Sentences with phrase «rotten borough»

Dishing out seats on the basis of personal connections bears a closer resemblance to the rotten borough system before 1832 than it does to modern democratic procedures, and it also helps keep politics as the preserve of a socially restricted elite.

The local authority, under his directly - elected mayoralty, had been converted into a rotten borough worthy of a whole issue of Private Eye.

There can be no justification for the present «rotten borough» peerages, retirement rewards for party loyalists or crudely sold to those who pay large sums into party coffers.

The first version of the Bill was introduced with a strong emphasis on getting rid of the rotten boroughs, while the enfranchisement of the new urban - industrial areas to the north appeared as a subordinate program.

Level 4: Monarchy / Gentry / Lords / Parliament / Political Unions / Bristol / London / Factories / Counties / Rotten Boroughs / King's Council / Commons

For example, the Radicals at level 3 bring into focus aspects of the Gentry, Rotten Boroughs, Political Reform, Philosophy, Property and Monarchy, showing how they relate to each other in terms of the Radicals» experience in the passing of the Reform Bill.

Opponents of government introduced an amendment reversing that disparity, and the final version of the Bill contained a compromise in which the pressure to guarantee new seats to the industrial constituencies was more evident than hostility to the rotten boroughs.

Electorates were a relatively small proportion of the population in most constituencies, and in the case of so called «rotten boroughs», tiny.

Polly Toynbee: The way we vote today is a toxic anachronism of safe seats and rotten boroughs.

The longer reform is postponed, the more painful it will be — like any infection, rotten boroughs won't get easier to heal over time.

Writing in the Guardian, he delivered a scathing attack on Labour, assailing the nanny state and listing Labour's perceived failures: the government's treatment of the sick and disabled, its tremulous retreat on freedom of information, its centralising instincts and the cosy corruption of old Labour rotten boroughs.

They are the modern equivalent of rotten boroughs.

Rotten boroughs abound: by today some 105 councils will be ruled at least 75 % by one party, mainly Tory.

There should be huge voting signs hung out everywhere, but rotten boroughs — especially Tory ones — don't want hoi polloi at their polls.

Historically the area contained the most nortorious of all rotten boroughs - the seat of Old Sarum, the original site of Salisbury which was moved in the thirteenth century.