title: Metrication in the United Kingdom

text: The "White Paper on Metrication" was published in February 1972, and it set out the case for metrication and refuted the charge of metrication by stealth as metric units had been lawful for most purposes since 1897. It also reported that metrication would be necessary for the UK to join the European Common Market and that as British industry was exporting to all parts of the world they would benefit. It also reiterated the previous government's policy that metrication should be voluntary and hoped metrication would be mostly complete within ten years. The expectation was also expressed that with both the imperial and metric systems coexisting for many years, that consumers would gradually become familiar and comfortable with the metric system.


title: Metrication in the United Kingdom

text: Shortly after the publication of the White Paper, the Minister of Transport announced postponement of the metrication of speed limits, which had been scheduled for 1973. The rest of the metrication programme continued, with the following completion dates:


title: Metrication in the United Kingdom

text: Yet the target of completion by 1975 "in concert with the Commonwealth" was not achieved; Australia, New Zealand and South Africa all completed their metrication processes by 1980.


title: Metrication in the United Kingdom

text: In England and Wales, unlike Scotland, education was controlled at county council level rather than at national level. In 1967 the Department for Education alerted all local education authorities to the need to adapt to the metric system. In 1968 all bodies that had an interest in the examination system were invited to contribute to the discussion of both metrication and decimalisation in education. In science subjects, this meant a conversion from the cgs system to SI, in geography from the imperial system to SI while in mathematics it meant discarding the teaching of mixed unit arithmetic, a topic that took up a significant part of the time allocated in primary schools to arithmetic/mathematics and 7% of total time allocated to all subjects.


title: Metrication in the United Kingdom

text: In Scotland, virtually all examinations set from 1973 onwards have used SI, especially those connected with science and engineering. In England, each examination board had its own timetable – the Oxford Delegacy of Local Examinations, for example, announced a change to SI in 1968, with examinations in science and mathematics using SI by 1972, Geography in 1973 and Home Economics and various craft subjects being converted by the end of 1976. Pupils were hampered by a revolution in teaching methods that was taking place at the same time and a lack of coordination at the national level. According to a report in 1982, children were taught the relationship between decimal counting, decimal money and metric measurements, with time being the only quantity whose units were manipulated in a mixed-unit manner.


title: Metrication in the United Kingdom

text: The year 1988 saw the introduction, in England, Wales and Northern Ireland of the National Curriculum, in which SI is the principal system of measurement and calculation. Following devolution, there are now separate but similar curricula for state schools in England and Wales and Northern Ireland. They provide for pupils to be taught to measure, calculate and solve problems using the metric system, but also to be cognisant of the Imperial measurements still in common use and their approximate metric equivalents.


title: Metrication in the United Kingdom

text: Scotland has always had a separate education system Curriculum for Excellence and there the units of measurement taught in education are the SI or metric system.


title: Metrication in the United Kingdom

text: The retail industry proved difficult for the Metrication Board. The sector saw little benefit in metrication – competition was fierce and margins low. The opinions of the trade organisations with which the Metrication Board could negotiate were fragmented.


title: Metrication in the United Kingdom

text: Many sectors of the industry did agree to a programme coordinated by the Metrication Board, with metrication of pre-packaged goods being introduced on a commodity by commodity basis. In 1977 when a carpet retailing chain reneged on an industry-wide agreement to use metric units (carpeting at £8.36 per square yard looked more appealing in price to the customer than carpeting at £10.00 per square metre), it became necessary for the first time to use legislation to enforce metrication rather than to rely on a voluntary adoption of the system.


title: Metrication in the United Kingdom

text: By the beginning of 1980, 95% of the "basic shopping basket" of foods were sold in metric quantities, with only a few products not being sold in prescribed metric quantities. The final report of the Metrication Board catalogues dried vegetables, dried fruit, flour and flour products, oat products, cocoa and chocolate powder, margarine, instant coffee, pasta, biscuits, bread, sugar, corn flakes, salt, white fats, dripping and shredded suet as being sold by prescribed metric quantities while no agreement had been reached with the industry regarding jam, marmalade, honey, jelly preserves, syrup, cereal grain and starches.


title: Metrication in the United Kingdom

text: When the Metrication Board was abolished in 1980, agreement had been reached with the EEC regarding the use of certain imperial measures until the end of 1989, a date that was subsequently extended to 1999. By this date most pre-packaged goods were sold in metric quantities with loose goods and goods weighed in front of the customer continuing to be sold in imperial quantities. In 1999, when the British Government allowed the derogation for the use of imperial units to lapse, all goods (apart from beer, cider and milk in returnable containers) had to be priced in metric units.


title: Metrication in the United Kingdom

text: The changeover to selling of petrol by the litre rather than by the gallon took place after the Board was wound up. It was prompted by a technical shortcoming of petrol pump design: pumps (which were electro-mechanical) had been designed to be switchable between metric and imperial units, but had no provisions for prices above £1.999 per unit of fuel. Once the price of petrol rose above £1 per gallon, the industry requested that they be permitted to sell fuel by the litre rather than the gallon, enabling them to reduce the unit price by a factor of about 4.5 and so to extend the lives of existing pumps.


title: Metrication in the United Kingdom

text: In the United Kingdom, draught beer and cider are the only goods that may "not" be sold in metric units. Since 2011, the legal measures for these are  pint (189 ml),  pint (284 ml),  pint (379 ml), and subsequent multiples of the half-pint. Other alcoholic drinks for consumption on the premises are sold by metric measure, as the , and gill measures for spirits (whisky, gin, rum and vodka) were replaced by 25 ml and 35 ml measures on 1 January 1995, and wine can only be sold in 125 ml, 175 ml or 250 ml glasses; prior to 1995, the size of wine glasses was unregulated.


title: Metrication in the United Kingdom

text: Before the Hodgson Committee, the metrication process was already in operation. One example was the Ordnance Survey, the national mapping agency for Great Britain, which initiated the Retriangulation of Great Britain in 1936, using metric measures. A metric National Grid was used as the basis for maps published by the Ordnance Survey from World War II onwards; War Office maps had had a metric grid since 1920. The Ordnance Survey decided on full metrication in 1964. The one inch to the mile (1:63,360) range of maps started being replaced with the 1:50000 range in 1969. The metrication of Admiralty Charts began in 1967 as part of a modernisation programme. , road and street maps with primary scales in miles per inch are being marketed under the A-Z brand.


title: Metrication in the United Kingdom

text: Another example was the Met Office, which began publishing temperatures in both Celsius and Fahrenheit in 1962, and stopped using Fahrenheit in their official reports in 1970.


title: Metrication in the United Kingdom

text: Many other sectors metricated their operations in the late 1960s or early 1970s. This was not visible to the general public, though the financial pages of newspapers displayed metric prices, e.g. in the principal London commodity markets (the London Metal Exchange, and the various agricultural markets, but not the oil industry).


title: Metrication in the United Kingdom

text: The basis of the British metrication programme as announced in 1966 was a voluntary adoption of the metric programme, with the costs being absorbed where they fell. As a result, the costs of and savings from metrication in the United Kingdom have not been comprehensively determined, and studies have tended to focus on specific programmes. As the programme was voluntary, industry was free to take the most cost-efficient approach. In many cases this meant installing equipment calibrated in metric units as part of an ongoing maintenance cycle rather than as part of a specific metrication programme. Such an approach was taken by the gas industry: all newly installed meters record usage in cubic metres, but many older installations still measure in cubic feet.


title: Metrication in the United Kingdom

text: A 1970s study by the United Kingdom chemical industry estimated costs at £6m over seven years, or 0.25% of expected capital investment over the change period. Other estimates ranged from 0.04% of a large company's turnover spread over seven years to 2% of a small company's turnover for a single year. Many companies reported recouping their costs within a year as a result of improved production.


title: Metrication in the United Kingdom

text: Some 85% of United Kingdom exports go to metric countries (as only the United States, Liberia, Myanmar have not adopted the International System of Units), and there are costs to business of maintaining two production lines (one for exports to the US in US customary units, and the other for domestic sales and exports to the rest of the world in metric). These costs have been estimated at 3% of annual turnover by the Institute of Production Engineers, and at £1.1 billion (1980) per annum by the CBI. Regardless of United Kingdom metrication, goods produced in the United Kingdom for export to the United States would have still been labelled in non-metric units to comply with the US Fair Packaging and Labelling Act.


title: Metrication in the United Kingdom

text: In 1978 the cost of converting road signs from miles to kilometres in the United Kingdom was estimated to be between £7.5 million and £8.5 million (1978 prices). A 2005 report pointed to the metrication of the United Kingdom's two million road signs as the major cost of completing the United Kingdom's metrication programme. The Department for Transport (DfT) costed the replacement of all of the United Kingdom's road signs in a short period of time at between £565 million and £644 million. In 2008–09, before the outcome of the consultations that led to the EU directive 2009/3/EC was known, the DfT had a contingency of £746 million for the metrication of road signs.


title: Metrication in the United Kingdom

text: Historically, weights and measures legislation in the United Kingdom only applied to trade, but when the United Kingdom joined the European Economic Community, it had to align its legislation with EEC directives that were in place. These directives included EEC directive 71/354/EEC which related to weights and measures and which required the United Kingdom to formally define in law a number of units of measure, hitherto formally undefined in law, including those for electric current (ampere), electric potential difference (volt), temperature (degree Celsius and kelvin), pressure (pascal), energy (joule) and power (watt).Due to public opposition to metrication (a 1979 survey indicated that, of people who knew about the programme, 46% opposed it and 31% supported it), the programme stalled. In the late 1970s, the UK government asked the EEC to postpone the deadlines for the introduction of metric units. The result was the repeal of directive 71/354/EEC and the introduction of directive 80/181/EEC. This new directive contained a derogation allowing the continued use in the UK, until the end of 1989 (subsequently extended to 1995), of many imperial units then in use for trade. The directive should have been transposed into United Kingdom law by 30 June 1981, but this was not done until the Weights and Measures Act 1985, which also removed from the statute book many imperial units that had fallen into disuse as a result of the completed elements of the metrication programme.


title: Metrication in the United Kingdom

text: At the end of 1988, the derogation was extended generally until the end of 1994, and until the end of 1999 for the sale of loose goods. This amendment was transposed into United Kingdom law by the Units of Measurement Regulations 1994. At the same time, regulations were passed prescribing metric quantities by which the remaining pre-packaged retail commodities not yet defined in metric terms could be sold. From the beginning of 1995, pre-packed coffee, coffee mixtures and coffee bags had to be sold in the prescribed quantities of , , , , , , , , , , or a multiple of or of ; and honey, jam and marmalade other than diabetic jam or marmalade, jelly preserves and molasses, syrup and treacle in quantities of , , , , , or a multiple of .


title: Metrication in the United Kingdom

text: The number of units of measure to which derogations applied was reduced with effect from 1 October 1995 and reduced further with effect from 1 January 2000. A direct result of the changes that were effective from 1 January 2000 was the requirement that most loose goods sold by weight, volume or length (for example, potatoes or tomatoes that were sold loose, or cheese or meat that was cut or weighed in front of the customer) must be priced and measured using metric units.


title: Metrication in the United Kingdom

text: The use of the acre as the primary unit for land registration was officially replaced by the hectare on 1 January 2010, under an EU ruling. The acre is still used as a supplementary unit alongside the hectare for land registration.


title: Metrication in the United Kingdom

text: Since 1 January 2010, the remaining non-metric units, allowed by United Kingdom law without supplementary indicators for economic, public health, public safety or administrative use, are limited to:


title: Metrication in the United Kingdom

text: Goods and services sold by a description, as opposed to a price per unit quantity, are not covered by weights and measures legislation; thus, a fence panel sold as "6 foot by 6 foot" is legal, as is a 6 x 4 inch photograph frame, but a pole sold as "50 pence per linear foot", with no accompanying metric price, would be illegal.


title: Metrication in the United Kingdom

text: In response to the specific requirements of the United Kingdom and of Ireland, both of which were in the process of converting to the metric system, Directive 80/181/EEC incorporated a provision that any unit of measure could be followed by a "supplementary indicator", provided that the supplementary indicator was not the dominant unit and that it was "... expressed in characters no larger than those of the corresponding indication ...". Initially this provision was to have expired in 1989, but it was extended first to 1999 and then to 2009. During the 2007 consultations on the revision of the directive, strong representations were made to retain this provision, as its removal would impede trade with the United States. When the directive was revised in 2009, the "sunset clause" was removed from the text.


title: Metrication in the United Kingdom

text: The EU directive gives no guidance as to what units may or may not be used as supplementary indicators, but British legislation has restricted the units that may be used in this way for purposes of trade to specified imperial units only.


title: Metrication in the United Kingdom

text: Furthermore, in the United Kingdom it is still common to see imperial packaging sizes marked with metric units. For example, most jars of jam, packs of sausages and tins of golden syrup are marked 454 g.


title: Metrication in the United Kingdom

text: There are no restrictions on the units that consumers can use when asking for goods, and the use of supplementary indicators and dual-measure weighing scales (provided these have been calibrated in metric) means that a consumer can see an imperial price, request an imperial quantity and be supplied with the imperial quantity, provided that the seller legally weighs out and sells the metric equivalent.


title: Metrication in the United Kingdom

text: In its initial form, the scope of directive 80/181/EEC was restricted to "economic, public health, public safety and administrative" purposes only. An outcome of the 2007 consultations was a proposal by the EU Commission to extend the scope of the directive to include "consumer protection" and "environmental issues". This was implemented by removing the phrase limiting the scope of the directive, thereby extending it to all matters that come under the ambit of the Internal Market Chapter of the EU Treaty.


title: Metrication in the United Kingdom

text: The directive specifically excluded units of measurement used in international treaties relating to rail traffic, aviation and shipping such as expressing aircraft altitude in feet.


title: Metrication in the United Kingdom

text: The United Kingdom's legislation of 2009 that implemented these changes made no reference to the extension of the directive's scope.


title: Metrication in the United Kingdom

text: During the 1990s, a series of statutory instruments relating to weighing devices and to the sale of pre-packaged goods were issued to ensure that United Kingdom law on metrology was harmonised with that of its EEC partners. In line with EEC practice, the meaning of weights displayed on pre-packaged goods was changed in 1980 to show the average weight of each item in the batch rather than the guaranteed minimum weight of each individual item. The EU Measuring Instruments Directive (Directive 2004/22/EU) which intends to create a common market for measuring instruments across the countries of the EU came into force on 30 October 2006 with a ten-year transition period.


title: Metrication in the United Kingdom

text: The EU non-automatic weighing instrument directive (directive 2009/23/EC), which came into force in 2009 and was superseded by directive 2014/31/EU, codified existing regulations regarding the harmonisation of non-automatic weighing devices used for trade, medical purposes or in the preparation of evidence to be heard in court. The directive identified four classes of weighing device ranging from Class I (having a minimum accuracy of 1 part in 50,000) to class IIII ("sic") (having a minimum accuracy of 1 part in 100). Devices that fall within the scope of the directive are required to be recalibrated at regular intervals and to have an output showing SI units, except for those used for weighing precious metals or stones. Secondary indications may be shown, provided that they cannot be mistaken for primary indications.


title: Metrication in the United Kingdom

text: The impact of this directive in the United Kingdom is that most traders cannot legally use weighing devices calibrated in units other than SI units. In 2000, after the deadline for the cessation of selling loose produce by imperial units had passed, some traders continued to sell produce from their market stalls using imperial-only scales. They were variously prosecuted for using unlawful scales, giving short measure and failing to display unit price per kilogram. Five traders, who became known as the Metric Martyrs, appealed unsuccessfully to the High Court, were refused appeal to the House of Lords, and appealed unsuccessfully to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).


title: Metrication in the United Kingdom

text: A LACORS report published in March 2010 highlighting widescale use of inappropriate scales in hospitals, sometimes of domestic quality, recommended that on safety grounds NHS hospitals should use Class III (or better) metric-only scales. A Department of Health alert was subsequently sent to all NHS trusts endorsing these recommendations.


title: Metrication in the United Kingdom

text: After the UK government's White Paper on metrication was published in February 1972, the journal "New Scientist" reported the lack of urgency in the minister's handling of the issue and described how the government refused to use its purchasing power to advance the metrication process. It quoted one (unnamed) metricationalist as saying "[The White Paper] is not firming things up at all. It will turn us into a dual country".


title: Metrication in the United Kingdom

text: Studies of the British metrication programme included two by US government agencies: NASA in October 1976 and the National Bureau of Standards in April 1979. Both reports noted that the British metrication programme lacked leadership from government. This manifested itself in many ways including:


title: Metrication in the United Kingdom

text: The involvement of the European Commission led metrication to be linked in public debate with Euroscepticism, and traditionally Eurosceptic parts of the British press often exaggerated or invented the extent of enforced metrication. Example stories include the "Daily Star", which on 17 January 2001 claimed that beer would soon have to be sold by the litre in pubs, something not demanded in any EU directive.


title: Metrication in the United Kingdom

text: Reaction to the UK Metric Association report "A Very British Mess" (2004), the executive summary of which was published in "Science in Parliament", was mixed: the "Daily Telegraph" suggested that the UKMA's assertion of hostility or indifference by the British public to the metric system was due to the lack of cultural empathy rather than it being "foreign or European", while the "Economist" said that retreat [to the imperial system] was impossible and the current impasse costly.


title: Metrication in the United Kingdom

text: An "Ipsos MORI" telephone survey conducted in September 2007 for "The Sun" newspaper, entitled "Northern Rock, Metric Measurements and the EU Constitutional Treaty" found significant opposition to metrication in response to the question, "How strongly would you support and oppose Britain switching to use entirely metric measurements, rather than continuing to use traditional units?": The greatest variation in opinion was between tabloid and broadsheet readers rather than by age, social class or voting intention.


title: Metrication in the United Kingdom

text: In its final report [1980], the Metrication Board wrote "Today metric units are used in many important areas of British life – including education; agriculture; construction; industrial materials; much of manufacturing; the wholesaling of petrol, milk, cheese and textiles; fatstock markets and many port fish auctions, nearly all the principal prepacked foods; posts and telecommunications: most freight and customs tariffs; all new and revised Ordnance Survey maps; and athletics. Nevertheless, taken as a whole, Britain is far from being wholly metric." The report major identified areas that had not yet been metricated as being the retail petrol trade [metricated in 1984], retail sale of loose goods [metricated in 2000] and road signs [not metricated].


title: Metrication in the United Kingdom

text: The regulations that came into force on 1 January 2000 regarding the sale of loose goods effectively made it mandatory to use metric units in the retail industry for most products, though supplementary indicators using certain imperial units were still permitted under UK law. Various price-marking orders prescribed the sizes in which products could be marketed. Some of these restrictions, such as wine being sold in 750 ml bottles, were derived from EU directives, while others, such as the production of bread in 400 g or 800 g loaves, were applicable to the UK only. The principle of the Internal Market, backed up by a judgment of the European Court of Justice, required that any product that was legally produced anywhere in the European Union could, in most cases, be sold anywhere in the EU. Thus a 500 g packet of rye bread, legally manufactured in Germany, could be sold in the United Kingdom even though it was not lawful under British law for a British baker to produce an identical 500 g packet of bread.


title: Metrication in the United Kingdom

text: A consultation by the EU aimed at bypassing this impasse was launched in 2004. The outcome was Directive 2007/45/EC, which deregulated prescribed packaging of most products, leaving only wines and liqueurs subject to prescribed EU-wide pre-packaging legislation. While this effectively undid much of the work done by the Metrication Board by deregulating prescribed sizing for over 40 products, the law relating to labelling of products has remained unchanged.


title: Metrication in the United Kingdom

text: The civil service is bound by law to follow EU directives relating to public administration. Government disseminators of information include the Office for National Statistics and the Ordnance Survey office. Both of these, being government departments, use metric units in their work.


title: Metrication in the United Kingdom

text: Standards pertaining to transport infrastructure were metricated using soft conversions, as part of the general metrication of the engineering industry – the standard railway track gauges fixed at in 1845 was redefined as 1,435 mm – a nominal decrease of 0.1 mm but within the engineering tolerances.


title: Metrication in the United Kingdom

text: Motorway marker posts used by road maintenance teams and emergency services demarcate locations in multiples of 100 m. Standards relating to the design and building of new road and rail vehicles have been metric since the engineering changeover in the 1970s. Imperial units have been retained for both road and railway signage except on new railways such as the Channel Tunnel Rail Link, and the Tyne and Wear Metro and London Tramlink which along with all other modern British tram systems also operate in metric. The Cambrian Line has also changed to metric units with the change to ERMTS signalling. London Underground has converted to using metric units for distances but not for speeds.


title: Metrication in the United Kingdom

text: Apart from the sale of fuel, which was metricated in the 1980s, motorists have seen little metrication. Speedometers and mandatory information on car advertisements such as fuel consumption are given in both metric and imperial units. The 1994 TSRGD permitted the use of metric units alongside imperial units for width and height warning signs and dual metric/imperial signs became mandatory from March 2015. Distances and speed restrictions are shown only in imperial units.


title: Metrication in the United Kingdom

text: The UK Metric Association (UKMA) commissioned YouGov to carry out a survey to investigate "public understanding and use of metric and imperial units and of public support for completing the metric changeover". The UKMA executive summary of results of the September and November 2013 survey, published in 2014, presents the following points as the key results:


title: Metrication in the United Kingdom

text: The sample size was 1,978 adults in September and 1,878 in November. The results were weighted and are said by YouGov to be representative of all GB adults (aged 18+).


title: Metrication in the United Kingdom

text: A number of advocacy groups exist to promote either the metric or the imperial system. The groups include:


title: Metrication in the United Kingdom

text: With the departure of the UK from the European Union on 31 January 2020, the country is no longer bound by EU regulations for commerce in England, Scotland, and Wales. In September 2021, Minister of State for EU Relations David Frost announced the government would be reviewing UK rules requiring metric weights on most goods for sale.


title: Cargo airline

text: Cargo airlines (or air freight carriers, and derivatives of these names) are airlines mainly dedicated to the transport of cargo by air. Some cargo airlines are divisions or subsidiaries of larger passenger airlines.


title: Cargo airline

text: In 2018, airline cargo traffic represented 262,333 million tonne-kilometres with a 49.3% load factor: 136583/262333*100round1% for dedicated cargo operations, and 125750/262333*100round1% within mixed operations (belly freight of passenger airliners).


title: Cargo airline

text: Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, adjusted cargo capacity fell by 4.4% in February while air cargo demand also fell by 9.1%, but the near-halt in passenger traffic cut capacity even deeper as half of global air cargo is carried in passenger jets’ bellies.


title: Cargo airline

text: Air freight rates rose as a consequence, from $0.80 per kg for transatlantic cargoes to $2.50-4 per kg, enticing passenger airlines to operate cargo-only flights through the use of preighters, while cargo airlines bring back into service fuel-guzzling stored aircraft, helped by falling oil prices.


title: Cargo airline

text: Air transport is a component of many international logistics networks, managing and controlling the flow of goods, energy, information and other resources like products, services, and people, from the source of production to the marketplace. Logistics involves the geographical repositioning of raw materials, work in process, and finished inventories.


title: Cargo airline

text: Larger cargo airlines tend to use new or recently built aircraft to carry their freight. However, many still utilize older aircraft, including those no longer suited for passenger service, like the Boeing 707, Boeing 727, Douglas DC-8, McDonnell Douglas DC-10, McDonnell Douglas MD-11, Airbus A300, and the Ilyushin Il-76. Examples of the 80+-year-old Douglas DC-3 are still flying around the world carrying cargo (as well as passengers). Short range turboprop airliners such as the Antonov An-12, Antonov An-26, Fokker Friendship, and British Aerospace ATP are being modified to accept standard air freight pallets to extend their working lives. This normally involves the replacement of glazed windows with opaque panels, the strengthening of the cabin floor and insertion of a broad top-hinged door in one side of the fuselage.


title: Cargo airline

text: The Antonov An-225 "Mriya", an enlarged version of the Antonov An-124 "Ruslan", was the world's largest aircraft, used for transporting large shipments and oversized cargos.


title: Cargo airline

text: Usage of large military airplanes for commercial purposes, pioneered by Ukraine's Antonov Airlines in the 1990s, has allowed new types of cargo in aerial transportation.


title: Cargo airline

text: In the past, some cargo airlines would carry a few passengers from time to time on flights, and UPS Airlines once unsuccessfully tried a passenger charter airline division.


title: Cargo airline

text: The Boeing 747 is also widely used as a cargo aircraft. The latest aircraft in the wide-body series is the Boeing 747-8.


title: Cargo airline

text: The following are freight divisions of passenger airlines operating their own or leased freighter aircraft. Some have shut down or merged with others:


title: Cargo airline

text: The following are freight divisions without freighter fleets, using passenger aircraft holds or having other cargo airlines fly on their behalf. Some of these previously had freighters:


title: Arabic music

text: Arabic music or Arab music () is the music of the Arab world with all its diverse music styles and genres. Arabic countries have many rich and varied styles of music and also many linguistic dialects, with each country and region having their own traditional music.


title: Arabic music

text: Arabic music has a long history of interaction with many other regional musical styles and genres. It represents the music of all the peoples that make up the Arab world today, all the 22 states.


title: Arabic music

text: Pre-Islamic Arabia was the cradle of many intellectual achievements, including music, musical theory and the development of musical instruments. In Yemen, the main center of pre-Islamic Arab sciences, literature and arts, musicians benefited from the patronage of the Kings of Sabaʾ who encouraged the development of music. For many centuries, the Arabs of Hejaz recognized that the best real Arabian music came from Yemen, and Hadhrami minstrels were considered to be superior. Pre-Islamic Arabian Peninsula music was similar to that of Ancient Middle Eastern music. Most historians agree that there existed distinct forms of music in the Arabian peninsula in the pre-Islamic period between the 5th and 7th century AD. Arab poets of that time—called "shu`ara' al-Jahiliyah" (Arabic: شعراء الجاهلية) or "Jahili poets", meaning "the poets of the period of ignorance"—used to recite poems with a high notes.


title: Arabic music

text: It was believed that Jinns revealed poems to poets and music to musicians. The choir at the time served as a pedagogic facility where the educated poets would recite their poems. Singing was not thought to be the work of these intellectuals and was instead entrusted to women with beautiful voices who would learn how to play some instruments used at that time such as the drum, the lute or the rebab, and perform the songs while respecting the poetic metre. The compositions were simple and every singer would sing in a single "maqam". Among the notable songs of the period were the "huda" (from which the "ghina" derived), the "nasb", "sanad", and "rukbani".


title: Arabic music

text: Both compositions and improvisations in traditional Arabic music are based on the "maqam" system. "Maqams" can be realized with either vocal or instrumental music, and do not include a rhythmic component.


title: Arabic music

text: Al-Kindi (801–873 AD) was a notable early theorist of Arabic music. He joined several others like al-Farabi in proposing the addition of a makeshift fifth string to the oud. He published several tracts on musical theory, including the cosmological connotations of music. He identified twelve tones on the Arabic musical scale, based on the location of fingers on and the strings of the oud.


title: Arabic music

text: Abulfaraj (897–967) wrote the "Kitab al-Aghani", an encyclopedic collection of poems and songs that runs to over 20 volumes in modern editions.


title: Arabic music

text: Al-Farabi (872–950) wrote a notable book on Islamic music titled "Kitab al-Musiqa al-Kabir" (The Great Book of Music). His pure Arabian tone system is still used in Arabic music.


title: Arabic music

text: Al-Ghazali (1059–1111) wrote a treatise on music in Persia which declared, "Ecstasy means the state that comes from listening to music".


title: Arabic music

text: In 1252, Safi al-Din developed a unique form of musical notation, where rhythms were represented by geometric representation. A similar geometric representation would not appear in the Western world until 1987, when Kjell Gustafson published a method to represent a rhythm as a two-dimensional graph.


title: Arabic music

text: By the 11th century, Islamic Iberia had become a center for the manufacture of instruments. These goods spread gradually throughout France, influencing French troubadours, and eventually reaching the rest of Europe. The English words lute, rebec, and naker are derived from Arabic oud, rabab or Maghreb rebab, and naqareh.


title: Arabic music

text: Bartol Gyurgieuvits (1506–1566) spent 13 years as a slave in the Ottoman empire. After escaping, he published "De Turvarum ritu et caermoniis" in Amsterdam in 1544. It is one of the first European books to describe music in Islamic society.


title: Arabic music

text: In the early 20th century, Egypt was the first in a series of Arab countries to experience a sudden emergence of nationalism, as it became independent after 2000 years of foreign rule. Any English, French or European songs got replaced by national Egyptian music. Cairo became a center for musical innovation.


title: Arabic music

text: Female singers were some of the first to take a secular approach. Egyptian performer Umm Kulthum and Lebanese singer Fairuz were notable examples of this. Both have been popular through the decades that followed and both are considered legends of Arabic music. Across the Mediterranean, Moroccan singer Zohra Al Fassiya was the first female performer to achieve wide popularity in the Maghreb region, performing traditional Arab Andalusian folk songs and later recording numerous albums of her own.


title: Arabic music

text: During the 1940s and 1960s, Arabic music began to take on a more Western tone – Egyptian artists Umm Kulthum and Abdel Halim Hafez along with composers Mohammed Abdel Wahab and Baligh Hamdi pioneered the use of western instruments in Egyptian music. By the 1970s several other singers had followed suit and a strand of Arabic pop was born. Arabic pop usually consists of Western styled songs with Arabic instruments and lyrics. Melodies are often a mix between Eastern and Western. Beginning in the mid-1980s, Lydia Canaan, musical pioneer widely regarded as the first rock star of the Middle East fused English lyrics and Western sound with Middle-Eastern quarter tones and microtones and became the first internationally successful Lebanese recording artist.


title: Arabic music

text: Western pop music was also being influenced by Arabic music in the early 1960s, leading to the development of surf music, a rock music genre that later gave rise to garage rock and punk rock. Surf rock pioneer Dick Dale, a Lebanese American guitarist, was greatly influenced by the Arabic music he learnt from his uncle, particularly the oud melodies and skills which he later applied to his electric guitar playing when recording surf rock in the early 1960s.


title: Arabic music

text: In the 1990s, several Arab artists have taken up such a style including Amr Diab, Moustafa Amar, Najwa Karam, Elissa, Nawal Al Zoghbi, Nancy Ajram, Haifa Wehbe, Angham, Fadl Shaker, Majida Al Roumi, Wael Kfoury, Asalah Nasri, Myriam Fares, Carole Samaha, Yara, Samira Said, Hisham Abbas, Kadhem Al Saher, Mostafa Amar, Ehab Tawfik, Mohamed Fouad, Diana Haddad, Mohamed Mounir, Latifa, Cheb Khaled, George Wassouf, Hakim, Fares Karam, Julia Boutros, and Amal Hijazi.


title: Arabic music

text: Due to Iraq's diversity and the long history, the country encompasses the music of a number of ethnic groups and musical genres. In 1936, Iraq Radio was established by two of Iraq's most prominent performers and composers, the Iraqi Jewish musicians, Saleh and Daoud al-Kuwaity with an ensemble, with the exception of the percussion player. The brothers had a pioneering role in the modern music of Iraq. Saleh was considered the father of Iraqi maqam as he was the pioneer of its first song. He also composed for the most famous singers of that era in Iraq and in the Arab world, such as Salima Murad, Afifa Iskandar, Nazem al-Ghazali, Umm Kulthum, Mohammed Abdel Wahab.


title: Arabic music

text: One of the main reasons for the predominance of Jewish instrumentalists in early 20th century Iraqi music was a prominent school for blind Jewish children in Baghdad, which was founded in the late 1920s by the great "qanunji" ("qanun player") Joseph Hawthorne ("Yusef Za'arur") (Hebrew: דנדהי ללוואלד-יוסף זערור).


title: Arabic music

text: Salima Pasha was one of the most famous singers of the 1930s–1940s. The respect and adoration for Pasha were unusual at the time, since public performance by women was considered shameful by some countries in the region, and most female singers were recruited from brothels.


title: Arabic music

text: The music in Iraq began to take a more Western tone during the 1960s and 1970s, notably by Ilham Madfai, with his Western guitar stylings with traditional Iraqi music which made him a popular performer in his native country and throughout the Middle East.


title: Arabic music

text: The majority of musical instruments used in European medieval and classical music have roots in Arabic musical instruments that were adopted from the medieval Arab world. They include the lute, which shares an ancestor with the "oud"; rebec (an ancestor of the violin) from "rebab", guitar from "qitara", naker from "naqareh", adufe from "al-duff", alboka from "al-buq", anafil from "al-nafir", exabeba (a type of flute) from "al-shabbaba", atabal (a type of bass drum) from "al-tabl", atambal from "al-tinbal", the balaban, castanet from "kasatan", and sonajas de azófar from "sunuj al-sufr".


title: Arabic music

text: The Arabic rabāb, also known as the spiked fiddle, is the earliest known bowed string instrument and the ancestor of all European bowed instruments, including the rebec, the Byzantine lyra, and the violin. The Arabic oud in Arab music shares an ancestor with the European lute. The oud is also cited as a precursor to the modern guitar. The guitar has roots in the four-string oud, brought to Iberia by the Moors in the 8th century. A direct ancestor of the modern guitar is the "" (Moorish guitar), which was in use in Spain by the 12th century. By the 14th century, it was simply referred to as a guitar.


title: Arabic music

text: A number of medieval conical bore instruments were likely introduced or popularized by Arab musicians, including the xelami (from "zulami").


title: Arabic music

text: Some scholars believe that the troubadors may have had Arabian origins, with Magda Bogin stating that the Arab poetic and musical tradition was one of several influences on European "courtly love poetry". Évariste Lévi-Provençal and other scholars stated that three lines of a poem by William IX of Aquitaine were in some form of Arabic, indicating a potential Andalusian origin for his works. The scholars attempted to translate the lines in question and produced various different translations. The medievalist Istvan Frank contended that the lines were not Arabic at all, but instead the result of the rewriting of the original by a later scribe.


title: Arabic music

text: The theory that the troubadour tradition was created by William after his experience of Moorish arts while fighting with the Reconquista in Spain has been championed by Ramón Menéndez Pidal and Idries Shah. George T. Beech states that there is only one documented battle that William fought in Spain, and it occurred towards the end of his life. Beech adds that William and his father did have Spanish individuals within their extended family, and that while there is no evidence he himself knew Arabic, he may have been friendly with some Europeans who could speak the language. Others state that the notion that William created the concept of troubadours is itself incorrect, and that his "songs represent not the beginnings of a tradition but summits of achievement in that tradition."


title: Arabic music

text: Most scholars believe that Guido of Arezzo's Solfège musical notation system had its origins in a Latin hymn, but others suggest that it may have had Arabic origins instead. It has been argued that the Solfège syllables ("do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, ti") may have been derived from the syllables of an Arabic solmization system "Durr-i-Mufassal" ("Separated Pearls") ("dal, ra, mim, fa, sad, lam"). This was first proposed by Meninski in his "Thesaurus Linguarum Orientalum" (1680). However, there is no documentary evidence for this theory, and no Arabic musical manuscripts using sequences from the Arabic alphabet are known to exist. Henry George Farmer believes that there is no firm evidence on the origins of the notation, and therefore the Arabian origin theory and the hymnal origin theories are equally credible.


title: Arabic music

text: Ethnomusicologist Ali Jihad Racy talks about the improvisation style of music that is present in much of the Mediterranean world. Racy discusses the regional attitudes towards improvisation music in the Middle East describing that improvisation can suggest casual or untrained or even non-professional music-making. This is held only by certain communities within the Arabic world and can differ from each region or community. Some regions look at improvisation music as the intuitive artistic ability that momentarily expresses the feeling of the player. Other groups tend to view improvisation as though it is the fulfillment of music transcending the classical maqam style or other styles of music playing. Other schools of thought on improvisation music, in the Arab world, believe that improvisation music shows a lack of understanding in musical training. Racy does not specify which groups have what views. Rather, the discussion is more focused on the idea that the Arabic music world is not monolithic in its view on improvisation in music. Other groups view improvisation as only learned through trial and error taking many years to perfect thus being a style played professionals.


title: Arabic music

text: A respectable tradition in improvisation music is known as Taqasim. Taqasim music uses a maqam and improvises the form or structure of the song, which creates a cathartic experience for the listener. Further, the improvisation aspects go beyond the form and are expressed in the quartertones of the song. This tradition historically was performed as a chant. Now it is used by performers on the oud/ud, violin, or nay, a type of flute. This style of improvisation is known for the effects it can conjure from a listener. Listeners have been known to laugh, cry, and shout, all from different parts of the same performance due to the improvisation music aligning exactly to draw extreme emotion from someone.


title: Arabic music

text: Franco-Arabic music is a popular form of West-meets-East style of music, similar in many respects to modern Arabic Pop. This blend of western and eastern music was popularized by artists such as Dalida (Egypt), Sammy Clark (Lebanon), and Aldo from Australia. Although Franco-Arabic music includes many forms of cross-cultural blending between the West and the Middle East, musically the genre crosses over many lines as is seen in songs that incorporate Arabic and Italian, Arabic and French and, of course, Arabic and English styles or lyrics.


title: Arabic music

text: There has also been a rise of R&B, reggae and hip hop influenced Arab music in the past couple of years. These songs usually feature a rapper in a traditional Arab pop song (such as Ishtar's song 'Habibi Sawah'). The Moroccan singer Elam Jay developed a contemporary version of the Gnawa genre that is fused with R&B which he named "Gnawitone Styla". Another variation of contemporary Gnawa played in Morocco is introduced by Darga. Based in Casablanca, the group fuses Gnawa with Reggae. Political Reggae artists such as TootArd from the occupied Syrian Golan Heights and from Haifa (Originally from Iqrith) started gaining popularity in Palestine in 2011 after the YouTube premiere of a song about the Arab Spring (mainly the Tunisian revolution), called "The Green Revolution", sung by them and an ensemble of Palestinian artists, most notable among them being Mahmoud Jrere of DAM. Notable is Shadia Mansour, a Palestinian British rapper known as "The First Lady of Arab Hip Hop." Much of her music focuses on the Palestinian cause.


title: Arabic music

text: Also there is the Moroccan pop introduced by the Moroccan singer Oussama Belhcen who's mixing between the American and the Moroccan music in his songs.


title: Arabic music

text: However certain artists have taken to using full R&B and reggae beats and styling such as Darine. This has been met with mixed critical and commercial reaction. As of now it is not a widespread genre.


title: Arabic music

text: Electronic dance music is another genre to come out into popularity. Often, songs in this genre would combine electronic musical instruments with traditional Middle Eastern instruments. Artists like Richii popularized this style with songs like "Ana Lubnaneyoun".


title: Arabic music

text: Another popular form of West meets East, Arabic jazz is also popular, with many songs using jazz instruments. Early jazz influences began with the use of the saxophone by musicians like Samir Suroor, in the "oriental" style. The use of the saxophone in that manner can be found in Abdel Halim Hafez's songs, as well as Kadim Al Sahir and Rida Al Abdallah today. The first mainstream jazz elements were incorporated into Arabic music by the Rahbani brothers. Fairuz's later work was almost exclusively made up of jazz songs, composed by her son Ziad Rahbani. Ziad Rahbani also pioneered today's oriental jazz movement, to which singers including Rima Khcheich, Salma El Mosfi, and (on occasion) Latifa adhere. We can also find a lot of jazz music in Mohamed Mounir's songs starting from his first album Alemony Eneeki in 1977, and he is considered to be the King of Arabic Jazz and Arabic Music generally. Another notable performer of this genre is the Palestinian singer Reem Kelani who blends jazz with Arabic music, both in her own compositions and in her arrangements of traditional songs.


title: Arabic music

text: Rock music is popular all around the world, the Arab world being no exception. There have been many Arab rock bands along the years that fused rock, metal and alternative rock sounds with traditional Arab instruments.


title: Arabic music

text: Arabic rock has been gaining a lot of attention lately in the Middle East with bands like JadaL, Kayan, Autostrad, El Morabba3 and Akher Zapheer of Jordan, The Wanton Bishops, Mashrou' Leila, Adonis and Meen of Lebanon, Cairokee, Massar Egbari, Sahara, Wyvern and Cartoon Killerz of Egypt, Khalas, and Chaos of Palestine and Acrassicauda of Iraq. The Tunisian rock band Myrath is gaining popularity worldwide. The band Hoba Hoba Spirit from Morocco is also gaining popularity, especially in the Maghrebi region. Rachid Taha, an Algerian musician, played a fusion of rock and raï.


title: Arabic music

text: Recently, there has been a new wave of bands emerging in the underground scene across the Arab world. These include Shaghaf, Khayal, Sada That, Code Masr and Hawas of Egypt and Ayloul of Lebanon.


title: Arabic music

text: The world of modern Arabic music has long been dominated by musical trends that have emerged from Cairo, Egypt. The city is generally considered one of the important cultural centers in the Arab world. Innovations in popular music via the influence of other regional styles have also abounded from Morocco to Saudi Arabia. In recent years, Beirut has become an important city where singers can fluently sing in various Arabic Dialects. Other regional styles that have enjoyed popular music status throughout the Arab world, including:


title: Arabic music

text: Arabic religious music includes Jewish (Pizmonim and Baqashot), Christian, and Islamic music. However, Islamic music, including the "Tajwid" or recitation of Qur'an readings, is structurally equivalent to Arabic secular music, while Christian Arab music has been influenced by Syriac Orthodox, Catholic, Greek Orthodox, Anglican, Coptic, and Maronite church music.


title: Arabic music

text: Secular art musical genres include maqam al-iraqi, andalusi nubah, muwashshah, Fijiri songs, qasidah, layali, mawwal, taqsim, bashraf, sama'i, tahmilah, dulab, sawt, and liwa.


title: Arabic music

text: Much of Arabic music is characterized by an emphasis on melody and rhythm, as opposed to harmony. There are some genres of Arabic music that are polyphonic, but typically, Arabic music is homophonic.


title: Arabic music

text: The basis of Arabic music is the maqam (pl. maqamat), which looks like the mode, but is not quite the same. The tonic note, dominant note, and ending note (unless modulation occurs) are generally determined by the maqam used. Arabic maqam theory as described in literature over the ages names between 90 and 110 maqams, that are grouped into larger categories known as fasilah. Fasilah are groupings of maqams whose first four primary pitches are shared in common.


title: Arabic music

text: The maqam consists of at least two "ajnas", or scale segments. "Ajnas" is the plural form of "jins", which in Arabic comes from the Latin word "genus", meaning "type". In practice, a jins is either a trichord (three notes), a tetrachord (four notes), or a pentachord (five notes). A maqam usually covers only one octave (usually two ajnas), but can cover more. Like the melodic minor scale, some maqamat use different ajnas when descending and ascending. Due to continuous innovation and the emergence of new ajnas, and because most music scholars have not reached consensus on the subject, a solid figure for the total number of ajnas in use is uncertain. In practice, however, most musicians would agree there are at least eight major ajnas: "rast", "bayat", "sikah", "hijaz", "saba", "kurd", "nahawand", and "ajam", and commonly used variants such as "nakriz", "athar kurd", "sikah beladi", "saba zamzama". For example, "Mukhalif" is a rare jins (in the Sikah) family used almost exclusively in Iraq, and it is not used in combination with other ajnas.


title: Arabic music

text: Unlike the tradition of Western music, Arabic music contains microtones, which are notes that lie between notes in the Western chromatic scale. While notes in the chromatic scale are separated by semitones (or half steps), notes in Arabic music can be separated by quarter tones. In some treatments of theory, the quarter tone scale or all twenty four tones should exist, but according to Yūsuf Shawqī (1969), fewer tones are used in practice.


title: Arabic music

text: Additionally, in 1932, at the Cairo Congress of Arab Music held in Cairo, Egypt—and attended by such Western luminaries as Béla Bartók and Henry George Farmer—experiments were done that determined conclusively that the notes in actual use differ substantially from an even-tempered 24-tone scale. Furthermore, the intonation of many of those notes differ slightly from region to region (Egypt, Turkey, Syria, Iraq).


title: Arabic music

text: As a result of these findings, the following recommendation was issued: "The tempered scale and the natural scale should be rejected. In Egypt, the Egyptian scale is to be kept with the values, which were measured with all possible precision. The Turkish, Syrian, and Iraqi scales should remain what they are..." Both in modern practice, and evident in recorded music over the course of the last century, several differently-tuned Es in between the E-flat and E-natural of the Western Chromatic scale are used, that vary according to the types of maqams and ajnas used, and the region in which they are used.


title: Arabic music

text: Musicians and teachers refer to these in-between notes as quarter tones, using "half-flat" or "half-sharp" as a designation for the in-between flats and sharps, for ease of nomenclature. Performance and teaching of the exact values of intonation in each jins or maqam is usually done by ear. It should also be added, in reference to Habib Hassan Touma's comment above, that these quarter tones are not used everywhere in the maqamat: in practice, Arabic music does not modulate to 12 different tonic areas like the Well-Tempered Klavier. The most commonly used quarter tones are on E (between E and E), A, B, D, F (between F and F), and C.


title: Arabic music

text: Arab classical music is known for its famed virtuoso singers, who sing long, elaborately ornamented, melismatic tunes, coloraturas unheard in any other musical genres and are known for driving audiences into ecstasy. Its traditions come from pre-Islamic times, when female singing slaves entertained the wealthy, inspired warriors on the battlefield with their rajaz poetry, and performed at weddings. A vast number of female Arab vocalists are mezzo-sopranos who possess darker and richer tones than generic Soprano voices as a result of having thicker vocal folds and larger larynx.


title: Arabic music

text: The prototypical Arabic music ensemble in Egypt and Syria is known as the takht, and includes, (or included at different time periods) instruments such as the 'oud, qānūn, rabab, ney, violin (introduced in the 1840s or 50s), riq and dumbek. In Iraq, the traditional ensemble, known as the chalghi, includes only two melodic instruments—the jowza (similar to the rabab but with four strings) and santur—accompanied by the riq and dumbek. The Arab world has incorporated instruments from the West, including the electric guitar, cello, double bass and oboe, and incorporated influences from jazz and other foreign musical styles.


title: Arabic music

text: The singers have remained the stars, however, especially after the development of the recording and film industry in the 1920s in Cairo. These singing celebrities are (or were) the biggest stars in Arabic classic music, they include Farid Al Attrache, Asmahan, Abdel Halim Hafez, Sayed Darwish, Mohamed Abdel Wahab, Warda Al-Jazairia, Wadih El Safi, Fairuz, Sabah, and Umm Kulthum.


title: Arabic music

text: Even though musical traditions in the Arab world have been handed down orally, Arab scholar Al-Kindi,and Persian scholars Abulfaraj or Al-Farabi and later Safi al-Din published treatises in Arabic on Persian music since at least the 9th century AD. In 1932, the first Congress of Arab Music was held in Cairo, where scholarship about the past, present and future of Arabic music was presented both from Western as well as Arab experts. The results were later documented, both in writing as well as in the form of audio recordings.


title: Arabic music

text: Research on Arabic music is a focus of departments of ethnomusicology at universities worldwide, and the global interest in World music has led to a growing number of studies and re-issues of historic recordings by independent researchers or private companies.


title: Arabic music

text: Making use of digital archives for texts, pictures and sounds, detailed information on the history of Arabic music is also made accessible over the Internet. The Lebanese foundation AMMAR, for example, is committed to the preservation and dissemination of traditional Arab music and has published a host of historical documents.


title: Razzie Redeemer Award

text: The Razzie Redeemer Award is an award presented at the annual Golden Raspberry Awards (also known as the Razzies) to a past Razzie Award nominee or winner who becomes "a respected artist" and comes back from critical and/or commercial failure.


title: Razzie Redeemer Award

text: Billed as “the Razzie you want to win”, it is the only award issued by the Golden Raspberry Award Foundation that can be considered a genuine honor. It was introduced in 2014.


title: Razzie Redeemer Award

text: The following is a list of nominees and recipients of that award, along with the films for which they were nominated.


title: 2021–22 Wrexham A.F.C. season

text: The 2021–22 season of Wrexham A.F.C. was the football club's 157th season. Despite being based in Wrexham in North Wales, the club plays in the English football league system, with 2021–22 being their 12th successive season in the National League; the season covers the period from 1 July 2021 to 30 June 2022. They also played in the English FA Cup and FA Trophy.


title: 2021–22 Wrexham A.F.C. season

text: Following the takeover by Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney at the previous season, they have arranged a FX docu-series called "Welcome to Wrexham" for the American Disney+ streaming service. A 20-person camera crew follow the players, coaches and fans to film the series for an entire matchday. The takeover from Wrexham Supporters Trust has resulted in investment of £2 million ($2.75m), attracting TikTok as kit sponsor and Expedia for the sponsor at the back of the kit.


title: 2021–22 Wrexham A.F.C. season

text: The owners were in the crowd first time as the club played against Maidenhead United, while they made their first visit to the club's home ground in October 2021 with more than 9,800 supporters attending their introduction before kickoff against Torquay United.


title: 2021–22 Wrexham A.F.C. season

text: On 24 January 2022, the club broke their biggest transfer record since 1978 to sign Ollie Palmer for £300,000.


title: 2021–22 Wrexham A.F.C. season

text: As of March 2022, the club was negotiating the purchase of the freehold of the Racecourse Ground stadium from Wrexham Glyndŵr University.


title: Orange Is the New Black (season 2)

text: The second season of the American comedy-drama television series "Orange Is the New Black" premiered on Netflix on June 6, 2014, at 12:00 am PST in multiple countries. It consists of thirteen episodes, each between 51–60 minutes, with a 90-minute finale. The series is based on Piper Kerman's memoir, "" (2010), about her experiences at FCI Danbury, a minimum-security federal prison. The series is created and adapted for television by Jenji Kohan.


title: Orange Is the New Black (season 2)

text: The series follows Piper Chapman, forced to board a bus and a plane without being given any information. Later she discovers that she is in Chicago to testify in the trial of Alex's drug boss, Kubra Balik, and that the stay is temporary. Meanwhile, in Litchfield Penitentiary, a new inmate is rising to power into the prison, by manipulating other inmates and taking control of the drug contraband. Threatened by this new inmate, Red goes to war, to protect her family and her power.


title: Orange Is the New Black (season 2)

text: "Orange is the New Black" received critical acclaim. The series received numerous accolades including: Producers Guild of America Award for Best Episodic Comedy and Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series. Uzo Aduba performance was awarded with the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Comedy Series and a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series. The second season was nominated to several Emmys: Outstanding Drama Series, Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series (Pablo Schreiber) and Outstanding Casting for a Drama Series. The series was nominated for the 72nd Golden Globe Awards for Best Television Series – Musical or Comedy, meanwhile Taylor Schilling was nominated for Best Actress – Television Series Musical or Comedy and Uzo Aduba for Best Supporting Actress – Series, Miniseries or Television Film. Lorraine Toussaint won a Best Supporting Actress in a Drama Series.


title: Orange Is the New Black (season 2)

text: On June 27, 2013, prior to the series premiere, Netflix renewed the show for a second season consisting of 13 episodes. Jenji Kohan stated that the story for the second season would focus less on Piper Chapman and more in the cast as a whole. For the second season, Uzo Aduba, Taryn Manning, Danielle Brooks, and Natasha Lyonne were promoted to series regulars. Laura Prepon did not return as a series regular for a second season because of scheduling conflicts. In July, it was announced that Lorraine Toussaint had joined the cast in a recurring role. Toussaint said of the role: "Jenji has written one of the more complex characters I've ever played, and probably one of the more difficult characters I've played. I think it'll be interesting seeing how this character is received, because Jenji has written a character that plays and enjoys the game, and is incredibly engaging and draws people into her, into the big game and has, I have a great deal of fun." It was revealed that Lori Petty would have a guest role. In February 2014, Netflix revealed that the season was to be released on June 6, 2014.


title: Orange Is the New Black (season 2)

text: The second season received critical acclaim, many praising Toussaint's performance as Vee. Rotten Tomatoes gave a rating of 98%, with an average rating of 9.1 out of 10 based on 42 reviews. The site's critical consensus reads: "With a talented ensemble cast bringing life to a fresh round of serial drama, "Orange Is the New Black's" sophomore season lives up to its predecessor's standard for female-led television excellence. Metacritic gave the second season a score of 89 out of 100 based on 31 critics, indicating "universal acclaim." David Wiegland of the "San Francisco Chronicle" gave the season a positive review, calling the first six episodes "not only as great as the first season, but arguably better."


title: Orange Is the New Black (season 2)

text: "Orange Is the New Black" was considered one of the best shows of the year by many critics and journalists.


title: Bow Street Runners

text: The Bow Street Runners were the law enforcement officers of the Bow Street Magistrates' Court in the City of Westminster. They have been called London's first professional police force. The force originally numbered six men and was founded in 1749 by magistrate Henry Fielding, who was also well known as an author. "Bow Street Runners" was the public's nickname for the officers although the officers did not use the term themselves and considered it derogatory. The group was disbanded in 1839 and its personnel merged with the Metropolitan Police. The Metropolitan Police Detective Agency traces their origin back to them.


title: Bow Street Runners

text: The Bow Street Runners are considered the first British police force. Before the force was founded, the law enforcing system was in the hands of private citizens and single individuals with very little intervention from the state. Magistrate Henry Fielding decided to regulate and legalise their activity due to high rates of corruption and mistaken or malicious arrests, therefore creating the Bow Street Runners.


title: Bow Street Runners

text: They represented a formalisation and regularisation of existing policing methods, similar to the unofficial 'thief-takers' (men who would solve petty crime for a fee). What made them different was their formal attachment to the Bow Street magistrates' office, and payment by the magistrate with funds from central government. They worked out of Fielding's office and court at No. 4 Bow Street, and did not patrol but served writs and arrested offenders on the authority of the magistrates, travelling nationwide to apprehend criminals.


title: Bow Street Runners

text: Henry Fielding's work was carried on by his brother Justice John Fielding, who succeeded him as magistrate in the Bow Street office. Under John Fielding, the institution of the Bow Street Runners gained more and more recognition from the government, although the force was only funded intermittently in the years that followed. It served as the guiding principle for the way that policing developed over the next 80 years. Bow Street was a manifestation of the move towards increasing professionalisation and state control of street life, beginning in London.


title: Bow Street Runners

text: Contrary to several popular sources, the Bow Street Runners were not nicknamed "Robin Redbreasts", an epithet reserved for the Bow Street Horse Patrol. The horse patrol was organised in 1763 by Richard Ford, Sir John Fielding's successor at Bow Street, who secured a government grant of £600 to establish the force to deal with highway robbery. It was so successful in cutting crime that when funding stopped, highwaymen soon returned. The Patrol was not re-introduced until 1805 following Patrick Colquhoun's campaign. They wore a distinctive scarlet waistcoat under their blue greatcoats.


title: Bow Street Runners

text: Up to the early 18th century, Britain did not have an official policing system backed by the state. A police force like the Maréchaussée already present in France would have been ill-suited to Britain, which saw examples such as the French one as a threat to their liberty and balanced constitution in favour of an arbitrary and tyrannical government. The enforcement of the law then was mostly up to the private citizens, who had the right and duty to prosecute crimes in which they were involved or in which they were not. At the cry of 'murder!' or 'stop thief!' everyone was entitled and obliged to join the pursuit. Once the criminal had been apprehended, the parish constables and night watchmen, who were the only public figures provided by the state and who were typically part-time and local, would make the arrest.


title: Bow Street Runners

text: As a result, the state set a reward to encourage citizens to arrest and prosecute offenders. The first of such rewards was established in 1692 of the amount of £40 for the conviction of a highwayman and in the following years it was extended to burglars, coiners and other forms of offence. The reward was to be increased in 1720 when, after the end of the War of the Spanish Succession and the consequent rise of criminal offences, the government offered £100 for the conviction of a highwayman.


title: Bow Street Runners

text: Although the offer of such a reward was conceived as an incentive for the victims of an offence to proceed to the prosecution and to bring criminals to justice, the efforts of the government also increased the number of private thief-takers.


title: Bow Street Runners

text: Thief-takers became infamously known not so much for what they were supposed to do, catching real criminals and prosecuting them, as for "setting themselves up as intermediaries between victims and their attackers, extracting payments for the return of stolen goods and using the threat of prosecution to keep offenders in thrall". Some of them, such as Jonathan Wild, became infamous at the time for staging robberies in order to receive the reward.


title: Bow Street Runners

text: Thomas Pelham-Holles, 1st Duke of Newcastle turned to Henry Fielding for help. Fielding had become a Westminster magistrate in 1748 and in his house in Bow Street, Covent Garden, he had started a kind of magisterial work that was different from anything that had been done before. Taking up the legacy of his predecessor, Sir Thomas de Veil, Fielding turned Bow Street into a court-like setting in which to conduct examinations.


title: Bow Street Runners

text: However, his reformed method was not limited to his magisterial activity in Bow Street; it was also extended outside of the magistrate's office. In fact, since 1749–50 Henry Fielding had begun organising a group of men with the task of apprehending offenders and taking them to Bow Street for examination and commitment to trial. Such an organised intervention was needed, according to Fielding, because of the difficulties and reluctance of private citizens to apprehend criminals, especially if those were part of a gang — reluctance largely caused by the fear of retaliation and by the extremely high costs of the prosecution that would have to be paid by the victim of the crime. This activity, however, was very similar to the thief-takers' enterprise and, as such, it could have been considered as corrupt as the latter. Therefore, Fielding wrote a number of pamphlets to justify the activity of thief-taking; he argued that the legitimacy of this activity had been undermined by the actions of a few (see for example Jonathan Wild) and that, in fact, thief-takers performed a public service where the civil authorities were weaker. Another step towards the legitimation of the activity of the Bow Street Runners concerned the lawfulness of an arrest made by an ordinary citizen. Fielding made clear that constables were not the only ones to have the right to make an arrest, but under special circumstances – such as with a warrant issued by a magistrate – also private citizens could act against a suspected criminal and arrest them.


title: Bow Street Runners

text: Another problem that Fielding had to face was that of the economic support of the Runners; without any direct funding from the government, the men at Fielding's service were left relying on the rewards issued by the state after an offender's conviction and by private citizens in order to retrieve their stolen goods. It is also true that many of the original Runners were also serving constables, so they were financially supported by the state. Nevertheless, the problem persisted and, in 1753, Fielding's initiative came close to failing when his men had stopped their thief-taking activity for some time. A way out of this situation came in the same year, when the government lamented spending too much money on rewards with no apparent decrease in the crime rates. At this point, the Duke of Newcastle, the secretary of state at the time, asked Fielding for advice, which he presently gave. The document that Fielding presented to the government revolved around the activity of the Bow Street officers; Fielding's suggestion included that he be given more money in addition to his own magistrate's stipend for two main purposes. The first was, of course, to offer economic support to the officers working in Bow Street, which would have allowed these men to extend their policing activities well beyond the simple thief-taking. The other purpose was to advertise the activity of the Bow Street office and to encourage private citizens to report crimes and provide information about offenders; the advertisements would be published in the "Public Advertiser", a paper in which, as some critics have pointed out, the Fielding brothers had a financial interest.


title: Bow Street Runners

text: In late 1753, the government approved Fielding's proposal and established an annual subvention of £200, that allowed Fielding not only to support the advertisement and the Bow Street officers but also to maintain a stable group of clerks who kept detailed records of their activities. A new kind of magistrate's office and policing activity was therefore established; after the death of Henry Fielding in 1754, it was carried on by his brother John, who had overseen the whole project and was to further expand and develop it over the following years.


title: Bow Street Runners

text: When Henry Fielding died in 1754, he was succeeded as Magistrate by his brother Sir John Fielding, who had previously been his assistant for four years. Known as the "Blind Beak of Bow Street", John Fielding refined the patrol into the first truly effective police force for the capital, later adding officers mounted on horseback, and remained chief magistrate of Westminster until his death in 1780.


title: Bow Street Runners

text: As soon as he was appointed, John Fielding examined the activity of the Bow Street office and the issues that needed to be addressed; the financial contribution from the state was still in place, so his pamphlet focused mainly on the need to tackle violence and highway robbery in particular. At the beginning, Fielding shared his office with Saunders Welch, an energetic former grocer elected High Constable of Holborn. Eventually, the government agreed to establish a separate magistrate office from which Welch could operate, leaving Fielding as the dominant presence in Bow Street. Over the years, the government subvention raised from the initial £200 to £400 in 1757 and to £600 by 1765, as Fielding managed to persuade the Duke of Newcastle, now First Lord of the Treasury, of the increasing costs of an active policing and advertising, as well as of the need of recruiting a permanent clerical staff for the office. The administration of the funds was left largely in Fielding's hands. He provided payments to six officers, for investigating and attempting to apprehend offenders, and occasionally to a few assistants.


title: Bow Street Runners

text: During John Fielding's time as a magistrate, the Bow Street office seems to have been open for most of the day and for most days of the week, even when Fielding was not himself in the office, and there was always a so-called 'ordinary' to whom one could report offences also during the night-time. One of the main activities carried out by clerks and assistants in the office was to collect and record information about offences and offenders, therefore creating a sort of criminal database that could turn useful to officers in their investigating activities. Fielding believed that a national system of criminal information circulating throughout not only the metropolis of London but also the entire country would ensure that offenders would be arrested and brought to justice; moreover, anyone contemplating an offence would be deterred from doing so.


title: Bow Street Runners

text: In addition, he introduced innovations at the Bow Street office that would have a great effect on the first procedures of criminal prosecution. Fielding created a court-like setting that could attract and accommodate a large audience for his examinations of suspected offenders, opened and available for the public for long and regular hours. In doing so, he turned the office from being the mere house of a magistrate to being the Bow Street Magistrates' Court in which several justices were employed in rotation in order to keep the office open for long hours every day. This process of transformation was further amplified by Fielding's success in encouraging the London press to attend and provide their readers with a weekly report on his activity.


title: Bow Street Runners

text: Just after John Fielding's death in 1780, the crisis of the administration of criminal law renewed itself, primarily foor three different factors. The first was the rise in crime rates because the end of a period of war (in this case the American Revolution) and the consequent return in the country of many soldiers and sailors, who were now out of a job. The second factor was directly linked to the first and concerned the issue of transportation to the American colonies, which had been established in 1718 and begun the principal sanction imposed on convicted felons. The loss of the American territories resulted in convicts piling up in inadequate jails, as they continued to be sentenced to transportation, without an actual destination. The government was forced to find either an alternative destination for convicts sentenced to transportation or an alternative sanction. The third factor concerned the events that took place in London in June 1780, known as the Gordon Riots during which the authorities lost control of the streets of the city. Those events highlighted the weakness of London policing and magisterial system.


title: Bow Street Runners

text: The government responded by establishing the Home Department in 1782, therefore allowing the administration of criminal law to receive more focused attention than before. In time, this office would provide a centre to deal with all the aspects of criminal administration. One of the main initiatives supported by the Home Department, as well as generously funded by them, was the introduction of an armed and salaried foot patrol during the winter of 1782–83, initiated by Sampson Wright, John Fielding's successor as chief magistrate, as a means of countering highway robberies, that was to become an established element of London policing in the 1780s. The government provided funds to support 46 men who worked in eight groups of six; each of the groups was assigned to one of the major routes around the metropolis and went out every night of the week.


title: Bow Street Runners

text: Eventually, in 1785, the Home Department attempted to introduce and pass "A Bill for the further Prevention of Crimes, and for the more speedy Detection and Punishment of Offenders against the Peace, in the Cities of London and Westminster, the Borough of Southwark, and certain Parts adjacent to them", which was meant to provide a measure of central control over the many police forces across the metropolis but failed to do so. Some elements were derived from the existing institutions, particularly Bow Street, but the concept of the metropolis as a unified district and a central command overseeing many policing divisions was completely new. In addition to the reform of the structure of the London policing forces, the bill included clauses aimed at the prevention of crime, such as giving police preventive powers to search and arrested on suspicion. An example is when they arrest Colonel Edward Despard, for provoking the Despard Plot. In 1792, Parliament did pass legislation that introduced some reform to the system, "The Middlesex Justices Act" which contained two elements of the 1785 bill: one was the establishment of public offices where magistrates monopolized the administration of criminal law throughout the metropolis, and the other was the increase in the powers of the police. The Act was mainly based on the model presented by the Bow Street office and on Fielding's conception of the magistrate and of how to deal with crime, therefore leading to the replication of the Bow Street structure throughout London.


title: Bow Street Runners

text: Under the new legislation, the Bow Street office maintained a privileged position among the other offices of the metropolis, due to the closer relationship of its magistrates with the Home Office and to the financial resources at their disposal, regulated by an informal agreement with the Treasury rather than by legislation, therefore increasing the policing resources available. This made it possible for the government to use the Runners and the patrolmen as they thought necessary, increasing their range of investigation, that now included more engagement with threats to national security and social disorder, as can be seen by the fewer and fewer accounts of Runners giving evidence in trials at the Old Bailey.


title: Bow Street Runners

text: In the new century, crime rates diminished in the metropolis, therefore the contribution of the Runners to the policing of property offences decreased considerably; they continued to investigate offences in London, but not as actively as they had before. Their incomes from London crime diminished as the position that Bow Street had once held in the commitment of felons to trial continued to erode with the expansion of the patrol and the creation of new police offices from 1792. By the early 1820s, Bow Street was responsible for just over 10% of the accused felons being committed to trial at the Old Bailey. After 1815, the Runners' most regular employment was to respond to help requests from prosecutors outside London. These were likely cases in which their skill and experience was thought to be useful in investigating offences in the provinces.


title: Bow Street Runners

text: After the establishment of the Metropolitan Police in 1829, the policing responsibilities of the Bow Street magistrates were very considerably diminished. The Bow Street patrol was gradually absorbed into the new police force and Bow Street was left with only the Runners. Even then, the Home Office held much of the authority over the activity of the Runners and was mainly concerned to bring Bow Street's finances under control. The Bow Street magistrates' effective loss of authority over the activity of the Runners and the government's concern to control costs meant that the funds for the office were much diminished in the 1830s.


title: Bow Street Runners

text: In 1834, a parliamentary committee recommended that the Bow Street men and constables should be incorporated with the Metropolitan Police as soon as possible and, although this report was not enforced, their conclusions were taken up and expanded by another committee in 1837. The reports of these committees were enacted into law as a renewal of the Police Act in 1839 and, in doing so, made the Runners at Bow Street redundant.


title: Bow Street Runners

text: Bow Street's involvement in a case began quite simply with the arrival of a victim or a messenger who wanted to report a crime. This was encouraged by the promise of a reward to the messenger (usually a shilling) and of a paid advertisement in one or more papers of the stolen goods. Fielding believed strongly in the importance of a rapid spread of information and therefore advertising was very important to his policing strategy. Of course, this included also the advertising of the activity carried out in Bow Street, as well as exhortations to victims to report offences and any kind of information on criminals and stolen goods.


title: Bow Street Runners

text: In case of robbery or other serious offences, Bow Street officers were immediately involved and dispatched. The success of their detection work and of the apprehension of offenders relied on the rapid collection and communication of information about the crime committed and on the descriptions of the offenders. Officers could go out on their own initiative to investigate an offence, as essentially they were hired by the victims to give them help. Most victims were expected to pay the expenses of the investigation and to offer a small reward for information as well. They would also have to face the expenses of an eventual trial, even though if the offender was convicted they would have had the right to receive financial compensation from the court.


title: Bow Street Runners

text: Later, as a response to the numerous reports of attacks by footpads and highwaymen, Fielding decided to send some men to patrol the squares of Westminster and the highways leading into the city, also on horseback from 1756, though by 1766–67 horseback patrolling had been sharply curtailed, due to the excessive costs. Nevertheless, two 'pursuit horses' were maintained to send officers to patrol roads from time to time. The patrol activity of the Bow Street officers is an indicator of a fundamental characteristic of the Bow Street policing system, which is its geographical range. In fact, the officers were not restricted to a particular area of the city but were able to operate across the entire metropolis, and also beyond London itself. To facilitate the reach of the office, Fielding was named in the commissions of the peace of Kent, Essex and Surrey, in addition to those of Middlesex and Westminster. That meant that the Bow Street officers did not have to seek the assistance of local magistrates in the counties surrounding London in order to make an arrest or carry out a search. Otherwise, they would have had to seek such assistance, although in practice there was not any impediment to their working wherever their enquiries took them, as some accounts from 1756 show that they pursued suspects into Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire and even to Bristol.


title: Bow Street Runners

text: Fielding's policing system relied very much on the information provided by informants, to whom were directed the many pamphlets and advertisements published by the Bow Street office. Turnpike gatekeepers and publicans were therefore encouraged to report crimes and offences as soon as possible to Bow Street, in order to allow Fielding's men to presently seek out and apprehend the offenders.


title: Nebraska Legislature

text: The Nebraska Legislature (also called the Unicameral) is the legislature of the U.S. state of Nebraska. The Legislature meets at the Nebraska State Capitol in Lincoln. With 49 members, known as "senators", the Nebraska Legislature is the smallest state legislature of any U.S. state.


title: Nebraska Legislature

text: Unlike the legislatures of the other 49 U.S. states and the U.S. Congress, the Nebraska Legislature is a unicameral legislature, thus not separated into two houses. It is also nonpartisan, and does not officially recognize its members' political party affiliations.


title: Nebraska Legislature

text: The First Nebraska Territorial Legislature met in Omaha in 1855, staying there until statehood was granted in 1867. Nebraska originally operated under a bicameral legislature, but over time dissatisfaction with the bicameral system grew. Bills were lost because the two houses could not agree on a single version. Conference committees that formed to merge the two bills coming out of each chamber often met in secret, and thus were unaccountable for their actions. Campaigns to consolidate the Nebraska Legislature into a single chamber date back as early as 1913, meeting with mixed success.


title: Nebraska Legislature

text: After a trip to Australia in 1931, George W. Norris, then U.S. senator for Nebraska, campaigned for reform, arguing that the bicameral system was based on the non-democratic British House of Lords, and that it was pointless to have two bodies of people doing the same thing and hence wasting money. He specifically pointed to the example of the Australian state of Queensland, which had adopted a unicameral parliament nearly ten years before. In 1934, voters approved a constitutional amendment to take effect with the 1936 elections, abolishing the Nebraska House of Representatives and granting its powers to the Senate.


title: Nebraska Legislature

text: Many possible reasons for the 1934 amendment's victory have been advanced: the popularity of George Norris; the Depression-era desire to cut costs; public dissatisfaction with the previous year's legislature; or even the fact that, by chance, it was on the ballot in the same year as an amendment to legalize parimutuel betting on horse races. This final coincidence may have aided the measure's passage in Omaha, where the unicameral issue was not a pressing one but horse racing was. (Gambling interests campaigned for "yes" votes on all amendments in hopes of assuring the horse-racing amendment's passage.)


title: Nebraska Legislature

text: The new unicameral Legislature met for the first time in 1937. Though the name of the body is formally the "Nebraska Legislature", during the first session the Legislature adopted a resolution formally giving members the title of "senator". In Nebraska, the Legislature is also often known as "the Unicameral."


title: Nebraska Legislature

text: The Legislature is responsible for law-making and appropriating funds for the state. The governor has the power to veto any bill, but the Legislature may override the governor's veto by a vote of three-fifths (30) of its members. The Legislature also has the power, by a three-fifths vote, to propose a constitutional amendment to the voters, who then pass or reject it through a referendum.


title: Nebraska Legislature

text: The Legislature is composed of 49 members, chosen by a single-member district or constituency. Senators are chosen for four-year terms, with one-half of the seats up for election every second year. In effect, this results in half the chamber being elected at the same time as the President of the United States, and the other half elected at the same time as other statewide elections. Senators must be qualified voters who are at least 21 years old and have lived in the district they wish to represent for at least one year. A constitutional amendment passed in 2000 limits senators to two consecutive terms. However, a former senator is re-eligible for election after four years. Senators receive $12,000 a year.


title: Nebraska Legislature

text: Rather than separate primary elections held to choose Republican, Democratic, and other partisan contenders for a seat, Nebraska uses a single nonpartisan blanket primary, in which the top two vote-getters are entitled to run in the general election. There are no formal party alignments or groups within the Legislature. Coalitions tend to form issue by issue based on a member's philosophy of government, geographic background, and constituency. However, almost all the members of the legislature are known to be either Democrats or Republicans, and the state branches of both parties explicitly endorse candidates for legislative seats.


title: Nebraska Legislature

text: Sessions of the Nebraska Legislature last for 90 working days in odd-numbered years and 60 working days in even-numbered years.


title: Nebraska Legislature

text: Article IV-8 of the Nebraska State Constitution gives the Governor the power to call special sessions on "extraordinary occasions." When called, lawmakers may only consider legislation outlined in the Governor's proclamation.


title: Nebraska Legislature

text: The Nebraska Legislature officially recognizes no party affiliations; affiliations listed are based on state party endorsements. , 32 members are Republicans and 17 are Democrats.


title: Nebraska Legislature

text: The Lieutenant Governor is the President of the Legislature and the official presiding officer. When presiding, the Lieutenant Governor may vote to break a tie in the Legislature, but may not break a tie when the vote is on the final passage of a bill.


title: Nebraska Legislature

text: The highest position among the members is the Speaker, who presides over the Legislature in the absence of the Lieutenant Governor. The Speaker is elected by floor ballot (or secret ballot) for a two-year term. The Speaker, with the approval of the executive board, determines the agenda (or the order in which bills and resolutions are considered on General File). The Speaker's agenda may be changed by a three-fifths vote of the elected members of the Legislature. The Speaker is not a member of any committee, but is an ex-officio member of the Rules Committee and the executive board.


title: Nebraska Legislature

text: Administrative matters of the body are dealt with by the executive board. The Board includes the Speaker, a chairman, a vice chairman, and six other senators. The chairman and vice chairman are chosen by floor ballot (or secret ballot) for two-year terms by the entire legislature. The chairman of the Appropriations Committee serves, but cannot vote on any matter, and can only speak on fiscal matters.


title: Nebraska Legislature

text: The executive board is also the Referencing Committee. All bills introduced are referenced by the Referencing Committee to the committee whose subject relates to the bill. Any member of the Legislature may object to where a bill was referenced and attempt re-refer the bill to a different committee with a majority vote of the Legislature.


title: Nebraska Legislature

text: The Nebraska Legislature does not caucus based on political affiliation or use caucuses to organize support or opposition to legislation. Senators are classified into three geographically based caucuses based on the three congressional districts in the state. Each caucus elects two board members who serve on the executive board and four members who serve on the Committee-on-Committees.


title: Nebraska Legislature

text: At the beginning of each biennium, the Legislature elects a Committee on Committees of thirteen members, one at large who is elected by all members from the floor of the Legislature by floor ballot (or secret ballot). Four members are from Districts 2, 3, 15, 16, 19, 21–29, 45, and 46; four from Districts 4–14, 18, 20, 31, 39, and 49; and four from Districts 1, 17, 30, 32–38, 40–44, 47, and 48. Each caucus elects its own four members to serve on the Committee on Committees. The Committee on Committees creates a report of the membership of all committees for the Legislature. The Legislature may approve the report with a majority vote or reject it, but may not amend the report. If the report is rejected, the Committee on Committees must start over and create a new committee membership report until the Legislature can adopt one.


title: Nebraska Legislature

text: Committee chairs are elected on the first day of the 90-day session and serve until the end of the 60-day session. Committee chairs are elected directly by the entire membership of the Legislature. On the first day, those wishing to run for a committee chair give a brief speech as to why they believe they're qualified, and following the speeches for that committee, members use a ballot vote to choose who they wish to serve as committee chair.


title: Nebraska Legislature

text: The first Unicameral allowed each committee to select its own committee chair in 1937; from 1939 to 1971 the Committee on Committees designated the committee chair; and from 1973 to present committee chairs are chosen by ballot. The Speaker, Committee on Committees chair, and the chair and vice chair of the executive board have been chosen by floor ballot since the Unicameral's first day in 1937.


title: Pecker (film)

text: Pecker is a 1998 American comedy film written and directed by John Waters. Like all of Waters' films, it was filmed and set in Baltimore; this film was set in the Hampden neighborhood.


title: Pecker (film)

text: The film examines the rise to fame and potential fortune of a budding photographer, played by Edward Furlong. Co-starring Christina Ricci, Lili Taylor, Mary Kay Place, Martha Plimpton, Brendan Sexton III, and Bess Armstrong. The film received mixed reviews from critics, but grossed about $2.3 million in the United States box office and was able to make profit.


title: Pecker (film)

text: In a Baltimore neighborhood known for having the thickest local accent, unassuming 18-year-old Pecker works in a sandwich shop and takes photos of his loving but peculiar family and friends on the side. Pecker, named for his childhood habit of "pecking" at his food, becomes unexpectedly popular when savvy New York art dealer Rorey Wheeler "discovers" his work. Pecker's pictures, taken with a cheap Canon Canonet 28, are grainy, out-of-focus studies of unglamorous subjects, but they strike a chord with New York art collectors.


title: Pecker (film)

text: Unfortunately, Pecker discovers that instant over-exposure has its downsides. Rorey's efforts to turn Pecker into an art sensation threaten to ruin the low-key lifestyle that inspired him. He abandons his trusty old rangefinder camera for a new, full-featured Nikon N50. Pecker finds that his best friend, Matt, can't shoplift anymore because Pecker's photographs have increased his visibility. Shelley, Pecker's obsessive girlfriend who runs a laundromat, seems especially distressed when the press dub her a "stain goddess", mistaking her good-natured "pin-up" poses for pornographic come-ons.