Interesting Facts

19th June The State Opening of Parliament.

According to a report by Deloitte Real Estates, the Houses of Parliament refurbishment could cost between £3.5bn and £5.7bn. (The buildings date from the mid-nineteenth century, after the original Palace of Westminster was all but destroyed by fire in 1834. But now the roof is leaking, paintwork is peeling, stonework crumbling and lifts are creaking to the point that MPs have become trapped, missing key votes in the Commons. Costs of renovation could spiral to as high as £7.1bn (once that has been said, it is bound to be even more. The first time I read about this in 2014 they were quoting  £1bn.) Time to turn it into luxury flats, and move parliament to Manchester?)

More than one copy was made of the Magna Carta ( meaning ‘The Great Charter).    (The Magna Carta, which was authorised on 15 June 1215 at Runnymede, is considered one of the first steps towards parliamentary democracy and includes the principle that no one was above the law, including the king. "No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any other way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgement of his equals or by the law of the land. To no one will we sell, to no one deny or delay right or justice." The   four   surviving   original   copies   of   the   1215   Magna   Carta   have   been   brought   together  for   the   first   time   in   London. I always thought there was only one copy - hence "the" Magna Carta.) ...

You might think there are only 3 political parties in the UK, but there are 12 different parties represented in the House of Commons. CC 2.0 - From Tony Moorey on Flickr (These are:- Conservative Labour Liberal Democrat DUP SNP Sinn Fein Plaid Cymru SDLP UKIP Alliance Respect Green As we enter an election year, imagine if they all take part in any TV debate.)

According to a Freedom of Information request from the Evening Standard newspaper a committee of British MPs has spent around £250,000 since 1995 commissioning portraits and statues of other MPs. (Now no one would really begrudge Sir Winston a statue or two, and even a prime minister like Mrs T should have her photo taken for the wall of infamy, but pictures and statues have also been commissioned for junior ministers and backbenchers. Frank Doran, Labour MP and chairman of the Speaker's Advisory Committee on Works of Art said, "We've been collecting art in the House of Commons, and Parliament generally, since the 14th century.  We're preserving the history of Parliament through art. We're also doing a number of other things as part of that process: one is supporting young artists.")

According to a report from parliament's public spending watchdog, the failed NHS (National Health Service) patient record system has so far cost the British taxpayer nearly £10bn (I say "so far" because the final bill, for what would have been the world's largest civilian computer system, is likely to be several hundreds of millions of pounds higher, it has been described as "the biggest IT failure ever seen".   Nice use of the superlative.  I wonder if the British taxpayer can sue?)

The Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA) has decided that MP's salaries in the UK are lagging behind that of Civil Servants. (So, are they going to bring Civil Service pay in-line with pay for British MPs? No, of course not; it looks like they're going to award themselves a £10,000 pay rise.  A massive 25%. MPs are currently paid £65,738 a year, and in a recent poll they (the MPs themselves) thought they should be paid £86,000 a year (some thought they should be paid £100,000). On top of that you have the "expenses". But before 1911 MPs weren't paid any salary, and in today's money that first salary would be worth, £39,000 - around Band 7 in the NHS for "specialist workers". An IPSA spokesperson told the Sunday Times: "There is no recommendation yet, there are no proposals yet. We are working on that. We are going to do this in a very public and proper way with consultation. We will be consulting before the end of June and a...

According to a Freedom of Information Act request by the Telegraph , the most borrowed book from the House of Commons library in 2012 was How to be an MP, by Paul Flynn. (The complete list is:- How to be an MP, by Paul Flynn. How Parliament Works, by Robert Rogers The new few, or a very British Oligarchy, by Ferdinand Mount Losing small wars: British military failure in Iraq and Afghanistan, by Frank Ledwidge Erskine May’s treastise on the law, privileges, proceedings and usage of Parliament, edited by Malcolm Jack Years of Lyndon Johnson, vol 4, by Robert Caro Outside in, by Peter Hain A Journey, by Tony Blair Chavs, by Owen Jones Back from the brink, by Alistair Darling But the winning book had only been borrowed 19 times, I personally think that says more about our MPs than anything else.)

Mayor Stubbs, the mayor of the sleepy town of Talkeetna, Alaska is celebrating his 15th year as mayor. (Maybe you think that it's not that interesting, until you realise Mayor Stubbs is a cat (okay so it should have been filed under "interesting animal"). Residents thought the candidates running for mayor weren’t up to scratch so campaigned to get the 15-year-old part-Manx the honorary position with a write-in campaign after he was born.  The feline has now become one of the longest-serving mayors in America.   This opens up so many possibilities, I can see a whole new line up in Parliament.) Source

The only animals that aren't banned from the grounds of the Houses of Parliament are dogs and horses. (Oh and politicians of course.)