>>>>... BTW our senate is appointed, not elected. We should throw the bums out.
>>>
>>>Oh, like the equiv. of the House of Lords here?
>>
>>Yup, where you send old politicians to collect a salary and beef up their pensions before they retire.
>
>But ours aren't all ex-MPs. Some are there cos their ancestors helped William the Conqueror. But fewer nowadays since Blair got rid of a good number of the "Life Peers". However, others may be there because they've been "ennobled", say for services to industry, or they were a popular movie actor, or whatever.

Much the same thing. Our senators aren't necessarily ex MPs. They are appointed by the ruling party - usually for payback. We don't get much in the way of actors etc, but if you did a really big favour or number of favours for whomever is now in charge, you might get this as what they call a 'patronage' appointment. You scratch my back, I'll make you a senator.

Nice thing about the job is that you can live in Florida or the Bahamas, show up for maybe 2 meetings out of hundreds during the year, and collect full salary.