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  3. Cabinet meetings outside London are rare and reluctant things. Harold Wilson held one in Brighton in 1966, but only because the

Cabinet meetings outside London are rare and reluctant things. Harold Wilson held one in Brighton in 1966, but only because the

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问题     Cabinet meetings outside London are rare and reluctant things. Harold Wilson held one in Brighton in 1966, but only because the Labour Party was already there for its annual conference. In 1921 David Lloyd George summoned the Liberals to Inverness because he didn’t want to cut short his holiday. Gordon Brown’s decision to hold his first cabinet meeting after the summer break in Birmingham, on September 8th, was born of a nobler desire to show the almost nine tenths of Britons who live outside London that they are not ignored. He will have to do better: constitutionally, they are more sidelined now than ever.  
    Many legislatures use their second chamber to strengthen the representation of sparsely populated areas (every American state, from Wyoming to California, gets two votes in the Senate, for example). Britain’s House of Lords, most of whose members are appointed supposedly on merit, has the opposite bias. A survey by the New Local Government Network (NLGN), a think-tank, finds that London and two of its neighbouring regions are home to more peers than the rest of Britain combined; even Birmingham, the country’s second-largest city, has just one.  
    Oddly, this distortion is partly thanks to reforms that were supposed to make the Lords more representative. By throwing out most of the hereditary peers in 1999, Labour paved the way for a second chamber that was less posh, less white and less male than before. But in booting out the landed gentry, it also ditched many of those who came from the provinces. The Duke of Northumberland (270th in the Sunday Times’s " Rich List") may not be a member of a downtrodden minority. But Alnwick Castle, his family pile, is in the North-east region, home to just 2% of the Lords’ members now. Geographically speaking, the duke and his fellow toffs were champions of diversity.  
    The government now wants to reintroduce some geographical fairness, but minus dukes. Long-incubated plans to reform the Lords would see it converted during the next parliament into a body that is mainly or entirely elected. A white paper in July outlined various electoral systems, all based on regional or sub-regional constituencies.  
    Some would like to see the seat of government prised out of the capital altogether, though in the past this has normally required a civil war or a plague. Southerners whisper that no one would show up if Parliament were based in a backwater such as Manchester. But many don’t now. The NLGN found that peers resident in Northern Ireland vote least often. But next from the bottom are the London-dwellers, who show up for less than a third of the votes on their doorstep. Even the eight who live abroad are more assiduous. The north may seem an awfully long way away, but apparently so is Westminster.  
In most countries, what is the purpose of establishing the second chamber of the legislature?
选项 A、To compromise with those who have vested interests in existing bodies and those who wish to have more rights and power in political life.
B、To be more representative, as House of Lords usually consists of citizens from urban area while House of Commons usually come from rural.
C、To help allocate those with high merit as a result of civil service special treatment.
D、To ensure to the most possible extent that citizens all across the country may enjoy the same right of claiming and being heard etc.
答案D
解析 本题只需看准第二段第一句“Many legislatures use their second chamber to strengthen the representation of sparsely populated areas”“许多立法机构用其上议院来加强人口稀少地区的代表性”即可作答。A项说国家与两股政治力量的妥协，但这在文中并未提及。B项说上议院主要是城市公民，而下议院主要是乡村公民，根据常识判断即可知其错误。C项说的是对公务员的特殊照顾，这在文中也未提及。   
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