Pledge “lordsblog”
"I will 'blog for victory' on the 10th of August by writing a post about the need for House of Lords reform, and link to the Elect the Lords campaign website but only if 20 other bloggers will do the same."
— James Graham, Elect the Lords campaign
Deadline to sign up by: 3rd August 2005
38 people signed up (18 over target)
Country: United Kingdom
More details
The 10th of August will be the 94th anniversary of the passing of the Parliament Act 1911.
The preamble of that act states:
“it is intended to substitute for the House of Lords as it at present exists a Second Chamber constituted on a popular instead of hereditary basis, but such substitution cannot be immediately brought into operation.”
Nearly a century later, we still don't have a Second Chamber constituted on a 'popular basis'. Rather, the removal of most of the hereditaries has been replaced by patronage - Tony Blair has appointed more people to the House of Lords than any other Prime Minister in history.
It's time to make a stand. Labour promised to hold a free vote on the composition of the upper house in their manifesto, and thus there is every chance we could see the demise of the current House of Lords over the next few years. But the last time the Commons voted on composition, despite the fact that a majority of MPs favoured a mostly or wholly elected second chamber, all the proposals fell (the proposal for an 80% elected chamber fell by just 3 votes). We cannot afford the pro-reform movement to be divided in this way again.
So, as part of our build up for a campaign, we'd like the blogging community to help play their part by helping to mark 10 August as "Lords Reform Day". All we're asking you to do is to write about the need for House of Lords Reform, and add a link to http://www.ElectTheLords.org.uk. You'll help our campaign enormously by helping to raise awareness on this day, and directing traffic to our site.
If 20 or more bloggers were to do this, we could make a big difference. I hope you'll feel able to do this small thing. If you need any more information, just ask in the comments section.
Many thanks!
