Marxist Abuse and the House of Lords

The woman who barracked Andrew Lansley after the Government meeting with health professionals at No. 10 this morning was none other than, to call a spade a spade, a nasty old bitch who in her time was a trade union representative and a member of an extreme left organisation, the Workers Revolutionary Party. Having watched the video the only thing one can say about this episode is that Lansley behaved with both patience and politeness and must at least have earned some brownie points that could well help him with his battle over the NHS Bill. Apart from nasty old ladies the Government now has to contend with Tory peers rebelling against the proposed House of Lords reforms. The peers are prepared to act as a log jam to stop any further legislation until they get their way, which is a little anti-democratic of them since the legislation will have been instigated by a democratically elected government. The whole reform of the House of Lords idea is admittedly a sensitive one and another mess left behind by Blair. It seems to me that  reform in this case should proceed by stages with say the maximum number of members reduced to 460 and with only 20 per cent of the members to be elected with that number increasing to 45 per cent in 2025. The balance of the peers would be made up of those others appointed by the government and the Bishops. As the appointed element would be more than half there could be no doubt that as now the House of Lords would not be able to stop any legislation that the government wished to push through nor stop any money raising bill. In that way there would be no need to have specific wording to provide for this. By proceeding in this way the rebellious Lords would have had their concerns taken into account in some way whilst leaving it up to later generations to change the composition of the House of Lords in a manner that suits them. The main idea is to inject some element of elected peers to the second chamber and on a first past the post basis. The last thing we need is any form of proportional representation.