Houses of Parliament, London

The Houses of Parliament, otherwise known as The Palace of Westminster, stands on the site where Edward the Confessor had the original palace built in the first half of the eleventh century.

House of Commons
An incendiary bomb destroyed the House of Commons in 1941. A reconstruction of Barry's original design for the house, taken from St. Stephen's chapel, the commons old meeting place, was completed in 1950. The seating arrangement in the house is reminiscent of choir stalls, the members of the cabinet sit on the front benches while opposition senior members sit directly opposite. The distance between the benches marked out on the floor in red lines, is exactly two sword lengths and one foot apart. Members are not allowed to cross these lines, thus ensuring that debates are kept orderly. In the centre of the floor stands the Table of the House, on which the mace is placed at the start of each parliamentary sitting; this is the Speaker's scepter. The speaker of the house presides over sittings, keeping order.

House of Lords
The House of Lords decorated in scarlet and gold has all the grandeur one would expect in this chamber. This is where Her Majesty the Queen comes to open Parliament each November. Placed beneath a regal canopy, the gold throne which dominates the house is where the Queen sits to deliver the traditional opening speech. The Lord Chancellor sits opposite, on the famous Woolsack, this is a large scarlet cushion filled with wool, a tradition dating back to the middle ages when wool was England's largest export.

Visiting the Houses of Parliament.
The busiest and most interesting time to visit the House is during Prime Minister's Question Time. If you wish to attend Prime Minister's Question Time you must book a ticket through your MP or your embassy. Prime Minister's Question Time is on Wed. from 12pm - 12-30pm.

The House of Lords sit on Mon. - Wed. From 2-30; On Thurs. From 3pm; If a sitting takes place on Friday it commences at 11am.

Both houses recess at Christmas, Easter and from August to mid October.

The US Government

The United States of America is a federal republic consis­ting of 50 states. Each state has its own government («state government»). In some ways the United States is like 50 small countries.

US government is formed by three branches: legislative power, executive power and judiciary power.

I am going to tell you about legislative power or the Con­gress.

So, the Congress is legislative power and is divided into two houses: the Senate and the House of Representatives. The Senate consists of 100 members, two from each state. They are elected to serve for a period of six years, but every two years elections to the senate took place when one/third of its members must be changed or re-elected. Congress meets in the Capitol, Washington. D.C. The main function of the Congress is to declare war and to make laws, which become effective af­ter the President’s approval. Also the Congress ratifies trea­ties and agreements.

The first Congress met in 1789 in New York City. The mem­bership then consisted of 22 senators and 59 representatives. Today the House of Representatives has 435 members. Elec­tions to the house take place every 2 years. Elections always take place in November, on the first Tuesday, after the first Monday. Americans who aren’t yet 25 years old have no right to be elected to the House of Representatives. Those who are under 30 can’t be elected to the Senate. The main political par­ties in the United States of America are the Democratic Party and the Republican Party. Every election they struggle to oc­cupy the more seats in the government as possible.

According to the present constitution, proclaimed in 1787 in Philadelphia, the President is head of the government and chief commander of the armed forces. He makes the most im­portant decisions and chooses the ministers, the members of his cabinet. But the President cannot do just what he wants. The Congress must agree first.

If the Congress makes a law and the President does not agree to it, he can abolish this law or agreement. But if this law were accepted by the majority of both the Senate and the House of representatives (two third of all votes in each house), this bill becomes a law even if it is not accepted by the Presi­dent of the USA.

That is democracy made in the USA.

 

The Internet

The Internet has already entered our ordinary life. Every­body knows that the Internet is a global computer network, which embraces hundred of millions of users all over the world and helps us to communicate with each other.

The history of Internet began in the United States in 1969. It was a military experiment, designed to help to survive du­ring a nuclear war, when everything around might be polluted by radiation and it would be dangerous to get out for any li­ving being to get some information to anywhere. Information sent over the Internet takes the shortest and safest path avai­lable from one computer to another. Because of this, any two computers on the net will be able to stay in touch with each other as long as there is a single route between them. This tech­nology was called packet switching.

Invention of modems, special devices allowing your com­puter to send the information through the telephone line, has opened doors to the Internet for millions of people.

Most of the Internet host computers are in the United States of America. It is clear that the accurate number of users can be counted fairly approximately, nobody knows exactly how many people use the Internet today, because there are hundred of millions of users and their number is growing.

Nowadays the most popular Internet service is e-mail. Most of the people use the network only for sending and receiving e-mail messages. They can do it either they are at home or in the internet clubs or at work. Other popular services are avai­lable on the Internet too. It is reading news, available on some dedicated news servers, telnet, FTP servers, etc.

In many countries, the Internet could provide businessmen with a reliable, alternative to the expensive and unreliable tele­communications systems its own system of communications. Commercial users can communicate cheaply over the Internet with the rest of the world. When they send e-mail messages, they only have to pay for phone calls to their local service pro­viders, not for international calls around the world, when you pay a good deal of money.

But saving money is only the first step and not the last one. There is a commercial use of this network and it is drastically increasing. Now you can work through the internet, gambling and playing through the net.

However, there are some problems. The most important problem is security. When you send an e-mail, your message can travel through many different networks and computers. The data is constantly being directed towards its destination by special computers called routers. Because of this, it is pos­sible to get into any of the computers along the route, inter­cept and even change the data being sent over the Internet. But there are many encoding programs available. Notwithstanding, these programs are not perfect and can easily be cracked.

Another big and serious problem of the net is control. Yes, there is no effective control in the Internet, because a huge amount of information circulating through the net. It is like a tremendous library and market together. In the future, the situation might change, but now we have what we have. It could be expressed in two words — an anarchist’s dream.

 

Good and bad manners 1

Good and bad manners make up the social rules of a country. They are not always easy to learn because they are often not written down in books. For example, British women didn't go into pubs at the beginning of this century because it was not considered respectable behaviour for a woman. Now both women and men drink freely is pubs and women are fully integrated into public life. Visitors to Britain are often surprised by the strange behaviour of the inhabitants.

In some countries it is considered bad manners to eat in the street, whereas in Britain it is common to see people having a snack whilst walking down the road, especially at lunchtime. Britons may be surprised to see young children in restaurants in the evening because children are not usually taken out to restaurants late at night.

Social rules are an important part of our culture as they passed down through history. The British have an expression for following these "unwritten rules": "When in Rome, do as the Romans do".