An Aspiring Champion for Team GB
Meet Lilly Williams-Howell, a talented young skater from Prestatyn, in North Wales.
Lilly, who is now 11 years old, has been skating since age 7, and is now very close to realising her dream of representing her country. After a lot of training and practice, she now has the chance to skate at an international competition for Team GB. We talked to Lilly a little bit about her skating, and her hopes for the future.
What is a Referendum?
What is a Referendum?
There has been a lot of talk recently about the referendum on membership of the European Union. It seems that we cannot turn on the television without hearing about it! But what is a referendum?
A referendum is a vote, not an election by which we choose the people to represent us, but a choice in which all the people who can vote are asked to accept or reject (not accept) a course of action.
You can find out more about our main election, the General Election here.
What this means is that voters are called to say yes or no to a question. You might think that this sounds perfectly reasonable; why shouldn’t everyone have a say in what our country is doing? But it is not as simple as that.
Most questions are decided by votes in Parliament; after all, this is why we elect them to represent us, and in practical terms, we cannot all expect to be experts on all the subjects that must be covered by the government. So this doesn’t happen very often.
Referendums in the UK
In fact, in the UK there have only been twelve, yes, just 12 referendums since 1973. Twelve referendums over the course of 43 years, of which only two have covered the entire country. You can see that this is not a large number.
You might be surprised to learn that the first to cover the whole country was in 1975, and it was on membership of the European Economic Community (EEC), which is what the European Union was then known as. The second was in 2011, and related to a reform in the voting system known as Alternative Vote.
All the other major referendums in the UK have been related to questions of devolving power – or the governing of the distinct regions of England, Wales Scotland and Northern Ireland.
Origins of the Word Referendum
The word came into use in English in 1847. But at that time, it was mostly about Switzerland, whose system of direct democracy involved (and continues to involve) a large number of referendums. The word was coined, or created, from Latin referendum, which means “thing to be referred”. This is because, in a referendum, the decision is referred to the people.
The word referendum in Latin is from the verb referre. This verb means “to bring back, to take back’, which is the very essence of a referendum: a question is being brought back to the people who will be affected by it.
What is the Plural of Referendum?
A lot of people think that the plural of referendum is ‘referenda’, but is it really?
[perfectpullquote align=”full” bordertop=”false” cite=”The Oxford English Dictionary” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]Referendum is logically preferable as a plural form meaning ballots on one issue (as a Latin gerund referendum has no plural). The Latin plural gerundive referenda, meaning ‘things to be referred’, necessarily connotes a plurality of issues.[/perfectpullquote]
What does that mean?
A gerund is a grammar term used in Latin and other languages. In Latin, ‘referenda’ would mean ‘more than one thing to be considered’, whereas a referendum as a vote tends to be on one single issue.
We can use ‘referendum’ as a plural if we wish, but ‘referendums’ has also become normalised in English, as the word has been accepted in popular use in English, and of course the usual way to make a plural in English is to add ‘s’.
You can find out more about the British political system in these posts.
The Doncaster Book Awards – By Kids for Kids
There are lots of children’s book awards, but the Doncaster Book Awards is special. That’s because children decide not only which books they want to win, but even which ones are on the shortlist.
Doncaster is in Yorkshire, in the north of England. Lots of schools in the area, alongside many home-educated kids, register and take part in the awards. First, the children select the shortlist for different categories of books, and these are then voted on by all the schools and the children. Sometimes book publishers ask to get their books on the list, but the answer is always no. This one is by children, for children!
Stories from the Stables Part 2 – Topper. Ouch!
Our Stories from the Stables series from Carolyn Ward continues with a flea-bitten grey with a shocking attitude.
Topper. I swear that pony could scowl.
It was my week to ride him, and I had just hauled him all the way down to the outdoor school and stood him in the middle to check his girth and stirrups. As I reached under to tighten up the girth he turned his head toward me and eyeballed me, then stepped over with his nearside foreleg; and stamped on my left foot.
I hissed a very rude word and frantically pushed him to move him off. My foot sunk into the woodchip surface with his heavy weight crushing it down. By now he was still looking directly at me, so I started punching his shoulder to try and get him to step off. Today’s teacher was a crosspatch I have no fond memories of; if she had found out about it I’d have been bawled out for having my foot in the wrong place or something.