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Politics is pretty fucking grim — but they are *not* all the same.

Why do we get the wrong Politicians? Isabel Hardman

ACGoff
14 min readOct 10, 2024

“They are all the same”

I have not got that perspective anymore… and I challenge you to not have that view either at the end.

This book has also convinced me that we need to reform MPs pay to encourage us normal people to consider the crazy job for the impact we could have with it.

First, some info

The UK has this political structure — I never realised the size of it:

  • House of Commons — where ~650 members of parliament (MPs) sit after being elected
  • House of Lords — where ~800 ‘peers’ sit: 90 of them hereditary (Dukes and Earls etc.), ~25 are Christian (though interesting must retire at 70yo?) and the rest are life time peers (nominated to get a ‘peerage’ by a leaving Prime Minister or by the House of Lords itself).
  • Local councils — where 20,000 councillors are elected every 4 years, separate to the Houses of Commons, to run services in their area.

In simple terms, MPs draft laws, Peers mark their work and can send it back, and local councils run all the day to day stuff with the budgets they get from the laws.

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