This video was made possible by Squarespace.
Build your beautiful website for 10% off at http://squarespace.com/hai.
The UK, of course, is a country made up of four distinct countries—the one everyone
forgets about, Pret territory, Buckfast territory, and that one that no matter what you say will
stir up drama in the YouTube comments.
Now, this wonderful country of countries has a pretty weird political system.
For example, the Queen for some reason owns all the dolphins in Britain and is also able
to fire the entirety of the Australian government and also doesn’t need a drivers license
or passport since they’re both issued in her name but the weirdest of the weird is
in this place—the Palace of Westminster.
This building is, of course, known for being blown up in V for Vendetta, crushed in Independence
Day: Resurgence, and blown up again in G.I.
Joe: Retaliation but interestingly, it’s also believed to be where the Parliament of
the United Kingdom meets.
Now, the British Parliament has some unique rules.
For example, MP’s are not actually allowed to speak directly to one another—only to
the speaker of the house.
They’re also not allowed to use each other’s names.
They therefore only refer to each other in the third person when talking to the speaker
saying something like, “Mr Speaker, the Honourable Member for Tewkesbury smells like
beef and cheese.”
There’s also one law saying it’s illegal to wear a suit of armor into Parliament.
That law was made in 1313 and remains super inconvenient since MP’s have to change in
and out of their armor before and after going into Parliament.
Lastly, MP’s aren’t allowed to clap in Parliament which is part of the reason they
do all their hooting and hollering during debate.
Now, this parliament, of course, is made up of two bodies—the House of Lords and the
House of Commons.
The House of Lords is made up of, at least currently, 792 unelected members who are appointed
by the Queen mostly off of the advice of the Prime Minister.
Despite being the upper house with the flashier looking room the House of Lords is nowadays
less powerful than the House of Commons since aristocracy fell out of fashion.
The House of Commons is the more democratic house with elected officials and they’re
the ones really running the show.
The members of the House of Commons usually serve a term of five years between elections
but the big oddity of the House of Commons is that the MP’s are not allowed to resign—it
is illegal to resign from the British House of Commons.
Now it’s worth pointing out, despite being illegal there’s no punishment for resigning
because you just can’t do it.
This anti-resignation rule was put in place back in 1624.
What you have to consider about being an MP in 1624 is that the job wasn’t quite as
cushy.
In fact, it wasn’t even really a job.
It was sort of like a part-time gig where MP’s would just travel down to London for
a short periods to vote.
Of course it wasn’t like today where you could just pop down to London on the train—it
would take days to travel to and from London and for all this work you were paid nothing.
There was no salary.
Therefore being an MP was viewed as a chore rather than some great honor and so, once
an MP was appointed, Parliament wanted to make sure they stuck around.
Things have, however, changed since 1624.
MP’s are now paid around $100,000 per year and the position is treated as a full-time,
somewhat respected job.
The other big thing was that, at some point, the idea of involuntary unpaid labor became
pretty unpopular.
So, instead of doing something reasonable like changing the rules Parliament started
using this crazy procedure to free MP’s that wanted to quit.
So, how it works is that the departing MP sends in an application to the official known
as the Chancellor of the Exchequer for one of two jobs—Crown Steward and Bailiff of
the three Chiltern Hundreds of Stoke, Desborough, and Burnham or the Crown Steward and Bailiff
of the Manor of Northstead.
This is all because in the rules of Parliament it is prohibited to hold either of these jobs
and the position of MP at the same time.
These jobs are both essentially overseers of ancient administrative divisions that no
longer exist meaning that there are no obligations anymore but the jobs still exist.
The second an MP is appointed to either of these positions they are no longer MP’s
and they stay Crown Steward and Bailiff of these areas until they either apply to be
removed from the position or until another MP is appointed to the position when they
ask to resign.
Now, one important thing to point out is that the Chancellor of the Exchequer can choose
not to appoint an MP to one of these positions which means that, in theory, someone could
be stuck as an MP against their will.
They could, of course, just not show up to their job and they’d still get paid which
doesn’t sound bad.
It just probably wouldn’t be great for their political careers.
If your UK political career just ended you should launch a business with a Squarespace
website.
You could start a cafe, for example, serving Uncle Johnson’s Tricky Tea with Auntie May’s
Naughty Whole Grain Wheat Biscuits, but for any business, whether it be a brick and mortar
one like this cafe of an online one like running a podcast, a YouTube channel, being a freelancer,
or anything else you absolutely need a website in this day and age.
What’s great is that you can build that website easily with Squarespace’s customizable
website builder, beautiful designer templates, and 24/7 award winning customer support.
With those you don’t have to worry about any of minutia so you can quickly assemble
a website that looks and works great.
Best of all, you can build your website for 10% off and help support the show by going
to http://squarespace.com/hai.