{"id":99,"date":"2003-06-13T13:32:09","date_gmt":"2003-06-13T18:32:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/?p=99"},"modified":"2003-06-13T13:32:09","modified_gmt":"2003-06-13T18:32:09","slug":"friction_makes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2003\/06\/13\/friction_makes.html","title":{"rendered":"Friction makes you warm"},"content":{"rendered":"

Next time you get antsy and irritable at political gridlock or separation of powers or legal technicalities or the various checks and balances that keep your <\/i>pet program from being implemented, or your <\/i>pet politico from being confirmed, or your least favorite injustice from getting overturned, consider dangers involved in a system where you can just change the government by fiat<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It is a measure of Tony Blair’s self-confidence that he was able to announce what is quite possibly the most sweeping revision of Britain’s unwritten constitution since 1689 as an aside in a Cabinet reshuffle yesterday. Britain, it appears, is to have a Supreme Court. You wouldn’t know it, however, from the way it was announced<\/a>. The most ancient office of state in the UK, barring the monarchy itself, has been abolished. The office of Lord Chancellor was certainly a bit of an an anomaly, being a member of the executive (as a Cabinet Minister and head of the Lord Chancellor’s Department, the chief legal department), legislature (as presiding officer in the House of Lords) and judiciary (head of the judiciary and the person who appoints judges), but the causal brushing aside of 800 years of history is breathtaking in its arrogance.<\/p>\n

No hearings. No debate. No referendum. No procedural barriers. No Constitutional issues. No barriers. Even if you agree to the rationale behind the change<\/a>, the way it was carried out <\/i>is more than a little disturbing.<\/p>\n

Labour MP Bob Marshall-Andrews QC said: “If you are going to change 1,500 years of constitutional history, you do it carefully, you have consultation, a White Paper and experts, and then finally you bring it before Parliament, because Parliament decides the way we are governed, not the prime minister on the back of an envelope in Downing Street.
\nIn the Commons, Tory MP Sir Patrick Cormack accused the government of abolishing “one of the great offices of state” on television. “Some of us care about these things and some of us care about the traditions and history of our country,” he said.
\n[…] Conservative spokesman Michael Howard said a thousand years of British constitutional history was being “torn up in a single press release”.<\/p>\n

I may be pleased that Blair chose to have the UK fight by our side in Iraq, but I’m damn glad he’s not my head of government, and that the system I live under restrains both well-meaning and <\/i>diabolical changes to the degree it does.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Next time you get antsy and irritable at political gridlock or separation of powers or legal technicalities or the various checks and balances that keep your pet program from being…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-99","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics-law"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":12340,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2008\/05\/27\/defaulty_programs.html","url_meta":{"origin":99,"position":0},"title":"Defaulty programs","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 27-May-08 11:15am","format":false,"excerpt":"Pet peeve for the day: programs that don't detect the currently selected default printer, but instead blythely use whatever they were using the last time they were fired up. 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