Turkey Senators to vote for Christmas

Rarely do we see parliaments voting themselves out of existence. When this happens it is usually because the country has been invaded, or dismembered in some other way. In Ireland we saw of course that the Irish Parliament voted itself out of existence in 1801, paving the way for the act of union. In fact, it voted twice, foreshadowing Nice and Lisbon in voting until “you get it right”. At least the second time there was massive bribery to induce the parliamentarians to vote themselves out of existence.
This week the Seanad faces an existential moment. Its flaws are many but most stem from the grotesquely unrepresentative nature of its electorate. John Crowne has tabled a bill that will begin to address this. It would give votes to all including emigrants ; Of course the bill will be voted down – its Not Invented Here, here being governmentland. Governments in Ireland don’t even take on board amendments that they themselves agree with, preferring instead to retable them….
The bill being voted down the reality is that the senators will be showing themselves to be incapable of bestirring themselves even in self preservation. An attempt at reform should surely precede abolition but the government senators would rather walk, baaing, through the whipped lobbies to deny reform and thus allow a free run for abolition. And, if they cannot even be bothered to save themselves we have to ask : what on earth use are they?

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