I've been mulling a post for a few days but it's been a bit busy and we've been under the weather with some kind of virus.
I've had a couple of walks but in public access woodland (rather than commons). The first was a walk in a bluebell wood. This is an almost annual 'pilgrimage' for us because the place is so stunning. Last year we didn't make it because we were still getting back to normal after our Australia trip and days off and fine weather didn't coincide around the right time. To see bluebells it needs to be sunny and in the morning. This year the wood didn't let us down. I'll (try to) put up a photo to give you some idea.
That was a short wander, then on Thursday I went for a proper walk around Hambledon and saw a whole lot more bluebells. The route was the top leg of Vann Lane (nice and quiet that day), Prest Wood, Packford Farm, Lord's Copse (bluebells) and Hambledon Hurst. I saw and heard some hawks a couple of times; to high up to be sure but I think they may have been buzzards. There was a crow flying around - protecting its young maybe.
I had thought of making a detour for a drink at the Winterton Arms at Chiddingfold but I contented myself with a choc ice from Hambledon village shop instead.
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Gordon Brwon's announcemetn of radical changes to the allowances of MPs on Youtube has to be the greatest humiliation of the House of Commons for a long, long time.
Parliament and especially the Commons finds itself at the heart of a crisis. Instead of being the country's chief agency for improvement, for making things right, the Commons has become, if not 'the Problem', certainly one of the problems. And, ideally, trying to put it right ought to be one of the main debates of the 2010 genereal election - and the one after that, too, possibly.
The real answer to the question of what's wrong with Parliament doesn't relate to MPs' allowances in the main; it's that we're in danger of losing sight of how a representative democracy should work in the internet age. There's too much information zapping around for a single, non-internet institution like the Commons to keep up with. The YouTube announcement was a sign of the times. MPs have risen to the challenge by starting their own blogs and websites and no doubt political parties are busy trying to capture (record, interpret and mould) internet opinion but neither the parties nor the individual MPs have woken up to the need for a completely new model.
It's been recognised that issue politics have grown in importance in the last half a century. Although this has been at the expense of party programmes, there's been little debate about what this signifies for the British constitution.
In theroy it might be possible to replace MPS with some form of pure democracy taking advantage of the internet. the public may not dislike the MPs so much that they want to sweep them away entirely but full democracy over the internet is becoming a benchmarek that the Commons has to beat if representative democracy is going to stay in good health.
It's not easy to find hard evidence of the course of the Commons' decline but it is easy to sense it. The kind of grandstanding that you hear in Commons committees, some of it bullying and ugly, suggests men who are grasping for publicity and relevance - and they don't always seem on top of their brief either. In the Commons there are some great orators - Cameron and Hague come to mind first - but you don't hear 'catching' ideas very often. Quite a few MPs get broadcast coverage to comment on what their colleagues are up to and these ones often seem intelligent, personable and 'insightful', but talking on the radio or TV isn't their day job - it's time out as a media type.
Where MPs emoluments come into the picture is not just that exploiting the current system is very provoking for the rest of us. The way in which MPs are rewarded seems designed to disqualify them from important parts of their job. (You suspect that) their pensions make it difficult for them to understand the scale of the problem for ordinary people, owning two homes gives them a particular interest in the housing market and not many of them have the opportunity to understand public transport from the point of view of someone commuting for, say, three and half hours a day.
It's the lack of ideas in the Commons that is becoming the House's most serious weakness.
If pure democracy seems extreme, what presentative kind can the internet promote and what are the parties able to do to help or hinder that?
Part of the Commons' identity crisis has already begun to be worked out by proxy in the debate over the reform of the House of Lords, though, tellingly, the debate (and the reform) seems to have become stuck. Assuming that the House of Lords has to be elected, it seems obvious that only one house can be elected on the basis of a territorial franchise. At first glance it seems equally obvious that the Commons should be the chamber that represents the 'places' - as it has always been. But if the Commons is supposed to remain the real seat of power, does that still make sense? It mightbe time for a more dynamic system where (stage 1)the electorate chose the issues - and they wouldn't have to be the same issues each time; (stage 2)the candidates had to demonstrate they were a) competent to decide on the issues b) representing/leading substantial amounts of public opinion on the issues.
Maybe not but, as I said, more of a debate is needed.
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I'v been reading Niall Williams's 'Boy in the World' and greatly enjoyed it.
