This means that Brits will enjoy their votes. Aside from that, there's nothing for Linux. If you're tech-savvy, you can overcome these artificial barriers. Even in China, people find ways to bypass government limitations, the British government won't do a better job.
Copying and pasting my comment here:
This is the House of Lords, ie the chamber that has fuck all power. What's more, none of the "lords" (they're not real lords any more) that have proposed these amendments are even of the governing party.
If the government had wanted these amendments in the bill, it would have put them in there in the first place. This is just a little group of self-righteous cunts looking to push an agenda by proposing ridiculous amendments.
Edit: Quick and dirty explainer on how it all works: bills start in the House of Commons and are normally put forward by the government. They get worked on for a while in various committees until everyone's happy, and then they're sent to the Lords for review. The Lords can propose amendments but the gov't (which sits in the Commons btw) is free to ignore them. The Lords can also block a bill if they're really against it but they can only do this three times I believe before it automatically goes through, and it's extremely rare anyway for them to do this, like a once per generation sort of thing.
People have been asking that for 100+ years ;)
To try and make the case for it though - the Lords is less dominated by party politics than the Commons (because they're appointed for life) so they tend to be quite good at properly scrutinising legislation which the gov't may have rushed through the Commons. They might not have a proper veto any more but it's still very embarrassing for a gov't to lose a vote, even if it's in the Lords. Makes them look weak and incompetent (imagine that?) so if a bill is defeated and sent back to the Commons they'll normally change it enough to make sure it passes the next time.
That's the idea nowadays anyway. The reality is, we ended up with the current system basically by accident and there's no proper reason for any of it.
Is there any talk about changing that? I know it's not often that the government structures change, but it does happen sometimes (eg in Lithuania we recently-ish introduced 2 term limit for city mayors, we used to not have any limits and it was a bit problematic)
Fairly regularly.
The problem is that - for all its faults (and nobody's pretending there aren't any) - the Lords have this awkward tendency to overall be a force for good. Their oversight tends to be non-partisan and fairly grown up precisely because they don't really have to care what's going to be in the papers tomorrow.
And nobody has yet managed to figure out a way of resolving the faults inherent with the Lords that doesn't also destroy the things that make them a force for good.
Make the appointments chosen by an independent board, change the name to "senate" or something that does sound so fudal and abolish any ability to veto so it's just advisory and I would be all for it
Oh there's always talk, there's just rarely any action. The last big change was in the late 90s when most of the old hereditary lords were kicked out, but for some unfathomable reason they decided to let 92 of them stay and that's the way it's remained ever since.
Basically everybody is in favour of kicking the remaining hereditaries out (having actual Dukes and Earls knocking about in Parliament is embarrassing even for us) but there's no agreement at all on what should be done with the HoL apart from that. Some want a fully elected second chamber, some think it should be scrapped entirely, and some think it should be appointed (as it is now) but by an independent panel (rather than the gov't) who would choose the top people from science, arts, industry etc to serve for a number of years.
Most people though don't give a shit, which is kind of why nothing gets done.
Lithuania benefits from being smaller, and thus easier to change. The biggest benefit and drawback of larger countries is always that their resistance to reform is high, even astronomical in the largest ones.
Mostly a check and balance.
Originally a king and queen took council from advisors (typically lords, knights and senior church members). These council sessions were called parliment.
Under Henry 8th parliment was divided into a house of lords (made up of lords and senior church figures) and house of commons (made up of commoners like knights). Parliment became a way to raise issues, offer advice, etc....
Members of parliment would occasionally be tasked to perform roles for the King, with Charles 1st. Parliment became soverign and stood over the monarch. The Act of the Union brought in ministries of the crown to represent the monarch on issues in parliment, this was the government.
Ministers were normally lords but over time increasingly came from the house of commons, WW1 represented an key point where it was decided a lord could no longer act as prime minister. The prime minister must come from the house of commons
Fast forward to the 00's and the house of lords was reformed, hereditary lords were kicked out. Instead the house of commons would be able to nominate people with service to the UK to the house of lords.
That government tried to be wise in creating a balance, the next political party took power for 14 years and did their best to stuff the house with their political representatives.
As part of the reforms the house of lords can't really propose legislation, (they can but the house of commons can ignore it), but legislation from the commons must be reviewed by the lords within a set time frame.
The house of lords can amend legislation and send it back if they don't like it but they can only do this 3 times. It means they can put upto a 5 year break on legislation, so in theory the government needs to expend real political effort tonget some things through.
In theory it should have been a major break on brexit, but 10 years of being stuffed by lackys messed that up.
So this has come from lords strongly affiliated by a party not in power and unlikely to ever retain it.
So you can just ignore it
The purpose is that they’ve been there since the dark ages when John “granted” the Magna Charta. As time passed the Commons grew in power since the Government needs their approval to remain in their post. Moreover the Crown has the power to appoint as many Lords as the Crown wishes and that power is actually exercised by the Monarch under the advice of the PM, which is always under the Commons’ control (customarily leader of the majority party). Basically the Commons can threaten to pack the Lords with enough new peers to pass anything they want.
A retirement home for has-been politicians. No really, making someone a Lord is a good way to get them out of the House of Commons (where the real power is).
It's been removed, since they tossed out the legacy ex-aristocrats it's basically been a well upholstered retirement club for establishment politicians :(
The house of lords exists to scrutinise the house of commons. The lords are appointed for life, which means they aren't subject to the political pressure of MPs in the commons. It's basically a check on democracy itself; a circuit breaker that triggers when the rhetoric in the commons gets too silly and populist.
Brexit was a good example of the HoL working as intended. The government initially wanted to pass a bill that would take us out of the EU without a withdrawal agreement in place. The HoL rejected it for obvious reasons, which is why we ended up with a much more sensible bill that clarifies the situation in Northern Ireland, the status of EU nationals living in the UK, etc.
Once upon a time the Houses were equally important. Then in the early 1900s, the Liberal government tried to introduce a land tax to fund social programmes and the Lords blocked it. Lords were appointed by the King, Prime Minister basically said to the King “I’m the Prime Minister who was elected so I should have a say in who becomes a Lord” and he agreed.
He then went to the Lords and said “The King says I can appoint Lords, so I’m going to introduce this bill to reduce your powers and you’re going to approve it or else I’m going to appoint enough Lords to ensure you never get a say on anything ever again” so in 1911 the Parliament Act was passed which gave the House of Commons the power to veto the Lords and since their powers have been shrinking ever since.
There has been talk of replacing the Lords with an elected Senate or National Assembly, but no one has yet seriously tried introducing it.
Technically it’s the Commons that is free to ignore the amendments, not the Government. Granted, the Commons always control the Government since a majority of the Commons can vote on not having confidence in the Government and force it to resign.
That's not even true. The people that got arrested for social media posts were literally trying to incite violence against minorities \*during a period of widespread racist riots\*, including some posting addresses of non-white people to groups that were threatening to "burn them all down, with all the fuckers still inside". That level of incitement is illegal whether you do it on the street or online, it being on twitter doesn't make it suddenly OK. In fact, incitement to violence on that level is against the law even in the USA which has (or at keast, had, until recently) the strongest free speech protections in the world.
These are two very different things.
Similar systems to both are already in place: mandatory on-device media scanning (iPhone/Android), and age verification for spicy sites. That could easily be extended to VPNs. Enforcement seems to be currently non-existent --- some sites voluntarily implemented age verification, others didn't. 4Chan is still accessible.
This is on Starmer, long history of being a prig. The good news is that he is likely to be gone by May. He is already hugely unpopular in the country and his own party, at least what left after defections to Reform and the Greens. The Parliamentary Labour Party already have the knives out and they will want to spend the next two years before the general election repairing the damage and trying to get back the support of the electorate.
Apparently there is a bit more to the "lawmakers" part as [this other post](https://www.reddit.com/r/LinusTechTips/comments/1po184r/comment/nuc329l/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) explained.
And indeed by looking at the linked document it lists just members of the house of lords that added this amendment and if I understand this system correctly other than striking a discussion this *shouldn't* do much.
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