Detainee 239: who is Shaker Aamer?’ on the link for an outline.
There are still 100 detainees in Guantanamo.
Q Can you still hear the screams from those tortured inside the cages created used for the purpose at Bagram? Read and learn.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/the-forgotten-guantanamo-prisoner-abuse-continues-at-bagram-prison-in-afghanistan-a-650242-2.html
Former Speaker of the House was just allowed a plea deal which will assure him a very light sentence. His crimes may not sound that serious — withdrawing money from his bank account in a way to avoid having it reported (“structuring”) and lying to the FBI about why he did it — but the reason he was withdrawing the money in the first place was so that he could pay hush money to avoid having it revealed that he had molested underage boys during his earlier career as a school wrestling coach.
Philip Giraldi, a retired CIA officer, suggests in Did Foreign Governments Blackmail Denny Hastert? Alleged misconduct by the House speaker was well known to the FBI—and to Turkey and Israel that the reason he was treated so leniently is that he threatened to reveal all the dirt he knew about the whole corrupt system in Washington.
This is why pedophilia among politicians is such a serious matter.
Hastert pled nolo contendre because he had no friends or associates willing to hang themselves on the same petard. His sentence will be like a feather pillow. Unfortunately, the message sent to his colleagues is; never relinquish your power and prestige.
When there was discussion on this forum recently on the extent to which the Duke of Windsor was a traitor, I thought I remembered reading a letter to the editor recently in the Financial Times that had bearing on the matter. However, I was unable to find the letter searching on line, and gave up.
However, today I found that letter on line. It wasn’t in the FT, it was in the London Review of Books!
Windsor Knot: Confirmation of UK Royal Treason with Nazis:
Baal at 1.30 – I know – it’s the last killer 5 syllables that elude.
On bbc news now they had a comentator from the Henry Jackson Society – you couldn’t make it up!
Stop paying your licence fee kids?
Rose
Well done with the Haiku.. when i started writing them, the syllables were out the window Lol.
Ba’al’s one on the old Haiku masters is so spot on
And i see Nevermind got wet from his wee haiku..and thanks for the videos, Ahem Smashing stuff Lol
Ben
a wee video for your Cause –
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNLxoEz2tE4
“Baal at 1.30 – I know – it’s the last killer 5 syllables that elude.”
Writing a poem with just seventeen syllables is very difi.