Who’s Who in Parliament: House Leaders
In Westminster-style parliamentary systems, the party (or parties) forming the government name a House Leader (the title may vary somewhat from jurisdiction to jurisdiction). While their titles may vary, their duties are essentially the same: to oversee the organization and conduct of business in the legislative body. Canada In Canada, each political party with representation [...]
On secession
The May 5 elections for the Scottish Parliament returned a majority Scottish Nationalist Party government. Party leader Alex Salmond quickly announced that a referendum on Scotland’s independence from the United Kingdom would be held during the SNP’s term in office, and recently clarified that it would be held in 2015. For a Canadian, this immediately [...]
Who’s who in Parliament: the Speaker
The term Speaker is a title often given to the presiding officer (chair) of a deliberative assembly, especially a legislative body. The Speaker’s official role is to moderate debate, make rulings on procedure, announce the results of votes, and the like. The Speaker decides who may speak and has the powers to discipline members who [...]
Keyword Post: MPs Indemnities, salaries and allowances
This is another post in response to recent keyword search activity on this blog. The information contained herein is very easily accessible here, on the Parliament of Canada website, which should always be your first stop when trying to find anything having to do with the Parliament of Canada, MPs, Senators, etc. (See this post [...]
Privilege, the press, the law and the Internet
A recent Guardian editorial on the matter of balancing parliamentary privilege and responsible behaviour concluded thusly: When parliament last examined the question of privilege, the internet was still in its infancy. Social media were embryonic. And the ink on the Human Rights Act was barely dry. The possibility that parliamentary privilege might intersect with the [...]
Keyword Post: Types of Government
There have been various queries in my keyword search activity from people looking for explanations of minority vs. coalition vs majority government, and so I decided to write a brief post explaining the different types of government. In parliamentary systems, such as the UK and Canada and many other countries, the head of state and [...]
The honourable member
One of the more curious aspects of debate in the House of Commons is that Members do not refer to each other by name, but by title, position or constituency name. This is done to guard against the tendency to personalize debate. Any Member who offends this tradition – either accidentally or on purpose – [...]
Important Political Resources
I admit to being somewhat surprised by some of the keyword searches that bring people to this blog. It seems that too many people have no idea where to get key information – somehow they end up on this blog rather than on the sites they should be visiting to get the information they want. [...]
STV is not the problem
Liberal Democrat Voice carried an op-ed piece by Anthony Butcher arguing that the Liberal Democrats need to drop their support for the Single Transferable Vote because “the perceived complexity of AV was a significant factor in its rejection by the public. The whole concept of preferential voting has now been tainted for a generation as [...]
The curious matter of cabinet formation
“If we believe in democracy, surely the essence of parliamentary democracy is rule by amateurs, and most governments prove that. We call on the experts to get expert views and opinions and ideas and policy and implementation, but ordinary people are elected by ordinary people to make decisions for all of us. That’s the basis [...]
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On procedure and politics by Radical Centrist is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
