So Jack Straw has presented his plans for reforming the House of Lords. What did you think of them?

Have you actually had a chance to think about it or have you been blindsided by the idea of giving the life peerages redundancy pay if they should choose to leave the upper house?

This government could well be compared to a prizefighter, leading with the left and smashing with the right when you least expect it.

The six options presented by Jack Straw for lords reform are except for one, ridiculous. Not only that but parliament has fairly simply been told that there will be reform no matter what they say. The voting system he proposes asks MPs to list their preferences numbered from one to six. That way if one option fails,  the MPs votes will then devolve to their next preferences and so on.

Now that in itself isn't such a bad way of doing things, indeed its very close to the system used for all elections in Australia. The problem arises when the options don't include all the possibilities, which seems to be the way Straw wants to set it up.

Thats not something which has been missed by members, who have already complained that they won't be given an opportunity to say no to the whole lot. This is a good thing, since there is a slight possibility that enough pressure will be put on the government to ensure that an option to say no is placed on the vote.

So what exactly are the options presented by Straw?

In essence, he wants MPs to choose whether to have the whole house elected, 80 per cent elected, 60 per cent elected, 50 per cent elected, 40 per cent elected, 20 per cent elected and 100 per cent appointed. Obviously the percentage left over from the five middle options would be appointed by the government.

If the UK parliament is to have reform, at least do it right. The concept of having any appointments to a chamber of parliament goes completely against the idea of what parliament is all about.

If appointments are made to the house of Lords, then what you will have in essence is a massive wave of cronyism which does nothing more than ensure the wishes of whichever party is in power.

Think about it. The government appoints the House of Lords and wants to pass a controversial bill. There is no way that bill can be stopped. None. No checks and balances imposed by the House of Lords because the House is full of the PMs cronies. How do you like the sound of King Tony?

Every true democracy in the world has some sort of system of checks and balances on it. In Australia, the entire government can be dissolved if a proposed bill fails to pass through both houses three times. Its happened too, in 1975 the Labor party under Gough Whitlam was dismissed by the Governor-General when appropriations bills couldn't be passed.

That might sound dangerous, but its not half as dangerous as having no checks and balances at all.

More on this later, duty is calling me.