Chairs, Chairs, Chairs | Hacker News Reader

Chairs, Chairs, Chairs

parliament.uk

65 pointsriprippity64 comments

> The Woolsack is where the Lord Speaker in the House of Lords sits and resembles a large square cushion covered in red cloth. In 1938 it was re-stuffed with a blend of wool from Britain and the other wool producing nations of the Commonwealth. The woolsack is thought to have been introduced in the 14th century to reflect the economic importance of the wool trade in England.

During the restuffing in 1938, it was discovered that the original stuffing was largely horsehair.

Call by name, call by value, call by reference.

Also c/f "lord privy seal" which is not a lord, nor a privy, nor a seal.

'Lord Privy Seal' is actually an abbreviation for the 'Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal', i.e., the person who (nominally) looks after the seal used to authenticate personal documents 'signed' by the monarch before written signatures came into use. The post of Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal is now usually given to the governing party's leader in the House of Lords, and the monarch's personal seals (which no longer serve any official purpose) are held by the Lord Chamberlain, who is part of the Royal Household and not the Government.

My comment is a quote, from Angus Calder's book "the peoples war" -he took it from a comment made by a labour minister of the time.

For a great pun on the by name/by value: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38858443

I like letter-slash-letter abbreviations but I've never run into c/f before. What does it mean? Do you remember where you first picked it up?

It's a misuse. CF no slash "compare" in backpieces, references &c. C/F appears to mean something in pre spreadsheet accounting but I did not study accounting at uni, so where I got the idea it needs a slash is beyond me.

Wool had probably too much economic importance to be used in such fashion.

Even "down" cushions in high-end couches today are usually a PU foam core wrapped in down batting. It's impractical, expensive and unnecessary to do otherwise.

And "down" pillows are often 95% feathers 5% down, unless advertised as 100% down (and will hundreds more)

Not that down is wool, obviously.

I have to disagree, PU foam has been the most useless cushion padding I've ever experienced in my life. It goes from firm + comfortable to useless in under a year for me in most cases. I've even tried replacing with the firmest PU foam available, and those attempts last maybe 2 years.

So I deem it as all those words you use, impractical, expensive, unnecessary to use PU.

Have you tried a horsehair core? That would last longer

I honestly didn't know that was a thing. I tried goose feathers, but I wasn't happy with the outcome. I'll see about the horsehair, thanks.

It was until the mid-20th century, when PU foam became a thing

An upholster can also usually wash and reuse horsehair when reupholstering a piece of furniture upholstered with horsehair. It's very resilient stuff(ing). You can also get horsehair fabric for upholstery purposes; it apparently wears like cast iron.

Am not an upholsterer, but I work with one somewhat regularly when a client wants an upholstered piece.

I agree with a comment, which appears now to be deleted, effectively that monarch's have no place in democracy.

The presence of Charles Windsor in the HoL is an affront to democracy that we should do away with. These chairs represent a fraction of the baggage of tradition that IMO should be carefully unpicked and dispensed with; parliament really needs to continue the slow progression towards sovereignty of the demos and away from the trappings of imperial oppulence and monarchic power. The mace should be smashed, melted down and used to fund a memorial to the Crown.

Even if, as some argue, it is "only symbolic", the kowtowing of the demos to a person of inherited title is a symbolism that we should be rid of.

Nice site, but where's the 'Add to Cart' buttons?

You’ll have to invade for that — and then display it in your museum —

It doesn't end well though. Or does it?

I'm not going to milk this joke any further, but that would be a good Veo 3 prompt.

https://www.drewpritchard.co.uk/products/set-of-four-leather...

I picked up a pair of these for £5 at Winchester dump about 20 years ago. Needed scrubbing with wire wool, rewaxing, a few mortises needing packing, and reupholstering, as they had evidently been in someone’s garden for some time.

Similar to the thread from yesterday - amazing what some people just throw away.

Nice find. Were they period?

Seemed to have been - horsehair and shoddy stuffed and hessian webbing, oak, brass tacks, and very perished leather. I recognised them immediately as there were a few at the debating chamber at my university which had been gifted by some MP back in the day.

I’ve no idea if that dump is still the gold mine it once was - I ended up with several very nice club chairs, some Victorian wingback armchairs, and an absolutely enormous camelhair Persian rug - chairs all needed reupholstering (I became quite good at this quite quickly), and the rug just needed a damned good clean and lasted me a decade before it finally actually disintegrated. Oh, and a few 30’s valve radios which needed nothing other than new capacitors. I’d assume it was always the kids cleaning out dead mum’s place or what have you to refurnish with ikea.

That sounds amazing. Doubt there is a place anything like that near me

> All but one of these chairs are in use

Which one isn't?

If know nothing about the subject, but if I had to guess I would guess that the sovereign's throne isn't used casually even by the sovereign.

Edit: it's stated that the throne is used during only the "state opening of the parliament" so that means it's not used "day to day".

The same is stated for the Chair of State, so the sole unused chair can't be either of those.

The robing room chair of state

Apparently not - provided for the king to use when he's putting his crown on before the state opening of parliament.

https://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/building/pal...

Copilot says: "This chair, located directly to the left of the Speaker’s chair, remains vacant as a symbolic reminder of the time when the monarch’s messenger or royal representative would sit there."

... but I can't find a link to support this.

I think Copilot made that up.

Notice the seating behind the table in these two images, one of a session with John Berkow prosiding as speaker, I think it is under Cameron's government (noughties [1]); the other of Pitt the Younger addressing the House [2]. Neither shows a vacant seat. Perhaps it is confusing it with the opening of parliament when the Queen wasn't able to attend (2022 [3]) and her throne was left vacant?

The mace represents the king's authority in parliament, you can see it at the front edge of the table in both images ([1], [2]).

The monarch's messenger is Black Rod, they're the one who knocks on the door to call the MPs to go and listen to the "King's" Speech.

[1] https://cdn.britannica.com/25/99525-050-DCC15F00/Chamber-Hou... [2] https://cdn.britannica.com/03/129303-050-05283CEF/William-Pi... [3] https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/may/09/queen-to-mis...

> I think Copilot made that up.

Hmm, I guess I was suspicious. It's like the old bloke at the end of the bar, who always wants to have something interesting to say.

All of these chairs are upholstered. I've found it interesting that chairs were exclusively hard-surfaced for nearly all of human history, even among royalty who could afford a cushion. Hard chairs were seen as promoting discipline and moral uprightness while comfortable seating would have signalled weakness, decadence (in the archaic sense) or laziness.

Chairs themselves were a status symbol. Commoners would use stools or benches.

We must still not think cushioned chairs are that important, or we wouldn't make kids spend 13 years straight sitting 5+ hours a day in hard chairs.

Given the title, as good an excuse as any to point people to the Vsauce video "Do Chairs Exist?":

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXW-QjBsruE

(Can't believe a half-hour video on ontology has >13M views.)

I recently learned that the King is the only person in the UK that doesn't require a passport to travel.

Passports are delivered "in the name of the king", thus from this point of view it makes sense to skip the "I hand myself my own passport" step. So british.

Of course, I wonder what the rest of the world thinks about this, an individual with no passport. Surely there are some edge cases where it does not fit in procedures.

I assume when the British King travels to other countries, he is greeted by those countries with a state welcome.

I imagine Trump isn't accumulating passport stamps or lining up for customs when he flies to other countries in Air Force One.

In principle International Law says that all heads of state get all the same affordances as Diplomats, which certainly makes sense if you imagine the Diplomats as just messengers - if Bill Smith can be here because Bill is King Steve's messenger, obviously King Steve himself could come instead and isn't subject to your normal rules, makes sense.

In practice however... power matters. Eswatini isn't going to pretend it has the power to arrest Putin, but I can certainly imagine if Russia wanted to arrest the King of Eswatini they'd just do it - what's Eswatini going to do about it? If they've got a halfway plausible rationale, nobody wants to start a war over that, at least nobody who might win.

Likewise under the same legal theory neither Ireland nor South Africa could currently arrest Benjamin Netanyahu, despite the warrant for his arrest on a charge of crimes against humanity. But in practice I'm sure Natanyahu would rather not find out the hard way whether that theory holds up, in either Dublin or Cape Town. Israel has a substantial military force, and the Americans might back them, but, neither Ireland nor South Africa are defenceless and this sounds like a bad way to find out for sure.

One of the rare bare .uk TLD? (not .co.uk)

Easy to come by though. I own one. My main concern was when giving email addresses over the phone that people would automatically put .co.uk, but so far that hasn't actually happened!

I have a similar problem: For purely vanity reasons, I have a .co e-mail. Whenever giving it over the phone, I say something like "blah blah blah, dot co; no UK, just dot co". So far this has worked, but -- along with my difficult to spell domain -- I somewhat regret my decision!

It used to be much harder to get a bare UK domain. Restrictions were loosened in the early 2010s, with priority given to those who already owned a domain that was second level .co.uk etc.

Anyone can register `.uk` domains these days, although they're not super common for historical reasons.

Was Scott Chair the chair of Scott Blair?

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