Remember the UK doesn't have a constitution and hence it's not clear what it can't do. One common theory is "Parliament can pass a law on anything that's not physically impossible". Kinda makes a change from "only regulat interstate commerce"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_United_King...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_Five_of_the_United_Stat...
It essentially requires 2/3 of both the House and Senate to agree on it, and then 3/4 of the States have to ratify it.
These days, meeting such a threshold is probably effectively impossible.
At first I was inclined to agree with you, but consider this: there were six amendements to the constitution in each half of the 20th century but just four in the entire 19 century. (The Bill of Rights and the 11th Amendment were all passed before 1800.) Now, it's true that when you throw out the 27th Amendment (whose multi-century ratification time makes its 1992 passage deceiving), it has been 41 years since the last amendment was passed. But there was 60 years between the 12th and 13th Amendments and 43 years between the 15th and 16th. Neither of those two lulls were signs that the Constitution had become effectively un-amendable.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_amendments_to_the_Unite...
There are also limits: MPs individually vote, and on something that was hugely controversial they would defy the whips. It's not "the Government" but a collection of individuals. And in the end we can vote them out and overturn absolutely any legislation in the next Parliament.
Government deadlocks are not always a bad thing, either, particularly when the issue is controversial. I'd argue that it is far better to have an issue debated and for compromises to occur, than to have one party's solution shoved quickly into place. This includes so-called emergencies, which are often excuses to go after civil liberties.
As a UK citizen I agree with you, the real problem is the apathetic electorate though, we get the politicians we deserve.
Germany has the same problem caused by PR Andrea Merkal needs 1 green vote to stay in power so buy buy Nuclear power
I am sure Rep or Dem whips visiting the HOC must be jelous of the power that their counterparts have.
If it can't be written down how could it enter as a factor in any legal proceedings?
Worth the paper it's not written on IMO.
A: "You can't do that it flouts the UK constitution"
B: "Oh right, what's the constitution say?"
A: "Well, I can't tell you that ..."It's just a little more complicated than a few cliches about "all men being equal" written by slave owners
Additionally, The British had slavery until 1833 -- slavery wasn't an American invention. Disparaging the paradox of slave owners writing all men were created equal is also revealing as to a lack of understanding of history and the context in which those documents were created as well as the political realities at the time.
Stick to code, your historical snark makes you look foolish.
That of course makes the constitution unknowable because the supreme court, the House of Lords, can ignore precedent. So that still leaves us with no way to know the constitution the best we could hope for is to form a quorum of Lords and check that something is legally OK with them; even then they could changed their minds.
I still think that without a clearly defined and codified set of basic principles a nation doesn't have what I would call a constitution.
Mostly constitutions, charters of rights and freedoms, or whatever are full of wonderful phrases about mankind. Especially if you get somebody good like Thomas Paine to write it. But it's the courts that decide if abortion is allowed and reject claims that smoking bans go against magna carta.
There are also administrative uses - the constitution sets down how often elections happen and who succeeds who. But if you are a 'nice' country that abides by that constitution then you would also presumably abide by the historical convention that the Queen picks the prime minister with the most seats in the house - even if that isn't written down.
If McArthur had decided to seize Washington in a military coup then a Constitution isn't physically going to stop him (that's what the marine corp is for!)
Similarly in Russia the new democratic constitution stopped Putin serving another term - but it didn't stop him putting a puppet in place.