Of all people, professional miserabilist Billy Bragg came up with a decent idea. The house is divided up according to the popular vote at the general election on a PR basis (Tories win 50% of the vote, Tories get 50% of seats), and the party membership elect the individual members. No government wants to do this, though, as patronage of the second House favours the sitting government so massively. Blair could have done it, but didn't.
The problem with the Lords being unelected is that they can fundamentally only ever stall legislation, rather than outright block it (and if they try the parliament act is always waiting in the wings). An elected chamber would have the authority to tell the Commons to go fuck itself (but then would it ever, being stuffed with regular politicians?).
The thing is, what would you replace the House of Lords with? How would you design an all-elected upper house? Or would you? Maybe you'd prefer a Unicameral system of Government, I dunno.
Only idiots bleat on about the House of Lords being unelected. It's good to have a somewhat unaccountable section of government as long as they bear in mind their task is to do things that may be unpopular but are for the greater good, the House of Lords are by and large good at keeping this in mind. Someone has to keep the urges of elected politicians to pander to sections of the public we really shouldn't be pandering to in check.
It amused me last night seeing an SNP politician trying to be a smarmy bitch to Lord Foulkes after he said there should be two referendums one on independence and one for devo max, she started the usual bullshit "it's rich for someone from an unelected chamber to be telling us the champions of the people what to do blah blah" and even the interviewer called her on it saying that's hardly a response to a sensible proposal.
0
Options
surrealitychecklonely, but not unloveddreaming of faulty keys and latchesRegistered Userregular
edited February 2012
the lords do a pretty good job mostly
they are vastly better, in general, at being informed than the commons
Well, they're not elected, so they don't have to worry about appealing to voters quite as much as the Commons. They have to latitude to say what they like without risking their job, whereas MP's are constantly aware of how things are going to play in the papers and with the man on the street.
My rather simplistic view of the House of Lords is that it is a safety net to stop popular yet stupid things getting through.
That's not simplistic. That's the exact reason they're there. The amount of times I hear the "fuck the House of Lords, they're not elected" argument you'd think I'd go insane by now.
Also Chris Huhne needs to go for his monumental stupidity. If he took the points and lost his licence, would he have to resign?
Well he's still denying the charges, but he has now in fact resigned.
Well it bothers me that the Lords are unelected, but Britain's head of state is unelected too, so I don't see it as particularly odd in that context. And they function pretty well in the (rather limited) role we have found for them. I think it bothers me more that the Lords are unrepresentative, even more than the Commons.
How about a grand-jury like house chosen at random?
I think they're similar though. They prevent change and enforce the status quo.
Now I look at my previous post, I can see it doesn't really express what I feel. I hate that the Lord is undemocratic and contains hereditary goddamn peers. But us having a Queen makes it pale into insignificance, and also reminds me how politically out of step I am with most Brits, so why bother arguing about it.
They should really get rid of the remaining 90 hereditary peers.
And yeah, the royal family should be quietly fired when Liz dies. Tourism won't suffer. We'll have a bunch of new castles to invite foreigners to look around!
The chances of the Royal Family going anywhere is remote. I'm sure Prince Charles will do his best to annoy, but the population will probably just put up with it, due to William being the next in line.
It costs each taxpayer something like 60p per person; i.e. not an amount the average person is going to get themselves worked up about.
PSN Fleety2009
0
Options
AManFromEarthLet's get to twerk!The King in the SwampRegistered Userregular
The chances of the Royal Family going anywhere is remote. I'm sure Prince Charles will do his best to annoy, but the population will probably just put up with it, due to William being the next in line.
It costs each taxpayer something like 60p per person; i.e. not an amount the average person is going to get themselves worked up about.
The cost of keeping the Royal Family running is negative, the country gains much more than they put into having a monarchy. The UK gains nothing by getting rid of the Windsors and loses a big part of its own cultural identity.
The chances of the Royal Family going anywhere is remote. I'm sure Prince Charles will do his best to annoy, but the population will probably just put up with it, due to William being the next in line.
It costs each taxpayer something like 60p per person; i.e. not an amount the average person is going to get themselves worked up about.
The cost of keeping the Royal Family running is negative, the country gains much more than they put into having a monarchy. The UK gains nothing by getting rid of the Windsors and loses a big part of its own cultural identity.
Not really. The cost of keeping the royal family is surely more than the cost of maintaining their palaces and castles for tourism would be if we kicked them out and opened fifty new castles for tourism, along with enormous art collections and hey look at that half of bloody Dorset that Prince Charles owns. And the majority of them are utter dicks anyway.
Andrew: dick.
Edward: unbelievable dick.
Charles: pompous dick.
Liz: ok, I guess.
Phil the Greek: very funny but still a dick.
Anne: a Vulcan.
William: seems ok.
Harry: kind of a dick.
AManFromEarthLet's get to twerk!The King in the SwampRegistered Userregular
But doesn't the family own a lot of that stuff. Surely they'd keep their private wealth and holdings if you "retired them".
0
Options
AManFromEarthLet's get to twerk!The King in the SwampRegistered Userregular
But basically it costs 65p per family to run the royal family, and they bring much more than that back into the UK economy. That's just a fact.
I'm an American, so I guess I don't get to comment on it too much, and I don't want to overstep my bounds, but it doesn't make much sense to cut it. It won't save any money, that's for sure. Even if they did find extra cash somehow, the government would just spend it on other crap like a new plane or buying a friend's failing bank or something.
No, they wouldn't. Not if I was doing it, anyway. It's not really private wealth, in my eyes. They can keep the stuff they've actually earned from jobs and so forth, but Balmoral? No. That belongs to the country and I'd like you out by 10am sharp, ma'am.
When Liz kicks the bucket, I don't want to see a single chinless Windsor goober within a mile of a palace. Charles certainly does not get to keep the incredible amount of land he's sitting on.
But basically it costs 65p per family to run the royal family, and they bring much more than that back into the UK economy. That's just a fact.
I would disagree. Who comes here specifically to see the Queen? Do they get to meet her? I don't think so. Buckingham Palace will still be here, along with all the great art they've been hoarding, the sundry palaces we're not currently allowed in and so forth. Versailles is a massive draw for france, and they decapitated their monarch a fair while ago.
If you absolutely insist, we can still have a Queen. We'll elect her from the our pool of beloved national treasures. I look forward to Queen Helen Mirren, Queen Judi Dench or Queen Barbara Windsor.
But basically it costs 65p per family to run the royal family, and they bring much more than that back into the UK economy. That's just a fact.
I would disagree. Who comes here specifically to see the Queen? Do they get to meet her? I don't think so. Buckingham Palace will still be here, along with all the great art they've been hoarding, the sundry palaces we're not currently allowed in and so forth. Versailles is a massive draw for france, and they decapitated their monarch a fair while ago.
If you absolutely insist, we can still have a Queen. We'll elect her from the our pool of beloved national treasures. I look forward to Queen Helen Mirren, Queen Judi Dench or Queen Barbara Windsor.
The great thing is that two of them already have experience being a Queen. :P
No, they wouldn't. Not if I was doing it, anyway. It's not really private wealth, in my eyes. They can keep the stuff they've actually earned from jobs and so forth, but Balmoral? No. That belongs to the country and I'd like you out by 10am sharp, ma'am.
When Liz kicks the bucket, I don't want to see a single chinless Windsor goober within a mile of a palace. Charles certainly does not get to keep the incredible amount of land he's sitting on.
Actual Prince Albert bought Balmoral with his own money* back in the day, and its basically the only castle the royal family own as private individuals and isn't supported by the crown estate. It's one of the few things they'd almost certainly keep in the event of being booted out. Nearly everything else is fair game though.
*Money taken from Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld taxpayers admittedly, but not ours.
My main qualms with taking all the crown estates from the monarchy is a) the crown estate already reports to parliament not the queen and gives their profits to the treasury and b) it'd mean their decisions would be made by politicians rather than the estate commissioners, and our politicians are fuckwits.
No, they wouldn't. Not if I was doing it, anyway. It's not really private wealth, in my eyes. They can keep the stuff they've actually earned from jobs and so forth, but Balmoral? No. That belongs to the country and I'd like you out by 10am sharp, ma'am.
When Liz kicks the bucket, I don't want to see a single chinless Windsor goober within a mile of a palace. Charles certainly does not get to keep the incredible amount of land he's sitting on.
Actual Prince Albert bought Balmoral with his own money* back in the day, and its basically the only castle the royal family own as private individuals and isn't supported by the crown estate. It's one of the few things they'd almost certainly keep in the event of being booted out. Nearly everything else is fair game though.
*Money taken from Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld taxpayers admittedly, but not ours.
My main qualms with taking all the crown estates from the monarchy is a) the crown estate already reports to parliament not the queen and gives their profits to the treasury and b) it'd mean their decisions would be made by politicians rather than the estate commissioners, and our politicians are fuckwits.
Bit more complicated than that, as all the land they 'own' is tied up in a whole bunch of agreements that date back to when George III (I think) handed all the profits of the estate over to the Treasury in return for a set income and forgiveness of various gambling debts. Estates grown since then, but at the moment the land owned by the Royal Family generates more money for the taxpayers than they get in return - however it is still personally owned, so even if you take the historic castles etc out of it and hand those over to the National Trust, you'd still make a loss in the end due to the non-historic properties going away. Plus they'd probably just be sold off in various underhanded deals for much less than they are worth (partly due the fact that it'd all go up at the same time) rather than generating a steady income in the hundreds of millions every year for the government.
I've never seen any evidence for the 'fact' that the Royal Family generate tourism income.
And, well I know this sounds like a communist cliche, but it's true: everything they own was taken from the people.
It may sound like a good idea for the government to seize land owned/controlled by the royal family and use it for the good of the nation, but all that would really happen is it would be sold at a knock down price to some politicians friend, so what does anybody really gain?
When I was younger I also used to think the monarchy was a giant waste of money, these days I figure if it makes some people happy then its okay considering all the things our taxes are spent on that only bring misery.
I've never seen any evidence for the 'fact' that the Royal Family generate tourism income.
And, well I know this sounds like a communist cliche, but it's true: everything they own was taken from the people.
It may sound like a good idea for the government to seize land owned/controlled by the royal family and use it for the good of the nation, but all that would really happen is it would be sold at a knock down price to some politicians friend, so what does anybody really gain?
When I was younger I also used to think the monarchy was a giant waste of money, these days I figure if it makes some people happy then its okay considering all the things our taxes are spent on that only bring misery.
I don't think that makes much sense, really. Our government spending far too much money on the military is something that appalls me, and so the Royal Family only annoys me - but that doesn't mean it's OK.
For me, the big problem with the Royal Family, and the aristocracy in general, is the nebulous but significant cultural effect it has, underpinning the class system. And since the class system is, for me, the single worst thing about Britain, that's a big deal. But I can't prove it has a big cultural effect. It's just one of those things that seems obvious to me, and not to some other people.
Having said all of that, I do feel sorry for the actual members of the Royal Family. They were raised to be useless snobs, which isn't much of a life really. Of course they have complete financial security, and that's a big thing, but it's not a trade-off that I would welcome. If someone said to me that my daughter could be very very rich and powerful, but the price was to be raised with the awful values of the epitome of the aristocracy, I wouldn't say yes.
Surely you can't say WIlliam and Kate are useless? William is a Search and Rescue helicopter pilot and Kate's outfits are almost single-handedly keeping the clothes' stores' finances in the green.
I also don't think you'd see a big difference in the perception of class if you got rid of them either, if anything I think it'd get worse.
Why?
Because I don't think it would go away (the problems aren't really the guys right at the top in the class system, it's the people who aren't quite there) and it'd just shift to being the very rich without having any of the ancestry thing tagged on. The working class stops being the working class and is more just lazy and feckless, whilst the guys at the top aren't seen as being at the top because they were born with a silver spoon in their mouth but because they worked hard regardless of why they actually are rich.
I'm pretty sure we'd just completely latch onto the US's terrible version/perception of class and just run with it.
Give me the remnants of the aristocracy over the Paris Hiltons and Donald Trumps of world any day, the system is just unfair but at least the former is a little bit more honest about it.
I don't see that removing one layer of unwarranted privilege means we necessarily get another, worse one instead. The Royal family have no real power - that's already held by the rich and our elected politicians. And the artistocracy aren't honest about why they're at the top of the social scale. You don't hear Prince Charles saying he's lucky he fell out of the right vagina because otherwise he could have been a miner. He thinks he's there because he should be. When we cleaned most of the hereditary peers out of the Lords it wasn't. Change for the worse.
I don't accept that the danger of a new evil means we have to put up with the one we've got. It's possible, but I don't think you can say it's a sure thing.
I'm not saying that there would be a replacement for the Royals, I'm saying that people's perception of the guys at the top would change away from recognising the advantages that so many of those in power started with. In a way the obvious type of 'unfairness' stays in your mind, making you focus on trying to mitigate them and make things fairer for everyone.
I'm also not arguing that we should keep the monarchy around for this reason, but I think the idea that getting rid of them would help the perception of class is untrue.
Like many on here I'm a republican, and would really rather the monarchy abolished after the Queens dies (hopefully not before the jubilee bank holiday!). One thing to be said for the monarchy is that they do seem to provide a sense of unity both across the UK and the Commonwealth as a whole.
I know that it's the 30th anniversary of the Falklands war and all, but this rabble rousing about the islands just seems bizarre. There just doesn't seem to be any real spark for the tensions and the ratcheting is a bit odd.
It's like Kirchner and Cameron met up and decided to just have a nice distracting tiff or something!
0
Options
AManFromEarthLet's get to twerk!The King in the SwampRegistered Userregular
I know that it's the 30th anniversary of the Falklands war and all, but this rabble rousing about the islands just seems bizarre. There just doesn't seem to be any real spark for the tensions and the ratcheting is a bit odd.
It's like Kirchner and Cameron met up and decided to just have a nice distracting tiff or something!
1.) Oil discovered off the islands that is in the British Exclusion Zone
2.) Argentina being a cock.
It wasn't the British who started the sabre rattling.
Until the Falkland Islands decide to not be British I don't understand how anyone in the international community can say anything but "STFU, Argentina."
I know that it's the 30th anniversary of the Falklands war and all, but this rabble rousing about the islands just seems bizarre. There just doesn't seem to be any real spark for the tensions and the ratcheting is a bit odd.
It's like Kirchner and Cameron met up and decided to just have a nice distracting tiff or something!
1.) Oil discovered off the islands that is in the British Exclusion Zone
2.) Argentina being a cock.
It wasn't the British who started the sabre rattling.
Until the Falkland Islands decide to not be British I don't understand how anyone in the international community can say anything but "STFU, Argentina."
Pretty much. Spain and the rest of Latin America might have a little moan though.
Posts
Choose Your Own Chat 1 Choose Your Own Chat 2 Choose Your Own Chat 3
Only idiots bleat on about the House of Lords being unelected. It's good to have a somewhat unaccountable section of government as long as they bear in mind their task is to do things that may be unpopular but are for the greater good, the House of Lords are by and large good at keeping this in mind. Someone has to keep the urges of elected politicians to pander to sections of the public we really shouldn't be pandering to in check.
It amused me last night seeing an SNP politician trying to be a smarmy bitch to Lord Foulkes after he said there should be two referendums one on independence and one for devo max, she started the usual bullshit "it's rich for someone from an unelected chamber to be telling us the champions of the people what to do blah blah" and even the interviewer called her on it saying that's hardly a response to a sensible proposal.
they are vastly better, in general, at being informed than the commons
even the lords spiritual
Choose Your Own Chat 1 Choose Your Own Chat 2 Choose Your Own Chat 3
Well he's still denying the charges, but he has now in fact resigned.
How about a grand-jury like house chosen at random?
At least, the head of state is inert now. When Charlie Chuckles gets in it's a fair bet he'll be sticking his oar in everywhere.
Choose Your Own Chat 1 Choose Your Own Chat 2 Choose Your Own Chat 3
Now I look at my previous post, I can see it doesn't really express what I feel. I hate that the Lord is undemocratic and contains hereditary goddamn peers. But us having a Queen makes it pale into insignificance, and also reminds me how politically out of step I am with most Brits, so why bother arguing about it.
And yeah, the royal family should be quietly fired when Liz dies. Tourism won't suffer. We'll have a bunch of new castles to invite foreigners to look around!
Choose Your Own Chat 1 Choose Your Own Chat 2 Choose Your Own Chat 3
It costs each taxpayer something like 60p per person; i.e. not an amount the average person is going to get themselves worked up about.
The cost of keeping the Royal Family running is negative, the country gains much more than they put into having a monarchy. The UK gains nothing by getting rid of the Windsors and loses a big part of its own cultural identity.
Not really. The cost of keeping the royal family is surely more than the cost of maintaining their palaces and castles for tourism would be if we kicked them out and opened fifty new castles for tourism, along with enormous art collections and hey look at that half of bloody Dorset that Prince Charles owns. And the majority of them are utter dicks anyway.
Andrew: dick.
Edward: unbelievable dick.
Charles: pompous dick.
Liz: ok, I guess.
Phil the Greek: very funny but still a dick.
Anne: a Vulcan.
William: seems ok.
Harry: kind of a dick.
Choose Your Own Chat 1 Choose Your Own Chat 2 Choose Your Own Chat 3
I'm an American, so I guess I don't get to comment on it too much, and I don't want to overstep my bounds, but it doesn't make much sense to cut it. It won't save any money, that's for sure. Even if they did find extra cash somehow, the government would just spend it on other crap like a new plane or buying a friend's failing bank or something.
When Liz kicks the bucket, I don't want to see a single chinless Windsor goober within a mile of a palace. Charles certainly does not get to keep the incredible amount of land he's sitting on.
Choose Your Own Chat 1 Choose Your Own Chat 2 Choose Your Own Chat 3
I would disagree. Who comes here specifically to see the Queen? Do they get to meet her? I don't think so. Buckingham Palace will still be here, along with all the great art they've been hoarding, the sundry palaces we're not currently allowed in and so forth. Versailles is a massive draw for france, and they decapitated their monarch a fair while ago.
If you absolutely insist, we can still have a Queen. We'll elect her from the our pool of beloved national treasures. I look forward to Queen Helen Mirren, Queen Judi Dench or Queen Barbara Windsor.
Choose Your Own Chat 1 Choose Your Own Chat 2 Choose Your Own Chat 3
The great thing is that two of them already have experience being a Queen. :P
On the other hand I think the Queen seems like a neat lady.
Choose Your Own Chat 1 Choose Your Own Chat 2 Choose Your Own Chat 3
liz is not merely ok
she waves like a champ
she deserves an excellent purely for that
Actual Prince Albert bought Balmoral with his own money* back in the day, and its basically the only castle the royal family own as private individuals and isn't supported by the crown estate. It's one of the few things they'd almost certainly keep in the event of being booted out. Nearly everything else is fair game though.
*Money taken from Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld taxpayers admittedly, but not ours.
My main qualms with taking all the crown estates from the monarchy is a) the crown estate already reports to parliament not the queen and gives their profits to the treasury and b) it'd mean their decisions would be made by politicians rather than the estate commissioners, and our politicians are fuckwits.
Choose Your Own Chat 1 Choose Your Own Chat 2 Choose Your Own Chat 3
He's kind of a racist old dickhead. Also a war hero, but generally a dickhead.
Choose Your Own Chat 1 Choose Your Own Chat 2 Choose Your Own Chat 3
Bit more complicated than that, as all the land they 'own' is tied up in a whole bunch of agreements that date back to when George III (I think) handed all the profits of the estate over to the Treasury in return for a set income and forgiveness of various gambling debts. Estates grown since then, but at the moment the land owned by the Royal Family generates more money for the taxpayers than they get in return - however it is still personally owned, so even if you take the historic castles etc out of it and hand those over to the National Trust, you'd still make a loss in the end due to the non-historic properties going away. Plus they'd probably just be sold off in various underhanded deals for much less than they are worth (partly due the fact that it'd all go up at the same time) rather than generating a steady income in the hundreds of millions every year for the government.
And, well I know this sounds like a communist cliche, but it's true: everything they own was taken from the people.
It may sound like a good idea for the government to seize land owned/controlled by the royal family and use it for the good of the nation, but all that would really happen is it would be sold at a knock down price to some politicians friend, so what does anybody really gain?
When I was younger I also used to think the monarchy was a giant waste of money, these days I figure if it makes some people happy then its okay considering all the things our taxes are spent on that only bring misery.
I don't think that makes much sense, really. Our government spending far too much money on the military is something that appalls me, and so the Royal Family only annoys me - but that doesn't mean it's OK.
For me, the big problem with the Royal Family, and the aristocracy in general, is the nebulous but significant cultural effect it has, underpinning the class system. And since the class system is, for me, the single worst thing about Britain, that's a big deal. But I can't prove it has a big cultural effect. It's just one of those things that seems obvious to me, and not to some other people.
Having said all of that, I do feel sorry for the actual members of the Royal Family. They were raised to be useless snobs, which isn't much of a life really. Of course they have complete financial security, and that's a big thing, but it's not a trade-off that I would welcome. If someone said to me that my daughter could be very very rich and powerful, but the price was to be raised with the awful values of the epitome of the aristocracy, I wouldn't say yes.
Why?
Choose Your Own Chat 1 Choose Your Own Chat 2 Choose Your Own Chat 3
Because I don't think it would go away (the problems aren't really the guys right at the top in the class system, it's the people who aren't quite there) and it'd just shift to being the very rich without having any of the ancestry thing tagged on. The working class stops being the working class and is more just lazy and feckless, whilst the guys at the top aren't seen as being at the top because they were born with a silver spoon in their mouth but because they worked hard regardless of why they actually are rich.
I'm pretty sure we'd just completely latch onto the US's terrible version/perception of class and just run with it.
Give me the remnants of the aristocracy over the Paris Hiltons and Donald Trumps of world any day, the system is just unfair but at least the former is a little bit more honest about it.
I don't accept that the danger of a new evil means we have to put up with the one we've got. It's possible, but I don't think you can say it's a sure thing.
Choose Your Own Chat 1 Choose Your Own Chat 2 Choose Your Own Chat 3
I'm also not arguing that we should keep the monarchy around for this reason, but I think the idea that getting rid of them would help the perception of class is untrue.
It's like Kirchner and Cameron met up and decided to just have a nice distracting tiff or something!
1.) Oil discovered off the islands that is in the British Exclusion Zone
2.) Argentina being a cock.
It wasn't the British who started the sabre rattling.
Until the Falkland Islands decide to not be British I don't understand how anyone in the international community can say anything but "STFU, Argentina."
Pretty much. Spain and the rest of Latin America might have a little moan though.