Tài liệu Part 8- Britain ppt

expressions of public sympathy for the Queen. But when the government announc ed that public m one y was going to pay for the repairs, the sympathy quickly t urned to anger. The Queen had recently been reported to be the richest wo man in the wo rld, so people didn 't see why she sho uldn't pay for them herself, It is, in fact, on the subject of Inoney th at' anti-royalist' opinio ns are mo st often expressed. In the early nineties even s ome Conservat - ive MPs, traditionally strong supporters of the monar chy, started protesting at h ow much the royal family was cost ing the country. For the whole of her l ong reign Elizabeth II had been exempt from taxation. BUl, as a resp on se LOthe change in attitude, the Queen decided that she would start paying taxes on her private income. In addition, Civil List paym ents to some membe rs of the royal family were stopped. (The Civil List is the mo ney wh ich the Queen and some of her relatives get from Parliament each year so that they can carry out their public du ues.) For mo st peop le, the mo st notable event marking Queen Elizabeth's 40th anniversary was a televi si on programme abou t a year in her life whi ch showed revealing details of her private family lif e. In the foll owi ng year parts of Buckingham Palace were, for the first time, open ed for public visits (to raise mone y to help pay for the repairs to Winds or Castle) . These events are perhaps an indication of the future roya l style - a little less grand, a little less distant. QUESTIO N S The future of the monarchy 81 One's bum year The Sun is Britain's most popular daily n ew spaper (see chapter (8). This was its from page headline after the Queen had spoken of 1992 as an onnus horribilis (Latin for 'a horrible year'). As \ ell as the separation of Charles and Diana, 199 2 had included the fire at Windsor Castle and the news that Australia was intendi ng to break its ties with the 'old country' and become a republic. The headline uses the similarity bet ween 'an nes' and 'anus' to make a pun of'b um ' (which, in colloquial British English, can mean both 'anus ' and 'horrible'). It also mimics the supposed frequent use by the Queen of the pronoun 'one' to mean 'ri me'. The headline thus mixes the ery formal-soundi ng' one' with the ery colloquial 'bum '. Itis imposs- ible to imagine that such a disrespectful (and unsympathetic) headline cou ld have appeared in the J 91)0S or 19605. I Why d oe s the British Prime Minister continue La 'advise' and 'request' the Queen, wh en everybody kn ow s that he or she is really t elling her what to do? 2 The attitude of the British peop le toward s their royal family has changed over the last quarter of the twentieth century. In what way has it cha nged , and wha t d em onstrates that there has been a c hange' Why do you think this has ha ppened ' S UGGESTI O N S 3 Would you advise the British to get rid of their monarchy? 4 Do you have a monarch in you r coun try, or someone wh o fulfils a similar role' If you do, how doe s their po sition c ompar e wi th that of the British m ona rch' If you d on't, do you think your co untry wo uld benefit frorn having a figurehead w ho cou ld perform the func tions of a mon arch? • The Queen and I by Sue T own send (Mandarin) includes humorou s characterizations of the main mem bers of the royal family. • Books about the mo narchy abo und. A mo ng them are: Th ePrin ce of Wa les: A Bio graph y by J onath an Dimbleb y (Little, Brown and Company) , TheQu een by Kenneth Harris ( Orion ) , El i zab eth R: The R ole of the M on archy To day by Antony Jay (BBCBooks), Di ana, Her Tru e Sto ry and D iana , Her New Life , both by An drew Morton (Michael O'Ma ra Books Limited) . Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark. 82 Ministers and depa r tments Most heads of government depart- ments have the title 'Secretary of State' (as in, for example , 'Secretary of State for the Environment'). The minister in charge of Britain 's rela- tions wi th the outs ide 'world is know n to everybody as the 'Foreign Secretary' . The one in charge of law and order inside the country is the 'Home Secretary'. Their depart- ments are called the Foreign and Common wealth Office and the Home Office respectively (the words' exterior' and 'interior' are not used) . The wor ds 'secretary' and 'office' reflect the history of govern- ment in Britain. in whi ch gove rnme nt departments were at one time pan of the dom estic arra ngements of the monarch. Another imp ortant person is the 'Chancellor of the Exchequer', who is the head of the Treasury (in other words. a s on of Minister of Finance) . 8 The government Who governs Britain? When the media talk about 'the governme nt' they usually mean one of two things. The term 'the goverm ne nt' can be used to refer to all of the politicians who have been app ointed by the mona rch (on the advice of the Prime Minister) to help run govern- m ent departments (there are several politicians in each department) or to take on various other special responsibilities, such as managing the activities of Parliament. There are normally about a hund red members of 'the government' in this sense. Although there are various ranks, each wi th their own titles ( c- Mi nist er s and depa rt m en ts ) . members of the govern ment are usually kno wn as 'm irusters'. All ministers com e fr om the ranks of Parliament , most of them from the House of Commons. Unlike in the USA and in some other countries in Europe, it is rare for a person from outside Parliament to be com e a minister. (And wh en this does happ en , the person concerned is quickly found a seat in one of the t wo Houses.) The other meaning of the term 'the governn1ent' is more limited. It refers only to the mo st p ow erfu l of these politicians, namely the Prime Minister and the other members of the cabinet. There are usually a bout twenty peo ple in the cabinet (though there are no rules about this). Most of t hem are the heads of the gov ernm ent departments. Partly a sa result of the electoral system (see chapter 10) , Britain, unlike mu ch of western Europe, norma lly has 'single-party govern - ment '. In other word s, all m emb ers of the governme nt belong to the same politi cal party. Traditionally, British politicians have regarded coalition gove rnment (wit h several parties involved) as a bad idea. Since the formation of modern poli tical parties in the nineteenth ce ntury , Britain has had a total of only twen ty-on e years of coalition gove rnments ( t915- 1922 and 1931 -194 5) . Even whe n, for brief periods in the 1970s, no Single party had a majority of seats in the House of C omm ons, no coalition was formed. There was a ' min ority government' instead. The habit of Single-party government has helped to establish the tradition known as collective responsibility. That is, every membe r of the gove rnme nt, however junior, shares the resp on sibility for every policy made by the government. This is true even if, as is often the case, he or she did not play any part in making it. o f course, Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark. individua l government members may ho ld diff erent opinions, but they are expected to keep these private. Byconvention, no member of the govermn ent can criticize government policy in pu blic. Any m ember wh o doe s so must resign. The ca binet Obviou sly, no gov enun ent want s an im por tant m ember of its party to start criticizing it. This wou ld lead to divis ion s in the party. Ther e- fore, the leading politicians in the governing party usually be com e members of the cabinet, whe re they are tied to gover nmen t policy by the conven tion of collec tive res po nsibility. The cabinet meets once a week and takes decision s about n ew policies, the impl emen tation of existing po licies a nd the runn ing of the various government departments. Because all gove rnmen t mem bers must be seen to agree, exactly who says what at these meetings is a closely guarded secret. Reports are made of the mee tings and circulated to gove rnment department s. They summarize the topics discussed and the decisions taken , but they never refer to individuals or what t hey said. To help run the complicated ma chiner y of a modern gove rnment, there is an organization called the cabinet of fice. It run s a busy com munication netw ork, keeping ministers in touch with each other and drawing up the agendas for cabine t meeti ngs. It also does the same things for the many cabinet com mittees. These comm ittees are a ppointed by the cabinet to look into various matters in more detail than the ind iv idua l member s of the cabinet have the time (or knowl edge) for. Unlike members of 'the governme nt' itself. the p eop le on these committee s are not necessarily politicians. The Pri me Min ister The position of a British Prime Minister (PM) is in direct contrast to that of the monar ch. Although the Queen appears to have a great deal of pow er, in reality she has very little. The PM, on the other hand, appears no t to have much power but in reali ty has a very great The cabinet 83 A cabinet me eting in progre ss The cabin et The history of the cabinet is a good example of the tendency to secrecy in British poli tics. It started in the eighteenth century as an informal g rouping of important ministers and of ficials of the royal household. It had no formal recognition. Officially speaking, the government was run by the Privy Council, a body of a hundred or more people (including those belonging to 'the cabinet'), directly responsible to the monarch (but not to each other). Over the years, the cabinet gradually took over effective power . .Ihe Privy C2 11~cil is now a merely ceremonial organization with no power. Among others,it includes all the present ministers and the most important past ministers. In the last hu ndred years, the cabinet has itselfbecome mo re and more 'of ficial' and pub licly recog - nized. It has also grown in size, and so is now often too rigid and formal a body to take the real decisions. In the last fifty years, there have been unofficial 'inner cabinets' (comprising the Prime Minister and a few other important ministers). It is thought that it is here, and in cabinet committees, that much of the real decisio n-making takes place. Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark. 84 8 The government ~ No. 10 Down ing Street Here is an example of the traditional fiction that Prime Ministers are not especially imp ortant people. Their official residence doe s not have a special name. Nor, from the outside. does it look special. It is not even a detached house! Inside, though. it is muc h larger than it looks. The cabinet meets here and the cabinet office works here. The PM lives 'above the shop' on the top floor. The Chancellor of the Exchequer lives next d oor , at No. I I, and the Government Chief Whi p (see chapter 10) at No. 12 , so that the wh ole street is a lot more important than it appears. Still. there is some- thing very dom estic about this arrangement. After the government loses an election all three ministers have to throw out their rubbish and wait for the furniture vans to turn up, just like anybody else moving house. The PM also has an official country residence to the west of London, called 'Chequers. The i dea l Pr im e Ministe r Here is another extract (see chap ter 6) fr om Y es , Prime Mini ster.the polit- ical satire. It is a section of the private diar y of a senior civil servant. In it he describes his conversation with anoth er top civil servant, in which they discussed who should become the new Prime Minister. When he says 'experts' in the last line he means. of course. the civil servants them selves! deal indeed. Aswe have seen (chapter 7), the Queen is, in practice, obliged to give the job of Prime Minister to the person who can c ommand a majority in the H ou se of Comm on s. This normally means the leader of the party with the largest n umb er ofM Ps. Fr om one point of v iew , the PM is no m or e than the fore most of Her Majesty's political servants. The traditional phrase describes him or her as primu s i nter po r" (Latin for 'first a mong equals '). But in fact the othe r min isters are not nearly as powe rful. The re are several reasons for this. First, the monar ch' s powers of patronage (the power to appoint people to allkindsof jobsand to confer honours on people) are, by convention ,actuallythe PM's powers of patronage. The fiction is that the Queen appoints people to government jobs 'on the advice of the Prime Minister'. But wh at actually happens is that the PM simp ly decides. Everybody knows this. The media do not even make the pretence that the PM has successfully persuaded the Queen to make a particular appointment, they simply state that he or she has mad e an appoi ntme nt. The strength of the PM's po wer of patronage is apparent from the modern phenom enon know n as the 'cabinet reshuffle'. For the past thirty years it has been the habit of the PM to change his or her cabinet quite frequently (at least once every t wo years). Afew cabinet m emb ers are drop ped , and a few n ew members are brought in, but mostly the existing m emb ers are shuffled around, like a pack of cards, each gelling a new department to look after. The second reason for a m odern PM's do min ance over other minis- ters is the pow er of the PM's publi c image. The mass media has tended to make politics a matter of personali ties. The details of pol- icies are hard to und erstand. An ind ividual, constantly appearing on the television and in the newspapers, is much easier to identify with. Everybody in the country can recognize the Prime Minister, while many can not put a name to the faces of the other ministers. Asa result the PM can,if theneed arises, go 'over the heads' of the other ministers and appeal directly to the public. We take a fairly dim view of them both [the two candidates]. It is a difficult choice, rather like asking wh ich lunatic should run the asylum. We both agreed that they would present the same problems. They are both interventionists and they would both have foolish notions about running the country themselves if they became Prime Minister. It is clearly advisable to look for a comp romise candidate. We agreed that such a candidate must have the following qualities: he must be malleable, flexible ,li keable, have no firm opinions, no bright ideas, not be intellectually committed, and be withou t the strength of p urp ose to change anyt hing. Above all, he mus t be someone who m we know can be professionally guided, and who is willing to leave the business of government in the hand s of experts. Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark. Third, all ministers except the PM are kept bus y looking after their gov ernm ent dep artment s. They don't have t ime to think a bout and discuss governm ent policy as a whole , But the PM does, and cabinet co mm ittees usually rep on directly to him or her, not to the cabinet as a who le. Mor eover, the cabinet office is directly unde r the PM 's control and w or ks in the same building . As a result, the PM know s mor e ab out what is go ing on than the other minister s do . Because there is not eno ugh tim e for the cabinet to discuss most matters, a cho ice has to be mad e about what will be discussed. And it is the PM who ma kes that choi ce. Mane rs that are not discussed can, in effect, be decided by the PM . The convention of collective respon sibility then mean s that the rest of the gov ernment have to go along with whatever the PM has decided. The civil service Considering h ow complex moder n states are, t here are no t really very man y people in a British 'govern ment' (as defined above) . Unli ke some other c oun tries (th e USA for examp le), no t even the mo st senior admini strative jobs change h and s when a new government comes to po\ver. The day -to -day running of the gove rnm ent and the imple ment ation of its policy contiriue in the hands of the sam e people that we re there with the previous governm ent - the top rank of the civil service. Governm ents come and go, but the civil service remains. It is no accid ent that the most sen ior civil servant in a govern - me nt departm ent has the title of 'Pe rman ent Secretary'. Unlike politicians, civil servants , even of the hig hest ran k, are unkn own to the larg er pu blic. There are proba bly less than 10,000 people in the country who, if you asked t hem, could give you the nam es of the present secretary to the cabinet (w ho runs the cabinet office) or the pre sent head of the home civil service; still fewer know the name s of more than one of the present perma nent secretaries. For those who bel on g to it, the British civil service is a career. Its most senior positi on s are usually filled by peo ple who have been working in it for twent y years or more. These peop le get a high salary (higher than that of their ministers) , have absolute job security (unlike their minister s) and stand a good chance of being awarded an official honour. By c om parison, ministers, even those who have been in the same department for several years, are still new to the job. Moreover, civil servants k now the secrets of the previo us gov- er nm en t which the present minister is un a wa re of. For all the se reasons, it is often possible for top civil servants to exercise quite a lot of c on trol over their mini sters, and it is sometime s said that it is they, and no t their mini sters, wh o really govern the country. There is undoubtedly some tr uth in this opin ion . Ind eed, an interesting case in early 1994 suggests that civil servants now expe ct to have a d egre e of control. At this time, the association w hich represents the country's lOp civil servants made an official comp laint The civil service 85" Prime Ministers sinc e 1940 Winston Churchill (19+0-4-1)) Clement Aulec (194-5-1) I) Winston Churchill ([ 9I) [-I) ')) Anthony Eden (19H-,)7) Harold Macmillan ( 19 ')7-6 3) Alec Douglas-Home (1963-64-) Harold Wilson (1964 70) Edward Heath ([ 97°-74-) Harold Wilson (1974- -76) lames Callaghan (1976-79) Margaret Thatcher (J 979-9 r ) John Major (J991-97) Tony Blair ( 1997 -) BJUf :::: Ccnservetive Red :::: Lcbour The o rigins ofth e civil service The British'cult of the talented amateur' (see chapter I)) is not normally expressed openly. But when, in the midd le of the nine - teenth century, the structure of the modern civil service was established, it was a consciously stated principle, as described by the contemporary historian Lord Macauley: We believe that men who have been engaged. up to t wenty -one or twe nty-two. in studies which have no immediate connection with the business of any profes- sion, and of which the effect is m~ rely to open, to invigorate, and to enrich the mind, will generally be found in the business of every pro fession superior to men who have, at eighteen or nineteen. devoted themselves to the special studies of their calling. In other words, it is better to be a non -specialist than a specialis t, to have a good brain rather than thor - ough knowledge. Reforms since then have given greater emphasis Lo specialist knowledge, but the central beliefremains that administration is an an rather than an applied science. Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark. 86 8 The government ~ W h i t e h a ll This is the name of the street in London which runs from Trafalgar Square to the Houses of Parharnent. The Foreign and Com mon wealth Office and the Ministry of Defence are both located here. These are the two oldest government depart- ments. The term 'Whitehall' is sometimes used to refer to the gov- ernment as a who le (although other departments are in other streets nearby). This is don e when the writer or speaker wishes to e mp has- ize the administrative aspects of government. The phrase , 'the opinion in Whitehall .' ref ers not only to the opin ions of governme nt ministers but also, and perhaps more so, to the opinions of senior civil servants. o , 100 , that four government ministers 'verbally abu sed' their civil service advisers and generally treated them 'with c ont empt '. It was the first time that such a complaint had been made , It seemed that the unpre- cedentedly long per iod of government by the same party (the Conservatives - see c hap ter 10) had shifted the traditional balance of pow er. H ow ever, the British civil service has a (largely) deserved reputa- tion for absolute political impartiality. Many ministers have remarked on the struggle for power between them and th eir top civil servants, but very few have ever complained of any political bias. Top civil servants k now that their po\ver depends on their staying out o fpol u- ics' and on their being absolutely loyal to their present mini ster. Modern criticism of the civil service doe s not question its loyalty but its efficiency. Despite reforms, the t op rank of the civil service is still largely made up of people from the sa me narr ow section of society - peop le who have b een to public scliool (see chapter 14) and then on to Oxford or Cambr idge , wh ere they studied subjects such as history or classical languages. The criticism is ther ef ore that the civil service does not have e nough expertise in matters such as economic s or techn ology. and that it lives too mu ch in its own closed world , cut off from the concerns of most peopl e in societ y. In the late twentieth century, ministers tried to overcome these percei ved defi- ciencies by appo inting experts from ou tside the civil service to work on various projects and by having their own political advisersworking alongside (or, SOIl1e wou ld say, in competition with) the ir civil servants. Central and local govern ment So me co unt ries, such as the USA and Canada, are federal. They are nu de up of a n um ber of states , each of which has its own g overnment wit h its own powers to make laws and collect taxes. In these countries the central gover nments have power s only because the states have given them powe rs. In Britain it is the oth er wa y aro und . Local gov- ern men t authorities (generally known as 'c oun cils') only have powers because the central governm en t has given them pov.·ers. Indeed, they only exist because the central gover nmen t allows them to exist. Several times in the last hundred years British gove rnment s have reorganized local gover nment, abolishing some local councils a nd bringing n ew ones into existence. The system oflocal government is very similar to the system of national gover nment. There are elected representatives, called coun- cillors (the equivalent ofMP s). They meet in a cou ncil chamber in the Town Hall or County Hall (the equ ivalent of Parliament) , where they make policy whic li is impleme nted by local government of ficers (the equivalent of civil servants) . Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark. Most British pe opl e have far mor e dir ect dealings with local gov- ern ment than they do w ith national gov ernm ent. Local coun cils traditionally manage nearly all pub lic services. Taken together, they employ three tim es as man y peo ple as the national gove rnmen t does. In addition, there is no system in Britain wher eby a national gove rn - ment official has responsibility for a particular geog ra ph ical area. (There is no one like a 'prefect' or 'g overnor) In practice, therefore, local councils have traditi ona lly been fairly free from cons tant central interference in their day to day wo rk. Local councils are allowed to collect one kind of tax. This is a tax based on pro perty. (All othe r k ind s are collected by central govern me nt.) It used to be called 'rates' and was paid only by those who owned property. Its amo unt varied according to the size and location of the p rop erty. In the early I 99 0S it was replaced by the 'com mu nity cha rge' (know n as the 'p oll tax') . This charge was the Key to England and Wales I W ElT romHIR E 2 GR EATER II.l.N{H EITH J IOUTH roRKS H I ~E 4 DE RmHI U 5 NO TTlN GlWllHIRE I SfmORDlH IRE I LEKESffRSH I RE I WEn HIDIJ,NDI t U/1UIOGE5tlIlE 10 'ORJJIIJtPIOH5tlIRE II WIJ.WlmI!llE 11 HElEFOtll /JID WOKElHR FRANCE IJ I 8E OfOR OIH IRE 14 BUU INGHAMI H IRE IS GLO UUlH~ I M I ~ E 16 HE RTFO~ DI HIU 11 OIFO ~OlH 1RE II GUAm lO HOON (~. iRal) I' 8ERlSHIU 10 lWll'SHll< 11 W1LTSHIU 11 Gwm lJ "10 Gll"ORGAM l( SOUTH GLlIIORGlJl ? (Gre ater London only) liS km Key to Greater l ondon Boroughs I (ilJ 01 London 9 Soulttw~.t 1 (ilJol Wfl~lf' 10 lfwil h3nl J e-tttl II Wnbolit • klillrt Oll 12 W >ndI -m 5 lbn"l'1 B b nsilpa' tlltM. 6 IIxbor 14 ~ 1 Wil th>/II Fmsl IS RKt.ond" 1lO" IUlnn I fc-t<~e l6 liolt'lOIlllO" n-,. British Isles: Counties and London Borough s. as at June 1995 Keyto Nort hern Ireland I BWAIT 14 m MAM AGH 1 HE WT OWMA B BEl I) ONAGH J (,I RRI{ KmGUI 16 (ooKSTOWN 4 amEREAGH 17 MAG HEW !LT 5 HORTH DOW N 18 UPJ.BANE 6 AMII 19 DERRY J DOWH 10 U II.l. VA OI I H!W Rf.&N O" OURH E 11 ( OUPJ. IHE , BANB Rl OGl 11 BA LlTM OHET 10 lMU U n M OTU II {,WGAYO H H BAU TIt ! IlA u UIIAGH 15 \.l RN E u DU H(,A NNOJj 26 A NTIJ II Central and local government 87 II- Counti es, b or ou ghs , p ar ish es Count ies are the oldest divisions of the cou ntr y in England and Wales. Most of them existed before the Norman conquest (see chapter 2). They are still used today for local govern ment purpo ses, although a few have been 'invented' more recently (e.g. Hum berside) and others have no function in govern- ment but are still used for other pur poses. One of these is Middlesex, wh ich covers the western pan of Greater lond on (letters are still addressed 'Middx.'] and which is the name of a top-class cricket team. Many c ount ies have 'shire' in their name (e.g. H ertf ord shire. Hampshire, Leicestershire). 'Shires' is what the counties were originally called. Bo roug hs were originally towns that had gr own large and important e nough to be given their own gov- ernme nt, free of control by the county. These days, the name is used for local government purposes only in lo ndo n, but many towns still pro udly describe themselves as Royal Bo rough s. Parishes were originally villages centred on a local church. They became a unit of local government in the nineteenth century. Today they are the smallest unit of local government in England. The name 'parish' is still used in the organization of the main Chris- tian churches in England (see chapter 13). Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark. 88 8 The government The Greater London Council The stor}'of the Greater London Council (GLC) is an example of the struggle for power betwe en central and local government, In the early 1980s Britain had a right -w ing Con- servative gove rnment, At a time when this government was unpopu- lar. the left-Wing Labour party in London won the local election and gained con trol of the GLC The Labour-controlled GLC then intro- duced many measures which the national government did not like (for example. it reduced fares o n London's buses and increased local taxes to pay for this). The gove rnment decided to abolish the GLC Using its majority in the House of Com mo ns. it was able to do this. The p owe rs of the GLCwere either given to the thir ty- two horoug hs of Lon do n, or to special commnces. It was not until the year 20 00 that aSingle govern- mental authority for the who le of London came into existence again and the city got its first ever directly- elected mayor. Public libraries In co mparison w ith the people of other western countries. the British public buy relatively few books . However. this does not necessarily mean [hat they read less. There are about 5" , 000 public libraries in Britain (that'sabout one for every 12,000 peopl e). On average. each one houses around +5" .000 books. A recent survey showed that 70%of children betwe en the ages of four and sixteen use their local library at least twice a month. and that 5" I %of them use it once a we ek or more. In addition . and unfortunately, many British people seem to pr ef er libraries to bookshops even wh en they want to ow n a boo k. Nearly nine million boo ks are stolen from the shelves of libraries every year. same for everybody who lived in the area covered by a council. It was very un popular and was quickly replaced by the 'cou ncil tax', which is based on the estimated value of a property and the numb er of people living in it. Local c ounc ils are unable to raise enough money in this way for them to provide the services which centralgovernment has told them to provide. In addition, recent gov ernment s have imposed upper limits on the amount of council tax that councils can charge and now collect the taxes on business properties themselves (and then share the m one y out between local councils). Asa result, well over half of a local council's income is now given to it by central government. The modern trend has been towards greater and greatercomrol by central gov ern menlo This is not just a matter of controlling the way local government raises mone y. There are n ow more laws governing the way councils can conduct their affairs. On top of this, schools and hospitals can now 'opt out ' oflocal-government control (see chapters 14 and 18). Perhaps this trend is inevitable n ow that national party politics domin ates local politics. Successful independ - ent candidates (candidates who do not belong to a political party) at local elections are becoming rarer and rarer. Most people now vote at local elections according to their national party preferences, if they both er to vote at all, so that these elections become a kind of opinion poll on the performance of the national government. Local gov ernm ent services Most of the numero us services that a modern government provides are run at local level in Britain.These include pub lic hygiene and environmental health inspection , the collecting of rubbish from outside people's houses (the people who do this are euphemistically known as 'd ustrnen'), and the cleaning and tidying ofall public places (which is done by 'street sweepers) ( e- Theorgan iza tionoflo col gOl"emment) . They also include the provision of public swimming pools, which charge admission fees, and public parks, which do not. The latter are mostly just green grassy spaces, but they often contain children's playgrounds and playing fields for sports such as football and cricket which can be reserved in advance on payment. Public librari es are an other well-known service ( e- Publi c librari es ). Anybod y can go into one of these to consult the books, newspapers and magazines there free of charge. If you want to borrow books and take them out of the library, you have to have a library card or ticket (these are available to people living in the area). Sometimes CDs and video cassettes are also available for hire . The popularity oflibraries in Bri tain is indicated by the fact that. in a country wi thout identity cards (see chapter 6), a person's library card is the most common means of identification forsomeone wh o does not have a driving licence. Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark. . gov ernm ent departments. Partly a sa result of the electoral system (see chapter 10) , Britain, unlike mu ch of western Europe, norma lly has 'single-party. m ember of its party to start criticizing it. This wou ld lead to divis ion s in the party. Ther e- fore, the leading politicians in the governing party usually