THREAD: The UK needs a hard reset. When your phone is malfunctioning to the point that it is no longer fit for purpose, the first thing you try is a hard reset. It's one step before throwing it at the wall in anger or, if you're less dramatic by nature, recycling it and getting

a new one. Our country needs a hard reset. Many Brits like to believe that the UK is a bastion of democracy, revered by other - less fortunate - nations. But you don't need to scratch far below the surface, especially in recent years, to see just how deluded that outlook is.

We should be outraged that Boris Johnson is swelling the unelected House of Lords to 800+ members by rewarding high-profile Brexiteers, his own brother, the ex-PM's husband and a Russian-born media mogul with peerages. But we're either so mired in our collective serfdom that

we'll just wave it through or we're just exhausted from 10 years of one insult after another under successive Tory governments. Everyone should be furious that figures like @Fox_Claire, @GiselaStuart and @catherinehoey, having spent years lying shamelessly about the

EU and decrying the idea of 'unelected bureaucrats running our country' are poised to accept a sycophantic gift of a lifelong job in an entirely unelected second chamber. But on the whole, we won't be because we've been trained to believe it's OK. The House of Lords itself needs

to go; it's not a badge of honour to sit alongside only Iran as one of just two countries in the world to have unelected clerics in its legislature. It's obscene in the extreme that any democracy would think it acceptable that the second chamber of its parliament is effectively

handpicked by successive Prime Ministers with no input from the people. Moving on, we urgently need to move to Proportional Representation. How in God's name can we justify 800,000+ votes being needed to elect one Green MP while it's only around 38,000 for a Tory MP? For far too

many, it's a choice between voting with your conscience or voting strategically and it's utterly wrong. Then, we need to reassess our place in the 21st-Century world. Brexit has come to symbolise our national failure to realign with modern realities and it's made us an

international laughing stock. We need to prioritise cooperation over isolation and peace over war. Finally, we, the people (to coin a phrase) need to stop slavishly accepting the status quo as the best we can hope for. It's manifestly perverse that the likes of Johnson and

Rees-Mogg grow up in the sure knowledge of one day governing while never having to experience the hardships they are elected (and fail) to alleviate. We should demand a politics that is more representative and less nepotistic, cronyistic, elitist and corrupt. We need to wake up,

organise and take action because right now, our collective nonchalance is the lifeblood of the Johnson/Cummings quagmire. Time to reboot the UK. It starts with each of us.