What a F***ing Day,

 I am going to admit that I have been kind of checked out of politics and the news for a while because honestly, it is so overwhelming, but today BBC News notifications have been going off a lot and I've seen more than I usually would of what is going on in Westminster.

Firstly, the idea of a resignation Honours List sounds bonkers to me, especially when that person has effectively had to resign in disgrace, especially after they clung to power for as long as possible despite it being clear that their hands were not clean. All political appointments to the Honours list are somewhat baffling to me to be perfectly honest, particularly when it's to stack the House of Lords with people who think one way or another. Although I stick to my view that having the Upper House be the UK system rather than the American system (voting for a second house just doesn't make sense to me, sorry) having an outgoing Prime Minister, or in this case a Prime Minister who has already gone and has been that way for months (and two new PMs) appointing people to that house seems crazy to me. 

Putting all of this aside, how on Earth can we - the UK in general, I mean - justify allowing such a person, who has also now stepped down because of the report into one of the things he had to step down from the PM roles for, to appoint people to the Upper House? Whilst the list came out first and then he stepped down, and it's highly possible that he held out stepping down for the reasons he stepped down until the moment that the list was out, I don't see how there is any justification for giving someone who is no longer an MP because of poor judgement and worse behaviour carte blanche to install new people into the Upper House where they have the attendance allowance, the expenses accounts and all of those sorts of perks of retaining a role in Westminster. Whilst several were 'stepping down at the next election' I would genuinely take a guess that at least a few of them have made the calculations that actually they are likely to suffer a crippling defeat at that election and rather than having a political career which ended in failure, they choose to jump before being pushed, and were more than happy to be put forward for a role that they can't easily be pushed out of, even if all they do is take a nap during debates. 

House of Lords reform is something that no one has real appetite for - or no one with any power to do it - so these people who are appointed there will likely be there for the rest of their lives, and many of them can only claim to be good at one thing: being a career politician, and personally, one of the reasons I prefer the Upper House of the UK to the US is that the appointments based system is, mostly, more of a meritocracy, and is far more diverse than the Lower House. Politicising that environment, which does happen on occasions like this, isn't good for anyone. Having experts in different fields, whether you know their names or not, has far, far more value than having household name politicians who have given up on the idea of becoming the PM.