Clegg's Lords proposals are made of fail

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I wouldn't go that far. I think what we have now is an abomination since the abolition of hereditary peers and the now annual ritual of busing in new Lords so one party get's an advantage over the other.

You mean it was better when it was full (in theory, but almost never in practice) of hereditaries? Is there any reason to think that, beyond partisan interest?

Obviously the current system is a joke, but it's also a comparatively toothless one.

I can think of philosophical reasons to support the system with all the hereditaries beyond partisanship or stodgy traditionalism, but almost none of them are reasons that the fundamental ideologies behind the current political systems of most Western countries would care about.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Is he perhaps trying to set a point of differentiation from the Conservatives, to try to pacify the half of the Lib Dem supporters he upset by backing the Coalition?

Possibly, but are Lords reform and damn boundary changes really what those people were in it for?

[I really don't see the use of having a House of Lords if it's not to at least some extent possible to be hereditary. The element of 'luck of the draw' in that respect strikes me as partially the point and rather than have the half-formed abortion of an upper house that currently exists or other versions of such that are being proposed and have been proposed it strikes me as more sensible to just put 'another place' out to pasture like an old grey mare and henceforth use the concept of the nobility as a knighthood-type honor without a necessary political aspect to it the way they do or are supposed to do in Belgium and Spain. But I digress.]