Another week, another campaign by members of the public to get me to vote one way or another on a certain issue. Of course we peers welcome the views of the public, and as a crossbencher I am not whipped, I am not bound to vote in any particular way except as my conscience dictates. So it is very interesting and important when people, or organisations write to me to explain an issue in a Bill that needs my attention. I read all the letters and papers that come my way. Peers have no secretaries and the allowance we used to get for secretarial help was removed a few years ago, so on the whole I cannot cope with replies, but I do read them.
Emails are another matter altogether. Some campaign groups think it is a good idea to flood the inboxes of peers with long, identically worded emails, addressed in many cases to every single member of the House, so that one has to scroll down endlessly to get to the subject matter of the email. This cuts no ice with me. On the contrary, it is extremely irritating and I have to remind myself not to react by voting automatically against whatever it is the emailers want because I am so unimpressed with their tactics. Dozens of emails arrived this week, all headed Write to the House of Lords now. In other words, the writers had not even bothered to edit the text in order to make sense to the recipient. The email was very long; so complex that I could not make out what was at issue, and of course they were all identical. The writers had not taken the trouble, or had insufficient ability, to voice in their own words what it was they were anxious about. Although getting dozens, or even hundreds of emails, makes a point, one has to remember that there are another 50 million or so citizens out there who have not written to peers, so maybe what has arrived is very much a minority point of view.
If lobbying is to be done, and of course it is much more effective when addressed to crossbenchers than to MPs because of our freedom to vote as we wish, then here are my tips. Don’t all write in the same words, make it your own personal expression of opinion. Write a proper letter, not an email. Make all your points in brief clear language on not more than two sides of A4. Better still, club together in an organisation and write one briefing from everyone. Don’t expect an answer. Don’t be rude. We peers are not especially sensitive creatures, but to tell us that we must have corrupt intentions or to ask us how we can sleep at night, as happened during the lobbying surrounding last year’s Health Bill, will not strengthen the argument.
There has been published a very interesting and practical study of lobbying called Peering In, http://www.cloresocialleadership.org.uk/userfiles/Peering_In_FINAL_SR.pdf carried out in 2012 by Esther Foreman of the Social Change Agency. Well worth reading if you are thinking of trying to influence legislators.
Mass emailing to MPs or peers reminds me of the 1million demo in Westminster against the Iraq war. It is something that members have to put up with, and if necessary walk through, to get to work, or lunch, even if you are thinking about NHS computer commissioning as you do so!
I don’t favour either referend-ums/plebiscites or mass mailings or formal petitioning, but then aren’t the chambers of parliament all hot air in any case?
I do favour parliamentary democracy, and the abolition of the ~~house of Lords.
1. This post looks like “a frayed knot”, and a Gordian tough one at that, which shows-up a constitutionally concealed and ring-fenced Oligarchy posing as a Democracy;
neither does GHH detail how “parliamentary democracy” (a) does work (b) should work
[“work” surely has to include all the proactive participations of every individual citizen/subject ].
2. A true Democracy will clearly publish distinctions and know-hows for communication during Cooperative Democracy timeframes, as distinct from those know-hows of Directive Democracy timeframes.
[ Britain has not yet (nor has any other democratic governance-body to the best of my knowledge) achieved such published clear distinction in democratic and other governance know-hows for the citizen].
3. Whilst the posting peer uses many words to describe a quite simple and straightforward citizen-ability (namely “write your concerns and needs clearly but briefly and politely”)
and is herself ‘compromised’ by admitting
(i) “I am not bound to vote in any particular way except as my conscience dictates”
(note: there’s dressed-up aggressive oxymoronism therein;
and anyway in what ground is that ‘conscience’ rooted ? Is it from the same ‘mind-function’ that ‘sees’ destructively-competitive career-ladder climbing in the Workplace to be the modern be-all and end-all of Lifeplace identity and civilisational-sustainworthiness that the baroness joins in misnomering as “Social Mobility” ? )
she nonetheless is publicising a vital Issue, vital I would suggest both for individual human development and for participative-democratisation, quite apart from her key inclusion of the joint need for economical-and- effective communications by both parliamentarians and citizens.
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The question of “corrupt intentions” could well be well-founded;
{ as “being paranoid” is not a fault or mental-illness if there is some truth and real-possibility-element in the situation it is fearing;
and as more insidiously-subtly so with the constitutionally-concealed ‘right’ of practically all professionals including psychiatrists to live and work under the Delusion that they are each many-human-beings and are ‘worth’ many human-livings each (If £100 per week is a sufficient living for one human being, then £1000 per week is ten human livings) }.
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“How Not To Win Both Life-&-God, and People, as Friends”
is the true issue here, I would now suggest.
and as a crossbencher I am not whipped, But you do have a convenor don’t you, who may obtain a consensus?
No way. There is no agreement, pressure or suggestion about which way we vote.
So, in this free will form of voting, how is it going on secret courts?
http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/nazi_police_state.htm
Read Hansard. Everything is online.
Way.
While convenors are not part of the “usual channels” (ie. the party whips who decide the business of the House), they have been included in their discussions in recent years.
It is the nature of political assemblies that all the people in it take seats adjacent to those who have similar opinions.
Crossbenchers sit together, and sit as far as they can opposite the Lord speaker chairman of the house.
That is all too clearly a political position.
From memory, the Crossbench had expanded in number in recent years, which would explain
the need for somebody to be a whip without in any sense seeming like the whips of the other parties.
The Crossbench is a party in no uncertain terms.
“Independents” vary in hue. The Commonal garden Parish councillor (not the town ward councillor) nearly always claims to be independent but is of course only so because
he/she lives in a designated CofE parish,
where, simplistic as it may seem, everybody
has the same reactionary demeanour.
Whatever the “Independent may say”, and about
what, Independence in a multiparty democracy
can only be a political party by means of duplicity, and guile.
In a horse shoe or circular shaped chamber,
there would be much more clarity for the otherwise learnéd Baroness, about where she sits, and what she stands for, in the political arena.
Nonsense, showing no acquaintance with the way the chamber works. For results of votes see this site http://www.parliament.uk/business/publications/business-papers/lords/lords-divisions/. You will see that the crossbenchers regularly split their votes in various ways over amendments.
Read Hansard. Everything is online.
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Apart from the information that’s been made a state secret, because it would show the extent of the fraud.
Now why would you want to hide that?