The UK has two Houses of Parliament.  There's the House of Commons.  This is an elected chamber.  And there is the House of Lords.  This is unelected.  No, this is not Ruritania - this is 'democratic' Britain.  In the House of Lords sit Lords and Ladies - some have hereditary titles and some have life-long titles only.  These latter tend to be the pals of Prime Ministers past and present.  Judges and Bishops sit there too.

Scary fact - recently the House of Lords has been more democratic than the House of Commons.  This is because Tony Blair is PM and he does not understand the meaning of the word 'democracy'.  He wants trial by jury to be a thing of the past.  And ID cards to be mandatory.  And big business to run schools.

The system to elect members to the H of C is first past the post.  Winner takes all.  The present PM promised some action on proportional representation (he held discussions with the Liberal Democrats in 1997before he was the PM) but then the Labour Government gerrymandered (redrew the constituency boundaries to their advantage) to the extent that they will never be out of power no matter how few people vote for them.  22% of the electorate elected a government with 67 of a majority this year.  This is enough to keep this elected government in power for another full 5 years.  Nobody thinks Mr Blair is ever going to introduce a bill on PR because it could mean that his party would some day have to share power or heaven forfend lose it.

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Eleanor

Hello.  I do think you are a bit out of date about the Lords.  Most of the hereditary Lords have been booted out now, but there are still some who are doing a rattling good job.  The only one I know personally is a Scottish Peer, the Countess of Mar who is an old-time socialist.  She is also against compulsion for no reason.  She was poisoned by sheep dip (dipping her own sheep and/or goats which she keeps to provide milk for her cheese business in Worcestershire)  So she has been banging on about Gulf War Syndrome because the drugs and pesticides taken to the first Gulf War bore a striking resemblance to the aforesaid sheep dip. 

Actually, I had no problem with hereditary peers who had had generations of experience in ruling their own estates, and some of them, certainly the ones who showed up regularly were very good. 

Life Peers are what keeps the thing together nowadays, but there are some very good ones.  Lord Winstone, Lord Renfrew (an archaeologist), Lord Bragg (Melvyn, not Billy) and Baroness Kennedy, a frighteningly good lawyer in an earlier career.  They are our last best hope for survival until we can get "Now I'm President of G8 and Europe, I'm even more powerful than the Queen" Blair out of his coronet and into the duckpond.

Yes, I think we really need to dump the gullible melagomaniac twit in the slime, and as soon as possible.  Bring on the revolution!

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Yes, they got rid of some of them, didn't they?  I vaguely remember it being on the news.  Riveting stuff, eh?  But those who remain in their ermine robes (are the bishops and judges still there? Those totally in tune with the common hordes?) are still unelected, Ruth.  Melvyn Bragg?  Rules me?  Why, exactly?  Good, bad or indifferent, he has no right to because he is unelected.  This is supposed to be a democracy.  And how did he get there?  Whose pal was he?  Blair's?  Think possibly yes.  It's not right.  He is a political appointee.  Not an elected member of anything. 

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It took them a while to get to the point in this article, but anyway, it seems that upper house seats are for sale (still) in the UK. The labour party is very upset about getting busted for this.

Police launched an inquiry last March into allegations by the opposition Scottish National Party that Labour and other political parties had nominated people for seats in parliament's upper house, the House of Lords, in exchange for party funding.

Three other people, including the Labour Party's top fundraiser, Lord Michael Levy, have been arrested as part of the "cash-for-honours" probe but it was the first time a top adviser in Blair's Downing Street office had been arrested.

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IRV is basically a form of PR.

No it isn't. It can be used in combination with PR. See the glossary:

http://www.care2.com/c2c/groups/disc.html?gpp=4440&pst=95503&archival=

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IRV is basically a form of PR.

No it isn't. It can be used in combination with PR. See the glossary:

http://www.care2.com/c2c/groups/disc.html?gpp=4440&pst=95503&archival=

Well your descriptions of the systems are fairly accurate but your interpretation of PR seems to be only dealing with one way of seeking a proportional representation in the body you are electing to.

Your descriptions of IRV seem to be basically describing Alternative Vote, which is one voting method that can deliver a more proportional representation than FPTP. Hence my description of it as a type of PR. However, it won't necessarily stop parties getting a majority in parliament without the majority of the votes so whilst AV is more democratic than FPTP it still has problems.

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