Talk:Parliament

Back of envelope figures here:

I make (counting up from my Astrogeography page) 42 worlds or moons which orbit protostars.

That makes 82 Gubernorial seats. The major elect should more or less balance that. There are 4 groups, so.... 20 Medical Elect 20 Judicial Elect 20 Military Elect 20 Scientific Elect

The minor elect should be smaller, so say 10 each 10 Agricultural Elect 10 Industrial Elect

And then the Nobles. Bit harder to balance, but probably about 30, which means that on average 3/4 of worlds will be able to elect 1 Lord. But that's averages. Obviously, if there's only 1 noble family per planet, as the current titles 'Duke of Osiris' etc seems to imply, this number needs to be moved downwards, to encourage strife/RP!

That gives 82+80+20+30=212 seats, or approximately twice the size of the US Senate, or a little larger than 1/3 of the size of the House of Commons, or 1/2 the size of the House of Representatives. That, I think, makes a managable size!

Checking from the 'Verse' page: 9 planets/moons orbiting protostars in White Star System 9 (inhcluding Shadow) in Yellow/Georgia 8 Red 9 Kalidasa 4 Blue + Miranda....

That makes 39+Miranda. So, 78 Gubernorial seats.+ 80 Major Elect+ 30 Lords Parliamentary+ 20 minor elect= 208 Of course, this assumes that the coded worlds are the only ones which are ICly inhabited. This is obviously incorrect, but....

Judicial Elect

It may be strange, particularly to Americans and people from Code Napoleon nations, used to the Consitutional separation of the Judiciary from the Executive and the Legislature to accept a setting where the legal profession has its own members of parliament. This is true. It's not ideal, but that said, it's hardly unheard of- until 2010, the UKs supreme court was the Judicial Committee of the House of Lords ('The Law Lords'), an arrangement stretching back hundreds of years. Additionally, legislatures, world wide, have a disproportionate number of lawyers within them, presumably because they're the only people twisted enough to understand the legalese in the laws that are drafted, and the only people to whom the position of 'Politician' gets more respect than their original post!

Lord High Marshall

This is past history of the MUSH (apparantly), as the political head of the Alliance. I would suggest that we have this position..... 'promoted' into a figurehead position, of complete powerlessness, rather in the same way that the Queen is the Head of the UK. Yeah. And somehow she always seems to invite the person who won the General Election to be her Prime Minister......

I've written this rather along the line of the President of China ( According to the Constitution of the People's Republic of China since 1982, the National People's Congress (NPC), in theory China's top law-making body, has the power to elect and force the resignation of the President. By law, the President must be a Chinese citizen of 45 years of age or older. The President cannot serve for over two successive terms, a term being the equivalent of one session of the NPC, which is five years. Also, all the authorities and works of the President must be done under the NPC and its Standing Committee's order. The President does not have any administrative power; the position is that of a powerless figurehead.[1] The President promulgates statutes adopted by the NPC and NPCSC without veto. The functions of the President are largely ceremonial; the President appoints the Premier upon the decision of NPC, Vice-Premiers, State Council members and Ministers of all departments upon the nomination of the Premier, all ambassadors to foreign countries, and all legislative committee chairs, treasurers and secretaries. The President has the responsibility to give Special Presidential Decrees, and declare State of Emergency, and declare War ritually upon the decision of NPC. The President is assisted by the Vice-President. In the event that the President dies or leaves office, the Vice-President automatically assumes presidential powers. In the event that they both are unable to perform normal duties, the Chairman of the National People's Congress will perform the duties of the President as Acting President until the NPC can elect a new one.) or the President of Germany.