Here Here, my honourable good friend

Today has been rainy and a bit chilly, a perfect day to go watch the Brits argue at Parliament! Its really dorky but I was so excited to have the chance to do this after learning all about British politics in AP Gov't (and still remembering some of it), I love the political process, and there were people in fancy wigs, whats not to love?!

We got to Parliament and went through their cool security where we got a badge with our picture on it, but you were looking away from the camera so its a weird picture. Then we went and waited in the grand hall which we realized later was where many great leaders, like Winston Churchill, have laid in state after they've died. After waiting for a bit we were brought up these stairs into another room to wait. This room had some statues along the wall and after a few minutes we noticed some people gathering around one of the statues. Pretty soon one of the women started yelling about "100 years ago today (someone) chained themselves to this statue to protest for woman's rights. Today we want the government to listen to us about climate change" or something like that. Then they started chanting "Deeds not words" over and over. She repeated her speech a few more times as the cops started to gather. Turns out these four people had super-glued themselves to one another and were stuck around the statue. The police weren't happy about the situation but couldn't remove the protesters so they did the next best thing, removed us. So we were brought back into the main hall and around some corridors and out into a small courtyard and then led up the stairs into the visitor's gallery.

We were watching the House of Commons, which is technically the lower house in the British Parliment, but they are the ones that are elected (unlike the House of Lords who are appointed) and they actually do all the stuff. We arrived at the end of a debate on putting in new prisons, and I didn't really understand a lot of it. But then the Secretary of State came in to give a report on the Swine Flu. He talked about what they knew thus far, and then they debated for a while about pandemic preparedness and talked about stockpiling face masks. It was really neat to hear about something thats been in the news and to hear how they discussed it. Next came a debate on the budget, which is when it got really good. I didn't really understand exactly what they were talking about (something about tarrifs on household energy) but I did understand how awesome the arguments were. They were interrupting the speaker guy and then basically insulting him and he would go right back at em. It was really funny at points, but also really exciting to see politics at work right there (yeah I know I"m a dork). Junior year I take a class in January that goes to D.C. so now I really can't wait to go sit in on a House or Senate debate and compare it to this; I doubt it will be as fun though. Americans should definitely adopt the wig thing.