Nobody Cares about Britain

[Innula Zenovka]

The Guardian Restoring Palace of Westminster could cost £40bn and take 61 years

 

[Veritable Quandry]

Have they thought about just adding ballroom?

 

[Katheryne Helendale]

Just plaster everything in cheap gold leaf.

Of course, then Trump would come visit and would never leave.

 

[Casey Pelous]

The Guardian Restoring Palace of Westminster could cost £40bn and take 61 years

The poor place has been through a lot.

Suggestion: They could probably save a lot by using a quartz movement in Big Ben.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

UK supreme court hearing interrupted by history podcast played from judge’s phone

As the highest court in the UK, the supreme court is usually the forum for proceedings of the utmost gravity. But last week, one hearing was momentarily interrupted by an unlikely and comic intervention.

As one legal professional addressed the bench, the voice of Tom Holland, host of the popular podcast The Rest is History, boomed out through the court’s microphone system, delivering a satirical impersonation of the late US president Jimmy Carter.

As proceedings were being recorded, the moment was captured and quickly circulated online. As the theme song plays and gets louder, the lawyer starts to laugh, while Lord Briggs, one of the judges, appears to look down at his phone.

“The Rest Is History. It was switched to silent, do carry on,” he said, prompting laughter in the courtroom.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

‘It’s sacred and transformative’: Somerset holds Saxon-inspired festival to embrace ‘month of mud’

 

[Innula Zenovka]

The constitutional significance of what happened to the Prime Minister last week

Members of parliament moved for a parliamentary committee to decide what is prejudicial to national security instead of the government

emptycity.substack.com

 

[Innula Zenovka]

I hope he's right with this analysis

Orr, Farage and Lowe: The Civil War Brewing on Britain’s Right

Reform’s ideological glow-up collides with Rupert Lowe’s insurgency - and first-past-the-post will inevitably punish them both.

www.bearlypolitics.co.uk

 

[Sid]

The Guardian Restoring Palace of Westminster could cost £40bn and take 61 years

The building is worth it to be restored.
Can you imagine the British parliament debating in a modern environment where every MP has a seat at their disposal? Like in the German Bundestag for instance, with digital voting system, computers and all that?
Nah..

 

[Innula Zenovka]

The building is worth it to be restored.
Can you imagine the British parliament debating in a modern environment where every MP has a seat at their disposal? Like in the German Bundestag for instance, with electronic voting system and all that?
Nah..

Welcome to the Restoration and Renewal Programme | Restoration and Renewal

www.restorationandrenewal.uk

 

[Innula Zenovka]

The building is worth it to be restored.
Can you imagine the British parliament debating in a modern environment where every MP has a seat at their disposal? Like in the German Bundestag for instance, with digital voting system, computers and all that?
Nah..

I'm not sure that giving every MP a seat would be a good use of valuable floor space. Much of MPs' work is done in committee rooms or their offices (both of which could certainly use an upgrade, particularly the offices). The chamber itself is almost empty most of the time, and when individual members do attend the debate to raise a specific point the government minister responding generally promises either to write to them with an answer or to arrange a meeting to discuss it further.

The big set-piece occasions we see on TV, like Prime Minister's Questions, are good theatre but don't generally achieve very much. Sometimes an opposition MP can make a big impact with forensic questioning -- Keir Starmer managed it once or twice when he was leader of the opposition, and Kemi Badenoch has had Starmer on the ropes once, with questions about what exactly he knew about Mandelson's relationship with Epstein before appointing him as ambassador to the US -- but that's very rare.

 

[Sid]

The Dutch Binnenhof (13th century) seat of the Dutch parliament in The Hague is being renovated at the moment.
The budget when they started: 475 million euro. The latest estimate: 2.7 billion euro.
That is 5.5 times more expensive.
One simply doesn't know what surprises these old buildings hold before one starts carefully digging and breaking.
There were archeological finds that delayed things, unexpected foundation problems and there was the huge inflation round a few years ago and the costs for modern security were a lot higher than expected in the beginning.

Some people say that those 475 million were deliberately estimated too low, to get approval from parliament to start with the work.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Only €2.75 billion?

The more expensive option involves moving only the House of Lords out of the building while works that could take 61 years and cost £39bn are carried out.

The other proposed option was moving MPs and peers out of the Palace of Westminster for up to 24 years from 2032, under a refurbishment plan that could cost as much as £15.6bn.

BBC News - Conservatives call for rethink of Parliament revamp - BBC News

Conservatives call for rethink of Parliament revamp

Tory leader Kemi Badenoch says current plans to refurbish the Palace of Westminster are "out of control".

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[Sid]

Only €2.75 billion?

Het Binnenhof is old, but not as original preserved as the Palace of Westminster and smaller. A lot has been modernized and added over the years to keep it functional as parliament and the other functions it had before that. 2.75 billion. Still a nice chunk of change.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Het Binnenhof is old, but not as original preserved as the Palace of Westminster and smaller. A lot has been modernized and added over the years to keep it functional as parliament and the other functions it had before that. 2.75 billion. Still a nice chunk of change.

The original Palace of Westminster was constructed in the C11th as a royal palace, but it's of course been rebuilt and modernised many times over the years. Much of it was destroyed by fire in 1834, and was rebuilt over 30 years, from 1840 to 1870, in a project that was beset by delays and cost overruns. I suspect we'll see the same thing happen this time. It also needed extensive repairs over 9 years after severe bomb damage in 1941.

The oldest surviving part of the Palace is Westminster Hall, where the queen's lying in state took place. That was built in 1097 for William II, the son of William the Conqueror.