Saw this while reading the morning paper (of course before I clipped all the coupons and tossed the whole rag in the recycling bin)
LONDON — With historic budget cuts about to change the way the British live — slashing children’s benefits, freezing public salaries, and trimming welfare roles — one must do one’s part: Even the queen is cutting back…The queen is freezing salaries for royal servants and aides earning more than $73,500, and reviewing all vacant slots with an eye to reducing her staff of 1,400 — which includes a royal piper who plays under her window in the mornings as well as an official counter of swans.
In America we came up with a much better solution to our financial problems. We told the King to kiss our asses and to go climb a tree.
I still have no idea why the UK and the Common Wealth nations keep the royals and the lords around. I suspect in the case of the Common Wealths I have a theory that the average Joe on the ground in Canada has no idea that there is a Governor General and that if they wanted to cripple the whole of Canadian government (or the Queen through her) they could. They don’t know because it simply doesn’t happen….but they still pay for the Governor and for the Queen.
Maybe its just me, given that as American we’re culturally taught to hate royalties and birthrights, as well as dictatorships. I know there are readers in various Common Wealth Nations as well as the UK. Can you defend keeping the royals around?
They’re subjects of the queen. They don’t have a choice.
Just watched “The Book of Eli”, wasn’t a bad film. Great Tough-Guy line from it was “There’s always a choice…”
See also AMERICA! *fuck Yeah!*
In their current role the Royals aren’t of much use and don’t do much but don’t cost much and the English seem to like keeping them around, but in the grand scheme of things there is a lot to be said for a benevolent king or dictator vs our political system or the even worse Parliamentary system. I actually wrote a bit of an essay on that recently.
Kings and Dictators tend to look at their country and people as capital. Therefore they try to protect and enhance it. Some better some worse.
Elected officials, especially in the US system where any second term president is a lame duck, are highly motivated to get what they can for themselves and “screw whatever mess I leave for the next guy”. Again, some are better and some are worse, but monarchs and dictators have a long term interest in the future of their nation. Democratically elected politicians CLAIM to have long term interests, some do and some don’t.
Iffin ya would like to read the rest: http://boomersandbs.blogspot.com/2010/07/deconstructing-supposed-supremacy-of.html
Interesting posts. Only it really doesn’t factor in the “Mad Tyrant” kings that pop up. I mean how many crazy royals are there? Or malevolent dictators. I understand they’re outside your analogy, but having a monarchy or dictatorship never has protections against Tyranny.
I’ll take our flawed system over that any day, tho I can see you point.
Abraham Lincoln was a malevolent dictator that intentionally encouraged a horribly damaging war of Northern Supremacy, conscripted people to fight against their will, eliminated freedom of the press and ran roughshod over political enemies completely ignoring Habeas Corpus not unlike say, um, HITLER or STALIN? He was popularly elected, by a slim margin in the states that hadn’t seceded from a union they lawfully didn’t want to be part of anymore, so if you examine his claim to have been president of the entire union he claimed, he wasn’t even popularly elected by majority vote.
What about them apples?
A bit over one million casualties and their descendants that had their homes, businesses, and even entire cities burned to the ground and then were raped by carpetbaggers and menaced and belittled ever since would likely be curious as to how it would have been any worse if he’d been a “king” instead of a “President”.
It’s the exact same reason we vote to build huge expensive stadiums for multi-million dollar sports team owners so they can have a place for their million dollar players to play games in.
Root root root for the home team, if they don’t win it’s a shame…
Only as a General rule those million-dollar stadiums pay for themselves several times over in ticket sales as well as ad and merchandise revenue.
I hear the Royals add to the tourist trade, but I have never seen any cut-and-dry numbers.
Don’t get me wrong, you couldn’t pay me to sit in the bleachers at any of these games, but you can’t wrinkle your nose at the people who pay big bux to watch grown men play a children’s game.
Still I suspect this is going to be a born loser:
http://www.boston.com/sports/soccer/articles/2010/07/18/new_stadium_could_kick_start_revolution_somerville/
Soccer in America is rarely a money-maker.
Those multi-million dollar stadiums RARELY pay for themselves if erected at public expense.
Just as the multi-thousand dollar hot dog stand erected at public expense rarely pays for itself.
It’s the same mistake that elected officials across the nation make every single day, and here’s the Clue-by-Four:
Guys, if it WAS a profitable idea all on it’s own, the businessman would be doing it ON HIS OWN, because business relations generally work by Murphy’s Golden RUle — him who provides the gold, makes the rules. Unless the savvy businessman convinces the brain dead politician to fund things without haveing ANY government control or kickback, it’s invariably a sucker deal for the businessman to (legally) fleece the public treasury.
I don’t care if it’s a stadium, a Wal-Mart, or a coffee stand — if the public treasury is expected to lay out money (or special status breaks that cost the treasury and enhance the bank account of the developer) for a business deal that they would not ordinarily offer EVERY business (such as an across the board tax cut — those actually work to promote business and increase revenue), it NEVER pays off for teh government what the preliminary projections show. . . but somehow the businessmen seem to make THEIR profit just fine.
That wopuld be because experienced and successful business are good at THEIR line of work (working deals to their benefit), and politicians generally are not. . . else they’d be pulling in major coin as businessmen themselves. (There are exceptions, especially businessmen who later go into politics. Most of those find themselves just as out of their depth in politics against savvy political types as the political types find themselves in business deals with savvy businessmen.)
i can’t speak as to the British royals, as i know pretty much zilch about that country. their royal family seems to be a dysfunctional soap opera worthy of Jerry Springer, but that’s from no more than what you have to go on yourself.
in general a symbolic monarchy can work. look at the Belgians or the Swedes, their royals seem pretty decent folk overall. pointless and powerless, but decent enough people.
i still oppose it, though, because if you give a monarch any real power you’re inviting tyranny, and if you don’t, you’re being terribly unfair to them. honestly, sticking a handful of random people up on a pedestal as “symbols of the country” or “diplomatic figureheads” just because of who their daddies were? what kind of normal lives can they have? and it does the country no useful difference, either.
NOMEN!!! Good to see you at the new place! Don’t be a stranger!
Also great to read that despite our great political distance we can agree about royal families.