If comment is free, then my comment is that you're a bunch of morons
Seriously. The Grauniad have launched a new section on their website: "A New Politics: Blueprint for Reforming Government". They say this is "in the wake" of the expenses "row".
So let me get this straight. When Alistair Darling was giving away FIFTY BILLION POUNDS of OUR MONEY to a bunch of incompetent, mendacious, infantile, off-with-the-fairies money grubbers, that was OK - a few Old Labour fogies got a bit upset about it, but Will Hutton was said we have to do it, so there was no pressing need to create a website for collecting the public's views on how to reform the financial system.
When unelected, anachronistic, sycophantic, ridiculous members of the equally unelected, sycophantic and ridiculous upper house - which, in case somebody's not clear on this, CONTROLS THE LEGISLATION that gets passed in this country - got caught SELLING THEIR VOTES FOR CASH, that wasn't new website time. Just another class scandal in a class ridden society. They're aristocrats, after all - they operate on a different standard.
The fact that this country is CURRENTLY AT WAR in 2 overseas locations, plus has armed forces deployed in various flash points around the world, gets less coverage on the front page of the Guardian that the Gaza and Sri Lanka conflicts (anyone else notice the very different tone they take when reporting white-on-brown violence vs. brown-on-brown violence, by the way?).
So now, to cement their emerging image as a self righteous middle class rag with trendified, fashion-driven ethics, they are launching, with great fanfare, a new website to enable public debate on how to reform the (elected, accountable) House of Commons. Because of SOMEONE'S WISTERIA.
I'm not sying that the British electoral system and houses of Parliament don't need significant reform. They do. First past the post has got to go. More pluralism has to be allowed in the Commons. MP salaries needs to be brought in line with those of their closest professional peers. The House of Lords should be completely reimagined as a properly democratic Upper House. Religion should be disestablished and proper sepsration of Church and State enshrined in law. The Monarchy needs to be stripped of all privileges and powers.
None of thse things draw any calls for significant public debate. Certainly the Guardian - the self-proclaimed progressive broadsheet in this country, and boy don't they milk that repiutation - isn't sticking its neck out to demand open discussion and public consultation on controversial stuff like should bishops be granted automatic seats in the upper legislative chamber of a modern democratic state. Cause that would actually cause debate. You know, that stuff where people have actual opinions that are often different and they actually express them, quite vigorously, expecting the other party to defend their own positions? Yeah.
Whereas we can all comfortably settle down to a long, risk-free, bobble-headed nodding session of smug condemnation; of somebody's moat and somebody's bathroom fittings and somebody's porn flicks. It's a confluence of commercially driven journalistic cravenness and middle class conformity the likes of which I would not have believed possible if I weren't living through it myself.