Letter: Electoral system by the back door (From Lancashire Telegraph)

Letter: Electoral system by the back door

2:55pm Monday 23rd July 2012 in Readers' letters

Have we ever had a worse crop of politicians than the present lot, both nationally and locally?

Last week we had the shambles of reforming the House of Lords which everyone agrees is essential, but the proposals pushed by the Lib Dems don’t make for an improvement.

Firstly, it is suggested that 80% of members would be elected following party lines, no doubt resulting in a duplication of the Commons, with the usual party whips. Who needs that?

Secondly, they will be elected by PR, but didn’t we vote against this system? It seems the Lib Dems are going to get PR. through the back door – and I thought it was all about democracy. After seeing how the Coalition works, where a minority party has more power than its share of the vote warrants, this is an arguement against PR.

Why Cameron didn’t form a minority government so we could have poltitions who didn’t abandon their principles is beyond me. Perhaps that is too much to expect from politicians and their lust for power.

Then we had Milliband spouting about having more but smaller banks. Perhaps he isn’t old enough or wise enough to realise that we had those in the past, only for them to be taken over by larger banks.

Does he propose to introduce legislation prohibiting takeovers? But then he has to appear to be following Brussels’s dictat.

Maybe we could reduce the numbers on the local council by two-thirds and make them serve two years, avoiding having to make workers redundant. I won’t hold my breath.

J Duckworth (via email).