Word: parliament
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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More than 100 years before the French and American revolutions, a series of convulsions in Britain built the essentials of the modern democratic state. A civil war, and then what was termed "the Glorious Revolution," established the constitutional primacy of Parliament - a body whose principal chamber is accountable to, and removable by, the popular will, expressing itself in periodic elections. A "parliamentary democracy" is how Britain describes itself, with both pride and, occasionally, condescension for those (as they say) in less happy lands...
...Revelations of the tawdry behavior of modern MPs - expensing everything from improvements to second homes to their spouse's porn - have led to popular outrage in Britain and claimed the scalp of the Speaker of the House of Commons, a supposedly above-the-fray symbol of Parliament's reputation. The scandal has exposed what anyone who has spent time in the House of Commons knows well; that many of its members are has-beens and never-will-bes, self-important rhetoricians inebriated (as one truly great parliamentarian said of another) with the exuberance of their own verbosity...
...pocket rather than dumping it on the taxpayer. "As it's not a full-fat royal trip," Lowther-Pinkerton said, "the Queen has very graciously offered to foot the bill, which is very kind of her." It's also a good p.r. move. In recent weeks Britain's Parliament has been engulfed in scandal after a national newspaper revealed that scores of parliamentarians used taxpayer money to cover personal expenses - including a $48,000 gardening bill that included maintenance of a floating "duck island." (See the top 10 most outrageous U.K. expense claims...
Indeed, voters in Utrecht seem more concerned by the antics of Dutch anti-Muslim populist Geert Wilders than they are with, say, the E.U.'s plan to cut greenhouse-gas emissions by 20% by 2020. Wilders wants to abolish the European Parliament altogether. "Every voter who wants to signal that the European Union is good for nothing in its current form can do so by voting for Geert Wilders," he said. His PVV party, like other political outliers, is expected to benefit from mainstream voter apathy. The Trotskyite anti-capitalist movement of Olivier Besancenot could muster 10% of France...
...sober minds are needed. Despite the dwindling turnout, the Parliament is still a powerful legislative body. MEPs debate, amend and either reject or approve E.U. legislation on vital and concrete issues like climate change, immigration, financial regulation and employment. But in Utrecht, few seem to know or care what MEPs do. That makes campaigning much tougher, of course. "People should be interested," says Judith Merkies, a candidate for the Dutch Labour Party (PvdA). "It is about their lives, their place in the community and the world." At the same time, she accepts that voter apathy is a message in itself...