The Houses of Parliament

Today I went to London on a tour of the Houses of Parliament. One can book these tours through one's MP or just online, which is much easier these days. As mentioned yesterday, this was a private tour I had arranged for 25 of us as part of the school parents' art society.

 The tour started at 2pm and it was very informative - we had a wonderful elderly gentleman as our guide who has been there for so long that his knowledge about the place and the parliamentary system was impressive. As is typical of Great Britain, there are many fascinating traditions that are still carried out today, which have not been updated for the 21st century.  I particularly liked the rule that when a bill in the House of Commons is not agreed upon, it goes to division and then if it is to be voted upon again the members have 8 minutes in which to do so. The members are notified by a bell ringing in their home, and in certain local pubs and restaurants and then they have to scurry back to the Houses of Parliament and enter a certain corridor called a division lobby (one for the House of Commons, one for the House of Lords) which gets locked after 8 minutes. If they do not make it back within that time frame they cannot vote. Why can't they be notified by text and vote online? Because it is not the way it has been done for centuries, and the English do love traditions. Read more on that process  here. 

It was raining this morning and cooler, which was a blessing as I think it can get quite hot and stuffy in there. There was an awful lot of standing as by law, only members are allowed to sit down in certain areas and even though we filed into the rows of seats in both the House of Lords and the House of Commons we were forbidden from sitting down! After the tour, which lasted about 2 hours, we went and had a stylish afternoon tea in the rooms overlooking the Thames. (I have added an extra of the view from the terrace) I had pre booked this so I could get gluten free scones and dainty little sandwiches, which were delicious. By the time we came out at 5.30pm the sun had broken through and the sky was partly blue again.

It was a fascinating day and well worth the visit.