The Upper Austrian statehouse

Hi everybody!

Last week our class visited Upper Austria's parliament, the "Landtag", in Linz.

I thought you might be interested because it is impressive how Austrian politicians work.

We had the pleasure to listen to a plenary session. In this session the politicians discussed about interesting topics and voted on different issues.

Discussed topics were:

• horse breeding in Stadl Paura
• asylum application, tent camps, opening of barracks
• train ticket for traveling within Austria

In the end, we had the chance to discuss with four politicians. We asked interesting questions and had a nice discussion with them.

It was a nice day in Linz and I enjoyed it.

Regards,

Julian

General Election 2015 in the UK

Hi everybody!

I was reading an article the other day in the online edition of BBC News and it talks about the election in the United Kingdom.

I thought you might be interested because it is an up to date topic and it concerns all citizens of the European Union.

I will now summarize the political situation in Great Britain:

The initial situation was that the conservatives, with their prime minister David Cameron, were in power. They promised a referendum in 2017 to decide if Great Britain should leave the European Union.

Then there was the election on the 7th May 2015.

David Cameron is the winner of the election. His party reached 36.9 % of the votes. The conservatives won the election and reached an absolute majority of 11 seats.

The European Union is not very delighted of the result of the election. Since David Cameron is an opponent of the European Union, Brussels fears that the United Kingdom will leave the union.

Below you find a short overview of the British parties:

Conservative Party:

• The Conservative Party is the big winner of the election 2015.
• The referendum about leaving the European Union will be discouraged.
• David Cameron has been prime minister since 2005.
• After the election the Conservatives reached 331 seats in the parliament.

Labour Party

• Labour is the big loser of the election 2015.
• Their leader Ed Miliband retired after the election.
• After the election the Labour Party reached 232 seats in the parliament.

SNP Party

• Nicola Sturgeon is the leader of the SNP Party and the successor of Alex Salmond.
• After the election the SNP Party reached 56 seats in the parliament.

Liberal Democrats

• The leader of the Liberal Democrats is Nick Clegg
• After the election the Liberal Democrats reached 8 seats in the parliament