Who Shall Be King ?

Keeps dipshit politicians in check.

It's hard for me to explain my political views, because I lack the sophisticated language and the confidence. But... I think that having a monarch (albeit even a fairly powerless and symbolic one) is good for a country, because it provides a fairly harmless focus for unbridled nationalism which otherwise would be expressed in harmful and right-wing ways.

I don't really have much basis for this, other than the observation that European countries that *kept* their monarchies have tended to be more liberal and stable than those that didn't. (And no, I can't really qualify that statement, it's just an observation based on WWII and the USSR and things like that. Yes, I know it's simplistic, but I stated above that I had a problem with expressing myself politically.)

I think that people who focus their right-wing nationalistic tendencies on a Monarch with no political power are less likely to focus their right-wing nationalistic tendencies on a leader who DOES have political power.

If "Daily Mail Readers" can focus on the Queen, they're less likely to focus on the BNP. I think.

Vive la république!

You REALLY think that if you get rid of the royal family, that the class system will disappear overnight? Get a grip! Did killing the royal family destroy Russia's class system, or just replace it with an even more brutal class system? Does America not have a class system?

It's a good thing that the British *have* the royal family to blame all their class troubles on, otherwise they might have to look in the mirror or something.

Looking out across present-day Europe, I don't really see that monarchies have less of a problem than republics when it comes to nationalism. The Scandinavians are cool because they're Scandinavians, not because they have monarchies. Throughout history, there have been plenty of fascist-leaning monarchies. I don't really see the "reining-in-nationalists" argument.

"The monarchy is wrong. Isn’t it? The onus is on monarchists to prove otherwise. A sense may even obtain that this issue has been settled, a sense which itself leads to complacency and stasis. The likes of me have given up having opinions about the monarchy: cruel to knock them, when everyone knows they’re absurd. Even were that true, it leaves the monarchy in place. ‘Ironic royalism’: ‘I don’t believe in it, but it’s harmless enough – entertaining – fills the tabloids...’. Even this isn’t the real picture. If this event has focused the issue for anyone, it’s been to swing them behind the Queen and her 50 years, and by extension behind monarchy. Even irony about the royal family remains a minority stance: let alone passionate opposition and serious critique.

‘The monarchy is wrong because it props up and exemplifies our class system’. They’re still wheeling that one out, and it convinces me less and less. Class, for one thing, appears to have changed radically while the Queen remains. For another: lose the monarchy, and you won’t lose what class really means – financial inequality, unequal ownership of production, things that haven’t centred on monarchy for 300 years. It’s a sort of argument by analogy: I don’t like class, so I don’t like the monarchy. Maybe that’s reason enough. But what are you really going to do about class, once you’ve got rid of the monarchy? Possible to argue they make a better target, visible and obvious, than the clever shady Murdoch dynasties, the new old rulers of the world. Better the devil you know, better the political foe who wears a crown and thus makes her power, by modern lights, absurd. What lies beyond the monarchy is fearful: not the socialist spill of reactionary fear, but a higher stage of capitalism. That may not be a good reason to back the monarchy, but it’s one reason why those who’ve railed may now stay their hands."

wow, so everyone is equal in America and enjoys the same levels of economic and political influence? winner.

Now there is an interesting quandary. Because if she can't, then there's that whole "Taxation without representation" problem.

(But obviously it's symbolic, DC)

The Government is of course accountable to the House of Lords, which even after the purge of hereditary peers still possesses a kind of old-skool British class structure tied in with monarchy and aristocracy and inherently undemocratic and only loosely connected with modern British life.

if charles submitted himself to this scientific AND democratic procedure then the royal troubles wd vanish overnight

i. Charles Windsor
ii. David Jason
iii. Ant or Dec
iv. Alien or Predator
v. Swampy
vi. Trisha
vii. Linda Barker
viii. Julie Burchill
ix. Pob (of Pob's Programme)
x. Al the Pub Landlord
xi. Maggie Hambling
xii. kitten in beer glass

(This may or may not reflect my views on democracy as a whole.)

The campaign starts here. I'd willingly squeeze her toothpaste.

win-win!!

Anyone witha voice like *hers* is quite clearly possessed by Beelzebub.

kate it's symbolic they don't get to "rule"

But part of all ruled/rulin relationships is symbolic!!! < /Geertz>

I have been cracking my shit up standing in the queue at Marks & Sparks, thinking about the idea of "Royal Big Brother" - i.e. the glasshouse filled with the Royal Family and minor members thereof, and the public gets to vote on who stays, and who meets Madame Guillotine.

(Of course, instead of Davina, it would have to be presented by Nigel Spivey. I am writing the pitch to Channel 5 as we speak...)

Use different more accurate facts plz.

To answer the original question, me please. I'll commission Kevin Shields to be poet laureate and his official functions can consist guitar abuse at high state functions.

he's caught that beautifully, but i thing i prefer the straight-leg swing of the first

steve bruce

this gary johnson dude was hyped for the epl a couple of years ago

got a sadsack curblishley ambience to him

hmmph i've had to re-run motd for the brother so i'm no longer current

'this could be their year'
used
unironically
by steve claridge

the hope that kills etc