Doctor Who: Time of Angels

This episode was really good. It packed a lot in without feeling rushed, it used time-travel in interesting ways, it felt serious and as if what happened actually mattered, it was genuinely scary at least some of the time, it was fun and several great characters had real chemistry between them, it was funny, it continued developing a great monster from previous episodes, and the plot didn't fall of the rails half way through.

Generally, my only criticisms would be small-ish things that could be improved, and things that could be even better. (I expect more flaws will occur to me later.) But I would note it does repeat a couple of ideas that New Who has used before to good effect: that's a natural thing to do, and works quite well, but they've reached the point where I'm definitely conscious of them.

House of Lords

Some current political issues are difficult but comparatively straightforward to form a clear opinion on ("Should we be violently racist and xenophobic?" "No!"). Some are insanely complicated ("What's the best way for an economy to recover?") and combine differing goals with differing methodologies which to decide definitively need much more detail and evidence than many people, and possibly any people, have.

Let's pick something in the middle. Many people have expressed a dissatisfaction with the House of Lords. What SHOULD be done with it?

1. No upper house at all.

This is superficially reasonable, but despite the problems with the house of lords, I have the impression that the Lords have served a useful purpose in debating legislation and voting against some examples of egregiously bad legislation. Some friends have spoken very highly of them in some contexts, although I do not remember any more; if anyone would like to add details?

2. Appointed house.

This obviously has the problem of being susceptible to being skewed by the current government (or by various forms of bribery). (Maybe I should include "outright purchase" on the list, considering that many political things ARE directly influenced by funding, but honestly, if you think about it, it would have the worst aspects of hereditary peers, appointed peers, and newspaper oligarchs.)

3. Hereditary house.

This obviously has the problem that if there is a systematic bias in your hereditary members, you will be stuck with it.

4. Elected house.

This normally tries to be similar to the lower house but elected in a different way (eg. one is elected in districts, one by nationwide proportional representation), or for longer terms. But has the problem of being in many ways a copy of the lower house.

5. Elected house but not filled with the representatives of the same political parties as in the house of commons

Is there any way to achieve this? It might be possible in principle, but are there upper houses which DO work like that? If there was, would you get any sort of sensible representation, or would you just end up electing celebrities, some of whom would be great but many of whom would be wildly inappropriate.

6. Randomly chosen.

I don't think this would actually work, but people constantly suggest it. We still do this for juries (for a variety of reasons). In some ways it's similar to a hereditary house. (You could even select people at random from birth if you wanted.) It has the advantage that it might be more free from systematic bias, but the disadvantage that some people may actually be better representatives than an average person, and ideally you' have a system which chooses those people preferentially.

7. Include relevant experts on law, science, etc

This sounds nice, but I don't know if it's actually at all possible without bias or further elitism.

8. Some combination of the above, possibly with a higher or lower voting threshold

Eg. We currently have a mix of appointed and hereditary, with controversial results. Would any of the options shore up each others weak points? Or benefit from a different voting threshold (eg. a high one if you mainly want something that vetos really bad legislation, a low one if you think you'll have a system where no-one agrees.)

I definitely don't know what would be desirable. Which options seem... least bad? Are there any other upper houses in the world it would be good to emulate?