UK lords aim probe into Silicon Valley oligarchs The UK's Parliament has launched a probe into Silicon Valley's giant internet plantations platforms – and wants to know if they're treating suppliers fairly. It also wants to know whether you're happy that you can switch from one platform to another, or whether they're trying to lock you in. The term "platform" is broad enough …
The House of Lords really? Don't ya just love largely ceremonial governments bodies trying to show that they actually have a reason to exist. You can investigate American companies all you want because you have absolutely zero jurisdiction over their actions. Even in the UK the House of Lords is a joke.
You can do lots to US companies - any of them who transact business in the UK/EU are vulnerable. Doubly so if they have a European HQ as all of the big boys do.
Once a company achieves a certain size is nigh on impossible for them to avoid governmental reach.
Also note there have been a number of times where the HoL has told the HoC to think again about a particular piece of legislation.
The House of Lords ratifies any bills and laws passed by the House of Commons.
They have sanity checked and rejected an awful lot of the more controversial crap being pushed through.
I don't like the idea that the position of being a lord is hereditary, but I do like the idea that they aren't part of the same system that creates the members of the commons. Making it very difficult for the Murdock empire to have it all thier way.
Actually no! For 20 years from the mid 80s to mid 00s they were the only effective opposition to the Government. Some of the most vile proposals of the Thatcher, and Major governments were defeated in the Lords. Blair and his crew didn't get ID cards and their most obnoxious snooping bills through due to opposition in the Lords. Now you might ask how it is that a unelected bunch of geriatrics have more spine than the run-of-the-mill parliamentarian, but that is another matter.
A "joke" that has helped stop the Snoopers Charter, Identity Cards and its cradle-to-grave National Identity Register (no doubt still in the bottom drawer of some data fetishists desk).
People can (and often should) sneer at the UK 2 house system but before you do note this.
The UK does not run it's national budget on "continuing resolutions," because (literally) on a person by person basis parties cannot reach an agreement. It does not lay off huge swaths of staff because of some arbitrary spending cap pulled out of some Con-gressmans back passage.
It it is not designed to generate deadlock until every special interest group and politician who wants their palm greased has been payed off or otherwise appeased.
In fact the closest thing the US system resembles is the way the UK runs it's local government, at town and county level.
That might be fine for a population of a few million people at most.
It's a rubbish choice for the largest (or 2nd largest) economy on the planet.
Those who live in glass houses should not throw stones.
Things like this produce unhelpful effects like us having to agree to cookies every time we visit a new website, I'm getting a bit tired of all that shit especially on mobile .
Just educate the consumers and let them decide.
I've mostly stopped using the services of these companies anyway.
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