Utterly corrupt system
Awards for the mates of the rich and famous, those who do their highly paid jobs for their big fat pay cheques. I'd love to see these actually mean something again.
Dr Sue Black among handful of IT Brits getting New Year gongs
Updated Former Bletchley Park board member Dr Sue Black is among just a handful of IT folk on the UK's 2016 New Year honours list. Black, an honorary Senior Research Associate in Computer Science at University College London, was made an OBE for "services to technology". She has been a vocal campaigner for the site, having …
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Thursday 31st December 2015 14:44 GMT Timmy B
Why not make it better...
Have a shortlist for people in each category, with details of them and their lives for people to read and have us all vote on it. We could even put people forward to be added to the shortlist too. Take all the corruption out of it.
Still - nice for Damon Albarn to get an OBE, though.
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Thursday 31st December 2015 17:32 GMT Anonymous Coward
"[...] we should be throwing the House of Lords in there too."
People who no longer expect/want promotion have the freedom to follow their own inclinations rather than the expected party political line.
The House of Lords has been a thorn in successive Government's sides on numerous occasions - often when controversial bills have been nodded through the House of Commons without sufficient scrutiny or consideration.
If anyone is going to stop Theresa May's Snoopers Charter then it will be the more enlightened members of the Lords.
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Thursday 31st December 2015 18:04 GMT Anonymous Coward
"If anyone is going to stop Theresa May's Snoopers Charter then it will be the more enlightened members of the Lords."
No it won't, ever hear of the Parliament Act ?
The House of Lords is full of political appointees that nobody voted for, the electorate cannot get rid of them unlike MPs. If people want to stop the snoopers charter then make your MP aware of your discontent and that they risk being thrown off the commons gravy train. It's your vote, use it.
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Thursday 31st December 2015 18:36 GMT Anonymous Coward
"No it won't, ever hear of the Parliament Act ?"
Was it in the Tory election manifesto? It isn't a financial bill. IIRC the Parliament Act only applies in those two cases - particularly the latter. Otherwise the Lords can vote down any Commons' bill - with limits on how long they can delay any re-introduction in a new parliamentary session.
The current "reform" threats by the Government are down to the House of Lords obstructing "secondary legislation" - which is a way a government creates laws apparently without needing any proper scrutiny.
My Tory MP has no interest in most constituents' concerns. He has a safe seat and votes with the Party line - except when the Vatican tells him to follow their line. His main concern is not upsetting the Party who might deselect him.
Even political appointees to the House of Lords have often chosen to be "cross benchers" - or even to defy their party on major issues. The fact that they can't easily be removed makes them immune to the party whips. There is a limit to how much packing of the second chamber can be achieved by a particular party while in power.
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Thursday 31st December 2015 18:58 GMT Anonymous Coward
>"Was it in the Tory election manifesto? It isn't a financial bill. IIRC the Parliament Act only applies in those two cases - particularly the latter"
Urban myth, it does not have to be in the manefesto and can be forced through:
"The Parliament Act 1911 also provides for the provisions should the Lords block a non-finance public bill. S.2 (1) states that if the Commons pass a bill “in three successive sessions” and it’s rejected by the Lords, then after the Lords block it for a third time, the Speaker of the Commons is then able to send the bill to the monarch for Royal Assent, without the Lords consent. When assent is granted, then like finance bills, they are considered primary legislation. In all there must be a full two years between the bill’s second reading in the Commons and the second rejection of the Lords, for this bill to be then enacted by the monarch."
"In addition to these legal methods of avoiding the Lords consent, there is or was a convention that used to ensure the Lords didn’t necessarily have to agree with a bill for it to be passed into law. Around 1946, the primarily Conservative House of Lords decided that they would not obstruct a bill that was in the government’s manifesto when they were elected. This became known as the Salisbury Convention, after the peer who first proposed this set up. This convention would then allow the Commons to pass laws, provided they were in the manifesto, without the consent of the Lords."
Source:
http://www.lawteacher.net/free-law-essays/constitutional-law/the-house-of-lords-decides-law-essays.php
If you want to stop the snoopers charter get out and protest, don't expect a load of unelected crony old farts to possibly stop it. Don't think it's just the Tories who like spying on you, Labour brought in RIPA.
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Thursday 31st December 2015 19:24 GMT Anonymous Coward
"Urban myth, it does not have to be in the manefesto [...]"
The Parliament web site is quite specific about manifesto bills:
"The Salisbury Convention ensures that Government Bills can get through the Lords when the Government of the day has no majority in the Lords.
In practice, it means that the Lords do not vote down a Government Bill mentioned in an election manifesto."
http://www.parliament.uk/about/how/laws/parliamentacts/
The Lords ability to delay Commons' Bills for the defined periods In the Parliament Acts is often sufficient to cause the Bill to run out of Parliamentary time - or to harden opinion against it.
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Thursday 31st December 2015 20:15 GMT John Brown (no body)
"The House of Lords is full of political appointees"
Yes, appointees put there by both sides as they go in and out of power. And it's a double edged sword for the appointing party because once in, it's almost impossible to get them back out. And they know that. So can vote with their conscience if they choose to.
It's not ideal, I know this, but it seems to work, on the whole, better than an elected house based on our current first past the post voting system.
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Wednesday 6th January 2016 18:11 GMT Michael Wojcik
These things belong in the same history bin as the British Empire
Britain still has a world-wide empire. The sun has not yet set on it.
Admittedly it's allocated a bit more sparsely these days.
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Thursday 31st December 2015 18:22 GMT Arthur the cat
Semi-IT person
David MacKay got a knighthood and among other things he did the prototype of Dasher way back in 1997.
http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/dasher/
http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/dasher/History.html
He also wrote a book on machine learning.
http://www.inference.eng.cam.ac.uk/mackay/itila/
Biting the hand that feeds IT
