Lords and Swords

What got me thinking this week was a friend's Dad (if you're ever in need of a fact by the way, Dad's are usually a good place to start) who produced the gem that the distance between the benches in the House of Commons is equivalent to two men at full reach holding swords; Surely giving Blair and Cameron a sword each couldn't harm PMQs.

If you did decide to have a bit of a sword fight in the House of Commons though you could be pretty sure your opponent would be unprotected as it's against the law to enter the Houses of Parliament in a suit of armour. Despite being unshielded from the dangers of swords MPs do enjoy certain privileges, Parliamentary Privilege in fact, which entitles them to debate freely without fear of being charged for libel; fitting really as the name for parliament is believed to come from the French ‘parler’: to speak. It would seem though that these privileges have been abused on occasion: in the late 1700s a group of MPs formed the ‘Hellfire Club’ who are said to have met a Medmenham Abbey for Satanism and orgies.

The 'houses' themselves aren't perfect either and the soft limestone that the houses of parliament are made from is susceptible to the natural acidity of rain water, basically meaning that the Houses of Parliament themselves are gradually dissolving whenever it rains.

On the inside there is also more to the familiar green benches of the commons and red benches of the lords than meets the eye. One theory being that in terms of Tudor dying techniques green dies, made from woad, were the cheapest option, certainly less expensive than the red dies used in the House of Lords which were made from a plant that had to be imported from Holland.

If all this is too much for you as an MP and you can’t take it any more sadly you’re stuck; it’s against the rules to resign. To get round this MPs make the most of the rule that a serving MP cannot be in a paid position of the crown. So there are two pretty much fictional offices: The Chiltern Hundreds and the Manor of Northhead to which they can be appointed and therefore relinquish their parliamentary responsibilities. And if you’ve ever wondered why this is all worth the bother (aside from wanting to change the world for the better and all that stuff obviously) then the basic salary of an MP might enlighten you a little: £60, 277, with bonuses for different positions. The Prime Minister gets an extra £126,085 a year. And far from being just another day at the office you get hundreds of years of history and a little bit of craziness, plus a really long summer holiday.