سمِ اللَّهِ الرَّحمٰنِ الرَّحيمِ
وَاللَّهُ يَشْهَدُ إِنَّ الْمُنَافِقِينَ لَكَاذِبُونَ
قَاتَلَهُمُ اللَّهُ ۖ أَنَّىٰ يُؤْفَكُونَ
La Ilaha Illallahu, Muhammad-ar-RasulAllah!
Salatanw-wa Salamun Alaika, Ya RasulAllah!
بِسمِ اللَّهِ الرَّحمٰنِ الرَّحيمِ
"In the Name of Allah, the All-beneficent, the All-merciful.
تَبارَكَ الَّذي بِيَدِهِ المُلكُ وَهُوَ عَلىٰ كُلِّ شَيءٍ قَديرٌ
Blessed is He in whose hands is all sovereignty, and He has power over all things.
الَّذي خَلَقَ المَوتَ وَالحَياةَ لِيَبلُوَكُم أَيُّكُم أَحسَنُ عَمَلًا ۚ وَهُوَ العَزيزُ الغَفورُ
He, who created death and life
that He may test you [to see] which of you is best in the conduct of the Soul!
And He is the All-mighty, the All-forgiving.
وَقالَ رَبُّكُمُ ادعوني أَستَجِب لَكُم ۚ إِنَّ الَّذينَ يَستَكبِرونَ عَن عِبادَتي سَيَدخُلونَ جَهَنَّمَ داخِرينَ
Your Lord has said, ‘Call Me, and I will hear you!’ Indeed those who are disdainful of My worship will enter hell completely humiliated.
ذٰلِكُمُ اللَّهُ رَبُّكُم خالِقُ كُلِّ شَيءٍ لا إِلٰهَ إِلّا هُوَ ۖ فَأَنّىٰ تُؤفَكونَ
That is Allah, your Lord, the creator of all things, there is no god except Him. Then where do you stray?
اللَّهُ الَّذي جَعَلَ لَكُمُ الأَرضَ قَرارًا وَالسَّماءَ بِناءً وَصَوَّرَكُم فَأَحسَنَ صُوَرَكُم وَرَزَقَكُم مِنَ الطَّيِّباتِ ۚ ذٰلِكُمُ اللَّهُ رَبُّكُم ۖ فَتَبارَكَ اللَّهُ رَبُّ العالَمينَ
It is Allah who made the earth an abode for you, and the sky a canopy, and He formed you and perfected your forms, and provided you with all the good things. That is Allah, your Lord! Blessed is Allah, Lord of all the worlds!
هُوَ الحَيُّ لا إِلٰهَ إِلّا هُوَ فَادعوهُ مُخلِصينَ لَهُ الدّينَ ۗ الحَمدُ لِلَّهِ رَبِّ العالَمينَ
He is the Living One, there is no god except Him. So supplicate Him, putting exclusive faith in Him. All praise belongs to Allah, Lord of all the worlds.
قُل إِنّي نُهيتُ أَن أَعبُدَ الَّذينَ تَدعونَ مِن دونِ اللَّهِ لَمّا جاءَنِيَ البَيِّناتُ مِن رَبّي وَأُمِرتُ أَن أُسلِمَ لِرَبِّ العالَمينَ
Say, ‘I have been forbidden to worship those whom you invoke besides Allah, since there have come to me manifest proofs from my Lord, and I have been commanded to submit to the Lord of all the worlds.
هُوَ الَّذي خَلَقَكُم مِن تُرابٍ ثُمَّ مِن نُطفَةٍ ثُمَّ مِن عَلَقَةٍ ثُمَّ يُخرِجُكُم طِفلًا ثُمَّ لِتَبلُغوا أَشُدَّكُم ثُمَّ لِتَكونوا شُيوخًا ۚ وَمِنكُم مَن يُتَوَفّىٰ مِن قَبلُ ۖ وَلِتَبلُغوا أَجَلًا مُسَمًّى وَلَعَلَّكُم تَعقِلونَ
It is He who created you from dust, then from a drop of [seminal] fluid, then from a clinging mass, then He brings you forth as infants, then [He nourishes you] so that you may come of age, then that you may become aged —though there are some of you who die earlier— and that you may complete a specified term, and so that you may apply reason.
هُوَ الَّذي يُحيي وَيُميتُ ۖ فَإِذا قَضىٰ أَمرًا فَإِنَّما يَقولُ لَهُ كُن فَيَكونُ
It is He who gives life and brings death. So when He decides on a matter, He just says to it, ‘Be!’ and it is."
(Al-Munafiqun: 1-4)
(Yunus: 81)
(Al Kahf: 94)
(Surah Mulk: 1-2)
(Surah Ghafir: 60-68)
(Surah Muhammad: 1)
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To rid Britain of corruption, start by reforming the House of Lords | Simon Jenkins | The Guardian
To rid Britain of corruption, start by reforming the House of Lords
The row over peerages for Tory donors is yet more proof that radical overhaul is essential – and now is the perfect time
“Britain is not remotely a corrupt country,” declared the prime minister in Glasgow this week. So what did he mean by remotely? He had just been accused of selling peerages to party donors. In 2006, Boris Johnson called such abuses of the House of Lords a “putrefaction … a quintessentially British crime”. Back then it was Tony Blair he was attacking. We know Johnson’s ethics vary depending on the situation – but the hypocrisy of this is still blatant.
Members of the House of Lords must have yawned at headlines that donors who gave £3m to the Conservative party had been offered peerages. What was new? They were all aware that Britain has long been the only democracy in the world where membership of the national parliament is up for sale. This has been the case since David Lloyd George’s day, and is so despite the Honours (Prevention of Abuses) Act of 1925 having outlawed it. Party leaders simply break the law.
Yet no member of the political establishment will admit to this, because cases erupt under every regime. Michael Foot as Labour leader in 1980 privately confessed that when he nominated his first Labour peer, his chief whip, Michael Cocks, was aghast: “But none of them has any money.” At least 25 of Blair’s 292 peers were party donors. In 2006, Blair was the first prime minister to be interviewed by the police under the 1925 act, but the Crown Prosecution Service later admitted there was insufficient evidence for a prosecution. The same omertà this week forced a hapless Tory minister, Anne-Marie Trevelyan, to defend Johnson by implying that it was mere coincidence that so many “great philanthropists” to whom he had given peerages happened to be Tory donors. This was like Moscow calling it coincidental that so many foes of Vladimir Putin happened to come down with food poisoning.
In 2015, an Oxford University survey found that between 2005 and 2014, under Blair, Gordon Brown and David Cameron, 303 peers had been created, boosting Lords membership close to an obscene 800. This made it the biggest assembly in the world outside Beijing. The report recorded that in that time 92 of these peers had given £338m to the three main political parties, almost all from just 27 millionaires. The Lords is not just an upmarket Thames-side retirement club but the principle sump from which British party politics is lubricated. It is perhaps significant that not one of the last five prime ministers has deigned to go near the place.
Britain is a parliamentary rather than a presidential democracy, with the Commons acting as the absolute sovereign. The Lords, a relic of ancient hereditary rule, is mere icing on parliament’s cake. It contains some of the wisest and most experienced voices in the land, whose contribution to public debate is invaluable, and serves as a partial check on the Commons. Yet those voices must do so in a chamber inflated by patronage and corruption, where 92 individuals are still present by virtue of birth. No one involved has any interest in reform, not party treasurers eager for cash, nor MPs dreaming of retirement. nor, it seems, even reputable peers embarrassed by the company they must keep.
Johnson may be right that Britain is not “corrupt” in comparison with some states. But as Transparency International puts it, corruption is “the abuse of public power for private gain”. The British state is corrupt in, among other things, planning decisions, ministerial access, defence contracts and the regulation of international money. The corridors of Westminster are awash in lobbyists with free passes. Why else would firms pay MPs and peers thousands of pounds as “consultants”, if not in the expectation of government favour? We still await accountability on billions of public money squandered on non-competitive Covid contracts, including to “friends” of peers and MPs. Ostensibly, this looks like the most monumental case of corruption in British history.
The case for Lords reform is beyond argument. The chief obstacle is the absence of a mechanism for change. In the 1960s, a great age of reform, royal commissions served as non-partisan forums in which to negotiate proposals. Governments came to dislike such commissions as somehow infringing upon their sovereignty. In the 2010s Cameron and Nick Clegg came near to a coalition compromise on a new second chamber but funked it at the last minute.
There have been copious reports on Lords reform over past decades. Increasingly, opinion has moved away from electing peers, which would leave control of membership to the party machines. Election is the privilege of the Commons. Some have suggested a chamber whose members are drawn from the nations and regions of an emergent federal Britain, and from occupations and interests that have been chosen because they will be likely to contribute to public debate. Its powers would be limited, but not nonexistent.
Such a chamber cannot be hard to envisage. In fact, there seems no better moment for it: refurbishment is about to move the Lords into a temporary home, hopefully outside London. The price of its return to Westminster should be reform. As for the rich who merely want the title of lord, why not sell it openly? As the newspaper baron Lord Northcliffe said when offered a peerage: “When I want one, I will buy it like an honest man.”
Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist
I reckon:
1. Get rid of the monarchy and all the associated forelock-tugging, snobbery, and nostalgia for Empire
2. Have a national conversation -- who are we? what do we stand for? what do we value? what sort of country do we want to be?
3. Based on the above, write a constitution, with an elected head of state, with rules about who can stand for office, how long they stay in office, and what they are allowed to do when in office.
4. Also have an elected upper house with some teeth, who can keep the Government in check if need be.
5. Keep peerages, if people want them, but also with rules. No power, but if people want to make a large donation to the public coffers in exchange for a bit of (fake) ermine and a fancy title, let them. A bit like the novelty lordship we got my brother for Christmas a couple of years ago, but a lot more expensive.
Same old same old. You can’t “reform the Lords” in any meaningful way without giving it more legitimacy - and that would give it some influence - and that would take even a tiny bit of power away from the Commons - and the Commons won’t have that. Jenkins knows all this.
The whole constitution needs looked at.
We have a monarch at the peak of this, who call themselves "Her Majesty" and "His Highness" handing out the right for other people to be called "His Lordship" and "Sir".
It's all a ridiculous anachronism, that was a joke in the 18th century, and has long past it's usefulness.
It's a giant club of entitlement, we have hundreds of well connected very average individuals running things, real talent has no chance.
Why the country is descending into a corrupt and failing state.
Most interesting. The house of lords is a big problem. A problem rooted in Britain's constitutional monarchy. With no constitution. "Wrong, James, the constitution is one of precedent!". That's right. There's no constitution.
The root of the problem is the UK's blind spot regarding its democracy. The British position is "The oldest democracy! Habeas corpus!" and "the monarch is merely ceremonial, and has no role" which is immediately contradicted when they add "she's got so much experience and her advice gives stability!" That, and the UK isn't the oldest democracy, but that's another matter.
Now Simon says "Britain is a parliamentary rather than a presidential democracy, with the Commons acting as the absolute sovereign. The Lords, a relic of ancient hereditary rule, is mere icing on parliament’s cake." This is true, to a point, except that Britain's parliamentary democracy is led by a PM who has weekly meetings with the queen. While the privy council, that is the main ministers, and the PM, meet the queen once a month.
Purely symbolic as we saw earlier.
The House of Lords is the most important symptom of this incomplete British democratic system. Which has evolved, through precedent only.
It is not enough to reduce the monarch's role to an advisory one, and not enough to have most lords now appointed rather than hereditary.
British democracy must be rebuilt from scratch. Start again. Have elected houses. Have no unelected heads of state. No need to give the queen a hard time, just let her retire to her estates as a normal and quite wealthy citizen.
She can still be a tourist attraction. But for heaven's sake get yourselves a real democracy.
- 63
Don't forget that the Queen gets advanced notice of Legislation and has been able to manipulate to protect her financial interests, as revealed in this paper.
The HoL is a gravy train. £300+ for just crossing the threshold each day, the same as people on UC get for about 20 days to live on. The honours system is corrupt - it is used to pack the chamber with partisans. Apart from kicking out the bishops and herditaries as an easy move, it's hard to find an alternative in the long term. Another level of politicians? - we can see how corrupt that becomes by looking at the US system.
I never thought I’d live to see the son of a KGB officer ennobled. You’d think these Russians had plenty of money to throw around.
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Bet you never thought you'd live to see a British PM who was born in New York, either...?
- 57
Being born in a stable does not make a man a horse.
But it can make you an ass.
"Corrupt leaders like Johnson will stretch the democratic traditions of this country to breaking point. It is vital that everyone who opposes this slide into authoritarianism hold him and his cronies to account."
How?
- 48
I wad sum po’er tae giftie gie us, tae see oorsels as ithers see us.
The Lords is semi feudal, it also has clerics making laws. We scorn other countries and claim we have the ‘mother of all parliaments’ yet how can it be representative when we have bishops in it?
It is of course also stuffed with cronies, has-beens and folk booted out of the commons and other places.
Yes, that is Ruth Davidson I am meaning. She was going to lose her seat if she fought it, the Tory revival had stalled so she said she was stepping down from politics to spend time with her family. It’s affy strange what a bit of ermine can do, she jumped at the chance to sit unelected and making laws till the coos come hame in the Lords. Almost Damascene if I was a cynical bugger and getting £300 a day for life.
Other countries shake their heads at us and rightly so.
- 30
Not remotely a corrupt country. True. There is nothing remote about it, it is right in your face and has been all my adult life. We underestimate the level of corruption in all layers of officialdom. The third world countries are not as sophisticated at hiding it. But from potholes in the roads to peerages, Britain is corrupt through and through.
- 22
We have a crazy system that has somehow survived because too many of those who should bring it down are too comfortable within that system. We have a monarch appointed by God who oversees the silliness. A house of Lords full of mostly elderly men who have donated or know too much to be left out. A commons with a first past the post system that usually is tory controlled because their donors have the biggest wallets even though tory policies are bad for everyone including business as the economy has tended to do better , like everything else in spite of media misrepresentation, under labour. What we need is a people elected small second chamber, a proportional representation commons and an end to the nonsense of excessive wealth flaunting, nostalgic never ending pageantry, of the monarchy.....but that would make make us just like Germany and they are doing? Very nicely thank you.
- 8
The Rotten Boroughs never went away unfortunately, they just evoled into something with a veneer of respectability and accountability
Guardian Pick
155The United States deliberately set up a two-house political system as part of the "checks and balances." Although there are some exceptions, the quality of the Commons now is so poor that we need a second House. The Lords is not entirely corrupt, and does have some useful members. But we badly need a Lords that is more representative, not only of the four nations, but also of those distinguished by their contribution to society, and not to party coffers or Johnson's next holiday home
- 70
It can’t be truly representative at the moment as the SNP is the largest party in Scotland by a landslide, yet not one SNP member will sit in the Lords. I’m pretty sure that’s the same for PC as well.
I think the last SNP MSP who was sounded out for the ermine was Tricia Marwick who was the speaker at Holyrood but she politely declined saying it wasn’t really for her.
Which is very polite for a diehard republican.
- 73
The Lords is a product of another age. It’s an analogue joke in a digital world, and reforming it won’t work. Total abolition is the only way.
- 52
Not entirely corrupt
speaks volumes. It is a staggeringly low bar.I grew up believing that I was fortunate enough to be in a country where corruption was not significant, and that things would gradually steadily improve.
I was mistaken.
- 17
I wouldn't suggest that stupid nation can teach anyone anything about democracy anymore..
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What a terrible example and a horrific ambition. The Lords need to be elected but expressly not so it can be more like the US. Sake.
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I suggest either an US style senate or an German style Bundesrat. Both would require splitting up England in smaller regions, the later would also require those regions having devolved parliaments.
- 6
The US senate is commensurate with the EU. The US has a number of federal states with a congess alone, but, if I am not mistaken, many of the 49 states has congress and senate the same as the UK.
I see your post is a Guardian Lick,( typo for pick), which is a bit rich for accuracy. - 29
I think the last SNP MSP who was sounded out for the ermine was Tricia Marwick who was the speaker at Holyrood but she politely declined saying it wasn’t really for her.
It was actually an OBE, rather than a peerage, but the same principle occurs.
The House of Lords, and the entire Honours system is simply an instututionalised form of corruption, and incompatible with democratic values.
- 30
nope, the US senate is even more undemocratic than the Lords. 2 senators per state. If you live in a sparsely populated tundra like N Dakota your senators have way more pull than California. Ultimately this is driving extremism in the USA (it used to be that the Senate seemed above mere party politics, but see Ted Cruz as an example of whether that is true today).
- 21
World's biggest care home.
- 4
I want so much to agree.
But how do we arrange a method of electing the members which isn't pretty much the same as the HoC?
The USA sees Senate and Congress flipping over the years - more or less in step. Despite cycles that were deliberately split so they wouldn't all align.
- 3
So which house provides the government ? Which house takes precedence if they keep rejecting the others proposals , both would be elected unlike now and where the Commons is ultimate arbiter .
What basis would you pick 300 ? How to do get the expertise from that or do you just replicated the same process of MPs .. picked from partys with no need for any competence?
And where does the media figure in this design to rid politics of corruption for sure we know there's a close relationship between the Tories and the media.
Allah's Eternal Wrath and Catastrophes upon all [Luciferaunic, Kabbalah-Massonic, misanthrophic, pedo-sodomite] "governments"/ corporations/ mafia/ secret societies/ Vatican Chabad etc./ people/ hypocrites/ satanists/ deceivers/ impostors/ psychopaths/ Riba/ SSHIa of this world [who shall be increasingly and completely exposed for all their filth and crimes and thence punished to death!] ... and Allah's most severe punishment upon those who oppress/ deceive/ connive/ plot against Allah's Mu'minun ... shall befall now!
The End.
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