Quote: “No - it's called a balanced constitution - the Yanks have had separation of powers for 250 years. In the past we elected a bunch of monkeys and then they give the one with the bluest (or reddest) bum all the power with no checks or balances”
The USA’s “separation of powers” is not as separate as many believe, for example:
the president (executive) appoints the supreme court (judicial);
the vice president (executive) is chairman of the senate (legislative);
presidential appointments (executive) have to approved by the senate (legislative);
if a senator becomes president, his/her seat is not filled by a by-election, the state governor (executive) appoints a senator (legislative) until the election is due (Obama was a case in point).
These are checks and balances up to a point, but to refer to them as separation of powers is an exageration.
It is true that members of the government (excutive) cannot be members of Congress (legislative) so that’s separate, but it also means that they’re not elected (apart from the president of course).
If comparing constitutions, it’s not true to say that their’s is better than ours, or vice versa, they are completely different systems.
Quote: “yeah - they were talking about it - then the Tory MP's (whose leaders thought the thing up) realised that it would be used to impose HS2, Gatwick Runway2, windfarms, new M ways right through their constituencies, the Green Belt and their homes in the country so it sort of hit a large brick wall called self-interest
besides it is so sweeping it will be tied up in the courts for donkey's years”
Suspect it’s not just LHR rwys that will be “tied up in the courts for donkey's years”.
It’s almost certain that HS2 will be too and for longer (if it isn’t scrapped), as it’s a much bigger project and likely to upset a whole lot more people, as many more people could lose their homes and/or businesses than in the case of LHR. Plus there‘s those who‘ll be adversely affected by HS2 (noise, house price falls, etc.), but just a little too far away to be compensated.
We can therefore forget about the nonsense that HS2 (with a spur to LHR) will remove the need for more rwys.
Excellent, now back on-thread.