Problem is it means two mandates.

Currently the house of lords largely acts to slow down for debate anything that wasn't in the governments manifesto when they campaigned, anything else they are considered to have a mandate to implement and the Lords shouldn't block it. If both are elected then the lords will have a seperate and possible contradicting mandate - meaning that the house of commons no longer has the prime mandate to govern as it currently does.

I don't see why you couldn't keep it just the Majority of the Commons.

The change would mostly be a symbolic move, that would be seen as a step foward for the Lib Dems and instead of argueing for PR, they can argue for Expanded PR or Expanded rights for the House of Lords.

That is only likely to happen very rarely though right, when the elections are closer?

Most of the time the winning party will win both.

Look at the US. There's been plenty of times where they've had one of the three of {President, Senate, Representatives} a different colour to the others.

Nine times out of ten it's always the President.  Which is meaningless since your "President" is elected by whoever wins the House of Commons.

The other times it tends to be only because of "transitional" shifts within the Senate.  Unlike you, we don't re-elect our entire congress at one time.

At any election only 1/3rd of our senators are up for reelection.  So if the Democrats were to suddenly massivly lose popularity and lose the house and the Presidency it could take up to 6 years for the republicans to take the senate depending on how the cards play for reelection.

Yes. You don't get rapid change even if the public wants it. Personally I think that's a bad thing.

Actually, your Supreme Court is even worse at that, because your judges have political colour (WTF). Even if the whole country would want a progressive court, it would take 10 years to reduce the power of the Republican judges.

Like I said though, that's only due to us not voting everyone in at once.  If you kept your election cycle it'd be the same as it is now.

Really it's harder to get change in the US too because our representatives are always changed districts wise so there is no point to run against them.

Something like 80-90% of our house of representatives don't face any real competition.

I agree with you. Kowenicki is so blinded by a single perspective that he doesn't acknowledge that there are all sorts of equally valid views about what the Lib Dems are doing. Why don't we just say that Con-Lib would be a coalition of two unpopular groups? After all, the Conservatives only managed 36%... It is silly really. People are bleating all over the place without realising they sound daft. Everybody is right and wrong at the same time.

As for Gordon Brown, didn't he win his seat? Again?

And why politicians get served everytime is beyond me... they are just like any of us and seeing the worst in them all the time is just ridiculous.

1. the "best interests of the country" is about as subjective a statement as exists in politics...

2. hardly, infact most of there talk so far has been about the economy (and this is according to the Conservatives btw...) but of course, they want something in return for there support in a co-allition, thats fair enough and how these things work elsewhere. also, most opinion polls have show public support for electoral reform...

3. Labour have every right to hold out for a co-allition of there own, heck until an alternative is found, the constitution itself says that the PM stays on, so all this right wing media guff about Brown clinging on is utter drivel and only shows their complete ignorance of the system.

4. they would be a co-alition with more seats and considerably more votes than the Conservatives (on their own) have...the majourity of people would have voted for one of the parties in the co-allition...its only the media morons who wouldnt be able to see that...

5. okay, let me explain this for you, this is how the UK Political System works and has done for many years:

when you vote, you vote for a Party and there candidate in your constituency.

you do not, unless you live in their constituency, vote for the person who becomes PM

the PM is the leader of the party with the most seats in the Commons (or the leader of the co-allition)

so, HE won HIS seat, several times in fact...

HIS party won the 2005 election, he became leader of that party in 2007 as he was the only person who stood and no-one opposed him to become leader, they had every oppurtunity to have opposed him before he took that position.

do you understand now, how our system works? or do you just want to ignore this like the media?

whoa!

Gordon Brown has opened talks with the Liberal Democrats, he is live now saying so, apparantly he just spoke to the Clegg, Brown will step down ahead of the Labour conference in Autumn to allow a new leader to take charge!