Be Excellent To Each Other

They always put the politics on page 2. This made it a bit awkward for me to see how they were covering some major issue without people thinking I was looking at the facing page.

You obviously weren't boycotting it very well.

I'm sure this wasn't an insormountable problem for a man of your intellect.

The quality of the journalism, on the other hand...

It was part of the pile of papers the JCR would get delivered every morning. Only one they didn't get was the Mail.
If I want a tabloid, I'll get the Grauniad.

Yes, I stopped trying.



I once went to a talk given by the Sun's political editor. He came across as very clever and sharp on politics. When asked why he didn't write for a broadsheet, his response was that he could reach far more people in the Sun.

Did someone use the "quality rather than quantity" argument?

Are we still talking about tits?

I'd imagine it must be quite hard to distill complicated topics into basic language that still conveys a message to the reader. Writing down several levels is a lot harder than writing up levels (mainly why I keep posts short here)

Not that I recall. Wouldn't say the audience of university students at the talk was representative of Sun readers at all (unless everyone there secretly read it for the sport)

Breaking the Glass Ceiling news now!

The House of Commons passed a bill last night to ensure that an eligible female bishop will jump the queue to become one of the Lords Spirtual in the House of Lords ahead of any male bishops.

What a strange but brilliant country we live in!

I suppose we should applaud any efforts to improve even slightly the nature of the utterly pathetic and laughable historical bullshit that this country is so hopelessly mired in.

There is something charmingly bizaare in trying to apply modern values to an archaic set-up.

I think we should kick them all out of the House of Lords equally.

Why can't it just be a level playing field? The best man person for the job?

Because society is geared towards providing an advantage to white men. This level playing field you talk of just does not exist.

Fuck's sake, DavPaz. You did that deliberately.

Shh.

It's political correctness gone mad.

Page 3 will now show defrocked bishops.

I'll get my coat.

Oh, I'm sorry. I thought you were being genuine and wanted proper debate. Silly me!

I don't.

Colour me surprised.

Given the role they have, I don't see much benefit in change, given the drivers of said change would be those that have the least to do with it.

This page 3 thing is weird for multiple reasons.

They have stopped doing the topless thing (maybe, it's only been 2 days without it) and are showing "celebrities" in bikinis instead, and this is being lauded as a win?
They haven't said anything about it, surely they would be shouting about the change as it is publicity?
The arguments the anti-page 3 spokeswomen make always seem to bring in unrelated issues and hurt their own campaign because of it, yet nobody pulls them up on it? Woman on the BBC this morning talking about how page 3 is just another part of the anti-women system and how come the papers show men as high powered and in a good light, and they never show women in power. Then she brings up the example of David Cameron always being on the front page and not a woman instead. Errr... what? I think that is something to do with him being the prime minister. Maggie Thatcher was always on the front page too IIRC.
Surely the only campaign tool against page 3 they needed was a "WTF is this shit, in this day and age" one?

Never saw the point of page 3 myself, i'm glad it's over if it really is.

In a fair number of cases, the Lords are the only sensible people in power, due to them not needing to pander to an electorate.
The push to make it an elected house scares me more than them staying as they are. Make it electable and they'll just fill it full of politicians...

I just don't see that the church should have a role in government, especially with the percentage of population who identify as Christian falling year-on-year. It's anachronistic.

I don't think I believe in a fully-elected chamber either, though. You'd just have the same problem as in the HoC. I'm not sure what the ideal solution is.

Benevolent dictatorship.

You could mitigate this by having long (10-15 years) terms and no re-election. It's not ideal, but nor is a bunch of unelected hereditary peers and bishops, though.

Define 'benevolent'.

Me.

The only thing you'd be benevolent for is big business. Might as well keep 'democracy'.

That's not true. I'd also be nice to cars and bacon.

Being nice to bacon involves never eating it again, you realise?

I'd like to see an upper house made up entirely of appointed members, with their appointment being done by a cross-party commons commitee instead of the party in favour handing out gratitude appointments. Get rid of party affiliations in the Lords completely as a result, make them a proper check on dodgy legislative agendas from all parties. No hereditary appointments, but once you're in you're in until you're incapable of carrying out the duties and retire.

Then you'd just get constant blocking of things from people that don't like the "in" party.

House of Lords should clearly be locked in a room and not be told who is putting what policy up for review

Taking both quotes into consideration:

I used to think it was all crap, then I realised how dull it'd all be without it all. I'm quite happy to pay whatever it is I do for the Royal Family to go skiing and whatever, I view it as a particularly slow burning comedy drama. It's completely batshit mental as a thing to do, but it's well worth the money.

Bishops in the HoL I think is pretty decent, as, by and large, their credo is "Be excellent to each other" and taking that viewpoint isn't too bad despite the odd potty view on stuff. I think I'd keep it as it is, I don't really want an elected HoL, nor do I want hereditary peers unless I happen to agree with them. Picking sensible people from different fields makes much more sense, but I disagree strongly with the selection of some people that are in of late.

Well you get that now - the lords has party whips, for goodness' sake!

Edit - @Grim...

I have no issue with bishops in the House of Lords, I'm not sure why there's a guaranteed amount of spots for (Anglican only) Bishops though.

Disestablishmentarian.

I prefer 'Liberationist'.

Hmm, personally I couldn't care less about the cost of skiing trips and yachts or whatever but I don't think that it's so harmless. I can't help but feel that it allows an awful lot of what is wrong with our society to be seen as legitimate and unchangeable. It prevents aspects of our governance from ever being properly evaluated. Whatever we replaced it all with would never be perfect but it would at least be up for debate.

Very much this. The problem with any plan to reform the HoL is that by and large it takes its revising role extremely seriously and does a lot of hard, tedious work improving the quality of legislation. The risk is that any attempt to modernise the place would result in a loss of this expertise.

As for the royals: harmless and add colour to life, and removing them is a problem for my sixth term as Prime Minister when every other problem in the country's been solved. Unless Charles f-cks things up (the second series of 'House of Cards' is the best discussion of the constitutional situation if that were to happen).

I am antidisestablishmentarian.

If we have to have bishops, we should also have rabbis, imams, priests, granthi, archaka and Dawkins.

So best to kick the bishops out.

Once Charles becomes King we may have to alter the entry to 'mostly harmless'.

Well no - we have anyone, and if that person happens to be a a bishop, or a rabbi, or a priest, and you blatantly googled archaka, then so be it.

I think Brenda is doing all she can to prevent that.

I'm not the type. Not in a textual medium at least.

It's almost like you don't know me at all.

SEND 'EM ALL BACK OR INTO PRISON! BUILD SCHOOLS! IGNORE JUSTICE!



EDIT: he's also a hypnotist.