Month: April 2012

Titanic Redux

An Australian billionaire has announced plans to build a replica of the Titanic. Naturally, the ship will be named Titanic 2 (most media outlets seem to be writing the name with Roman numerals, but ships traditionally use Arabic numerals, e.g. Queen Mary 2) and it will be constructed in China by CSC Jinling Shipyard.

As a liner enthusiast, I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, I’m not too keen on the recent trend toward ever bulkier passenger ships. Ships like the Norwegian Epic and the Oasis of the Seas look more like floating condos than naval vessels. Even the Queen Mary 2 suffers from balconyitis, albeit to a lesser degree.

Epically Obese
Photo of the Norwegian Epic courtesy of Brian Burnell @ http://nuclear-weapons.info

The Titanic, on the other hand, looked very much like a ship, with a lean superstructure and four raked funnels. Aesthetically speaking, the Olympic-class ships were a masterpiece, both inside and out.

The sister who survived
I couldn't find a picture of the Titanic in full profile, so I had to use the Olympic. Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

 

As far as I can tell, no designs for Titanic 2 have been released yet, so it’s unknown how closely she will resemble her namesake. However, it’s already been confirmed that she’ll have a bulbous bow for greater fuel efficiency, bow thrusters for greater maneuverability, and a larger rudder. They’ll also have to figure out a new place for the lifeboats. On the original ship, they were stored 59 feet above the water on the boat deck, but current SOLAS regulations require lifeboats to be stored no higher than 49 feet (though Cunard was able to negotiate an exemption for the Queen Mary 2 because of the nasty conditions on the North Atlantic).

The interior will need to be changed as well. I doubt they’ll have steerage, for example, and second class will probably be ditched too. Even first class will need adjustments (back in 1912, private bathrooms were the exception rather than the rule, even in first class!). If they’re truly faithful to the original design, there won’t be any balcony cabins like we know them today. True, the so-called ‘millionaires’ suites’ on B- and C-decks had ‘private promenades,’ but those were totally enclosed. The lack of balcony space could prove detrimental to the ship’s commercial success. After all, one of the reasons the Queen Mary 2 has so many balconies is that they were thought necessary to help recoup her $900 million price tag. Granted, the Titanic 2 won’t be nearly that large, but if she’s constructed like a true ocean liner, she’ll be a lot more expensive than an ordinary cruise ship.

Ultimately, the whole enterprise seems macabre though. After all, the Titanic is only famous because her maiden voyage resulted in the deaths of 1,500 people. I do wonder how they plan to handle that in the brochure!

Lords Reform: A Real Farce

The Joint Committee on the Draft House of Lords Reform Bill published its report on the government’s proposals yesterday. There weren’t really any surprises: the committee recommended an 80 percent elected/20 percent appointed House of 450 members, each of whom would serve for a non-renewable 15-year-term. The elected members would be chosen using a modified version of the single transferable vote method, while the appointed members would be chosen by a statutory Appointments Commission (though the Prime Minister would retain the ability to nominate a limited number of individuals to serve as Ministers in the House of Lords). The Church of England would continue to be represented by bishops, though their number would be reduced to 12. But I have a feeling that this particular scheme is going to go the way of all the other schemes that have been proposed since Lords reform began in 1911.

As always, the stumbling block will be the issue of the relationship between the two Houses of Parliament. Right now, the House of Lords is subordinate to the House of Commons. The Parliament Acts 1911 and 1949 allow the Commons to pass legislation without the Lords’ consent, while the Salisbury Convention states that the Lords will not reject government bills that arise from manifesto commitments.

But although the Lords can no longer fight the Commons on equal terms, they still play a valuable role as a revising chamber. Unlike in the Commons, where legislation is often nodded through without any real scrutiny, the Lords look at every clause of every bill. The Lords is traditionally a much less partisan place than the Commons, and many of its members have real-world experience beyond the Westminster village. The Lords can look at legislation from a different perspective, and their amendments often go a long way toward improving the final product (in fact, the vast majority of Lords amendments are subsequently agreed to by the Commons).

The main problem with the government’s proposals is that they assume that the reformed House of Lords will remain subordinate to the Commons. But while it makes sense for an appointed body to defer to the will of an elected body, it’s hard to see why an elected House of Lords should have to give way. After all, one could argue that it would have greater democratic legitimacy since its members would be chosen through a form of proportional representation rather than first-past-the-post. It would only be a matter of time before the two Houses came into serious conflict, and it’s difficult to see how the primacy of the Commons could survive. Legislative gridlock is all-too-common here in America, but it would throw a real monkey wrench into the British system.

The government’s proposals face a perilous journey to the statute book. I suspect that, deep down, most MPs are aware of the absurdity of one elected chamber having to kowtow to another elected chamber. There are also many Conservative MPs who would love to torpedo Lords reform in order to give Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats a symbolic middle finger. If the newspaper reports are to be believed, there are even Cabinet ministers who are quietly encouraging rebellion. Even if the bill squeaks by the Commons, it faces massive opposition in the Lords. Theoretically, the government could use the Parliament Acts to force the bill onto the statute book, but that would require them to get the bill through the Commons twice. Given how divided the Coalition is on the subject of Lords reform, I’m not sure the government would want to re-fight what’s bound to be a bruising battle.

Despite what Nick Clegg and company say now, I suspect the House of Lords will remain in its current form for many years to come.