Living in London

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Today we segway'd, taxi'd, and cruise'd. We started the day with a Segway tour of Djurgarden, a beautiful garden island that is part of Stockholm. We rode past all kinds of beautiful flowers and vegetable gardens, all set in a gorgeous park. As I would have predicted, Heather is trying to figure out where we should live in order to justify owning one.

Then we set off to the National Museum, which turned out to be fantastic ... They had a very good design exhibition, and some genius curator has finally put 18th century paintings with modern in the same gallery. Heather was reminded of the etiquette of museums.

Then we did some fun people-watching as the city readied itself for it's Gay Pride parade. We longed to stick around to see the parade, but hey, we had a ship to catch. We wound all around the parade route in a taxi en route to the piers to begin our cruise. 

We loved Stockholm and hope we can return to this lovely little city soon. However, now that the day is here, we are both amazed at how excited we are to board this very impressive ship. 

Remember this song?:

Oh, do you know the muffin man,
The muffin man, the muffin man,
Oh, do you know the muffin man,
That lives on Drury Lane?

Oh, yes, I know the muffin man,
The muffin man , the muffin man,
Oh, yes, I know the muffin man,
That lives on Drury Lane.

Well guess where Drury Lane is located? Yep, in London. Here’s a fascinating blog post on it at one of our favourite sites.

You can listen to the tune by clicking on the player at the bottom of this site.

My apologies for the tabloid headline but it was just too tempting.

Tony Blair has met with the Queen and requested that Parliament be dissolved on April 11 — and she has graciously consented to do so. It turns out that dissolving the parliament is a normal part of the election process. Cool!

The Prime Minister has called for an election on May 5. (05/05/05) The race is on for a month long campaign. (I suspect that many Americans would welcome the opportunity to dissolve congress, especially if they only had to endure a month of campaigning.)

All of the major papers have sections dedicated to the latest news on the UK election. Stay up to date with these links:

• Financial Times
• The Guardian
• The Evening Standard
• BBC
• Election Watch (blog)
• Lost in Westminster (blog)

Surprisingly,The Times does not have a section dedicated to the election, at least not yet. Stay tuned . . .

Sometimes I wonder if the Britain and the US do things differently just to be ornary.

Index cards, those 3 inch by 5 inch cards of heavy paper, have a million and one uses. They are widely available in both the US and Great Britain.

In the US they are designated as 3 x 5 Index Cards, while in the UK they are 5 x 3 Record Cards (See photo).

3x5? 5x3? It is difficult to know who went first and who followed with the opposite designation.
 

Another entry in our ongoing series on the British Parliament.

Parliament is the supreme legislative institution in the United Kingdom and its overseas territories. The legislative bodies of many nations around the world are modelled on it (especially those of the Commonwealth nations). The UK Parliament is one of the oldest representative assemblies in the world, having its origins in the mid-13th Century. The United Kingdom Parliament today comprises members from England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales.

The Queen is the head of the State here (yes really!) and the rest of Parliament is comprised of an Upper House (the House of Lords) and a Lower House (the House of Commons). The 695 members of the House of Lords (known as 'peers') are not elected. Originally, they were drawn from the various groups of senior and influential nobility in Britain, who advised the monarch throughout the country's early history.

Unlike the House of Lords, the 659 members of the House of Commons are democratically elected and, as such, are directly responsible to the electorate. The forthcoming British elections will be to chose the members of the House of Commons.

In modern times, the centre of parliamentary power is in the House of Commons; the Queen acts only as a figurehead, and the powers of the House of Lords are greatly limited. The House of Lords is a more prestigious group and a “peerage” may be a kind of reward for time well spent in the British government. (Stay tuned for more details on both houses.)

Additional reading:

• House of Parliament (Wikipedia)
• An Introduction to Parliament
• Politics in the United Kingdom (Wikipedia)
• Previous Living in London posts

In our ongoing series of the politics of the United Kingdom, today we look at The Cabinet.

The Cabinet is the committee at the centre of the British political system and is the supreme decision-making body in British Government. When the Cabinet meets, Secretaries of State from all departments, and other ministers, meet in 10 Downing Street to discuss issues of the day. The Prime Minister chairs the meetings, selects its members, and also recommends their appointment as Ministers by the Monarch. Most members are Secretaries of State by title, with some exceptions. The number of members that can be paid as Cabinet Ministers is limited to 21.

For more information, see this page on the 10 Downing Street site or this wonderful entry in Wikipedia.

Tally ho!

As a follow-up to our post on Prime Ministers yesterday, we wanted to add a bit of colour about 10 Downing Street. In the US, the President lives and works in the White House at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Similarly, the Prime Minister of Britain lives and works at 10 Downing Street.

No 10 Downing Street is a historic building that is also a place of work. It is a symbol of Government known the world over and is the home to the Prime Minister and his family. From the outside, the plain Georgian frontage with its famous black door appears too small to accommodate all these roles. Inside, the building opens out to reveal a series of elegant state rooms, used both for official receptions and everyday meetings. Offices for the staff of the Prime Minister's Office are crammed into every spare space.

A few interesting facts about 10 Downing street:

• Number 10 has been the official home of the Prime Minister since 1735 when Sir Robert Walpole first took residence
• It has been home to over 50 Prime Ministers
• Downing Street stands on the site of a former brewery
• Number 10 was originally Number 5
• The last private resident of Number 10 was a Mr Chicken
• The Cabinet usually meets once a week in 10 Downing Street, normally on a Thursday morning, in the Cabinet room

Take a few minutes to explore the rich site dedicated to 10 Downing Street.

The British use a parliamentary system in which the role of Head of Government is separated from the role of Head of State. The Head of State is the Sovereign, or the British Monarch --- currently Queen Elizabeth II.The Prime Minister is appointed by the Queen, who is bound by constitutional convention to choose the individual most likely to command the support of the House of Commons. The natural choice is usually the leader of the majority party in the House of Commons. Tony Blair, for example, is the leader of the Labour Party, which has the majority in the House of Commons. (Look for more details on the Houses of Parliament in posts later this week.)

Should the Prime Minister lose the confidence of the House of Commons he or she is obliged, by custom, to either resign or to request the monarch to call a general election. If the Prime Minister resigns, the Queen can try to find another Prime Minister who has the confidence of the House.

There have been twelve British Prime Ministers since WWII began:

2005 will be an election year in England, and we plan to actually read the news as the election approaches. We will share what we learn about the British system of government. The first thing that seems a bit weird, reading about all this as an American, is that the UK holds elections on some sort of ad hoc basis. Could be February, May or June.

The British General Election 2005 is expected to be held in May. However, in early November 2004, widespread news reports claimed that a snap poll could be held as early as February. According to The Scotsman, Labour Party officials "insisted that May remained the most likely time for the poll." In mid-November 2004, The Guardian claimed that May 5th was the most likely date, with the convenient abbreviation 5.5.5 (i.e. 5/5/05). However in mid-December, another Guardian article reported that "The coming general election could be held as late as June 16 and not, as most MPs in all parties have been expecting, on May 5, senior ministers are privately warning colleagues."

Turns out that general elections are held at intervals of up to five years. The Government can, and often does, decide to hold one at an earlier date. In times of national emergency, such as war, general elections can be postponed, but this is very rare. A general election is the election of the whole House of Commons at one time, that is, one Member of Parliament (MP) for each constituency in the United Kingdom. The candidates may be from any one of a number of political parties, or if not from a registered party, he or she may stand as an 'Independent'. One Independent MP was returned at the 2001 General Election. Also, a parliamentary by-election can be held when a seat falls vacant in the House of Commons (usually because an MP dies, resigns or is made a member of the House of Lords).

Stay tuned for additional posts on the British government . . .