Houses of Parliament -- Your questions and reviews – London chat forum

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Have you ever visited Houses of Parliament? What did you think of it? Let other people know by posting your photos and writing a little review.

[glenking]

Parliament is a little imposing when you first visit it, it took me half an hour to pluck up the courage to walk up and see if i was allowed to enter. The front is full of gun cops and you wonder whether they're going to let you in. But once you're inside it's brilliant, well worth a trip.
I went on a tour, and it was good because it was a pretty small group (about 10), and the guide know everything.
Westminster Hall was very impressive, as he explained about all the trials of people like Guy Fawkes, and he points out where all the Kings and Queens laid in State when they died.
He took us on the route that the Queen takes when shes comes up in her carraige to open Parliament in November. That takes you to the House of Lords (the one with all the red seats and gold throne) and then the rather less impressive House of Commons, which looks like a cheap version of the Lords.

Definitely a worthwhile tour. Its nice to see the places that you see on the news, so you can appreciate what they are really like

[Drummerboy]

[Taken from my blog.] I went on the tour and it's pretty good. The first place you go whilst you're waiting for your guide to turn up is Westminster Hall. This is pretty much the best room in the entire tour, with the big old hammerbeam roof fifty feet in the air. This is where the tried Guy Fawkes and Charles I -- and now they're using it as a waiting room for the tour! It's also the only part of the entire tour where you're allowed to take photographs.
You have to line up down the sides and wait for your designated guide to show up. We had a bloke called Colin, who not only looked like a Colin but had the personality of a Colin to match. He was one of those political anorak geeky guys who knew everything about everything, and everything else as well. He gave us a little test too, whilst he was counting our heads, making us tell everyone who our local MP was. Luckily I knew who mine was -- Ed Davey -- but you could see people squirming whilst they tried to dredge the name out of their heads. It was like being back at school for five minutes. But after that little bit of fun was over he started the tour proper, and led us half the length of the building to the starting point.

You pretty much follow the route that the Queen takes at the State Opening -- starting at the Norman Porch and Robing Room. That is a lovely looking room, but i found the decorations a bit bizarre. They've got pictures and mouldings of King Arthur and his knights, complete with Lancelot, Excalibur and Merlin. It's like something out of a fairy tale. After that you go into the Royal Gallery where the pictures come back to reality -- huge pictures of Nelson's last moments and the Battle of Waterloo. Everywhere you look (and this goes for the entire building) are statues and paintings of previous kings and queens, PMs and politicians. Every famous name from the last 1000 years are present and correct in some place or other. Queen Victoria gets the most because she built the place, but our present Queen is there alongside Prince Philip and the Queen Mother.
After that is the Prince's Chamber where they've got some pretty fabuolous portraits of the Tudors and Stuarts, and then you hit another highlight -- the House of Lords.

You wouldn't believe the amount of gold in the House of Lords. The place is absolutely covered in it, and the seats are the plushest red leather (not allowed to sit down though, so couldn't test them out). The tour goes right down the middle of the room, so you can literally stand five feet from the throne. We all went and stood at the end as well, where the Commons come and stand at the State Opening, so you get the same view as they do crammed behind the wooden fence.
After that you leave the Royal half and head towards the Commons. First up is the Peer's Lobby and Central Lobby. This is the place that you always see on the telly, where the journos grab the politicians for a quick chat on the 9 o'clock news. Then you head to the Member's Lobby and the grand statue of Churchill and Lady Thatcher.

I quite liked the Member's Lobby because they've left a bit of it in ruins. If you look at the arch that leads into the chamber then you can see some pretty extensive bomb damage from the Second World War. Apparently a bomb dropped straight onto the chamber and blasted debris out the arch -- now left in limbo for everyone to see.

You wouldn't believe how small the actual House of Commons is. It is tiny! It is about half the size that you imagine from the TV. Colin said that it measures the same size as a tennis court -- which seems a bit small too me, but he wasn't too far out. Honest to god -- it is so small that you think they've cut it in half. The tour takes you round the back of the Speaker's chair and straight down the aisle, so you are literally standing where the PM stands at PMQs. They've even got the books laid out on the table like they do on the telly. They don't let you sit in the green seats though, which is unfortunate, especially when you've been on your feet for an hour by this point. After the Commons you head down St. Stephen's Hall (the original site of the House of Commons, where Charles I tried to arrest the five MPs), and back into Westminster Hall.

[Drummerboy]

[Taken from my blog.] After going on the Houses of Parliament Tour last summer and enjoying it, I decided I'd definitely be going back to sit in the public gallery... so that's what I did today.

It's actually pretty easy to get in. I was a bit surprised because you don't need to book or show any ID or anything. You can literally just turn up at the door and they'll let you in. It's a bit intimidating when you first get there because the visitor entrance is guarded by a couple of cops with big machine guns, but all you've got to do is talk to the little skinny guy in front of them who gives you a big green ticket. If you flash that at the cops then they'll let you past.
Once you've got past them, it's easy... Next up is an airport-style security scanner and a camera, which they'll use to take your photo and put it on a pass, which you have to wear around your neck.

After that you walk into Westminster Hall and St. Stephen's Hall, which contains a little shop and some seats. This is the waiting room. A pretty lady in a suit gives you a little card which you have to fill in with your name and address (remember to bring a pen), and then you just sit down and wait for a place to open up in the gallery. I was told that the queue for the Commons can sometimes last as much as 2 hours, but I was lucky because I got waved through after five minutes. It probably helped that I turned up five minutes before opening time.

When you first walk into the public gallery you get a bit of a thrill. I don't know why. Maybe I'm just a saddo, but I thought it was quite good. The gallery is at the top and the back of the Chamber, so the MP's seats stretch out below you. The Speaker's chair is directly ahead, facing you, whilst the Prime Minister's place is on the left. You are literally looking down upon the MPs heads.
Because of the way that the Gallery appears to hang over the Chamber, you can only see about half of the seats. You get a great view of the Speaker, the front benches and the big table with the golden sceptre, but anything south of that is blocked from view. Unfortunately that means that you can't see where the Lib Dems usually sit (not a great loss!).

One little annoying thing was the big glass screen that they've constructed between the Gallery and the Chamber to protect the MPs. It's so thick and big that you can't actually hear the MPs speaking -- their talk gets piped in through the speakers. They got a load of TVs dotted around too playing BBC Parliament.

The most famous people that I saw talking today was Caroline Spelman, Ben Bradshaw and Simon Hughes. I might have seen John Redwood as well but he didn't stand up and say anthing, so I couldn't tell. If it was him, then his hair has gone grey from when I last saw him on the telly. Maybe he's stressed out.
John Bercow was in the Speaker's Chair too.
The first half hour was filled up with countryside questions about meat and abbattoirs, and how to make life nicer for farmers. After that they moved onto catholics getting murdered in Nigeria. Then it was the Leader of the House's go, who read out his plans for the Queen's jubilee celebrations.
As you can imagine, it's difficut to stay awake for that kind of stuff, and the guy next to me actually started slipping over like the Leaning Tower of Pisa, eyes struggling to stay awake. After about an hour I could feel me slipping too, so I had a nice little stroll back through Westminster Hall.

[Drummerboy]

[Taken from my blog.] I went to the State Opening of Parliament today. I had to get up well early (6:45 AM!) and I should have got a medal but it was worth it. The parade was due to go past at 11 AM so I thought I'd better be there by nine at least, but I ended up in McDonalds by half-8, just to pass the time. It was drizzling with rain all day and maybe that's what kept the crowds away, but the streets were still empty at 10. You could have arrived an hour before and still got yourself a good spot.

I had plenty of time, so I walked the whole thing from the Palace down The Mall, through Horse Guards and Whitehall, and all the way up to Parliament. Unfortunately you needed a pass to get past the Abbey, and the coppers stopped me going any further, so I ended up under the shadow of Big Ben in Parliament Square, right on the corner where Winston Churchill is.
This was about 9 o'clock, and it was just me and ten million policeman and one other guy, who had the biggest camera I have ever seen in my life -- bigger than my head. He was obviously a pro. We had a little moan about the protesters still occupying Brian Haws' old spot, and had a good old laugh when Danny Alexander went past in a limo (he only works round the corner, literally two minutes from Parliament... so much for government cutbacks!). After that we had a bit of luck because they started shutting off the roads for the parade. And we ended up being fenced in to Parliament Square, just us and about fifty others. No one else was allowed in, so we had the place to ourselves! We watched them cramming up against the barriers down Whitehall, while we stood comfy with five feet each.

You know the parade is close when the soldiers start lining the streets. I noticed this at Trooping the Colour too -- first of all you get the gun cops staring at you from behind the barrier, eyeing you up in case you look a bit shifty, and then the soldiers come along with the machine guns and swords. Their boss (sergeant?) gets out his measuring sticks to make sure they are ten paces distant (exactly) and straightens their caps and trousers too -- a real mum. And then they stand there for the next hour not moving a muscle. We had a female sergeant barking orders at them every time someone came past, six feet from our ears, voice booming like a thunderclap. Lord knows what it's like being married to her -- I wouldn't fancy her shouting at me to put the bins out.

Just before 11 o'clock you get all the limos coming past with foreign flags on. I suppose they were full of diplomats but you couldn't really see because most of them were blacked out. And after that the parade starts proper.

After my trip to Trooping the Colour last year I was expecting about 500 horses, ten thousand soldiers and about fifty thousand marching bands. But there wasn't a lot of that at all. There was only really one or two bands, 100 horses at most, and probably a couple of hundred soliders in their red tunics and bearskins. The whole parade passed us by in two or three minutes -- no joke. I didn't even really see the Queen this time because I had the camera pressed up against my face. It's only when I got home and watched the movie that I realised who I saw. The Queen was in a closed black carriage with Prince Philip, being pulled by two white horses, and that was followed by another one with four more Royals inside. But I haven't got a clue who they are, not even now, after watching the video ten times. Then came an open-top carraige with Princess Anne inside, and that was basically it. I didn't see Charles, William, Harry or Kate, but maybe I missed them. It was a very short parade.

After that the Queen disappeared into Parliament to deliver the speech, and we had to wait in the rain for 45 minutes for her to come out. I weedled my way a bit closer to Parliament in the meantime, and got a better view of them coming back. And the whole thing was over by about 12:15.

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[Drummerboy]

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