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.