IS it time for the end of the peers show?

The House of Lords is a bloated chamber featuring many, ermine-coated fat cats.

There will soon be more than 800 members of this unique club. Some deserve to be there for their dedication to political life.

Others are there simply for having made donations to political parties.

They are the Lords of the Blings. So what happened to David Cameron's Big Society and One Nation?

This is an apolitical column.

That said, I can't bear to see some politicians milking the system while so many people are struggling with austerity.

When politicians are made a lord they should live up to such parliamentary promotion – they should have earned it.

Some who have been elevated have integrity. William Hague is being lauded and he has worked hard for the Tories.

I hope Frank Field gets a Lords' seat because the Birkenhead MP is challenging.

Whether you agree with him or not, he is out there speaking his mind.

What I can't abide about many of the current unelected "Downturn Abbey" clones is their hypocrisy.

Lord Hogg made me pig sick when he claimed for expenses for cleaning out his moat.

I wonder if his family emblem is a blood-sucking boar?

Lords can claim £300 a day attendance allowance.

Nice work if you can get it I care about those who have to find the money to get to the Jobcentre Plus and have to pay for photocopying CVs in order to get an interview for some half-baked apprenticeship.

Ten thousand people – of all political persuasions – have now signed a petition with a national newspaper calling for the Lords to be axed.

At least let's have a referendum to review it. At the moment it’s a chamber of horrors that will reach 1,000 members by 2020 if we don’t stop it now.

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CHANNEL Five really does live up to my Channel Nosedive title. They are coming to the end of their crude "benefits season."

Yet still they managed to fit in the documentaries 12 and on Benefits and My Big Benefits Wedding.

Where were they when the "Big" Iain Duncan Smith Benefits Con happened?

The IDS team at the Department of Work and Pensions invented false statements and testaments from fictional claimants who praised the DWP for sanctioning them.

These fictitious people would be sectioned in real life.

Who in their right minds would praise a government hell bent on reducing their money while burying the truth and reducing employment and support allowance?

What would they have done next?

Actors playing disabled people saying how much they were enjoying trying to get a job after being declared fit for work.

It was revealed last week that 2,500 disabled people have died since the benefits overhaul.

Channel 5 ironically had a programme called The Best of Bad TV.

Its benefits season has been cheap and crass, Channel 5 should redress the balance and make a series of investigations into how the benefits administration system needs to be overhauled so everyone is treated fairly, regardless of age and disability.

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AND finally...

While the Labour leadership contest hots up in the UK, I hear that in the US Presidential nomination race a Democratic rival called Bernie Sanders from Vermont is “stealing” votes from under pressure Hillary Clinton.

He is a passionate, grey-haired socialist who sports open-necked shirts and has spent 25 years in Congress.

Over this side of the Pond we will see next week if left winger Jeremy Corbyn, who has spent decades as a Labour backbencher, will become opposition leader.

The political parallels are intriguing.

Yet the oddest moment in the US campaigns, which get very personal, was Republican hopeful Donald Trump inviting a reporter to tug his hair to prove that he doesn’t wear a toupee.

It's obvious it's not a hairpiece – they don't make wigs that bad.

Peter Grant