Wales has about 5 million people, but most of them live in the South, near the M4 corridor. (The M4 being the motorway from London, past Cardiff, into Carmarthenshire.) In size, Wales is about 20,000 sq km (10,000 sq m). A growing minority of the Welsh speak Welsh.
WRT Llanfairpwll (as it is abbreviated), although the name/does/ have a meaning in Welsh, it was, IIRC made up in the 19th century to encourage tourism. And from what I've heard, the name is the most interesting thing about the town by a fair margin.
Re:Let's try that in Welsh
on
Wireless Wales
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Hmm. Either a translation program, or a word-for-word translation by way of a dictionary, methinks. Let's see what a speaker might come up with:
Broadband am ddim? Broadband diwifrau am ddim? Gellir rhoi hwn i ddefnydd da, yn arbennig yn ardaloedd trefol ddwys. Mae'n drueni fod cymaint of ISPs yng Ngogledd America yn ymladd yn erbyn y wardriving, tra nid yw'n broblem dramor.
It's interesting that the previous translation used the word "rhydd" (used above in the imperative form "rhyddha") for "free", since it means "free as in speech", as opposed to "for no cost" ("am ddim" - lit, "for nothing"). Yet another language that makes the distinction; pity there isn't a simple way around the ambiguity that exists in English.
It's true: the HoL turnover is relatively slow; I heard an estimate only yesterday in Lord-deaths a year, I'm not sure what the number was, on Radio 4's programme "Today in Parliament" or somesuch. They were discussing it in the HoL for some reason... I think there's a few hundred Lords, but they have a propensity for long life.
Anyhow, the point is that any one government probably won't have very much influence on who goes into the HoL.
The problem is that it probably shouldn't be the government that selects lords in the first place; they should be selected in a way that ensures that they are the best people to do their job.
What is their job? To look over bills and acts before they become law. So a good lord is one that can do this in a way that will benefit the people of the country best. Knowledge of law and politics and skill in debate are also useful. The problem is to devise a way to get these people into the HoL! I can't think of one off the top of my head...
In principle, I am against a non-democratically-elected House of Lords, because it isn't democratically elected.
On the other hand, the House of Lords provides a vital function: to scrutinise any legislation which the House of Commons produces. Of course, if the House of Commons is determined to get legislation past the house of lords, it can use the Parliament Act to bypass it, though this is not often used. If the HoL didn't exist, the HoC could pass any legislation it wanted. "What's the problem with that? The HoC is democratically elected after all, so it must be doing the will of the people."
Just because our MPs were elected doesn't stop them from producing badly thought-out legislation. Even if Labour MPs are unsatisfied with Labour-produced legislation, they might not speak out. I gather this is worse than it used to be. The HoL ensures that no single body is responsible for producing legislation in the UK.
So we shouldn't scrap the HoL, but we should look for an alternative way for members of the House of Lords to be elected to ensure that they better reflect the view of the people.
It used to be that Lords either inherited their peership or were granted it by the Prime Minister. There have been reforms recently (and there will be more in future), so some or all inherited peers were removed. This leaves population of the HoL solely up to the HoC, which isn't ideal because HoC have influence over who is in the HoL and therefore what the HoL says.
Slashdot Mirror
Wales has about 5 million people, but most of them live in the South, near the M4 corridor. (The M4 being the motorway from London, past Cardiff, into Carmarthenshire.) In size, Wales is about 20,000 sq km (10,000 sq m). A growing minority of the Welsh speak Welsh.
/does/ have a meaning in Welsh, it was, IIRC made up in the 19th century to encourage tourism. And from what I've heard, the name is the most interesting thing about the town by a fair margin.
WRT Llanfairpwll (as it is abbreviated), although the name
It's interesting that the previous translation used the word "rhydd" (used above in the imperative form "rhyddha") for "free", since it means "free as in speech", as opposed to "for no cost" ("am ddim" - lit, "for nothing"). Yet another language that makes the distinction; pity there isn't a simple way around the ambiguity that exists in English.
It's true: the HoL turnover is relatively slow; I heard an estimate only yesterday in Lord-deaths a year, I'm not sure what the number was, on Radio 4's programme "Today in Parliament" or somesuch. They were discussing it in the HoL for some reason... I think there's a few hundred Lords, but they have a propensity for long life.
Anyhow, the point is that any one government probably won't have very much influence on who goes into the HoL.
The problem is that it probably shouldn't be the government that selects lords in the first place; they should be selected in a way that ensures that they are the best people to do their job.
What is their job? To look over bills and acts before they become law. So a good lord is one that can do this in a way that will benefit the people of the country best. Knowledge of law and politics and skill in debate are also useful. The problem is to devise a way to get these people into the HoL! I can't think of one off the top of my head...
In principle, I am against a non-democratically-elected House of Lords, because it isn't democratically elected.
On the other hand, the House of Lords provides a vital function: to scrutinise any legislation which the House of Commons produces. Of course, if the House of Commons is determined to get legislation past the house of lords, it can use the Parliament Act to bypass it, though this is not often used. If the HoL didn't exist, the HoC could pass any legislation it wanted. "What's the problem with that? The HoC is democratically elected after all, so it must be doing the will of the people."
Just because our MPs were elected doesn't stop them from producing badly thought-out legislation. Even if Labour MPs are unsatisfied with Labour-produced legislation, they might not speak out. I gather this is worse than it used to be. The HoL ensures that no single body is responsible for producing legislation in the UK.
So we shouldn't scrap the HoL, but we should look for an alternative way for members of the House of Lords to be elected to ensure that they better reflect the view of the people.
It used to be that Lords either inherited their peership or were granted it by the Prime Minister. There have been reforms recently (and there will be more in future), so some or all inherited peers were removed. This leaves population of the HoL solely up to the HoC, which isn't ideal because HoC have influence over who is in the HoL and therefore what the HoL says.