1.
Upper house
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An upper house, sometimes called a Senate, is one of two chambers of a bicameral legislature, the other chamber being the lower house. The house formally designated as the house is usually smaller. Examples of upper houses in countries include the UKs House of Lords, Canadas Senate, Indias Rajya Sabha, Russias Federation Council, Irelands Seanad, Germanys Bundesrat, a legislature composed of only one house is described as unicameral. An upper house is different from the lower house in at least one of the following respects, Powers, In a parliamentary system. Therefore, in countries the Upper House votes on only limited legislative matters. Cannot vote a motion of no confidence against the government, while the house always can. In a presidential system, It may have equal or nearly equal power with the lower house and it may have specific powers not granted to the lower house. For example, It may give advice and consent to some executive decisions and it may have the sole power to try impeachments against officials of the executive, following enabling resolutions passed by the lower house. Status, In some countries, its members are not popularly elected, membership may be indirect and its members may be elected with a different voting system than that used to elect the lower house. Less populated states, provinces, or administrative divisions may be represented in the upper house than in the lower house. Members terms may be longer than in the house. Members may be elected in portions, for staggered terms, rather than all at one time, in some countries, the upper house cannot be dissolved at all, or can be dissolved only in more limited circumstances than the lower house. It typically has fewer members or seats than the lower house and it has usually a higher age of candidacy than the lower house. In parliamentary systems the upper house is seen as an advisory or revising chamber. Some or all of the restrictions are often placed on upper houses. No absolute veto of proposed legislation, though suspensive vetoes are permitted in some states, in countries where it can veto legislation, it may not be able to amend the proposals. A reduced or even absent role in initiating legislation, additionally, a Government must have the consent of both to remain in office, a position which is known as perfect bicameralism or equal bicameralism. An example is the British House of Lords, bills can only be delayed for up to one year before the Commons can use the Parliament Act, although economic bills can only be delayed for one month
2.
Parliament of Northern Ireland
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It was subsequently abolished under the Northern Ireland Constitution Act 1973. The Parliament of Northern Ireland was bicameral, consisting of a House of Commons with 52 seats, the House of Commons had 52 members, of which 48 were for territorial seats and four were for graduates of Queens University, Belfast. The boundary changes were not made by a boundary commission but by the Unionist government. Population movements were so small that these boundaries were used almost everywhere until the Parliament was dissolved in 1972, in 1968 the government abolished the Queens University constituency and created four new constituencies in the outskirts of Belfast where populations had grown. This change helped the Unionists, as they only two of the University seats but won all four of the newly created seats. There had, however, long been calls from outside Unionism to abolish the graduate franchise, the Senate was a last-minute addition to the Parliament, after the original plans for a single Senate covering both the Stormont and Dublin Parliaments were overtaken by events. Twenty-four senators were elected by the House of Commons using the single transferable vote, the elections were carried out after each general election, with 12 members elected for two parliaments each time. The other two seats were held ex officio by the Lord Mayor of Belfast and the Mayor of Londonderry, the Senate generally had the same party balance as the House of Commons, though abstaining parties and very small parties were not represented. Because of this, and its dependence on the House of Commons for election, the British monarch was originally to have been represented in both Northern Ireland and Southern Ireland by the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. However, the replacement of Southern Ireland by the Irish Free State led to the abolition of the post of Lord Lieutenant, instead, a new office – Governor of Northern Ireland – was created on 12 December 1922. Initially the Parliament met in Belfasts City Hall but moved immediately to the Presbyterian Churchs Assemblys College, the Commons met in the Colleges Gamble Library and the Senate in the Chapel. In 1932, Parliament moved to the new purpose-built Parliament Buildings, designed by Sir Arnold Thornely, at Stormont, the city boundaries were extended slightly to include Stormont within the capital city. Stormont came to be a nickname referring both to the Parliament itself and to the Northern Ireland government, the Parliament did not try to infringe the terms of the Government of Ireland Act, on only one occasion did the United Kingdom government advise the King to withhold royal assent. This was the Local Government Act which abolished proportional representation in government elections. The output of legislation was high for a devolved Parliament, though some of the Acts were adaptations of recently passed acts by the United Kingdom parliament. The 1921 general election was fought on the issue of partition. Thereafter, general election timing was up to the Prime Minister, elections almost always took place at a time when the issue of partition had been raised in a new crisis. This generally guaranteed the loyalty of Protestant voters to the Unionist Party, independent Unionist candidates and the Northern Ireland Labour Party were usually accused of being splitters or dupes of the Nationalists
3.
Daniel Dixon, 2nd Baron Glentoran
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Daniel Stewart Thomas Bingham Dixon, 2nd Baron Glentoran, KBE was a Northern Ireland soldier and politician. Glentoran was the son of Herbert Dixon, 1st Baron Glentoran, after being educated at Eton and Sandhurst he was appointed aide-de-camp to the GOC in Northern Ireland in 1935. Consequently, the privately owned Sligo, Leitrim and Northern Counties Railway linking Enniskillen to Sligo was forced to close and he was then Minister in and Leader of the Senate for three years, becoming its last speaker in 1964. Lord Glentoran was said to have had such a grand demeanor that once, when visiting America, appointed Knight Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire in 1973, Lord Glentoran was also the Lord Lieutenant for Belfast from 1976 to 1985. In 1933 he married Lady Diana Mary Wellesley, daughter of the third Earl Cowley, list of Northern Ireland Members of the House of Lords
4.
Leader of the Senate of Northern Ireland
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The Leader of the Senate of Northern Ireland was the Leader of the House in the Senate of Northern Ireland. The post was a position that was nevertheless politically unimportant. In his memoirs, Brian Faulkner expresses surprise that Jack Andrews accepted the position, the Deputy Leader of the Senate of Northern Ireland was the third-ranking position in the Senate, after the Leader and the Speaker. The position of Deputy Leader was established, along with the Senate itself, in 1921, Speaker of the Senate of Northern Ireland Members of the Northern Ireland Senate, 1921-1972
5.
Single transferable vote
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The single transferable vote is a voting system designed to achieve proportional representation through ranked voting in multi-seat organizations or constituencies. The exact method of reapportioning votes can vary, Hare–Clark is the name given to STV in lower house elections in two Australian states and territories, Tasmania and the Australian Capital Territory. The name is derived from Thomas Hare, who developed the system, and the Tasmanian Attorney General, Andrew Inglis Clark, Hare–Clark has been changed to use rotating ballot papers. Although the New South Wales Legislative Council and the Senate have reformed their electoral systems to abolish group tickets, STV is the system of choice of groups such as the Proportional Representation Society of Australia, the Electoral Reform Society in the United Kingdom and FairVote in the USA. STV has had its widest adoption in the English-speaking world, as of 2010, in government elections, STV is used for, In British Columbia, Canada, STV was recommended for provincial elections by the BC Citizens Assembly on Electoral Reform. In a 2005 provincial referendum, it received 57. 69% support and it was not adopted, however, because it fell short of the 60% threshold requirement the Liberal government had set for the referendum to be binding. For a more complete list, see History and use of the single transferable vote, when STV is used for single-winner elections, it is equivalent to the instant-runoff voting method. STV used for elections is sometimes called proportional representation through the single transferable vote. STV usually refers to the version, as it does in this article. In Australia STV is known as the Hare–Clark Proportional method, while in the United States it is called choice voting. In STV, each voter ranks the list of candidates in order of preference, in the most common ballot design, they place a 1 beside their most preferred candidate, a 2 beside their second most preferred, and so on. The completed ballot paper contains an ordinal list of candidates. The Droop quota is an extension of requiring a 50% +1 majority in single-winner elections, for example, at most 3 people can have 25% +1 in 3-winner elections,9 can have 10% +1 in 9-winner elections, and so on. If fractional votes can be submitted, then the Droop quota may be modified so that the fraction is not rounded down, thus the quota is a positive but not necessarily an integer value. An STV election starts with every voters first choice, according to the following steps, if any such elected candidate has more votes than the quota, the excess votes are transferred to other candidates. Votes that would have gone to the go to the next preference. This can be done in several ways, if no-one new meets the quota, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated and those votes are transferred to each voters next preferred candidate. This process repeats until either a winner is found for every seat or there are as many seats as remaining candidates, there are variations, such as how to transfer surplus votes from winning candidates and whether to transfer votes to already-elected candidates
6.
Parliament Buildings (Northern Ireland)
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Parliament Buildings, commonly known as Stormont because of its location in the Stormont Estate area of Belfast, is the seat of the Northern Ireland Assembly. It previously housed the defunct Parliament of Northern Ireland, the need for a separate parliament building for Northern Ireland emerged with the creation of the Northern Ireland Home Rule region within Ulster in the Government of Ireland Act 1920. In 1922, preparatory work on the site, east of Belfast. Alongside the parliament and Ministerial Building the site would have been host to the Northern Ireland High Court, the plans were scrapped following the Stock Market Crash of 1929 and its knock-on effect on the economy of the United Kingdom. Instead, a smaller building, designed by Sir Arnold Thornely in the Greek classical style. It was built by Stewart & Partners and opened by Edward, Prince of Wales, Stormont Castle served as the official residence of the Prime Minister of Northern Ireland and was the meeting place for the Northern Ireland cabinet. Another residence, Stormont House, served as the residence of the Speaker of the House of Commons of Northern Ireland. In the main hall, originally called the Central Hall but now known as the Great Hall and it was a gift from King George V and had originally hung in Windsor Castle, where it had been a gift from German Kaiser Wilhelm II. The Kaisers chandelier had been removed from Windsor and placed in storage during World War I and it was never hung in Windsor again. The painting The Entry of King William into Ireland, a gift from the Dutch Government to its Northern Ireland counterpart, was hung in the House of Commons when it opened. However, it was removed after having been defaced by a Scottish preacher, the reason for his anger was that the painting also showed the Pope, who had blessed Williams enterprise. The building itself changed little over the years, even as the parliaments meeting inside it did, to camouflage it during World War II, the buildings Portland stone was painted with supposedly removable paint made of bitumen and cow manure. However, after the war, removing the paint proved an enormous difficulty and it took seven years to remove the paint, and the exterior façade has never regained its original white colour. While most traces of it were removed from the façades, some of the remains of the paint survive in the inner courtyards, craigavon and his wife are buried in the estate grounds. The building was used for the Parliament of Northern Ireland until it was prorogued in 1972, the Senate chamber was used by the Royal Air Force as an operations room during World War II. The building was used for the short-lived Sunningdale power-sharing executive in 1974, between 1973 and 1998, it served as the headquarters of the Northern Ireland Civil Service. Between 1982 and 1986, it served as the seat of the rolling-devolution assembly and it is now the home of the Northern Ireland Assembly. However, no one supported the demand and the new assembly
7.
Stormont Estate
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The Stormont Estate is an estate east of Belfast in County Down, Northern Ireland. It is the site of Northern Irelands main government buildings, which are surrounded by woods, lying within the townland of Ballymiscaw, Stormont was originally the estate of a Rev. John Cleland. It was named after a district in Perthshire and comes from the Gaelic Stoirmhonadh, Stormont Estate is now home to the Stormont Parkrun, a free, weekly,5 kilometres timed run. The regulations governing the use of the Stormont estate are displayed at its entrance and these were initially enacted on 31 October 1933, in an order by the Ministry of Finance
