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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.  
According to the text, which of the following is the reason of UK having such a population-basis distorted second chamber?
选项 A、Seats in the Lords are mainly elected.
B、Citizens outside London care little about politics.
C、Endeavours trying to change the situation went to the opposite.
D、Great London area possesses more political and economic resources.
答案C
解析 本题需要注意第三段“Oddly，this distortion is partly thanks to reforms that were supposed to make the Lords more representative”“一项意欲使上议院议员更具代表性的改革却是催生此类扭曲的原因之一”即可作答。选项A错误，因为上议院的席位都是appointed supposedly on merit，根据功勋授予。B项无此表述。D项虽可以推断正确，但是与本题无关。   
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