I can see why Constitutional reform is being discussed – if we had a codified Constitution like America, there might be safeguards against such behaviour put in place, however there are pros and cons to going down this route.

Reformists, of course, come in all sizes of “r” from superscript to 144 point capitals. Radical questions, though, I have yet to see on the agenda. But the expenses saga has led to many opportunities for open debate about the nature of our governance.

For example, however they are constituted, through election or otherwise, all manner of questions could be explored concerning both Houses.

Should Parliament continue to meet solely in London? After all, it has not always met there. Granted, one has to go back several centuries, but the chapter houses of Lincoln and York Cathedrals come to mind. It’s not as if there’s a shortage of rock to meet on, and just about anywhere else would be far cheaper to house MPs, while today’s world of wireless internet connections and mobile phones removes barriers to communication with the civil service etc.

Perhaps Parliament could be peripatetic, moving around like Any Questions? Indeed, the web has now developed to the degree that it is questionable whether Parliament needs to physically meet at all, or whether webcams and software could enable the smooth, democratic running of the country without MPs and Lords having to so much as move out of their homes and offices. I am absolutely sure this will happen with the passage of time, and it would be interesting to trial such a system with a couple of councils.

It would, I concede, be very soulless, though, and a periodic get together might be necessary to overcome this.

The more I see the Commons in action, the more resistant I for one become to election as a sole method of constituting the Lords. It seems to me that such a move would totally compromise its function as a revising chamber. Furthermore, the qualities necessary to rise to the level of a Law Lord or a Bishop are surely not necessarily the same ones that easily lend themselves to banging on doors and drumming up votes. Yet they are most valuable input into our legislature.

My conclusions on Lords reform and electoral reform are similar, in that while reform of both seems popular, there seems no consensus on the reforms to be made.

Personally, I remain an AV+ man. Unlike PR, it retains constituencies and enables local party members to select their own candidates.

The expenses affair is nothing more than a leftover from a time when Parliament felt it knew best and that the electorate were not equipped or responsible enough to have the type of democracy that now serves us.

It is as though the stereotype of both houses has somehow become exchanged.

The Commons with its privileges and power and a House of Lords desperate to be heard, served by its many political pensioners, on no salary, who mingle freely and unobserved within the electorate taking on board their concerns, hopes and ambitions.

The government executive increasingly relies upon appointments to the upper house just to serve in cabinet. Is there nobody in the Commons that can do these jobs? How can MPs representing their constituencies interrogate these peers when they park their backsides on the rosy benches of the Lords?

Now we have a ‘street trader’ celebrity, with attitude appointed to the house, not to serve as a working peer but as window dressing to a government. He will not prosper by doing this and should reconsider his options.

A latter day Moses takes his followers across a sea of debt and red tape into a political wilderness in search of a land of goat milk and money. Who will part the waves for him? An almighty Lord, Baron Mandelson; he will provide the industry as manna from heaven. Moses must know that the covenant he holds to be true will never allow him to set foot in this Promised Land and he will stay forever in the wilderness.

Lord Mandelson declares that constitutional change will arrive before the summer recess. I smell Parliament Act in the air, the stench of whips and a Commons ochlocracy at work.

If the Commons now imposes it appointments on the upper house willy-nilly then perhaps the house should give a designation to peers as working and non-working, with only working peers being able to sit in chamber and vote. Maybe the designation could change especially upon change of government?

Would this require constitutional change?

Some of the benefits of these kinds of institutions are cultural as well. For instance the police actions at the G20 were atrocious and heavy handed they show a contempt for the right to protest and those attitudes combined with the foot dragging of the IPCC seem to reveal a kind of institutional reluctance to criticize the police or hold them accountable. When the police know this, they ride roughshod over the most valuable aspects of free political systems. Is this a problem in the US too? Sure, the police always tend toward the authoritarian, but do we see the same contempt, the hiding of identification, the death and beatings of innocent bystanders without serious consequence – absolutely not!

That all said I have long favoured the Intelligence Services being moved more at arms length and the various heads appointed by parliament and reporting (on request) to parliament as a way of preventing the government having any involvement in or ability to put pressure upon them over their reports. Under such circumstances both parliament and the country would have more confidence that the report was unbiased.