Poll: Do you like the British Royal Family?
- Thread starter Terramax
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Honestly as an American? I really like the idea of living in a monarchy. In a monarch-ed ruled land you have a leader that you can trust to be responsible with their power as they have it for life and several generations down as well. The Royal family now the Windsor dynesty(is that the right word?)seem to be good responsible even headed heads of state with several of the family(i believe at least) have military experience.
English, and God bless the Queen!
They (the Royal Family) bring in a crap load of money tourism wise, and the Queen/Prince of Ediburgh to a lot in the way of international politics - the Queen is also a very busy Grandmother at the ripe old age of 87 (I wonder if she will get to write a letter to herself at 100?)
The Queen should usurp the Government. Fuck it, it'd make a change if nothing else - better than the current twats in power.
[Added]
Also, it's worth noting that the Queen served in the Auxiliary Territorial Service in WW2 and Prince Andrew flew helicopters in the Falklands War.
They (the Royal Family) bring in a crap load of money tourism wise, and the Queen/Prince of Ediburgh to a lot in the way of international politics - the Queen is also a very busy Grandmother at the ripe old age of 87 (I wonder if she will get to write a letter to herself at 100?)
The Queen should usurp the Government. Fuck it, it'd make a change if nothing else - better than the current twats in power.
[Added]
Also, it's worth noting that the Queen served in the Auxiliary Territorial Service in WW2 and Prince Andrew flew helicopters in the Falklands War.
People claiming to be in the IRA typically where not, members of the paramilitary groups would always trumpet their Republican or Unionist values but they kept their other affiliations quiet. Both groups where at risk of being found by the authorities and locked up permanently without charge, informants, the RUC and intelligence agencies like armies 14 Intelligence Company and MI5 where there (even undercover SAS in the most hostile areas). Not only that they where always on guard for paramilitaries from the other side, they would drag people off and torture and murder them.odolwa99 said:
Being a member of such a group is not exactly something you go around telling anyone that isn't a member or respected sympathiser.
thats like 2 kills in like 2 hundred thousand years of history. and both were done by groups of people who were known to be communists who dont care about human life at all no matter who it is. also they never killed the princess theres a whole movie about it called Anastasia that i saw.lacktheknack said:
Yeah... I'm pretty sure you're joking by now.Mycroft Holmes said:
OT, again: I don't quite understand the idea that a hereditary monarch is inherently more objective than an elected politician. That assumption has been presented by quite a few posters in this thread, but what is it based on? True, they don't have to jockey for popular support in elections (and thus might be inclined to shoot down populist ideas bad for the country), but I don't see what would keep them from believing in a specific ideology and acting accordingly.
You... you can't discriminate fact from fiction.Mycroft Holmes said:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Duchess_Anastasia_Nikolaevna_of_Russia
That's a very, very bad thing.
I don't hate them I just honestly don't care about them. Sure I'm concerned for their well being as much as I would be for any stranger, but I just don't really get into the whole celebrity worship thing.
I consider myself 100% and steadfastly without question, indifferent to the British Royal family. All I want is for American news channels to get over the fact that they squirted out a kid. I get it why they are doing it and why the British are happy about it. I think I read somewhere(don't quote me on this) that the royal baby brought in like something 302 million in Tourism.
Likely it was hearsay. But as you indicate, people had strong opinions and may have wanted to show support vocally. The British military almost certainly had eyes and ears all over the country, but a few chance words between mostly elderly men in a pub or work place in the South would go unnoticed.J Tyran said:
In any case, this is all starting to sound like a Monty Python routine. No one expects the Spanish Inquisition!!
Again. No. I'm going to repeat this until it sinks in, because it's a stupid argument.Binnsyboy said:
The queen does not "own" the crown estate any more than she "owns" the treasury, or the revenue service, or the prison system, or any other government institution which theoretically belongs to her. In theory, yes, in practice, no.
Back when people were hitting each other with swords, the treasury and other institutions which existed back then were the literal property of the monarch. People paid taxes directly to the monarch, and the monarch owned that money to spend as they saw fit. Over time, as the peasants got uppity and started demanding weird shit like rights, the monarch was forced to renounce more and more control over these institutions to parliament. It never ceased to be the monarch's property, in fact no government institution in our country has ever ceased to be the personal property of the monarch. Even parliament originated as an institution raised privately by the monarch to advice them on policy.
People make a massive show about how the monarch "willingly" gives up the crown estate. They don't. The monarch owns the crown estate, but they no longer have any legal right to control it, just like every other part of the government. They could not ask for it back at this stage, just as they could not order specific prisoners to be released from the prison system or demand a bigger share of tax revenue.
Well, that's all well and good for Anglicans, isn't it.J Tyran said:
My family, however, faced centuries of religious persecution because of your "tradition" and because they believed in the radical notion that noone is marked out by God as especially fit to rule.
That's my "tradition", I like it better than yours.
If this is accurate, which I doubt since there was a lot of support for Edward VIII in Britain at the time and ruining his image was first and foremost on the political "to do List", then all it shows is that there have been no worthy royals. If it's true that Edward was a sympethiser, that doesn't make the useless remainders any less worthless. It just means the entire family have been a total shower and haven't had even one good example, among them.Megalodon said:
I guarentee you, "the british" are not happy about it....Mcupobob said:
As for the tourism thing, I'm pretty sure that's royalist spin and general media exaggeration. Anyone who came over to the country, did so for other reasons and possibly just thought they'd have a look in the meantime. Anyone from Britain who made an effort to make a holiday of it, needs slapping about the face and neck.
No and i hate the very idea of a royality in anyway, they are a joke and i wish they would go away to stop making our people look like dumbasses to the rest of the world
You know what, let me actually go through this in detail.
The royal family brings in loads in tourism!
What is being argued here is that the "mystique" of having a functioning monarchy persuades people to visit the UK when they otherwise wouldn't. That may or may not be true and is largely impossible to quantify. But let's think about it anyway.
The UK is 8th in the most popular international tourist destinations. 6 of the 7 countries above it do not have an active monarchy. What they tend to have is actual attractions people want to visit, or a cultural significance which marks them out. Heck, Germany gets more tourists than the UK. France gets almost 3 times as many tourists as the UK. Austria gets almost as many tourists as the UK with a fraction of the population. These places don't have monarchies, they don't sell themselves on the basis of having monarchies. They sell themselves as places with interesting history, beautiful cities and buildings and actual things to do. Spain gets almost twice as many tourists as the UK and do you ever see its monarchy in the international news or on promotional material? No. It sells itself on the basis that it has a great climate, natural beauty, good beaches and interesting history and culture. These are things people actually care about.
In the UK, we have many things which are attractive to tourists. Moreover, we speak English (the most widely spoken language on Earth). This endless insistence that "oh, it's the monarchy who brings everyone here" is frankly not doing us justice. People aren't spending thousands and flying halfway around the world solely because of a small family of people they won't actually see, they're doing it because there's actual reason to do so.
A lifelong head of state has more responsibility than an elected one
Tell you what, why don't we compromise.
Instead of an elected head of state, we can just pick an unelected senior civil servant or diplomat and make them head of state for life. How does that sound?
Because that would still be more democratic than the system we have. For one, we could pretty much guarantee that the head of state would be competent because they would have had to be to reach the position from which they were selected.
If that thought creeps you out, maybe you should think long and hard about the system we actually do have, which is far more arbitrary and demands far less competence from the person who is representing our country overseas. Speaking of which..
A monarch is more highly respected internationally than a representative would be
Let's be honest here.
Those trips the queen (and her family) makes overseas. Do you think they sit around and discuss actual political issues? Do you think they actually talk about anything of importance to the country? Do you think anyone seriously questions the queen on anything? Do you think anyone actually expects her to do anything beyond show up and be the queen?
Whether or not the queen is respected, whether or not the heads of state of other nations actually like her is irrelevant because she herself is not an elected representative or professional diplomat. Frankly, we could pick some actor or musician who is doing well internationally and send them over to buy foreign heads of state a nice steak dinner and it would fulfill much the same function.
The reason we assume the queen is competent and well liked is because we tend to separate the ceremonial aspects of international diplomacy (in which everyone is meticulously polite and little of importance is done) from the practical aspects, which are actually difficult and need to be handled by a representative.
The monarchy keeps the government stable
And that's a good thing?
What has kept the government stable in the UK, what still keeps it stable to this day to some degree, is the class system. We retained an upper class for far longer than many countries, because as a monarchy we maintained the idea for far longer that "good breeding" made some people naturally better than others. Countries which abandoned this had to reinvent their class systems, often resulting in greater social mobility. When all you need to be "the right sort of person" is money, it's possible to better yourself. In Britain, until very recently, it was impossible for a person to fully shrug off the legacy of their class background, even if they had financially bettered themselves.
To this day, our political system (and indeed the top levels of virtually every important aspect of our society) are full of people from a very particular social background. That's why our government is comparatively stable, because regardless of which party is in power it is generally composed of and represents the views of the same socio-political group. If you think that is a good thing, then fine. As someone who feels that social mobility is an important part of representative democracy and that anyone, irrespective of background, should be able to aspire to political office, I don't.
Captcha: keep calm
The royal family brings in loads in tourism!
What is being argued here is that the "mystique" of having a functioning monarchy persuades people to visit the UK when they otherwise wouldn't. That may or may not be true and is largely impossible to quantify. But let's think about it anyway.
The UK is 8th in the most popular international tourist destinations. 6 of the 7 countries above it do not have an active monarchy. What they tend to have is actual attractions people want to visit, or a cultural significance which marks them out. Heck, Germany gets more tourists than the UK. France gets almost 3 times as many tourists as the UK. Austria gets almost as many tourists as the UK with a fraction of the population. These places don't have monarchies, they don't sell themselves on the basis of having monarchies. They sell themselves as places with interesting history, beautiful cities and buildings and actual things to do. Spain gets almost twice as many tourists as the UK and do you ever see its monarchy in the international news or on promotional material? No. It sells itself on the basis that it has a great climate, natural beauty, good beaches and interesting history and culture. These are things people actually care about.
In the UK, we have many things which are attractive to tourists. Moreover, we speak English (the most widely spoken language on Earth). This endless insistence that "oh, it's the monarchy who brings everyone here" is frankly not doing us justice. People aren't spending thousands and flying halfway around the world solely because of a small family of people they won't actually see, they're doing it because there's actual reason to do so.
A lifelong head of state has more responsibility than an elected one
Tell you what, why don't we compromise.
Instead of an elected head of state, we can just pick an unelected senior civil servant or diplomat and make them head of state for life. How does that sound?
Because that would still be more democratic than the system we have. For one, we could pretty much guarantee that the head of state would be competent because they would have had to be to reach the position from which they were selected.
If that thought creeps you out, maybe you should think long and hard about the system we actually do have, which is far more arbitrary and demands far less competence from the person who is representing our country overseas. Speaking of which..
A monarch is more highly respected internationally than a representative would be
Let's be honest here.
Those trips the queen (and her family) makes overseas. Do you think they sit around and discuss actual political issues? Do you think they actually talk about anything of importance to the country? Do you think anyone seriously questions the queen on anything? Do you think anyone actually expects her to do anything beyond show up and be the queen?
Whether or not the queen is respected, whether or not the heads of state of other nations actually like her is irrelevant because she herself is not an elected representative or professional diplomat. Frankly, we could pick some actor or musician who is doing well internationally and send them over to buy foreign heads of state a nice steak dinner and it would fulfill much the same function.
The reason we assume the queen is competent and well liked is because we tend to separate the ceremonial aspects of international diplomacy (in which everyone is meticulously polite and little of importance is done) from the practical aspects, which are actually difficult and need to be handled by a representative.
The monarchy keeps the government stable
And that's a good thing?
What has kept the government stable in the UK, what still keeps it stable to this day to some degree, is the class system. We retained an upper class for far longer than many countries, because as a monarchy we maintained the idea for far longer that "good breeding" made some people naturally better than others. Countries which abandoned this had to reinvent their class systems, often resulting in greater social mobility. When all you need to be "the right sort of person" is money, it's possible to better yourself. In Britain, until very recently, it was impossible for a person to fully shrug off the legacy of their class background, even if they had financially bettered themselves.
To this day, our political system (and indeed the top levels of virtually every important aspect of our society) are full of people from a very particular social background. That's why our government is comparatively stable, because regardless of which party is in power it is generally composed of and represents the views of the same socio-political group. If you think that is a good thing, then fine. As someone who feels that social mobility is an important part of representative democracy and that anyone, irrespective of background, should be able to aspire to political office, I don't.
Captcha: keep calm
Yeah, i love the monarchy. Whilst 2.5 million people are written off as shirkers because they don't work and have their incomes tied to a 1% increase due to lack of public funds...the monarchy gets a 10% increase and never has to do a days fucking work in their lives. They get to eat swan while i'm lucky if i can afford beans on toast...fuck 'em all!
I'm a northerner if you hadn't guessed...we don't like to be called British because that lumps us in with the shandy drinking southerners. I despise everything about elitist priveledge and the monarchy is the worst of that all rolled into 1 inbred monster.
I'm a northerner if you hadn't guessed...we don't like to be called British because that lumps us in with the shandy drinking southerners. I despise everything about elitist priveledge and the monarchy is the worst of that all rolled into 1 inbred monster.
I'm eh about them, some of them seem like nice enough (or normal enough) people. What I don't like is that they're all over the news for doing things any other person would barely get a second look for, and what I like even less than that is all the Queen-worshipping that becomes apparent whenever they're mentioned (in Australia, btw). I'm one of those of that just wishes we'd cut ties with Britain, make a new flag and get on with the business of being our own country. And to go a step further, I've had debates with constitutional monarchists, and they describe those in favour of a republic as out to undermine the cultural fabric of Australia, and their main arguments were that I was being disrespectful to soldiers who fought and died under the flag (because once you mention disrespecting the military you get the high ground), and that most pro-republics are minorities who are just racist bigots who hate Britain (now there's some delicious irony). Then again, maybe I just met a bad bunch.
EDIT: Although for Britain, I would recommend keeping them, they're a massive tourist attraction and worth far more than they cost.
EDIT: Although for Britain, I would recommend keeping them, they're a massive tourist attraction and worth far more than they cost.
Yes, well, about that...Willinium said:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/apr/15/spain-king-juan-carlos-hunting
It is their Country so her-ray for them if the feel like being proud of the Royal family. But pardon me for my next statement. Ahem... THIS IS AMERICA (if your in america reading this, if not disregard this statement) We won this land from the Brits so we should give nothing more than a flaming pile of dog poop in a bag to them, cause I hate how everyone in America gives so much damned attention to Royal family. Sarcasm in 3...2..1. OMG! They just had a baby lets waste all of our news resources on following this case! Lets tell every one who doesn't care about it on every form of news so everyone will know. End Sarcasm. Personally yes congrats on the kid and the wedding good for you just don't WASTE 2 FLIPPING MONTHS OF ARE AIR TIME TALKING ABOUT BOTH THE WEDDING AND THE BABY. This is were it gets real, It's not just the Brits i have a grip with I will sound hypocritical here but here it goes I just hate how much time, money and effort that america puts in to celebrity in general. Yeah they made a amazing movie, yeah the made a instant hit, just now a days it seems like 85% of the news is about celebrity are we really that boring come on were America we can do much better than that Lets talk about things that matter like fixing the country, the economic crisis and please get are monkey ear of a president off his lazy rear end and make him listen to people (--->not Justin Berber on his iphone during congress meetings (<-- Probably just fiction but seems legit) I know, I got off track but here is my final answer. In Short, NON-BRITISH, AND NO!