7. The uk politics. The House of Lords

The House of Lords is the second chamber, or the ‘Upper House’ of the United Kingdom’s Parliament. Today the main functions of the House of Lords are to contribute to the legislative process, to act as a check on the government and to provide a forum of independent expertise. Its judicial role as a final court of appeal ended in 2009 as a result of the establishment of a new United Kingdom Supreme Court.

The House of Lords is the second chamber of the UK Parliament. It works with the House of Commons to:

• make laws

• check and challenge the actions of the government, and

• provide a forum of independent expertise

Most senior members of the Government are members of the House of Commons but there are ministers, along with two Cabinet members, in the House of Lords.

The House of Lords also contains many Members of Parliament who were in previous governments.

8. The uk politics. The House of Commons

The House of Commons, the lower Chamber of the Parliament, is the real governing body of the UK. It has greater powers than the second, upper parliamentary Chamber, the House of Lords.

Their main function is to make laws by passing Acts of Parliament, as well as to discuss current political issues.

The House of Commons is made up of 630 Members of Parliament who are called MP’s for short. Each member of Parliament represents a county or a borough ['bʌrə] of the UK.

MP’s are elected by voters for a period of five years. The election is held in the form of the voting by secret ballot. The system when the winner is the candidate who gets more votes than any other single candidate is known as the-first-past-the-post-system.

The House of Commons has seats for only about two thirds of its 630 members. The first two rows of seats are occupied by the leading members of both the Government and the Opposition. According to their seats’ location, they are called "front-benchers" and "back-benchers".

The House of Commons is presided over by the Speaker.

9. The UK education system

Most schools in the UK are state schools, they are supported with money from the government and provide free education for children

Nursery schools from the age of 3

Co-educational schools

5 – 11 – primary schools

11 – 18 – secondary schools

Grammar schools – more academic, single-gender schools

A preparatory school is a school to prepare pupils to go to a public school

A public school is an independent secondary school.

Public schools in England are not run by the government.

The entrance exams used by most public schools are known as Common Entrance exams and are taken at the age of 11 (girls) or 13 (boys)

The most famous public schools are Eton, Harrow and Winchester

School Exams

The Common Entrance Exam - taken by children, who wish to enter a private school at aged 11 or 13 in Britain.

GCSE - General Certificate of Education and these are usually taken in Year 11 of Secondary school

A-levels - final exams in Secondary Schools (or at sixth form colleges); are used by universities to determine which students are accepted for University courses, or by potential employers who are considering employing a student.

10. Pre-historic Britain, architecture

c. 4000 – 2000 BC

Neolithic (New Stone) Age

c. 2000 – 750 BC

Bronze Age

c. 750 BC – 43 AD

Iron Age

· the period 4000BC – 43AD – Prehistory

· No written records

· The first people to arrive in Britain were hunter-gatherers who arrived from mainland Europe

· 4000 BC - a party of ‘young farmers’

· the first phase in man-made environmental disaster

New Stone Age - There were important climate changes – a considerable general warming of the Western European climate. This is one of the things that led to people changing the way they lived. As the climate got warmer, they were able to start farming. Also important was the domestication of animals. These two things (climate change and animal domestication) led to a communal life. The most basic was human shelter, and also just as important were sanctuaries (places of religious reference or commemoration). Sanctuaries were temples or tombs (remembering the dead). So the three different types of buildings at the time were houses, tombs, and temples.

Bronze Age - round barrows (burial chambers), villages and the first hill forts are built. Brochs were being built.

· a class of massive, circular, prehistoric houses

· Walls typically 4 m thick and an inside floor space of around 10 m diameter were built and occupied from around 800BC until the second century AD

· Both defensive and housing purposes (seeds storage, cat domestication – rodents)

Stones circles

· Beginning as early as 3300 B.C. standing stones, often in the form of a circle or flattened oval

· At least 900 of them still exist

· the fertility of the earth