>>Right I just learnt pretty much everything there is to know about Parliament and I reckon I can teach it to you in about five minutes >>five minutes? I've spent my whole life
studying >>yeah well you're obviously not
very good at it and then, okay? I'll keep this short and sweet unless anyone keeps interrupting, alright? here we go, this is the prime minister
and his cabinet >> hang on a minute that's a bunch of monkeys! >>A bit of respect please Brian! Oh right yeah. anyway this is the government, it has about 100 ministers who are each responsible for different areas of our lives like transport education even food and sport the government makes decisions on our behalf but it can't do anything it likes there's Parliament Parliament is bigger and the
government's part of it >> Parliament is the highest authority in
the UK it's our legislative body which means
that it makes it revises most of the laws in the UK. >>oh nice one hey I'm reading this book it's called
everyone loves a know it all >> Are you? >>No cos no-one wrote it! as well as making and changing laws
Parliament has to keep an eye on and influence the government this is
called 'scrutiny' which sounds quite painful >> So, Parliament and government are two very different things parliament in the highest authority in
Britain and keeps a check...>>ahem! there's a five-minute time limit here if you don't mind Parliament is made up a
three things the Monarch, the House of Lords and the
House and Commons The House of Commons contains all the 646 Members of Parliament or MP's these - these are the people we vote for a general elections each MP represents a different part of the the country and an MP's political area is called a constituency so what does Parliament actually do? well stuff is the short answer loads of stuff is a bit longer. Longer again both the
House of Commons and the House of Lords spend around half the time making I'm
passing new laws MP's can also bring up the subjects
for debate so everyone gets their opinions heard as
there's lots of opinions sometimes everyone shouts at the same
time. >>ORDER! and Parliament scrutinizes what the
government is doing especially how it raises and spends
money.>>And how does the government do that? >>Well, we pay for everything in the country through taxes income tax on what we earn, VAT on what we buy council tax for local services pretty
much all government's money comes from us. The government spends its money on things like... schools, hospitals, emergency services the legal system and the armed forces.>> So how does Parliament scrutinize the government and make sure our taxes are spent wisely?>>It does a few things its members asked the government awkward
questions and they form groups of people call
committees which scrutinize the work that
individual government departments the House of Lords scrutinizes the government too they also helped introduce new laws
and have their own committees investigating big issues like Europe,
science on the economy. This concludes my high
speed blah blah free guide to Parliament and government, any questions?>>I'm impressed it was a triumph of brevity and
concision, a waffle free whistle-stop summary of the workings of a
parliamentary system. A pithy, high-octane precis of
constitutional hiearchy. it was a.... sorry!