Loads of things are old. Loads of things have “been around for a while”. Especially in government, there seems to be a relationship of reverence: the older a thing can claim to be, the more its seniority demands that you basically leave it alone.

A good example of this is the UK parliament. It styles itself “the mother of Parliaments”. Its corridors between central lobby and the chambers are decorated with (bad) paintings of national myths. It can often feel when you’re there that this is an unbroken tradition that broke out about twenty minutes after the Romans left.

But: the current palace is pretty modern. It was finished in 1870, five years after the Parliament of Canada. A large amount of it is reconstructed after bombs in the second world war. Even the oldest bit, Westminster Hall, has been extensively remodelled as anyone who has gone into the committee rooms there and imagined that they’ve been transported to a suburban anglican church hall will know. The idea of “mother of Parliaments” is also pretty suspect. Many countries, notably Iceland, have evidenced claims to a longer tradition of elected democracies with a legislature.

Even the internal structures are constantly in flux. Select committees have been continually iterated. The practices of both Houses change all the time - the introduction of cameras, microphones, women, Hansard reporters etc.

Hansard is the point I want to get to. I think it is a perfect mirror for how institutions react to new ideas.

To quote wikipedia:

Several editors used the device of veiling parliamentary debates as debates of fictitious societies or bodies. The names under which parliamentary debates were published include Proceedings of the Lower Room of the Robin Hood Society and Debates of the Senate of Magna Lilliputia. The Senate of Magna Lilliputia was printed in Edward Cave's The Gentleman's Magazine, which was first published in 1732. The names of the speakers were carefully "filleted"; for example, Sir Robert Walpole was thinly disguised as "Sr. R―t W―le"