If the people REALLY wanted to revolt… the police couldn’t stop them! Over 60 million people in the UK
There’s only a very small minority that feel like you I’m glad to say Kaos and that’s why there will be no revolution…
I’m not saying the current system works, it obviously doesn’t when we need to keep repairing it every 15 years or so, I’m just saying that I’d rather improve it than go through revolt!
And… I’ve got some lovely tomatoes/potatoes/leeks/onions growing in the communal area of my flat that you can barter from me if you’re worried about starvation!
lol, quite an assumption you’ve jumped to their, without explanation or evidence
I was agreeing with Kaos point when he said "It [society] owes you a living, because it has removed your right to live in any other way, other than by that societies rules. "… I was going round saying where’s my money or where’s my this that or the other… there’s a massive difference.
I’m a lil suprised by your assumption that I haven’t “got off my rear and done something for society” - where did you gleam the life history of me and how did you get the time time to do such a thorough investigation in to the state of my behind?
saying society ‘owes’ is not the same as I’m ‘taking’ from society.
So…getting back to the first post…if the police decided to section 59 me on the street (for argument’s sake for revving my engine ‘inappropriately’ as per Nick’s post) and take away my bike there and then, could I legally refuse and request that ‘the incident’ be dealt with in the courts instead? Yes or no answer please
Actually, I have to disagree with you there (and I have mostly agreed with you up until here).
Parliament has no power to create law. Parliament merely has to approve the law that the crown has decided to make. In fact, the legislature, is technically ‘the Crown in Parliament’. To do what you suggest would effectively be an act of revolution, not a development of the constitutional practice of this country, since the Government is Her Majesty’s government.
The Prime Minister is, constitutionally, a servant of the Crown. Under the constitution (and yes, there is one, but it is largely governned by convention and not written statuted, and is not codified in the same way as the US constitution), the Prime Minister can actually be anyone - it is not automatic that it is the person who ‘wins’ the general election, which is why in 1974 Heath did not have to resign, and in 2010, Brown held office for a few days after the election result. Whilst Cameron had the most seats, he did not have a majority. By convention, the man who is next offered the job following the resignation of the incumbant is ‘the man who commands the confidence of the house’, but the monarch cannot require the Prime Minister to resign. Therefore, Brown could have held on as long as he wished and ‘ruled’ by minority government.
Constitutional Convention is far more than ‘tradition’. Its is a constitution, and certain parts of it are sacred.
I think by far and away the more powerful argument is that s59 is a breach of your human rights. Since the HRA 1998, any law which is incompatible with the UNDHR must be stated to be so. Otherwise, it must be read in accordance with human rights. I would suggest that such a ‘conviction’ would be criminal in nature, and therefore there must be a right to a fair trial, which an on the spot fine with no appeal would not be. There’s your argument, not the Bill of Rights.
However, there are sections within the Bill of Rights that cannot be impliedly repealed (such as no taxation without the consent of Parliament). Which is why you should look very carefully at any (secondary) laws which permit a fine - if the fine is not absolutely permitted by Parliament, there is a real argument that it is fundamentally unlawful. Whilst Parliament can largely do what it likes, local authorities cannot. They are government, not Parliament.
according to my research, pretty much. I recommend doing you own of course. reality doesn’t always do what 's right of though
I sopke to one traffic cope once and asked him if anyone had used the bill of rights / declaration of rights to rebutt the section 59… and he said ‘no, but nobody knows about it do they’…
That’s the key. The HRA requires that future law MUST be read in accordance with the HRA, and that will only be impossible if the legislature has directly and explicitly stated that it is impossible.
Entick v Carrington - a man may do anysuch act, save that which Parliament has expressly provided he may not.
I’d call that a limit…
There are many restrictions on the power of government, yet none on the power of Parliament, and that’s the key here. You forget, Parliament makes law, government merely suggests and administers law. The courts interpret that law and the administration thereof, to determine whether government has administered it in the way in which Parliament intended.
Of course, in the UK, things get interesting as Parliament is now a mere cipher for government, but that is a problem we should be addressing, and changing the House of Lords is not the key - the real reform needs to be had in the House of Commons.
No, Parliament didn’t. The Government did, and Parliament felt powerless to stop it. In fact, Parliament accepted the Parliament Acts purely to avoid the greater evil of a Government acting in a way as to completely ridicule Parliament. Those two simple acts were the biggest acts of constitutional vandalism ever inflicted on our country.
That is a bit like arguing that when the case name in a criminal case R v Carlsberg and someone was to say…Regina against Carlsberg…you came back and argue…no it wasn’t the Queen it was the Government.
When the Government acts in legal cases it Acts as the Crown, hence the Regina or Rex.
When the Government passes laws, it acts as Parliament.
It is a bit pointless to separate the two. When the Government Acts, regardless of how it manages to get the law passed in the Houses of Common, it acts as Parliament.
Government (theoretically) cannot and should not act as Parliament. Did your law school teach you nothing about the separation of powers? To be fair, it taught the last government nothing about separation of powers, except that the separation was a huge inconvenience when you wanted to rule as effectively a dictator. Seriously, good law should be passed by Parliament whatever the politics. Bad law requires the politics to ensure it gets through. And it is a real travesty and a huge detriment to our country that it is entirely possible that bad law is passed and remains in force. You talk in this thread about the Supremacy of Parliament - I would tenatatively suggest that Parliament has not been suprreme since before the days of David Lloyd George.
The Executive - Government
The Legislative - Parliament
The Judiciary - Supreme Court
Parliament passes laws, the Government cannot pass a law it can only create policy, only Parliament can pass a law when Parliament agrees it…whether this is done because the Government has a majority or because Parliament is in agreement, doesn’t really matter, it is Parliament that acts to create the law.
Think there’s a bit more to Parliamentary Supremacy than just Parliament’s ability to make or unmake any law. It is that Parliament, and only Parliament, can make or unmake any law - i.e. Parliament holds the supreme position within the tri-partite separation of powers. Whilst the Courts may interpret the law, the law that they interpret is Parliament’s law, and on Parliament’s understanding - if the Courts disagree with what Parliament has done, they cannot change or correct that. Further, whilst the Executive may administer Parliament’s law, they can only administer the law within the confines of that law - the executive is fettered by Parliament’s power.
However, in the current situation, Parliament is a mere cipher for the executive. Further, since Derry Irvine, the Judiciary have increasingly been in the pockets of Government. I cannot accept that this what Parliament is, and how it should be. Since De Montfort’s time (1250s) until the late 1700s, it has become increasingly accepted by those in power that you cannot govern except by the will of the people (i.e. in order for the king to do something, he had to get the consent of the Commons). The late 1700s to about 1911s taught the ‘people’ that actually if they organised themselves properly, instead of just being the group who said ‘yay’ or ‘nay’ to the King’s desires, they could actually operate to determine what the king desired. From 1911, the people learned that actually, they could go much further than that, tell the king what he wanted, bypass the other half of Parliament and guide the King’s hand in making it law. Since about 1997, the game has moved on to be one of ‘ok, if we can control Parliament, why do we need it?’.
Whilst I have no desire to go back to before Simon De Montfort, and have an absolute monarch, ruling through a network of enforcers, I do think we have gone very much too far. I personally would repeal the Parliament Acts, except for the bit about finance (and honestly about finance - to run the country, not to go to war, or to go on lavish and wasteful expansion plans - investment is not finance). I would have an entirely appointed upper house with hereditary, life and term peers, all of which could be impeached and stripped of their powers for conduct unbecoming by a constitutional court. I would reinforce the Bill or Rights and Magna Carta, and codify some of our more useful bits of constitutional convention. I would give this constitutional court the power to dismiss a Prime Minister, to determine whether laws were validly enacted (not just procedurally, but in real terms as well, by reference to the rights of the individuals in society) and I would give it power over the individuals that made up Parliament - effectively the chief Whips, but outside of the Party setting, and answerable only to Parliament. The court would be made up entirely of back benchers, of all parties, with no majority, with 12 members sitting on each case.
Parliament needs its power restored, but never ever confuse the desire of an elected dictator to strengthen his own dictatorship with his stated aim of improving the strength of Parliament. This power is only ever going to come from Parliament taking it back for itself.
“Parliament means, in the mouth of a lawyer (though the word has often a different sense in conversation) The King, the House of Lords, and the House of Commons: these three bodies acting together may be aptly described as the “King in Parliament”, and constitute Parliament. The principle of Parliamentary sovereignty mean neither more nor less than this, namely that Parliament thus defined has, under the English constitution, the right to make or unmake any law whatever: and, further, that no person or body is recognised by the law of England as having a right to override or set aside the legislation of Parliament.”
This is exactly what I have described. Though unlike Dicey I don’t pretend that this is done by any constitution, it is done because the Courts of the land accept this supremacy and uphold it, not because of a constitution, but because they do, and the cases I referred to earlier in this thread, the weights and measures cases, show that the court can, when it wants to, deviate from this, it could NOT deviate from this were this held within a constitution, just like the Supreme Court of the US is incapable of deviating from the Constitution of the United States.
I tend to agree with you on the issue of how Parliament works, I have always said that we should do away with the Party Political system, which would force people to vote for MPs based on that MPs opinions on the issues, not their allegiance to a particular colour.
This though has nothing to do with Parliamentary Supremacy, which stands intact, it can make or unmake any law and is subject to no other body of Government control. You can argue about how much control the Executive exerts through Party Politics and the Parliament Acts, but they cannot direct Parliament to do anything, they can just attempt to get their agenda through.
As Tony Blair found out in his first defeat when attempting to extend the time in which people could be held without trial, this ability to exert does not guarantee the outcome you want, as Parliament is supreme and cannot be directed.
Not sure Dicey does agree with you. Highlighted to support my assertion… I have amended using the words in brackets in what I consider to be a way entirely consistent with Dicey’s thinking. To paraphrase, ‘Parliament is made up of three bodies, the House of Commons, the House of Lords and the King’. Parliament, as defined, is supreme. No-one can set override Parliament, or its powers’.
In other words, where a second constitutional body, for instance Government, controls Parliament (as is my assertion), such that it can no longer be truly said that legislation is made by the House of Commons, the House of Lords and the King acting together as Parliament, Parliament’s supremacy can no longer be said to be fully intact. The law that comes out of Parliament may still be supreme, but it can no longer be truly said to be Parliament’s law, merely the Government’s law. Even private members’ bills are rarely successul unless the Government supports them, as they are generally talked out. Eventhe champion of all private members’ bills, foxhunting, was supported by the Government, but not due to the merits of foxhunting, but as an excuse to test drive the Parliament Act.
I agree with you that the Executive through the Parliamentary system does have too much power, esp when people like Cameron ennobled 117 people to join the House of Lords.
However, I disagree with your view that Parliamentary Supremacy includes the legislative process, rather than the outcome, at least in this example of that. The House of Commons includes the Executive.
In essence if we were to look at the American example, their “Parliament” Would be The President, The Senate and Congress. You would be arguing that the Executive has too much power over the President and therefore the Parliament has lost its supremacy.
Now our system isn’t as clearly defined as that, as the Commons is both part executive and part legislative, many people playing a dual role in this respect, but the argument that the Executive exerts too much control over the legislative cannot be a fundamental part of Parliamentary Supremacy in our system. It is inbuilt into our very system that such control would exist.
Each individual part of Parliament has an element of executive, the Commons, the Lords and the Crown. Therefore, Parliament includes the executive, I agree. I agree with you that Supremacy does not include the process, but the outcome. However, my argument is that the outcome must be that Parliament has legislated. Where Parliament has been castrated to the extent that it has, in my view Parliament has effectively ceased to exist, except in name only.
Re Cameron’s 117, I would remind Sir that Blair achieved a similar feat, not just in his ennobling, but his expulsion from the House of all but 92 hereditory peers, the majority of which were Tory.
Of all the political parties, I would allign myself with the Tories. However, in reality I am a true parliamentarian. I do not like the fact that political parties have so much sway over politics. We should be electing Members, not parties. Our head of state should be just that, the head of state, not the figurehead of state.
Also, I would disagree with your critique of the American system. The split of elections for the two houses ensures that actually, Parliament is very powerful in constricting the will of the President. The problem there is the Parliament is factionised into two parties, and therefore the outcome is not necessarily that good - it results in too much Pork Barrel politics.
I think the problem with your argument that Parliamentary Supremacy relies upon a particular legislative process is that it is entirely arbitrary and subjective on when that legislative process is too far gone, there is no mark in the sand, and therefore I don’t think it is a part of the definition.
not that I expect to receive one, but you never know! 