Shownotes Transcript
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By the way, how long do these sessions last and how frequent not just Prime Minister’s question time, but just in general they do debate every day.
Yeah. They can last for hours, they can go into the night. And if it's a particularly big issue, it's not unheard of for them to go through the night debating.
And you're not allowed to eat and drink, that doesn't sound like a very easy job. Just from the work hours.
It kind of stops them from speaking too much because eventually they all get hungry.
And then what the whole debate is adjourned or is just finished.
It can be finished or it can be adjourned. So how they vote is they don't take hands. They vote literally with their feet. So when they're ready for a vote, they will go into one room for yes, and one room for no, then they'll count the people in the room.
Is it because you guys have never heard of the voting machine the digital voting button?
These are rules that came into effect three hundred four hundred years ago and they work.
So why change them?
I think this is what's really interesting because you kept a lot of the rituals.
Yeah.
It's so highly ritualistic.
Oh god, yes. For example, MPs aren't allowed to wear hats or swords in the House.
Hats I understand, that's a respect thing.
Yeah.
Swords like who? Oh, okay, again this was ages and ages ago.
Well, absolutely.
So there is actually still a place outside where MPs can leave their swords. But now they use them for umbrellas.
I suppose you can poke someone with the umbrella.
Well. You notice that everyone is facing each other. So you got one side is the government, one side is the opposition, and the space between the two, you can see there's a line by the feet of the MPs on the front bench. No one can cross that line and the distance between those two lines is how long a sword is.
So it's like you can't even reach it if you have a sword.
If you have a sword, so you can't stand up and stab your opponent.
You know what I think. They probably learned it the hard way. It probably led to sword fights before.
Yeah, it did.
And people did get killed for a speaking.
I'm sure they did.
That so now it's just leave your swords in the sword room.
Yeah.
It's like disarm before you go into the room for the debate, it needs to be a verbal debate. They kept them apart because emotions are high, they don't want them to fight. I hope they have security though.
Of course they do. But it's also illegal to wear armor in the House of the Parliament as well.
Well. If you get rid of the swords, you, I guess you can get rid of the armor.
Yeah. And the MPs aren't allowed to have their hands in their pocket.
It’s show that they don't have weapon, concealed weapon.
I think so. I did actually try to look up why that's the case and I think that's probably the most likely reason why.
Yeah, I don't want to think about other reasons.
No.
Yeah. But let's dial back a little bit.
Earlier on, you said when they want to put something to a vote, so they debate there for you, let's just say there's a new policy, a new law being proposed and then finally after they debated all the details, and they want to let everyone put in a vote, instead of just pressing a button, they will literally vote by going into the “YES room” or the “NO room”.
Yeah.