Notices by Another Angry Woman (stavvers@masto.ai), page 7

Functionally, by being the two biggest parties, either labour or the tories will usually get a majority of seats in the house of commons. Sometimes it doesn't happen like that, and nobody has a majority. This happened in 2010, which resolved by the tories forming a coalition government with the lib dems. Their guy was PM, the lib dems got a seat at the table, and it was awful. Sometimes they make simpler deals with other parties.

Anyway, basically, absolutely nobody in the UK is actually voting for a prime minister. We are voting for the person who then goes off to the house of commons and chooses the prime minister, then their vote advises the king, who goes with whatever they say rather than risk getting beheaded (happened once)

But because we have the system we do, entirely based on simple majorities of votes, sometimes tactical voting matters. For example, if you live in an area where the tories usually get in but the lib dems come second, voting lib dem means one less tory mp. Whoever gets the most votes, even if it's by 1, becomes the mp. And in parliament, if a bill gets most votes, even if only by 1, the bill passes (I'm simplifying a bit here)

Another arcane point. So the UK actually has two houses: commons (elected) and lords (appointed/hereditary). There are unlimited seats in the house of lords, I wanna guess at about 1000 in the currently. A small proportion are there because they're important dukes or bishops. Most of them are appointed by whoever current PM was at the time. The PM sends a list of ppl they want to be lord to the monarch, and they go yeah sure. They are a lord for life

One final point, when watching the northern Ireland results, is that the republican party, sinn fein, do not take their seats, because they refuse to swear fealty and kneel to the monarch. NI voters know this, and it's a political choice to vote for them. They always technically gain some seats, which means functionally there are always *fewer* than 650 MPs in the house of commons.

Anyway, so we have a ton of people - many of them former MPs - who now have lifetime seats in the house of lords which means they can sit on parliamentary committees, amend bills, fully block bills and be ministers (possibly even prime minister, I legit can't remember this).

This is perfectly normal here.

And finally, at any point an MP can stop being an MP. They can resign, die or be recalled if they really suck. This triggers a by-election, and the constituency votes in a new MP.

And a general election can functionally be called at any time if sufficient MPs vote for it. We don't really have set terms, there just has to be a general election five years after the last one, but can have one before that.

tl;dr: stupid country

To clarify and remove all doubt: the king can basically refuse to rubber stamp any prime minister or bill, even if parliament voted it through. He could in theory pick any prime minister he wants. Likewise, the house of lords can veto anything they want. They just don't, because of the threat of beheading.

@Nickiquote apparently the trick is to make eye contact with them when they try to nick your food, you need to assert dominance or they'll take the piss

This triptych of images from the wikipedia page on herring gulls is *chef kiss*

@BethanyBlack genuine 10/10 take, it is as correct as it is going to *incense* the people who deserve to be incensed by it

god I love footnoting

he fell asleep studying

Me: *goes to veggie/vegan cafe*
Me: carefully avoids ordering anything with gochujang or miso paste because it's always cross contaminated to hell with shellfish
My mouth: *starts swelling up anyway*
The feta: *turns out to not actually be feta but some sort of vegan substitute containing miso paste*

I'm fine, but vegans please for the love of god clearly mark when you're using a substitute because loads of your ingredients contain small amounts of shellfish!!!!

I am literally so fucking angry about this. It's a damn good and timely exhibition and absolutely nobody seems to want to fund it. Fedi, you've pulled off miracles before. Please can you pull of the quim-possible again? https://masto.ai/@vagina_museum/112603103927453956

lmao even the bbc is done with this chump

darmok and jalad at tanagra moment

the perfect wikipedia paragraph doesn't exi-

drake-kendrick beef