It's The Queens Birthday Day.

kneemos

xabi wrote: »

Thats crying out for a cock&balls to be drawn on it.

You'd be thrown in The Tower and fed gruel with little beatles .

maudgonner

kneemos wrote: »

You'd be thrown in The Tower and fed gruel with little beatles .

Which ones? John, George or Ringo would be good company (even if two of them are dead). But Paul annoys the hell out of me.

Princess Consuela Bananahammock

Was Hitler's birthday yesterday Always thought it would have been mildly amusing if they had the same birhtday....

SEPT 23 1989

FTA69 wrote: »

The whole concept of a monarchy in this day and age is ridiculous and outdated; similarly forking out millions of actual working people's money to fund a shower of parasites is a joke considering the austerity the rest of the country is being subjected to.

The Royal Family embodies the worst of British society to be honest; undemocratic, militaristic and hereditary privilege.

they earn more for the country than it costs to keep them

FTA69

SEPT 23 1989 wrote: »

they earn more for the country than it costs to keep them

Unquantifiable and probably untrue. Britain's history and heritage draws huge amounts of tourists, not the presence of an extend family of wasters. The likes of London, Windsor Castle etc will always be profitable tourist assets. Similarly the UK spends untold amounts on these f*ckers while Cameron et al simultaneously berate the unemployed and disabled as scroungers.

The likes of Versailles and various former royal sites in France actually get more tourists than the British equivalents and they got rid of their royals over two hundred years ago.


http://uk.businessinsider.com/the-queen-and-the-uk-royal-family-contribution-to-the-uk-economy-2015-9

LordSutch

Happy Birthday Ma'am.

A Great Lady by all accounts, long may she reign .....

William & Kate to succeed (skipping Charles)?

Permabear

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Mesrine65

kneemos wrote: »

You'd be thrown in The Tower and fed gruel with little beatles .

Ringo's in the Tower :eek:

FTA69

Permabear wrote: »

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Get up out of it you. You're a libertarian and you're forever on this moaning about your taxes being used for things like schooling and healthcare so you can at least be consistent and oppose thembeing used to fund a shower of people whose job is it is to do f*ck all and look down on everyone else.

Likewise a lot of the figures put forward about the trifling costs of the royals are unfairly skewed to leave out the real costs and that's before even getting into the wider argument of democracy and the foolishness of being a subject of some unaccountable monarch.

snubbleste

Fair play to the Queen.
She had no choice in her career. She excels at what she does.

Ush1

Permabear wrote: »

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Spoken like a true libertarian.

Shouldn't everybody be able to live like the Queen if it costs so little?

Beefy78

God bless her. Happy Birthday Your Majesty

BoJack Horseman

Ush1 wrote: »

Shouldn't everybody be able to live like the Queen if it costs so little?

Yes.

If I give you 53p.... And you give me 53p, we can both live like Queens.

Beefy78

FTA69 wrote: »

Get up out of it you. You're a libertarian and you're forever on this moaning about your taxes being used for things like schooling and healthcare so you can at least be consistent and oppose thembeing used to fund a shower of people whose job is it is to do f*ck all and look down on everyone else.

Likewise a lot of the figures put forward about the trifling costs of the royals are unfairly skewed to leave out the real costs and that's before even getting into the wider argument of democracy and the foolishness of being a subject of some unaccountable monarch.

I've never bought the 50p price tag as being accurate but I doubt the Monarchy is any more expensive than the cost of running a Republic. The bulk of the cost is upkeep on the various Palaces which would need to be spent anyway.

Living in London you must know that the majority of people in the UK want to keep the Royal Family. You talk about democracy yet you seem to be keen to discount the will of the people because it doesn't fit your World view.

Arghus

Permabear wrote: »

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Not a lot indeed, but I'm sure there's many more deserving things that 53p a week could rather be spent on.

Personally, I think the Monarchy is a load of nonsense that helps to prop up outdated ideas of class and heredity privilege and because so much of it's function is now symbolic, it's highly insidious in how it goes about doing so.

Ush1

Beefy78 wrote: »

I've never bought the 50p price tag as being accurate but I doubt the Monarchy is any more expensive than the cost of running a Republic. The bulk of the cost is upkeep on the various Palaces which would need to be spent anyway.

Living in London you must know that the majority of people in the UK want to keep the Royal Family. You talk about democracy yet you seem to be keen to discount the will of the people because it doesn't fit your World view.

Democracy indeed, if 51% of the electorate wanted all black people deported would that happen?

FTA69

Beefy78 wrote: »

I've never bought the 50p price tag as being accurate but I doubt the Monarchy is any more expensive than the cost of running a Republic. The bulk of the cost is upkeep on the various Palaces which would need to be spent anyway.

Living in London you must know that the majority of people in the UK want to keep the Royal Family. You talk about democracy yet you seem to be keen to discount the will of the people because it doesn't fit your World view.

I do know that the majority of people support the Royal Family but that's not the point. A democratic system isn't simply equated with what the majority of people want in a given country; it's a system of government where power is explicitly supposed to lie in the hands of the populace and not in the hands of a sovereign, nominal or otherwise.

The majority of Russians were probably content under Stalin, likewise the majority of Libyans may well have supported Ghadaffi at one stage - it doesn't mean that ergo those systems were democratic.

As I said above, monarchy is an outdated and fundamentally wrong concept and it's abolishment is definitely something any democrat should support.

MRnotlob606

Brits out

Beefy78

Ush1 wrote: »

Democracy indeed, if 51% of the electorate wanted all black people deported would that happen?

No strawman, please

Permabear

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Ush1

Beefy78 wrote: »

No strawman, please

It's not a strawman, as FTA69 pointed out, Republics enjoy consititutions so that the populace has some form of protection and crucially, equality.

Saying a lot of Londoners like the Queen is not a very convicing argument.

RobertKK

I am looking forward to my father's birthday later in the year when he will be 90 years old, all going well please God.
Happy birthday to the Queen and all who celebrate significant birthdays. April is a really nice time of the year for a birthday, days are longer after the winter and the summer to look forward to.
It was my birthday last week, so I am slightly biased

Beefy78

FTA69 wrote: »

I do know that the majority of people support the Royal Family but that's not the point. A democratic system isn't simply equated with what the majority of people want in a given country; it's a system of government where power is explicitly supposed to lie in the hands of the populace and not in the hands of a sovereign, nominal or otherwise.

The majority of Russians were probably content under Stalin, likewise the majority of Libyans may well have supported Ghadaffi at one stage - it doesn't mean that ergo those systems were democratic.

As I said above, monarchy is an outdated and fundamentally wrong concept and it's abolishment is definitely something any democrat should support.

I think its fair to say that if you were starting a country today you wouldn't go down the route of a Monarchy as head of state. I'm sure we can all agree on that. But I think there are far more important democratic issues in the UK than whether the role of figurehead is one which has been voted on or not.

Democracy shouldn't mandate that every role needs to be elected. Elections are a tool of democracy. If you want to fix democracy in Britain (as I do...) then you start with the sham that is the UK Parliament. Focusing on a beloved family fulfilling a role that the public are happy with is a waste of effort.

Permabear

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Ush1

Permabear wrote: »

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So you're comparing the cost of upkeep of a single family, to the cost of running the public healthcare service?

I'd love if they were privatised, I'd imagine very quickly they'd be spotted scurrying around bins. I think the fascination with them is the fact they are privileged because of who they are, privitise them and they'd be another Kardashian family....for a while.

FTA69

Beefy78 wrote: »

I think its fair to say that if you were starting a country today you wouldn't go down the route of a Monarchy as head of state. I'm sure we can all agree on that. But I think there are far more important democratic issues in the UK than whether the role of figurehead is one which has been voted on or not.

Democracy shouldn't mandate that every role needs to be elected. Elections are a tool of democracy. If you want to fix democracy in Britain (as I do...) then you start with the sham that is the UK Parliament. Focusing on a beloved family fulfilling a role that the public are happy with is a waste of effort.

In fairness I'm not saying that number one power disparity in the UK that should be tackled immediately is the Royal Family, because it isn't. However when it comes up it's perfectly fair to point out the fact that monarchy is outdated and anti-democratic and it's also a sham considering we have an establishment preaching hard work and austerity on one hand while simultaneously demanding we fawn over an idle royal family on the other.

As I said above, the Royals aren't the be all and end all of inequality and privilege in the UK, but they're definitely a thread in that wider fabric.

Arghus

Permabear wrote: »

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My apologies. But even a penny a week is one too many in my opinion!

It seems like a very, very low amount. Any link to the article?

Permabear

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Ush1

Permabear wrote: »

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This thread is about the Queen, not whataboutery.

Permabear

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