cam : To add to the Bishop issue, apparently they sit in the House of Lords too.

adam : It's tied into 18th / 19th century Anglo-Irish politics. It was a major source of controversy at the time. The Church of England is still an established church, supported by the taxpayer. That's where the Anglican bishop crossover comes from. Everyone seems a bit embarassed about it now, but at the same time feeling that without the government subsidy all those nice looking churches would stop looking so nice.

cam : I guess it isn't killing them, but wouldn't a Heritage Act suffice for public funding for historical buildings of national significance (including churches) be better and then boot the bishops out of parliament, and dump their appointments on Canterbury.

Wonder why they haven't done it. Must not be publicly palatable, or more likely, not worth wasting political capital over.

adam : There is a detailed system of heritage listing but there are also a lot of churches. It's not just the buildings, people do have a vague sense of support for the CoE and the village institutionalism / tradition it represents.

adam : Amusing note by Simon Hoggart

The Labour MP for Medway hated Tony Blair from the off (when Blair had 93% approval ratings, Marshall-Andrews said: "Seven per cent! We can build on that!"

cam : Politicians in democracies can isolate electoral minorities (for good and bad reasons), I am not surprised that they can't get rid of the CoE subsidy/support because of enough popular support that it is democratically unpopular.

cam : Great quote. Bet that is used every time Marshall-Andrews pops up in an article.

Jacques Chester : This is an interesting development. I think you should consider putting this forward for the next Missing Link.

Or Ken Parish might be interested in it. A lot of Australian constitutional law is based on english constitutional norms.

cam : Jacques, I think it is going to reverberate into Australia because both Au and the UK practice Westminster so closely. Many of the reforms Brown is advocating are directly translatable so I expect it will cause focus on Australian constitutional practice.

avocadia : But there is a firewall between UK and Australian practice called The Constitution of Australia; the more applicable changes that Brown is discussing would have to go through a referendum, no?

cam : Australia (especially the states) has a habit of passing constitutional practice in legislation. For instance the Federal AG having to consult with the state AGs before appointing a High Court judge is in a statutory act. So a lot of these practices can be put into legislation. It means a future government can blast them away if they want, which they cant with a constitution, but it could be done now that way.