Hereditary seats are, by definition, undemocratic.
Please engage brain before asking further questions.

How do you propose to crush this Islamic fanaticism then ?

What about a nice old fashioned crusade?

If you did this I am afraid it would only serve to drive the likes of Cameron, Osbourne, Maude etc out of politics altogether.

................ oh, wait a minute

Where is the "infinite facepalm" pic when you need it?

Yeah, a holy war.
Better than a Jihad innit?

The thing is, it's guaranteed to be effective. I mean, all the other holy wars succeeded in permanently crushing Islam, so there's no reason that this one won't, right?

Might as well take out the Jews at the same time then we can enjoy wonderful tolerant Christianity untroubled by people with strange religions.

Sounds good. I think anyone who refuses to take part in Dally's Britishness Ceremonies should be immediately shipped to the front line to be used as a human shield.

As mentioned, they shouldn't really have time for another job and MP's are currently supposed to declare other sources of income or benefit in kind. Unfortunately it's often difficult to find out the true source of the money and whether its a conflict of interest. As shown by the Peers in current trouble, you simply get a mate to put the questions up for you. Plus our media and journalists are so useless they can never be bothered to actually investigate these people.
So, in my opinion, ban all other forms of income and benefit in kind then, other than having secret accounts etc, it eliminates the option for MP's and Lords to receive money from groups/lobbyists etc and so have no incentive to particularly screw the public.

I'd agree an MP with a previous job is generally more desirable than not, but then our dear leader had a previous employment and he still has no idea about how most people live their lives. I also can't think of many jobs that could be done alongside being an MP that would particularly make a person more experienced or grounded. They can do voluntary work if they like.
If they want to write a book etc then they can wait until they've left Parliament to publish it.
Any investments can be put into a blind trust as well, to avoid any conflict of interest there.

What do you define as 'source of income' though? What if you have investments? Are you supposed to stop earning any returns on them whilst in Parliament? I personally don't have a problem so long as sources of income are completely transparent and subject to full public disclosure.

As for the second/upper house, I'm with cod'ead - it should be fully elected. I'd copy the Australian model, with the upper house elected at different intervals to the lower house (generally half the Senate faces elections at the same time as the lower house, although full elections for both can happen). That in itself acts as a natural brake on extreme politics, as its rare for a government to control both houses for long. I'd also go for PR for the upper house.

The Blair legacy?

The financial rot started during his time in office. Cheap credit being thrown around like confetti. People running around racking up ridiculous amounts of debt, with no real idea how they were going pay it off.

"Cheap" credit was the result of consistently low interest rates. The wider availability of credit happened long before Blair & Brown had control of the sweetie shop

Indeed. It was a crucial factor in developing the service-based economy that was to take over from the manufacturing one.

Just thinking about this and realised that I remember how, in the mid to late '80s, you'd go into a shop and they'd be nearly throwing credit at you. It was a real culture change.

The "Blair Legacy", in terms of economics, should really be the "Thatcher Legacy".
Blair and Brown saw that the mood of the country had changed and that voters saw the traditional Labour model as out of date and inapplicable, hence they switched to "whatever works" to lose the old tax-and-spend image.
Tax had become a dirty word and remains so.
However, without taxation, provision of services has to be cut, dropped or privatised.
Unfortunately, the "Me" mentality still prevails and too many are of the the "Why should I" persuasion to get a consensus of joint responsibility.
Even economies that were functioning social democratic models were seduced by Thatcherite ideals and are now seeing widening inequality and increasing poverty.

We must not forget where most of the debt came from, i.e. largely unfettered banking spivvery.
So far, I've heard a lot of rhetoric but seen no action from the coalition about this (and about tax avoidance), instead they are taking a wrecking ball to the remaining skeleton of collective provision.

What is government for?
Is it to ensure the benefit of the whole nation or is its purpose to subjugate the nation as a cash-cow for the few?

Back on topic, to describe the current state of the House of Lords as the "Blair Legacy" is utterly vacuous.
At least Blair made a start, but the coalition have since simply stuffed the place with more unelected yes-men than ever before.

Apparently, Thatcher once responded, when asked what her greatest achievement was, with: "Tony Blair".

I'm sure I noticed somewhere that Cameron created more lords in his first year in office than any other PM in memory.

Yes, 117.
Great isn't it, that without a majority from an election you can just shape the upper house how you wish?
Isn't democracy wonderful?

Lovely.

We could start with making them clock on and off, both in Parliament and their constituencies

Of course they would. It encourages you to spend in their shop and pay HIGH finance charges to them too if you're slow at paying. They particularly liked those with "sucker" written on their forehead.

Yes.

The point is that it was a culture change. And that the era of cheap credit did not start post 1997.

Thought you and others on here were all for changing traditional British culture!

Nope.
Absorbing bits of others, as has "traditionally" been the case, will continue rather than freezing at some fondly-imagined truly British point.

Traditional British culture is one of steady change. Some things hang around, like the monarchy and fish & chips. Some things don't, like white dog poo and casual racism.