The Belgian papers this morning are full of the deal reached last night by politicians on the obscure but complex and painful issue of the partition of Brussels-Halle-Vilvoorde. I was fascinated to read that one of the details is that the directly elected component of the Belgian Senate is to be abolished.
The meat of the deal is that voters in the six faciliteitengemeenten / communes à facilités will get to choose between Flemish and Francophone lists of candidates for the European elections, and between Brussels and Flemish Brabant constituency lists of candidates for Chamber elections, and this will be anchored in the constitution. (Up to now, everyone in the whole of BHV got to choose from both lists for the European elections, so this will now be restricted to Brussels and the six gemeentencrazy plans to introduce directly elected members of the UK's House of Lords are being discussed, Belgium is going the other way…
Edited to add – I had missed the crucial point that the royals are to be kicked out. So Belgium is removing both directly elected members and hereditaries from its upper house.
The ones I have seen are either released in the past twenty years, or musicals. Surprised more people didn’t see Slumdog Millionaire, I thought it was quite widely seen – more comparable to The King’s Speech than, say, The Departed.