Having (in another thread) excoriated the U.S. for smugness, I have to now confess to a British usage which infuriates me.

"The Mother of Parliaments" -- a journalistic cliche for the British Parliament -- seems particularly self-satisfied. It's based on a misquotation, which is annoying enough, but it also seems to imply that we somehow gave the world democracy, which I don't believe to be true. Very annoying.

I seem to remember the Greeks gave the world democracy!

If I recall correctly, isn't there a distinction between "democracy" and "republic"? Specifically, that in a democracy the enfranchised population enacts laws by its vote, while in a republic that population elects representatives who in turn enact the laws?

If so, then the British and US systems would each be a republic, not a democracy.

Help me out here.

Well, we're a monarchy. The Queen enacts the laws.

But, you're also a democracy, too, correct? How exactly does that work?

How is the House of Parliament related to the House of Commons? If you recall in another thread I quoted a description of the House of Commons from a book, and arnie seemed to validate it. Well, I then had the opportunity to watch the House of Commons on TV, and the description was so true! It was hilarious. It was almost as funny as the Texas Democrats who have walked out of the legislature and the Republicans who are trying to arrest them for it! My, my, we have an interesting nation.

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Originally posted by Kalleh:
But, you're also a democracy, too, correct? How exactly does that work?

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We elect a government, the government creates a Bill, the Queen gives it the Royal Assent to make it an Act of Parliament (a law). She must sign; if she doesn't, there'd be a constitutional crisis and we'd have to have a civil war or somesuch. Last time that happened, we beheaded the Monarch (it was in 1660), which has tended to encourage the others.

That is statute law. We also have the Common Law, which is made up by judges following precedent -- which gives them a certain scope for making it up as they go along -- and is not necessarily written down anywhere.

In fact, what we elect are Members of Parliament (MPs) each of whom represents a specific area. Everyone over 18 in that area votes for a single MP from a list of candidates -- virtually anyone can be a candidate. We don't have to join a party to vote, we don't have primaries or anything similar. All MPs are elected on the same day -- a General Election -- and a General Election must be held no longer than five years after the previous one, but is not otherwise fixed in time.

When the results of the General Election are known, the Queen invites the leader of a party to form a government. A government must resign if it loses a vote of confidence (by MPs), so she has a bit of power and influence to wield at this point -- she chooses the leader of the party most likely to command the support of the most MPs, which -- allowing for coalitions and so on -- can sometimes be quite hard to determine if it was a close election.

Then she opens a new session of Parliament (the only time she visits) and lets them get on with it. The first thing they have to do is swear an oath of allegiance to the Crown (which is quite hard for some of them) so technically it's impossible to remove the Monarch. (Although if Parliament formally asked her to stand down, I guess she'd have to -- unknown, never been tested, it's the stuff of civil wars again.)

All the MPs (650 or so) form the House of Commons. There is also the unelected House of Lords (some heriditary members, some members appointed for life by previous governments, a few bishops -- the "Lords Spiritual" -- and such like); together they form Parliament. A bill must be passed by both houses before it receives the Royal Assent.

Thus each law starts:

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Be it enacted by the Queen's most Excellent Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, in this present Parliament assembled, and by the authority of the same, as follows:

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which is rather nice language, isn't it?

Talking of language, the heir to the throne takes over at the instant of the previous monarch's death, we are never without a monarch. Traditionally, Royal proclamations (which announce momentous events) end with the cry "God Save The King!" (or "Queen" if appropriate, of course) so a proclamation announcing the death of the Monarch would traditionally read: "The King is dead. Long live the King!"

The monarch chooses his/her own name on accession (which most people here don't realise, because Princess Elizabeth chose to be Elizabeth II, and that was in 1952, so we don't have much personal experience of this) so although people assume Prince Charles will become Charles III, personally I think he'll choose to be George VII. The Charles's have not been lucky: Charles I was the one we beheaded. We shall see in due course, I suppose.

And the Queen has a website here, although I don't think she did it herself.

As I mentioned elsewhere, the Isle of Man's parliament is older than the UK's. They have quite a lot of freedom in what they enact and, at present, a bill is before the House of Keys (the Manx Parliament) to legalise euthanasia.

The reason why the motorcycle TT races are held in the Isle of Man and not in the UK is that road racing is illegal in the UK. It is not, though, in the Isle of Man.

Richard English

And I think the Icelandic parliament is even older.

But it's especially annoying because it's a misquotation. Can't find it now, but someone (Cobbett, Donne?) said something (Democracy? The English People) is the "Mother of Parliament", so it's been completely distorted.

I should look it up, I suppose, rather than post such an ill-remembered item here!

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Originally posted by Kalleh:
If you recall in another thread

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Before my time here, of course, but it made a good read!

My pet grammar peeve is possibly mistaken use of the passive voice in the construction "I was sat on a bus when ...". Why I was sat? It clearly (to me) should be I was sitting but the sat construction is now almost universal in British English. But people don't say "I was jogged in the park when ..." if they mean they were jogging in the park. So why the confusion over sat/sitting (and to a lesser extent stood/standing)?

I am not sure how the passive versus the active voice got thrown in here, but I'll bite! In another thread (I can't find it right now), I mentioned that all writing teachers in the U.S. admonish us about using the passive voice. I seem to recall Richard saying that in England it is more acceptable. Is that the case?

Well, I wasn't complaining about the use of the passive per se, but about its incorrect use.

But I think the advice to UK writers is the same as in the US: avoid the passive if possible. It has, however, been a staple of poor (especially official) writing for years, although all guides advise against it. Civil servants prefer to write "it has been decided not to proceed with this project" rather than "I have decided not to proceed with this project" because it avoids identifying specific people or departments.

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Originally posted by pauld:
Can't find it now, but someone

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John Bright, apparently, in 1865. "England is the mother of all parliaments."

By which I assume he meant that the vote of the people is what gives a parliament its legitimacy, rather than that the English parliament gave rise to all other parliaments.


While I'm at it, do you have the expression "hoist with his own petard"?

I'm a chemist (as opposed to pharmacist) and my previous job was as a technical writer. In both of those professions, absolutely everything was written in the passive voice, and I hate it!

I suppose a certain degree of personal detachment is called for when writing descriptions of experiments or abstracting scientific papers, but the experience was not enjoyed. Particularly since the grammar checker in Word insists on picking up every single example of passive voice!

Ros

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Originally posted by pauld:
The Charles's have not been lucky: Charles I was the one we beheaded.

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King Charles II had a reasonable enough time of it. But you're correct, Charles is on record as saying that he would like to be called by his last name (Charles Philip Arthur George).

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Originally posted by Ros:
Particularly since the grammar checker in Word insists on picking up every single example of passive voice!

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Passive voice appears to have been set as a style of writing to be avoided by someone or other, though it gets used here pretty frequently, I can tell you. Why sentences containing it are flagged as wrong by Word's grandma chequer, I do not know.

Stephen.

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Originally posted by pauld:
we beheaded the Monarch (it was in 1660)

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Actually it was in 1648. Just as well no-one's checking this! The Restoration of the Monarchy was in 1660.

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Originally posted by the_bear:
Charles is on record as saying that he would like to be called by his last name (Charles Philip Arthur George).

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Is he? I didn't know that.

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I'm a chemist (as opposed to pharmacist) and my previous job was as a technical writer. In both of those professions, absolutely everything was written in the passive voice, and I hate it!

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Precisely, Roz. I also write for scientific journals, and I agree that everything is in the passive voice. Yet, that is often done, I am told, to avoid the first-person, which is considered too personal. For example, instead of saying, "I took dyspnea ratings on all the patients", I would have to say, "the researcher took....". That gets old too. So, the next option is to say "Dyspnea ratings were taken...."

I seemed to remember Richard saying somewhere that England is not as anal about the passive voice as we are (I hate those Word changes too!). Richard, where are you???

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(I hate those Word changes too!)

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The grammar checker does allow the turning off of individual rules, doesn't it? (I generally have it turned off completely, but I seem to remember that it was much more rigorous about which and that than I wished it to be, so I turned that rule off.)

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Originally posted by pauld:

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(I hate those Word changes too!)

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The grammar checker does allow the turning off of individual rules, doesn't it? (I generally have it turned off completely, but I seem to remember that it was much more rigorous about _which_ and _that_ than I wished it to be, so I turned that rule off.)

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In my experience it isn't that the Grammar Checker is rigorous about this rule it's that it suggests changing "which" to "that" every time it is used rather than choosing appropriately.

I rarely use the Grammar Checker at all but when I do I turn of a very large number of these "rules" including the passive voice one.

The passive voice is just one tool in a writer's toolbox and there is nothing wrong with using it. Like all tools it can be used well or used badly.
Like all tools we would find life tricky if we had to do without it completely.

To give a blanket ban on the use of passive voice would be as nonsensical as giving a blanket ban on the use of metaphors and similes. Certainly we could manage without but our writing would be impoverished for it.

I think the perceived problem comes from those people who write the kind of examples we've seen so far in this thread - primarily Government departments. In many cases they use the passive voice not to depersonalise the author but to depersonalise the reader.

Instead of saying "You need to complete pages 1-10 of this form" they use the unnecessary passive form "Pages 1-10 of this form must be completed."

Non curo ! Si metrum no habet, non est poema.

Read all about my travels around the world here.
Read even more of my travel writing and poems on my weblog.

Just back from London!

The passive voice is a perfectly good grammatical form and it is commonly used in UK English. It is a very useful device in diplomacy since its use allows the fact of an act to be reported with that act's being attributed to any particular person.

For example, were I to say, "...Smoking in pubs is generally accepted in London..." I am simply stating a point, not a fact that can be attributed.

However, were I to say, "...People in London accept smoking in pubs..." then I am suggesting that there are certain people who have made that point. And were I to say, "...I accept smoking in Pubs..." then I am making a personal statement that I might be called upon to defend.

And, yes, I have disabled the passive voice checker in Word.

Richard English

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Originally posted by Ros:
I'm a chemist (as opposed to pharmacist) and my previous job was as a technical writer. In both of those professions, absolutely everything was written in the passive voice, and I hate it!
Ros

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I too was a chemist, and hated the awful way I had to write up my thesis. However, though boring, the Chemistry literature does have a logic and clarity to it which is completely missing in social sciences. As a teacher, I had to read educational research, and that just reads as if was written by 12-year olds with verbal diarrhoea.

Nowadays, being able to write whatever I want, in whatever way I wish is wonderful.

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Originally posted by Graham Nice:
As a teacher, I had to read educational research, and that just reads as if was written by 12-year olds with verbal diarrhoea.

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Ooh! Fighting talk Graham! My father in law, although now retired, did research into various aspects of education. I've never read any of his work with a view to understanding it, but I did identify a certain tendency along the verbal diarrhoea lines when proof-reading some work for him recently!

Ros

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Originally posted by pauld:
While I'm at it, do you have the expression "hoist with his own petard"?

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Yes, but rare.
I seem to recall that this was originally "petar", and that the phrase came from Shakespeare. Don't rely on me for this, though.

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Originally posted by BobHale:
... Government departments. In many cases they use the passive voice not to depersonalise the author but to depersonalise the reader.

Instead of saying "You need to complete pages 1-10 of this form" they use the unnecessary passive form "Pages 1-10 of this form must be completed."

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Good point. The Campaign for Plain English has done a lot of good work in this area, and it seems to be having an effect, at least in major documents (although I dare say individual letters and suchlike are still written in officialese).

I see my children still have to write school essays which are a given number of words long. In my view it was this factor -- which rewards wordiness and waffle -- which taught me to write in such a long-winded and pretentious way. It was a great shock to leave University and find that what employers prized most was an ability to express oneself with precision and brevity, a technique some would say I have still not mastered.

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Originally posted by wordnerd:

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Originally posted by pauld:
While I'm at it, do you have the expression "hoist with his own petard"?

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Yes, but rare.
I seem to recall that this was originally "petar", and that the phrase came from Shakespeare. Don't rely on me for this, though.

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Relatively common over here. I was taught that a peter/petar/petard was a small bomb, and users of such weapons were sometines hanged with one of their petards attached to them, as a warning to others. So to be "hoist with one's own petard" is to be hanged alongside evidence of one's crime.

Now, my problem is that many people say hoist "by" his own petard, rather than "with" it, thus implying a petard is a type of rope or somesuch, presumably because "by" and "with" are interchangeable in most usage and they've misremembered the (by now meaningless) phrase. For some reason I find this very annoying!

I have always understood it to mean that he was blown up by his own bomb. Michael Quinion seems to agree on his World Wide Words site.

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Originally posted by pauld:
The monarch chooses his/her own name on accession.

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Interesting! I didn't know that. Does this mean that we may someday see the likes of "King Biff" or "Queen Trixie"?

Not likely, I suppose, but still...

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Originally posted by arnie:
I have always understood it to mean that he was blown up by his own bomb. Michael Quinion seems to agree on his site.

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Thank you! No idea if it's right, but it's enough to stop me worrying about with or by.