Episode Details

可以搜索公号【璐璐的英文小酒馆】或者添加【luluxjg2】咨询课程or加入社群，查看文稿和其他精彩内容哦~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.