It seems my comments on the royal family last night triggered @HYUFD into a fierce debate which looks to have carried on into this morning
As I said last night I have been a republican most of my life but of recent times have had nothing but praise and admiration for HMQ but it has become an anachronism and the media coverage of William and Kate talking to children contained behind a wire fence and standing on the back of a land rover waving at the people gives credence to it
80% of my 78 years have been lived in Scotland and Wales and maybe I just do not get this Queen appointed by God and we are subservient to their position and must bow when meeting them etc
I am content for Charles to be king and William and Kate to succeed him but they do need to modernise and accept attitudes change
I give William full marks when he told the Caribbean nations that he will support any decisions to become republics and it is unthinkable that Australia, NZ, or Canada will continue indefinitely to have our monarch as their head of state
We are in a rapidly changing world and only those who accept change and even welcome it will survive
The Caribbean tour struggled to straddle the obvious fissures between the monarchy and the modern world, with only partial success. Once HMQ has risen to her throne in the sky, a lot of questions are going to come to the fore.
Absolutely, and I am a little surprised how tone deaf the Palace has been to the issues. Perhaps if they still had Harry and Meghan in the room they might have addressed the issues a bit better. Not just the slavery one, but also the issues around post colonial development.
I think the truth is that young William is still learning on the job.
He has been doing it a while, he is nearly 40.
A lot of the problem with the monarchy is not so much the individuals, flawed as they are, but the obsequious funkiest around the household. The archaic protocols and stuffy orders of precedence pander to the worst of the Royal individuals.
Yes, but he is still third tier, and is only recently getting the exposure that his presumed imminent promotion will attract.
You're right about the Palace, though. I had passing dealings with them in my old job, and to say that they are stuck in the past is an understatement.
Lots of people twisting themselves in knots to defend what I think is a fairly bad decision by the church court, which was made with laughable justifications.
"white muppets" wrong "everyone was at it" not everyone "we'd have to cancel a whole century" no we wouldn't
Just have a look at the case itself, and read the judgment itself.
My point is not to justify it because everyone was at it, quite the reverse. But it was a *national* enterprise, it is what we as a country fundamentally did. It therfore seems a bit pointless to pick off arbitrary individuals.
I still don’t understand why there isn’t a national monument to Britain’s part in slavery and the slave trade (though I have suspicions verging on certainties).
If by some accident of history and geography the UK had been responsible for the Holocaust, all the people who had stolen Jewish property and moved into houses vacated by deported Jews would have been financially compensated, the British Armed forces would have flip flopped to roaming Europe to prevent pogroms and been held up as a virtuous ideal, the Royals would be dispatched to patronise the denuded shtetls of the east, and instead of a huge memorial to the attempted extermination of a race in our capital city there would be a few blue plaques.
Rubbish, the Holocaust happened less than a hundred years ago, within the lifetimes even of some Germans still alive today.
Britain ended slavery 200 years ago, nobody alive today, nor even their parents or grandparents, were involved in it
Not 200 years ago. ONly in 1838 (when the thinly disguised 'apprenticeship' scheme was abolished).
When the Jamaican PM said it was going to become a Republic, William just stood there and said nothing.
Well if there was a good reason for it remaining a Monarchy wouldn't William have said what it was?
Surely if anyone could think of a reason it would be William? After all he's almost 40 and has spent his whole life preparing to do the job and even he can't think of any positive reason for it?
What a total and utter farce. When someone actually bothers to challenge it it's immediately obvious that there's nothing there.
The whole tour has been excruciatingly embarrassing, hopefully it will be the last such "Royal" tour of the Caribbean
Lots of people twisting themselves in knots to defend what I think is a fairly bad decision by the church court, which was made with laughable justifications.
"white muppets" wrong "everyone was at it" not everyone "we'd have to cancel a whole century" no we wouldn't
Just have a look at the case itself, and read the judgment itself.
My point is not to justify it because everyone was at it, quite the reverse. But it was a *national* enterprise, it is what we as a country fundamentally did. It therfore seems a bit pointless to pick off arbitrary individuals.
Yes, seems a pointless endeavour in that respect.
I suppose you drop litter everywhere because of the vast amounts of pollution that will still be made everywhere else.
It seems my comments on the royal family last night triggered @HYUFD into a fierce debate which looks to have carried on into this morning
As I said last night I have been a republican most of my life but of recent times have had nothing but praise and admiration for HMQ but it has become an anachronism and the media coverage of William and Kate talking to children contained behind a wire fence and standing on the back of a land rover waving at the people gives credence to it
80% of my 78 years have been lived in Scotland and Wales and maybe I just do not get this Queen appointed by God and we are subservient to their position and must bow when meeting them etc
I am content for Charles to be king and William and Kate to succeed him but they do need to modernise and accept attitudes change
I give William full marks when he told the Caribbean nations that he will support any decisions to become republics and it is unthinkable that Australia, NZ, or Canada will continue indefinitely to have our monarch as their head of state
We are in a rapidly changing world and only those who accept change and even welcome it will survive
The Caribbean tour struggled to straddle the obvious fissures between the monarchy and the modern world, with only partial success. Once HMQ has risen to her throne in the sky, a lot of questions are going to come to the fore.
Absolutely, and I am a little surprised how tone deaf the Palace has been to the issues. Perhaps if they still had Harry and Meghan in the room they might have addressed the issues a bit better. Not just the slavery one, but also the issues around post colonial development.
I think the truth is that young William is still learning on the job.
He has been doing it a while, he is nearly 40.
A lot of the problem with the monarchy is not so much the individuals, flawed as they are, but the obsequious funkiest around the household. The archaic protocols and stuffy orders of precedence pander to the worst of the Royal individuals.
I broadly agree with this. What we probably want, if we want to retain the Monarchy at all, is something more continental. A bit of pagentry for weddings, funerals, state occasions is nice but day to day life needs to be a bit more normal, like Princess Anne has managed. They would surely be happier too.
And the constitutional side would seem to be a hop skip and jump from resolution. There is an excellent briefing paper here
It seems my comments on the royal family last night triggered @HYUFD into a fierce debate which looks to have carried on into this morning
As I said last night I have been a republican most of my life but of recent times have had nothing but praise and admiration for HMQ but it has become an anachronism and the media coverage of William and Kate talking to children contained behind a wire fence and standing on the back of a land rover waving at the people gives credence to it
80% of my 78 years have been lived in Scotland and Wales and maybe I just do not get this Queen appointed by God and we are subservient to their position and must bow when meeting them etc
I am content for Charles to be king and William and Kate to succeed him but they do need to modernise and accept attitudes change
I give William full marks when he told the Caribbean nations that he will support any decisions to become republics and it is unthinkable that Australia, NZ, or Canada will continue indefinitely to have our monarch as their head of state
We are in a rapidly changing world and only those who accept change and even welcome it will survive
The Caribbean tour struggled to straddle the obvious fissures between the monarchy and the modern world, with only partial success. Once HMQ has risen to her throne in the sky, a lot of questions are going to come to the fore.
Absolutely, and I am a little surprised how tone deaf the Palace has been to the issues. Perhaps if they still had Harry and Meghan in the room they might have addressed the issues a bit better. Not just the slavery one, but also the issues around post colonial development.
I think the truth is that young William is still learning on the job.
He has been doing it a while, he is nearly 40.
A lot of the problem with the monarchy is not so much the individuals, flawed as they are, but the obsequious funkiest around the household. The archaic protocols and stuffy orders of precedence pander to the worst of the Royal individuals.
I note a murmur on twitter that the current clusterfuck of royal pr is down to all the ‘good’ advisors being got rid of in 2017. I was unaware of this cull but I’m not sure that the huge, ramshackle Firm of Windsor can be marketed into relevance, nor if it’s all worth it just to prevent the supposed horror of an elected head of state.
It seems my comments on the royal family last night triggered @HYUFD into a fierce debate which looks to have carried on into this morning
As I said last night I have been a republican most of my life but of recent times have had nothing but praise and admiration for HMQ but it has become an anachronism and the media coverage of William and Kate talking to children contained behind a wire fence and standing on the back of a land rover waving at the people gives credence to it
80% of my 78 years have been lived in Scotland and Wales and maybe I just do not get this Queen appointed by God and we are subservient to their position and must bow when meeting them etc
I am content for Charles to be king and William and Kate to succeed him but they do need to modernise and accept attitudes change
I give William full marks when he told the Caribbean nations that he will support any decisions to become republics and it is unthinkable that Australia, NZ, or Canada will continue indefinitely to have our monarch as their head of state
We are in a rapidly changing world and only those who accept change and even welcome it will survive
The Caribbean tour struggled to straddle the obvious fissures between the monarchy and the modern world, with only partial success. Once HMQ has risen to her throne in the sky, a lot of questions are going to come to the fore.
I think that's a key issue. There's enough accrued sentiment that it seems best to let her live our her life in peace rather than upset a very old lady. Not entirely rational, but a politically interfering middle-aged chap with a poor reputation for marital stability is a very different kettle of fish when ti comes to people claiming the Divine Right (prop: James VI and I). And remember the very concept of an Established Church, let alone one with the King or Queen as head and the bishops as state employees, was explosive politically from 1540s to the 20th century (and was resolved in part by eradicating the concept, as in Scotland). It's only because of the decline in religion that the insistence of retaining a mediaeval theocracy, complete with legislative seats for the shamans of only one religion out of many, is not still more explosive today.
Rubbish, we had and have an established church to ensure its authority comes from the monarch not the Pope. The Parish system it provides also ensures any Parishioner can get married or buried in their Parish Church.
The Bishops represent less than 5% of a House of Lords which is still completely unelected anyway
Our whole constitutional arrangement centred around the monarch drawing their power from God is outdated:
“Of the 16% of people who define as belonging to the Church of England, 51.9% never attend services and in fact only 10.7% of people who identify with the Church of England report attending church at least weekly.”
The only reason we still have what we have is inertia and a lack of consensus on what to have instead. Rather like the Tory parliamentary party’s view of the PM incidentally.
It seems my comments on the royal family last night triggered @HYUFD into a fierce debate which looks to have carried on into this morning
As I said last night I have been a republican most of my life but of recent times have had nothing but praise and admiration for HMQ but it has become an anachronism and the media coverage of William and Kate talking to children contained behind a wire fence and standing on the back of a land rover waving at the people gives credence to it
80% of my 78 years have been lived in Scotland and Wales and maybe I just do not get this Queen appointed by God and we are subservient to their position and must bow when meeting them etc
I am content for Charles to be king and William and Kate to succeed him but they do need to modernise and accept attitudes change
I give William full marks when he told the Caribbean nations that he will support any decisions to become republics and it is unthinkable that Australia, NZ, or Canada will continue indefinitely to have our monarch as their head of state
We are in a rapidly changing world and only those who accept change and even welcome it will survive
The Caribbean tour struggled to straddle the obvious fissures between the monarchy and the modern world, with only partial success. Once HMQ has risen to her throne in the sky, a lot of questions are going to come to the fore.
Absolutely, and I am a little surprised how tone deaf the Palace has been to the issues. Perhaps if they still had Harry and Meghan in the room they might have addressed the issues a bit better. Not just the slavery one, but also the issues around post colonial development.
say what you like about flsoj, the odd phrase does cut through. They are trapped in piccaninny think. That Land Rover was a serious disaster.
Shaking hands with black children through a chain linkfence too. Ouch!
It seems my comments on the royal family last night triggered @HYUFD into a fierce debate which looks to have carried on into this morning
As I said last night I have been a republican most of my life but of recent times have had nothing but praise and admiration for HMQ but it has become an anachronism and the media coverage of William and Kate talking to children contained behind a wire fence and standing on the back of a land rover waving at the people gives credence to it
80% of my 78 years have been lived in Scotland and Wales and maybe I just do not get this Queen appointed by God and we are subservient to their position and must bow when meeting them etc
I am content for Charles to be king and William and Kate to succeed him but they do need to modernise and accept attitudes change
I give William full marks when he told the Caribbean nations that he will support any decisions to become republics and it is unthinkable that Australia, NZ, or Canada will continue indefinitely to have our monarch as their head of state
We are in a rapidly changing world and only those who accept change and even welcome it will survive
The Caribbean tour struggled to straddle the obvious fissures between the monarchy and the modern world, with only partial success. Once HMQ has risen to her throne in the sky, a lot of questions are going to come to the fore.
I think that's a key issue. There's enough accrued sentiment that it seems best to let her live our her life in peace rather than upset a very old lady. Not entirely rational, but a politically interfering middle-aged chap with a poor reputation for marital stability is a very different kettle of fish when ti comes to people claiming the Divine Right (prop: James VI and I). And remember the very concept of an Established Church, let alone one with the King or Queen as head and the bishops as state employees, was explosive politically from 1540s to the 20th century (and was resolved in part by eradicating the concept, as in Scotland). It's only because of the decline in religion that the insistence of retaining a mediaeval theocracy, complete with legislative seats for the shamans of only one religion out of many, is not still more explosive today.
I suspect that the only path to survival is a transition to what used to be called a bicycling monarchy.
But 'modernising' an archaic institution is tough to do. If you try to keep a lid on change, pressure builds up until suddenly too much change happens at once (cf. Tsar Alexander, Charles I, Louis the whatever). On the other hand, if you try to enact gradual change, it has a habit of running away from you (cf. Gorbachev) or not working out as you intended (cf. Cromwell)
It seems my comments on the royal family last night triggered @HYUFD into a fierce debate which looks to have carried on into this morning
As I said last night I have been a republican most of my life but of recent times have had nothing but praise and admiration for HMQ but it has become an anachronism and the media coverage of William and Kate talking to children contained behind a wire fence and standing on the back of a land rover waving at the people gives credence to it
80% of my 78 years have been lived in Scotland and Wales and maybe I just do not get this Queen appointed by God and we are subservient to their position and must bow when meeting them etc
I am content for Charles to be king and William and Kate to succeed him but they do need to modernise and accept attitudes change
I give William full marks when he told the Caribbean nations that he will support any decisions to become republics and it is unthinkable that Australia, NZ, or Canada will continue indefinitely to have our monarch as their head of state
We are in a rapidly changing world and only those who accept change and even welcome it will survive
The Caribbean tour struggled to straddle the obvious fissures between the monarchy and the modern world, with only partial success. Once HMQ has risen to her throne in the sky, a lot of questions are going to come to the fore.
I think that's a key issue. There's enough accrued sentiment that it seems best to let her live our her life in peace rather than upset a very old lady. Not entirely rational, but a politically interfering middle-aged chap with a poor reputation for marital stability is a very different kettle of fish when ti comes to people claiming the Divine Right (prop: James VI and I). And remember the very concept of an Established Church, let alone one with the King or Queen as head and the bishops as state employees, was explosive politically from 1540s to the 20th century (and was resolved in part by eradicating the concept, as in Scotland). It's only because of the decline in religion that the insistence of retaining a mediaeval theocracy, complete with legislative seats for the shamans of only one religion out of many, is not still more explosive today.
Rubbish, we had and have an established church to ensure its authority comes from the monarch not the Pope. The Parish system it provides also ensures any Parishioner can get married or buried in their Parish Church.
The Bishops represent less than 5% of a House of Lords which is still completely unelected anyway
But you're making my point for me. "authority from the monarch". That's like saying that Mr Johnson or HMTQ should decide on philosophy, or nuclear physics, or medicine.
In any case, the bishops should not be in the HoL at all. "Yes, Officer, those Xboxes in their cartons in the back room I stole, but they are less than 5% of my net wealth."
No it isn't, the established church should derive its authority from the monarchy as well as God. Before it derived its authority from the Pope. Nonconformist, non established churches derive authority solely from God and Christ but the Church of England is a Catholic Church not a purely evangelical Baptist or Pentecostal or Presbyterian or Methodist Church as you so often remind us.
Yes the Bishops must be in the Lords, indeed they are more educated and qualified than many if not most of those who get appointed to be Lords today.
As long as the Lords is an appointed chamber the Bishops must be there as they have always had a place in the upper house since Medieval times
Lots of people twisting themselves in knots to defend what I think is a fairly bad decision by the church court, which was made with laughable justifications.
"white muppets" wrong "everyone was at it" not everyone "we'd have to cancel a whole century" no we wouldn't
Just have a look at the case itself, and read the judgment itself.
My point is not to justify it because everyone was at it, quite the reverse. But it was a *national* enterprise, it is what we as a country fundamentally did. It therfore seems a bit pointless to pick off arbitrary individuals.
I still don’t understand why there isn’t a national monument to Britain’s part in slavery and the slave trade (though I have suspicions verging on certainties).
If by some accident of history and geography the UK had been responsible for the Holocaust, all the people who had stolen Jewish property and moved into houses vacated by deported Jews would have been financially compensated, the British Armed forces would have flip flopped to roaming Europe to prevent pogroms and been held up as a virtuous ideal, the Royals would be dispatched to patronise the denuded shtetls of the east, and instead of a huge memorial to the attempted extermination of a race in our capital city there would be a few blue plaques.
Rubbish, the Holocaust happened less than a hundred years ago, within the lifetimes even of some Germans still alive today.
Britain ended slavery 200 years ago, nobody alive today, nor even their parents or grandparents, were involved in it.
In any case there already is a museum to it, the International Slavery Museum in Liverpool
I’m surprised* that you missed the word ‘national’, what with you being such a big fan of the Britisher nation and all.
It seems my comments on the royal family last night triggered @HYUFD into a fierce debate which looks to have carried on into this morning
As I said last night I have been a republican most of my life but of recent times have had nothing but praise and admiration for HMQ but it has become an anachronism and the media coverage of William and Kate talking to children contained behind a wire fence and standing on the back of a land rover waving at the people gives credence to it
80% of my 78 years have been lived in Scotland and Wales and maybe I just do not get this Queen appointed by God and we are subservient to their position and must bow when meeting them etc
I am content for Charles to be king and William and Kate to succeed him but they do need to modernise and accept attitudes change
I give William full marks when he told the Caribbean nations that he will support any decisions to become republics and it is unthinkable that Australia, NZ, or Canada will continue indefinitely to have our monarch as their head of state
We are in a rapidly changing world and only those who accept change and even welcome it will survive
The Caribbean tour struggled to straddle the obvious fissures between the monarchy and the modern world, with only partial success. Once HMQ has risen to her throne in the sky, a lot of questions are going to come to the fore.
Absolutely, and I am a little surprised how tone deaf the Palace has been to the issues. Perhaps if they still had Harry and Meghan in the room they might have addressed the issues a bit better. Not just the slavery one, but also the issues around post colonial development.
I think the truth is that young William is still learning on the job.
He has been doing it a while, he is nearly 40.
A lot of the problem with the monarchy is not so much the individuals, flawed as they are, but the obsequious funkiest around the household. The archaic protocols and stuffy orders of precedence pander to the worst of the Royal individuals.
The big problem with the monarchy is that it is an unaccountable tool of the executive. And at a time when the executive is reducing Parliamentary and judicial scrutiny of its actions that is massively sub-optimal.
It seems my comments on the royal family last night triggered @HYUFD into a fierce debate which looks to have carried on into this morning
As I said last night I have been a republican most of my life but of recent times have had nothing but praise and admiration for HMQ but it has become an anachronism and the media coverage of William and Kate talking to children contained behind a wire fence and standing on the back of a land rover waving at the people gives credence to it
80% of my 78 years have been lived in Scotland and Wales and maybe I just do not get this Queen appointed by God and we are subservient to their position and must bow when meeting them etc
I am content for Charles to be king and William and Kate to succeed him but they do need to modernise and accept attitudes change
I give William full marks when he told the Caribbean nations that he will support any decisions to become republics and it is unthinkable that Australia, NZ, or Canada will continue indefinitely to have our monarch as their head of state
We are in a rapidly changing world and only those who accept change and even welcome it will survive
The Caribbean tour struggled to straddle the obvious fissures between the monarchy and the modern world, with only partial success. Once HMQ has risen to her throne in the sky, a lot of questions are going to come to the fore.
Absolutely, and I am a little surprised how tone deaf the Palace has been to the issues. Perhaps if they still had Harry and Meghan in the room they might have addressed the issues a bit better. Not just the slavery one, but also the issues around post colonial development.
say what you like about flsoj, the odd phrase does cut through. They are trapped in piccaninny think. That Land Rover was a serious disaster.
Shaking hands with black children through a chain linkfence too. Ouch!
No-one seems to be thinking "how will this look when it's photographed and filmed?"
There are no bad intentions on display there, yet that photograph is dreadful.
It seems my comments on the royal family last night triggered @HYUFD into a fierce debate which looks to have carried on into this morning
As I said last night I have been a republican most of my life but of recent times have had nothing but praise and admiration for HMQ but it has become an anachronism and the media coverage of William and Kate talking to children contained behind a wire fence and standing on the back of a land rover waving at the people gives credence to it
80% of my 78 years have been lived in Scotland and Wales and maybe I just do not get this Queen appointed by God and we are subservient to their position and must bow when meeting them etc
I am content for Charles to be king and William and Kate to succeed him but they do need to modernise and accept attitudes change
I give William full marks when he told the Caribbean nations that he will support any decisions to become republics and it is unthinkable that Australia, NZ, or Canada will continue indefinitely to have our monarch as their head of state
We are in a rapidly changing world and only those who accept change and even welcome it will survive
The Caribbean tour struggled to straddle the obvious fissures between the monarchy and the modern world, with only partial success. Once HMQ has risen to her throne in the sky, a lot of questions are going to come to the fore.
I think that's a key issue. There's enough accrued sentiment that it seems best to let her live our her life in peace rather than upset a very old lady. Not entirely rational, but a politically interfering middle-aged chap with a poor reputation for marital stability is a very different kettle of fish when ti comes to people claiming the Divine Right (prop: James VI and I). And remember the very concept of an Established Church, let alone one with the King or Queen as head and the bishops as state employees, was explosive politically from 1540s to the 20th century (and was resolved in part by eradicating the concept, as in Scotland). It's only because of the decline in religion that the insistence of retaining a mediaeval theocracy, complete with legislative seats for the shamans of only one religion out of many, is not still more explosive today.
I suspect that the only path to survival is a transition to what used to be called a bicycling monarchy.
But 'modernising' an archaic institution is tough to do. If you try to keep a lid on change, pressure builds up until suddenly too much change happens at once (cf. Tsar Alexander, Charles I, Louis the whatever). On the other hand, if you try to enact gradual change, it has a habit of running away from you (cf. Gorbachev) or not working out as you intended (cf. Cromwell)
The monarchy has been expert in gradual change. Otherwise it would have gone the way of the French or Russian monarchy long ago.
Charles has already made clear he will cut it back and open the palaces more to make it more like the Scandinavian monarchies
It seems my comments on the royal family last night triggered @HYUFD into a fierce debate which looks to have carried on into this morning
As I said last night I have been a republican most of my life but of recent times have had nothing but praise and admiration for HMQ but it has become an anachronism and the media coverage of William and Kate talking to children contained behind a wire fence and standing on the back of a land rover waving at the people gives credence to it
80% of my 78 years have been lived in Scotland and Wales and maybe I just do not get this Queen appointed by God and we are subservient to their position and must bow when meeting them etc
I am content for Charles to be king and William and Kate to succeed him but they do need to modernise and accept attitudes change
I give William full marks when he told the Caribbean nations that he will support any decisions to become republics and it is unthinkable that Australia, NZ, or Canada will continue indefinitely to have our monarch as their head of state
We are in a rapidly changing world and only those who accept change and even welcome it will survive
The Caribbean tour struggled to straddle the obvious fissures between the monarchy and the modern world, with only partial success. Once HMQ has risen to her throne in the sky, a lot of questions are going to come to the fore.
Absolutely, and I am a little surprised how tone deaf the Palace has been to the issues. Perhaps if they still had Harry and Meghan in the room they might have addressed the issues a bit better. Not just the slavery one, but also the issues around post colonial development.
say what you like about flsoj, the odd phrase does cut through. They are trapped in piccaninny think. That Land Rover was a serious disaster.
Shaking hands with black children through a chain linkfence too. Ouch!
The decision by the church of England Court to refuse Jesus College (Cambridge) request to remove a memorial to a slave trader from its chapel is a gem
"The true position, as set out in the historians’ expert reports and their joint statement, is that Rustat’s investments in the Company of Royal Adventurers Trading into Africa (the Royal Adventurers) brought him no financial returns at all; that Rustat only realised his investments in the Royal African Company in May 1691, some 20 years after he had made his gifts to the College, and some five years after the completion of the Rustat memorial and its inscription; and that any moneys Rustat did realise as a result of his involvement in the slave trade comprised only a small part of his great wealth, and they made no contribution to his gifts to the College."
It's ok so many of the slaves he "invested" in died en route that he didn't really make much money from it during his lifetime.
And
" I recognise also that it does not excuse Rustat’s involvement in the slave trade, although it may help to explain it, that, in the words of L. P. Hartley (in his 1953 novel, The Go-Between), “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.”
I'm sure the slaves themselves were fine with it for that very reason.
And the classic:
"... buying certain clothes or other consumer goods, or eating certain foods, or investing in the companies that produce them, we are ourselves contributing to, or supporting, conditions akin to modern slavery, or to the degradation and impoverishment of our planet."
As Jesus said: Let he who has never eaten anything be the first to ask us not commemorate a slave trader
Given almost anyone with any capital at all in the 17th century would have invested in a company with some connection to the slave trade, sound decision by the Church of England Court.
Otherwise there would be virtually no memorials to 17th century figures left.
Source for your claime? I'm not sure how that tallies with the church's own argument that investments in slavery were only an insignificant part of Rustat's "great wealth".
At peak slave trade, it amounted to about 12% gdp. In a massively agrarian economy they is pretty much everything which isn't farming. It is therefore quite likely that Rustat was say 10% slaves 90% landowner
Mind you HYUFD s claim doesn't excuse anything it just spreads the blame more widely
One corollary of those statistics is that Britain took a voluntary hit of 12% GDP in ending slavery and the slave trade. The country did the right thing — eventually! — knowing the cost.
Really? Ending the slave trade was a 12% hit to British GDP? Doesn't sound right
If we accept the 12 per cent figure. I've no way of knowing if that is correct but it comes from earlier in the thread.
The 12% was claimed to be the peak percentage - was the peak when the slave trade was abolished? Surely not.
The decision by the church of England Court to refuse Jesus College (Cambridge) request to remove a memorial to a slave trader from its chapel is a gem
"The true position, as set out in the historians’ expert reports and their joint statement, is that Rustat’s investments in the Company of Royal Adventurers Trading into Africa (the Royal Adventurers) brought him no financial returns at all; that Rustat only realised his investments in the Royal African Company in May 1691, some 20 years after he had made his gifts to the College, and some five years after the completion of the Rustat memorial and its inscription; and that any moneys Rustat did realise as a result of his involvement in the slave trade comprised only a small part of his great wealth, and they made no contribution to his gifts to the College."
It's ok so many of the slaves he "invested" in died en route that he didn't really make much money from it during his lifetime.
And
" I recognise also that it does not excuse Rustat’s involvement in the slave trade, although it may help to explain it, that, in the words of L. P. Hartley (in his 1953 novel, The Go-Between), “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.”
I'm sure the slaves themselves were fine with it for that very reason.
And the classic:
"... buying certain clothes or other consumer goods, or eating certain foods, or investing in the companies that produce them, we are ourselves contributing to, or supporting, conditions akin to modern slavery, or to the degradation and impoverishment of our planet."
As Jesus said: Let he who has never eaten anything be the first to ask us not commemorate a slave trader
Given almost anyone with any capital at all in the 17th century would have invested in a company with some connection to the slave trade, sound decision by the Church of England Court.
Otherwise there would be virtually no memorials to 17th century figures left.
Source for your claime? I'm not sure how that tallies with the church's own argument that investments in slavery were only an insignificant part of Rustat's "great wealth".
Most of the large companies on the Stock Exchange in the 17th century would have had some investment in slavery and the slave trade.
It was not the Church's argument as such, Justin Welby backed removing the memorial but the argument of the Judge at the Church Court. It was a sound one as Rustat was not a slave trader
You seem to be making the opposite argument to the one in the church court judgment. They are saying he had great wealth but most of it was unconnected to slavery, you are saying that all wealth at the time was connected to slavery. You can't both be right.
They are saying he still had some wealth connected to slavery, as did virtually anyone with significant capital at the time
Just like most greens today, especially those working in the public sector, will own fossil fuel shares in their pension funds.
Teachers don’t have a pension fund…
yes most public sector pension schemes are unfunded. Exceptions are the Local Government Pension Scheme (if you put all councils together it is by far the largest funded pension scheme =public or private in the country) and the parliamentary pensions scheme for MPs.
The biggest quasi private sector definded benefit pension scheme is the universities scheme with about £80 billion of assets . But the local government one is far bigger. Also the NEST pension scheme (for staff of smaller employees and the default one if employers do not choose another) is growing rapidly since auto-enrolment but of course is defined contribution not benefit.
I find pension schemes fascinating (mad I know ) , the most fascinating ones are the Mineworkers scheme and the British Coal supperannuiation scheme (for senior coal board staff) as both have about £9 billion in assets at the moment but nobody is joining (as pits shut) and loads die every year. Will the last ex-miner standing become a billionaire?
It seems my comments on the royal family last night triggered @HYUFD into a fierce debate which looks to have carried on into this morning
As I said last night I have been a republican most of my life but of recent times have had nothing but praise and admiration for HMQ but it has become an anachronism and the media coverage of William and Kate talking to children contained behind a wire fence and standing on the back of a land rover waving at the people gives credence to it
80% of my 78 years have been lived in Scotland and Wales and maybe I just do not get this Queen appointed by God and we are subservient to their position and must bow when meeting them etc
I am content for Charles to be king and William and Kate to succeed him but they do need to modernise and accept attitudes change
I give William full marks when he told the Caribbean nations that he will support any decisions to become republics and it is unthinkable that Australia, NZ, or Canada will continue indefinitely to have our monarch as their head of state
We are in a rapidly changing world and only those who accept change and even welcome it will survive
The Caribbean tour struggled to straddle the obvious fissures between the monarchy and the modern world, with only partial success. Once HMQ has risen to her throne in the sky, a lot of questions are going to come to the fore.
Absolutely, and I am a little surprised how tone deaf the Palace has been to the issues. Perhaps if they still had Harry and Meghan in the room they might have addressed the issues a bit better. Not just the slavery one, but also the issues around post colonial development.
say what you like about flsoj, the odd phrase does cut through. They are trapped in piccaninny think. That Land Rover was a serious disaster.
Shaking hands with black children through a chain linkfence too. Ouch!
No-one seems to be thinking "how will this look when it's photographed and filmed?"
Presumably it wasn't planned. Presumably the Cambridge's saw the children and decided to go over to them.
I actually have a lot of respect for the Cambridge's for not giving a flying fuck about "optics" in such situations.
Lots of people twisting themselves in knots to defend what I think is a fairly bad decision by the church court, which was made with laughable justifications.
"white muppets" wrong "everyone was at it" not everyone "we'd have to cancel a whole century" no we wouldn't
Just have a look at the case itself, and read the judgment itself.
My point is not to justify it because everyone was at it, quite the reverse. But it was a *national* enterprise, it is what we as a country fundamentally did. It therfore seems a bit pointless to pick off arbitrary individuals.
Yes, seems a pointless endeavour in that respect.
I suppose you drop litter everywhere because of the vast amounts of pollution that will still be made everywhere else.
Amazingly, not every issue is the same or requires the same solutions.
It seems my comments on the royal family last night triggered @HYUFD into a fierce debate which looks to have carried on into this morning
As I said last night I have been a republican most of my life but of recent times have had nothing but praise and admiration for HMQ but it has become an anachronism and the media coverage of William and Kate talking to children contained behind a wire fence and standing on the back of a land rover waving at the people gives credence to it
80% of my 78 years have been lived in Scotland and Wales and maybe I just do not get this Queen appointed by God and we are subservient to their position and must bow when meeting them etc
I am content for Charles to be king and William and Kate to succeed him but they do need to modernise and accept attitudes change
I give William full marks when he told the Caribbean nations that he will support any decisions to become republics and it is unthinkable that Australia, NZ, or Canada will continue indefinitely to have our monarch as their head of state
We are in a rapidly changing world and only those who accept change and even welcome it will survive
The Caribbean tour struggled to straddle the obvious fissures between the monarchy and the modern world, with only partial success. Once HMQ has risen to her throne in the sky, a lot of questions are going to come to the fore.
Absolutely, and I am a little surprised how tone deaf the Palace has been to the issues. Perhaps if they still had Harry and Meghan in the room they might have addressed the issues a bit better. Not just the slavery one, but also the issues around post colonial development.
say what you like about flsoj, the odd phrase does cut through. They are trapped in piccaninny think. That Land Rover was a serious disaster.
Shaking hands with black children through a chain linkfence too. Ouch!
It seems my comments on the royal family last night triggered @HYUFD into a fierce debate which looks to have carried on into this morning
As I said last night I have been a republican most of my life but of recent times have had nothing but praise and admiration for HMQ but it has become an anachronism and the media coverage of William and Kate talking to children contained behind a wire fence and standing on the back of a land rover waving at the people gives credence to it
80% of my 78 years have been lived in Scotland and Wales and maybe I just do not get this Queen appointed by God and we are subservient to their position and must bow when meeting them etc
I am content for Charles to be king and William and Kate to succeed him but they do need to modernise and accept attitudes change
I give William full marks when he told the Caribbean nations that he will support any decisions to become republics and it is unthinkable that Australia, NZ, or Canada will continue indefinitely to have our monarch as their head of state
We are in a rapidly changing world and only those who accept change and even welcome it will survive
The Caribbean tour struggled to straddle the obvious fissures between the monarchy and the modern world, with only partial success. Once HMQ has risen to her throne in the sky, a lot of questions are going to come to the fore.
I think that's a key issue. There's enough accrued sentiment that it seems best to let her live our her life in peace rather than upset a very old lady. Not entirely rational, but a politically interfering middle-aged chap with a poor reputation for marital stability is a very different kettle of fish when ti comes to people claiming the Divine Right (prop: James VI and I). And remember the very concept of an Established Church, let alone one with the King or Queen as head and the bishops as state employees, was explosive politically from 1540s to the 20th century (and was resolved in part by eradicating the concept, as in Scotland). It's only because of the decline in religion that the insistence of retaining a mediaeval theocracy, complete with legislative seats for the shamans of only one religion out of many, is not still more explosive today.
Rubbish, we had and have an established church to ensure its authority comes from the monarch not the Pope. The Parish system it provides also ensures any Parishioner can get married or buried in their Parish Church.
The Bishops represent less than 5% of a House of Lords which is still completely unelected anyway
Our whole constitutional arrangement centred around the monarch drawing their power from God is outdated:
“Of the 16% of people who define as belonging to the Church of England, 51.9% never attend services and in fact only 10.7% of people who identify with the Church of England report attending church at least weekly.”
The only reason we still have what we have is inertia and a lack of consensus on what to have instead. Rather like the Tory parliamentary party’s view of the PM incidentally.
So what, it must still be the established church. Otherwise by definition the established church returns to the Papacy and to Rome.
Hence in many of the non Roman Catholic majority nations of Western Europe like Denmark and Norway the Lutheran Church remains the established church.
Plus you end the Church of England as the established church you end the right of residents of the Parish to an automatic church wedding or funeral. Only regular churchgoers would keep that right
It seems my comments on the royal family last night triggered @HYUFD into a fierce debate which looks to have carried on into this morning
As I said last night I have been a republican most of my life but of recent times have had nothing but praise and admiration for HMQ but it has become an anachronism and the media coverage of William and Kate talking to children contained behind a wire fence and standing on the back of a land rover waving at the people gives credence to it
80% of my 78 years have been lived in Scotland and Wales and maybe I just do not get this Queen appointed by God and we are subservient to their position and must bow when meeting them etc
I am content for Charles to be king and William and Kate to succeed him but they do need to modernise and accept attitudes change
I give William full marks when he told the Caribbean nations that he will support any decisions to become republics and it is unthinkable that Australia, NZ, or Canada will continue indefinitely to have our monarch as their head of state
We are in a rapidly changing world and only those who accept change and even welcome it will survive
The Caribbean tour struggled to straddle the obvious fissures between the monarchy and the modern world, with only partial success. Once HMQ has risen to her throne in the sky, a lot of questions are going to come to the fore.
I think that's a key issue. There's enough accrued sentiment that it seems best to let her live our her life in peace rather than upset a very old lady. Not entirely rational, but a politically interfering middle-aged chap with a poor reputation for marital stability is a very different kettle of fish when ti comes to people claiming the Divine Right (prop: James VI and I). And remember the very concept of an Established Church, let alone one with the King or Queen as head and the bishops as state employees, was explosive politically from 1540s to the 20th century (and was resolved in part by eradicating the concept, as in Scotland). It's only because of the decline in religion that the insistence of retaining a mediaeval theocracy, complete with legislative seats for the shamans of only one religion out of many, is not still more explosive today.
Rubbish, we had and have an established church to ensure its authority comes from the monarch not the Pope. The Parish system it provides also ensures any Parishioner can get married or buried in their Parish Church.
The Bishops represent less than 5% of a House of Lords which is still completely unelected anyway
But you're making my point for me. "authority from the monarch". That's like saying that Mr Johnson or HMTQ should decide on philosophy, or nuclear physics, or medicine.
In any case, the bishops should not be in the HoL at all. "Yes, Officer, those Xboxes in their cartons in the back room I stole, but they are less than 5% of my net wealth."
No it isn't, the established church should derive its authority from the monarchy as well as God. Before it derived its authority from the Pope. Nonconformist, non established churches derive authority solely from God and Christ but the Church of England is a Catholic Church not a purely evangelical Baptist or Pentecostal or Presbyterian or Methodist Church as you so often remind us.
Yes the Bishops must be in the Lords, indeed they are more educated and qualified than many if not most of those who get appointed to be Lords today.
As long as the Lords is an appointed chamber the Bishops must be there as they have always had a place in the upper house since Medieval times
Your reference to medieval times is the perfect description of your attitudes, medieval
The decision by the church of England Court to refuse Jesus College (Cambridge) request to remove a memorial to a slave trader from its chapel is a gem
"The true position, as set out in the historians’ expert reports and their joint statement, is that Rustat’s investments in the Company of Royal Adventurers Trading into Africa (the Royal Adventurers) brought him no financial returns at all; that Rustat only realised his investments in the Royal African Company in May 1691, some 20 years after he had made his gifts to the College, and some five years after the completion of the Rustat memorial and its inscription; and that any moneys Rustat did realise as a result of his involvement in the slave trade comprised only a small part of his great wealth, and they made no contribution to his gifts to the College."
It's ok so many of the slaves he "invested" in died en route that he didn't really make much money from it during his lifetime.
And
" I recognise also that it does not excuse Rustat’s involvement in the slave trade, although it may help to explain it, that, in the words of L. P. Hartley (in his 1953 novel, The Go-Between), “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.”
I'm sure the slaves themselves were fine with it for that very reason.
And the classic:
"... buying certain clothes or other consumer goods, or eating certain foods, or investing in the companies that produce them, we are ourselves contributing to, or supporting, conditions akin to modern slavery, or to the degradation and impoverishment of our planet."
As Jesus said: Let he who has never eaten anything be the first to ask us not commemorate a slave trader
Given almost anyone with any capital at all in the 17th century would have invested in a company with some connection to the slave trade, sound decision by the Church of England Court.
Otherwise there would be virtually no memorials to 17th century figures left.
Source for your claime? I'm not sure how that tallies with the church's own argument that investments in slavery were only an insignificant part of Rustat's "great wealth".
At peak slave trade, it amounted to about 12% gdp. In a massively agrarian economy they is pretty much everything which isn't farming. It is therefore quite likely that Rustat was say 10% slaves 90% landowner
Mind you HYUFD s claim doesn't excuse anything it just spreads the blame more widely
One corollary of those statistics is that Britain took a voluntary hit of 12% GDP in ending slavery and the slave trade. The country did the right thing — eventually! — knowing the cost.
Really? Ending the slave trade was a 12% hit to British GDP? Doesn't sound right
If we accept the 12 per cent figure. I've no way of knowing if that is correct but it comes from earlier in the thread.
The 12% was claimed to be the peak percentage - was the peak when the slave trade was abolished? Surely not.
The decision by the church of England Court to refuse Jesus College (Cambridge) request to remove a memorial to a slave trader from its chapel is a gem
"The true position, as set out in the historians’ expert reports and their joint statement, is that Rustat’s investments in the Company of Royal Adventurers Trading into Africa (the Royal Adventurers) brought him no financial returns at all; that Rustat only realised his investments in the Royal African Company in May 1691, some 20 years after he had made his gifts to the College, and some five years after the completion of the Rustat memorial and its inscription; and that any moneys Rustat did realise as a result of his involvement in the slave trade comprised only a small part of his great wealth, and they made no contribution to his gifts to the College."
It's ok so many of the slaves he "invested" in died en route that he didn't really make much money from it during his lifetime.
And
" I recognise also that it does not excuse Rustat’s involvement in the slave trade, although it may help to explain it, that, in the words of L. P. Hartley (in his 1953 novel, The Go-Between), “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.”
I'm sure the slaves themselves were fine with it for that very reason.
And the classic:
"... buying certain clothes or other consumer goods, or eating certain foods, or investing in the companies that produce them, we are ourselves contributing to, or supporting, conditions akin to modern slavery, or to the degradation and impoverishment of our planet."
As Jesus said: Let he who has never eaten anything be the first to ask us not commemorate a slave trader
Given almost anyone with any capital at all in the 17th century would have invested in a company with some connection to the slave trade, sound decision by the Church of England Court.
Otherwise there would be virtually no memorials to 17th century figures left.
Source for your claime? I'm not sure how that tallies with the church's own argument that investments in slavery were only an insignificant part of Rustat's "great wealth".
Most of the large companies on the Stock Exchange in the 17th century would have had some investment in slavery and the slave trade.
It was not the Church's argument as such, Justin Welby backed removing the memorial but the argument of the Judge at the Church Court. It was a sound one as Rustat was not a slave trader
You seem to be making the opposite argument to the one in the church court judgment. They are saying he had great wealth but most of it was unconnected to slavery, you are saying that all wealth at the time was connected to slavery. You can't both be right.
They are saying he still had some wealth connected to slavery, as did virtually anyone with significant capital at the time
Just like most greens today, especially those working in the public sector, will own fossil fuel shares in their pension funds.
Teachers don’t have a pension fund…
yes most public sector pension schemes are unfunded. Exceptions are the Local Government Pension Scheme (if you put all councils together it is by far the largest funded pension scheme =public or private in the country) and the parliamentary pensions scheme for MPs.
The biggest quasi private sector definded benefit pension scheme is the universities scheme with about £80 billion of assets . But the local government one is far bigger. Also the NEST pension scheme (for staff of smaller employees and the default one if employers do not choose another) is growing rapidly since auto-enrolment but of course is defined contribution not benefit
The Royal Mail (incl Post Office) fund was massive and also used to have tons of assets, until Osborne nicked them and spent the proceeds, leaving future taxpayers to pay for postal pensions.
When the Jamaican PM said it was going to become a Republic, William just stood there and said nothing.
Well if there was a good reason for it remaining a Monarchy wouldn't William have said what it was?
Surely if anyone could think of a reason it would be William? After all he's almost 40 and has spent his whole life preparing to do the job and even he can't think of any positive reason for it?
What a total and utter farce. When someone actually bothers to challenge it it's immediately obvious that there's nothing there.
The whole tour has been excruciatingly embarrassing, hopefully it will be the last such "Royal" tour of the Caribbean
I wouldn't be surprised if behind the scenes some courtier was saying to the Jamaicans "Look, we had to come because of the jubilee and this is still technically a realm, but if you'd gone republican already like you said you would ages ago there'd have been no need for this trip in the first place!"
The decision by the church of England Court to refuse Jesus College (Cambridge) request to remove a memorial to a slave trader from its chapel is a gem
"The true position, as set out in the historians’ expert reports and their joint statement, is that Rustat’s investments in the Company of Royal Adventurers Trading into Africa (the Royal Adventurers) brought him no financial returns at all; that Rustat only realised his investments in the Royal African Company in May 1691, some 20 years after he had made his gifts to the College, and some five years after the completion of the Rustat memorial and its inscription; and that any moneys Rustat did realise as a result of his involvement in the slave trade comprised only a small part of his great wealth, and they made no contribution to his gifts to the College."
It's ok so many of the slaves he "invested" in died en route that he didn't really make much money from it during his lifetime.
And
" I recognise also that it does not excuse Rustat’s involvement in the slave trade, although it may help to explain it, that, in the words of L. P. Hartley (in his 1953 novel, The Go-Between), “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.”
I'm sure the slaves themselves were fine with it for that very reason.
And the classic:
"... buying certain clothes or other consumer goods, or eating certain foods, or investing in the companies that produce them, we are ourselves contributing to, or supporting, conditions akin to modern slavery, or to the degradation and impoverishment of our planet."
As Jesus said: Let he who has never eaten anything be the first to ask us not commemorate a slave trader
Given almost anyone with any capital at all in the 17th century would have invested in a company with some connection to the slave trade, sound decision by the Church of England Court.
Otherwise there would be virtually no memorials to 17th century figures left.
Source for your claime? I'm not sure how that tallies with the church's own argument that investments in slavery were only an insignificant part of Rustat's "great wealth".
At peak slave trade, it amounted to about 12% gdp. In a massively agrarian economy they is pretty much everything which isn't farming. It is therefore quite likely that Rustat was say 10% slaves 90% landowner
Mind you HYUFD s claim doesn't excuse anything it just spreads the blame more widely
One corollary of those statistics is that Britain took a voluntary hit of 12% GDP in ending slavery and the slave trade. The country did the right thing — eventually! — knowing the cost.
Really? Ending the slave trade was a 12% hit to British GDP? Doesn't sound right
If we accept the 12 per cent figure. I've no way of knowing if that is correct but it comes from earlier in the thread.
The 12% was claimed to be the peak percentage - was the peak when the slave trade was abolished? Surely not.
The decision by the church of England Court to refuse Jesus College (Cambridge) request to remove a memorial to a slave trader from its chapel is a gem
"The true position, as set out in the historians’ expert reports and their joint statement, is that Rustat’s investments in the Company of Royal Adventurers Trading into Africa (the Royal Adventurers) brought him no financial returns at all; that Rustat only realised his investments in the Royal African Company in May 1691, some 20 years after he had made his gifts to the College, and some five years after the completion of the Rustat memorial and its inscription; and that any moneys Rustat did realise as a result of his involvement in the slave trade comprised only a small part of his great wealth, and they made no contribution to his gifts to the College."
It's ok so many of the slaves he "invested" in died en route that he didn't really make much money from it during his lifetime.
And
" I recognise also that it does not excuse Rustat’s involvement in the slave trade, although it may help to explain it, that, in the words of L. P. Hartley (in his 1953 novel, The Go-Between), “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.”
I'm sure the slaves themselves were fine with it for that very reason.
And the classic:
"... buying certain clothes or other consumer goods, or eating certain foods, or investing in the companies that produce them, we are ourselves contributing to, or supporting, conditions akin to modern slavery, or to the degradation and impoverishment of our planet."
As Jesus said: Let he who has never eaten anything be the first to ask us not commemorate a slave trader
Given almost anyone with any capital at all in the 17th century would have invested in a company with some connection to the slave trade, sound decision by the Church of England Court.
Otherwise there would be virtually no memorials to 17th century figures left.
Source for your claime? I'm not sure how that tallies with the church's own argument that investments in slavery were only an insignificant part of Rustat's "great wealth".
Most of the large companies on the Stock Exchange in the 17th century would have had some investment in slavery and the slave trade.
It was not the Church's argument as such, Justin Welby backed removing the memorial but the argument of the Judge at the Church Court. It was a sound one as Rustat was not a slave trader
You seem to be making the opposite argument to the one in the church court judgment. They are saying he had great wealth but most of it was unconnected to slavery, you are saying that all wealth at the time was connected to slavery. You can't both be right.
They are saying he still had some wealth connected to slavery, as did virtually anyone with significant capital at the time
Just like most greens today, especially those working in the public sector, will own fossil fuel shares in their pension funds.
So this Rustat never invested personally in slaves, it was just his pension fund doing it against his wishes.
What a load of f***ing cobblers. It's amazing how quickly any logic or common sense goes out of the window.
The decision by the church of England Court to refuse Jesus College (Cambridge) request to remove a memorial to a slave trader from its chapel is a gem
"The true position, as set out in the historians’ expert reports and their joint statement, is that Rustat’s investments in the Company of Royal Adventurers Trading into Africa (the Royal Adventurers) brought him no financial returns at all; that Rustat only realised his investments in the Royal African Company in May 1691, some 20 years after he had made his gifts to the College, and some five years after the completion of the Rustat memorial and its inscription; and that any moneys Rustat did realise as a result of his involvement in the slave trade comprised only a small part of his great wealth, and they made no contribution to his gifts to the College."
It's ok so many of the slaves he "invested" in died en route that he didn't really make much money from it during his lifetime.
And
" I recognise also that it does not excuse Rustat’s involvement in the slave trade, although it may help to explain it, that, in the words of L. P. Hartley (in his 1953 novel, The Go-Between), “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.”
I'm sure the slaves themselves were fine with it for that very reason.
And the classic:
"... buying certain clothes or other consumer goods, or eating certain foods, or investing in the companies that produce them, we are ourselves contributing to, or supporting, conditions akin to modern slavery, or to the degradation and impoverishment of our planet."
As Jesus said: Let he who has never eaten anything be the first to ask us not commemorate a slave trader
I always like to raise “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.” with "The past is never dead. It's not even past" (faulkner). With slavery the latter is true: the causal nexus between what Rustat did in the 1600s and what happened to George Floyd is absolutely solid.
There's a lot in HYUFD's point, though. The Royal African Company was called Royal for a reason. We did this as a nation, and we can hardly, cancel a whole century
Nevermind cancelling a whole century. Maybe we should just cancel our whole country. Or cancel the whole of civilisation, because the reality is that it is all built on slavery of various forms.
The whole thing is pathetic and tragic.
All civilisation in the west, surely? It derives from classical Hellenism and that was built on slavery.
don't think so. "Built on slavery" overstates the importance of it. neither Greeks nor romans afaik ever went to war with the *primary purpose* of scoring more slaves, unlike the Mesopotamians and Egyptians
Oh well, so long as it was just dabbling in slavery a bit that's fine.
Personally I'm all for slavery so long as we make it non racist slavery. 10,000 years of tradition can't be wrong. And we treat the children making our clothes little better than slaves anyway.
Slavery was a big part of the economic motivation of Roman conquest, particularly on a personal decision making level, of e.g. the generals in the Republican period wanting to make money for themselves and money to keep the legionary booties - or sandalies - happy. Ship them off to the slave markets at e.g. Delos and make a quick buck or rather as.
Caesar was probably not exaggerating, when he said he enslaved a million Gauls. It made him the richest man in Rome.
The last hundred years of the Roman Republic must have been an utter horror show for their neighbours, and the provincials. Slavery in that period was every bit as horrible as it was in the 18th century Carribbean.
It seems my comments on the royal family last night triggered @HYUFD into a fierce debate which looks to have carried on into this morning
As I said last night I have been a republican most of my life but of recent times have had nothing but praise and admiration for HMQ but it has become an anachronism and the media coverage of William and Kate talking to children contained behind a wire fence and standing on the back of a land rover waving at the people gives credence to it
80% of my 78 years have been lived in Scotland and Wales and maybe I just do not get this Queen appointed by God and we are subservient to their position and must bow when meeting them etc
I am content for Charles to be king and William and Kate to succeed him but they do need to modernise and accept attitudes change
I give William full marks when he told the Caribbean nations that he will support any decisions to become republics and it is unthinkable that Australia, NZ, or Canada will continue indefinitely to have our monarch as their head of state
We are in a rapidly changing world and only those who accept change and even welcome it will survive
The Caribbean tour struggled to straddle the obvious fissures between the monarchy and the modern world, with only partial success. Once HMQ has risen to her throne in the sky, a lot of questions are going to come to the fore.
Absolutely, and I am a little surprised how tone deaf the Palace has been to the issues. Perhaps if they still had Harry and Meghan in the room they might have addressed the issues a bit better. Not just the slavery one, but also the issues around post colonial development.
say what you like about flsoj, the odd phrase does cut through. They are trapped in piccaninny think. That Land Rover was a serious disaster.
Shaking hands with black children through a chain linkfence too. Ouch!
No-one seems to be thinking "how will this look when it's photographed and filmed?"
Presumably it wasn't planned. Presumably the Cambridge's saw the children and decided to go over to them.
I actually have a lot of respect for the Cambridge's for not giving a flying fuck about "optics" in such situations.
If they saw the risk, considered it but decided that meeting the children was more important, then fair enough.
Other incidents on the tour rather suggest that no-one really had an eye on the optics at all.
The choice of a pre-1969 Series II added to the jarring and antediluvian flavour of the whole spectacle.
Obviously Phil the Interloper had released his iron grip on the reins of the Firm a good while before he croaked it, but he had a pretty merciless eye for a pr image; I wonder if he’d have managed things better in his prime? Sometimes you need an outsider to keep it real.
It seems my comments on the royal family last night triggered @HYUFD into a fierce debate which looks to have carried on into this morning
As I said last night I have been a republican most of my life but of recent times have had nothing but praise and admiration for HMQ but it has become an anachronism and the media coverage of William and Kate talking to children contained behind a wire fence and standing on the back of a land rover waving at the people gives credence to it
80% of my 78 years have been lived in Scotland and Wales and maybe I just do not get this Queen appointed by God and we are subservient to their position and must bow when meeting them etc
I am content for Charles to be king and William and Kate to succeed him but they do need to modernise and accept attitudes change
I give William full marks when he told the Caribbean nations that he will support any decisions to become republics and it is unthinkable that Australia, NZ, or Canada will continue indefinitely to have our monarch as their head of state
We are in a rapidly changing world and only those who accept change and even welcome it will survive
The Caribbean tour struggled to straddle the obvious fissures between the monarchy and the modern world, with only partial success. Once HMQ has risen to her throne in the sky, a lot of questions are going to come to the fore.
I think that's a key issue. There's enough accrued sentiment that it seems best to let her live our her life in peace rather than upset a very old lady. Not entirely rational, but a politically interfering middle-aged chap with a poor reputation for marital stability is a very different kettle of fish when ti comes to people claiming the Divine Right (prop: James VI and I). And remember the very concept of an Established Church, let alone one with the King or Queen as head and the bishops as state employees, was explosive politically from 1540s to the 20th century (and was resolved in part by eradicating the concept, as in Scotland). It's only because of the decline in religion that the insistence of retaining a mediaeval theocracy, complete with legislative seats for the shamans of only one religion out of many, is not still more explosive today.
Rubbish, we had and have an established church to ensure its authority comes from the monarch not the Pope. The Parish system it provides also ensures any Parishioner can get married or buried in their Parish Church.
The Bishops represent less than 5% of a House of Lords which is still completely unelected anyway
But you're making my point for me. "authority from the monarch". That's like saying that Mr Johnson or HMTQ should decide on philosophy, or nuclear physics, or medicine.
In any case, the bishops should not be in the HoL at all. "Yes, Officer, those Xboxes in their cartons in the back room I stole, but they are less than 5% of my net wealth."
No it isn't, the established church should derive its authority from the monarchy as well as God. Before it derived its authority from the Pope. Nonconformist, non established churches derive authority solely from God and Christ but the Church of England is a Catholic Church not a purely evangelical Baptist or Pentecostal or Presbyterian or Methodist Church as you so often remind us.
Yes the Bishops must be in the Lords, indeed they are more educated and qualified than many if not most of those who get appointed to be Lords today.
As long as the Lords is an appointed chamber the Bishops must be there as they have always had a place in the upper house since Medieval times
Your reference to medieval times is the perfect description of your attitudes, medieval
Medieval kings were much more relaxed about their authority supposedly being divine than HYUFD. Not that people didn't say or believe it, but it didn't stop them rebelling against or murdering kings they didn't like.
It seems my comments on the royal family last night triggered @HYUFD into a fierce debate which looks to have carried on into this morning
As I said last night I have been a republican most of my life but of recent times have had nothing but praise and admiration for HMQ but it has become an anachronism and the media coverage of William and Kate talking to children contained behind a wire fence and standing on the back of a land rover waving at the people gives credence to it
80% of my 78 years have been lived in Scotland and Wales and maybe I just do not get this Queen appointed by God and we are subservient to their position and must bow when meeting them etc
I am content for Charles to be king and William and Kate to succeed him but they do need to modernise and accept attitudes change
I give William full marks when he told the Caribbean nations that he will support any decisions to become republics and it is unthinkable that Australia, NZ, or Canada will continue indefinitely to have our monarch as their head of state
We are in a rapidly changing world and only those who accept change and even welcome it will survive
Why should Australia and New Zealand and Canada not continue with the British monarch as head of state? Most of their population would not be there if their ancestors had not come from the British Isles so a rather different context to the Caribbean nations most of whose population are still non white and not of British origin.
Only 15 out of 54 Commonwealth nations remain Commonwealth realms as we near the end of the Queen's reign anyway
Pretty sure most of the population of the Caribbean nations wouldn’t be there if British plantation owners and ‘businessmen’ hadn’t forcibly transported their ancestors there.
With the ultimate result the Caribbean having numerous black republics.
It seems my comments on the royal family last night triggered @HYUFD into a fierce debate which looks to have carried on into this morning
As I said last night I have been a republican most of my life but of recent times have had nothing but praise and admiration for HMQ but it has become an anachronism and the media coverage of William and Kate talking to children contained behind a wire fence and standing on the back of a land rover waving at the people gives credence to it
80% of my 78 years have been lived in Scotland and Wales and maybe I just do not get this Queen appointed by God and we are subservient to their position and must bow when meeting them etc
I am content for Charles to be king and William and Kate to succeed him but they do need to modernise and accept attitudes change
I give William full marks when he told the Caribbean nations that he will support any decisions to become republics and it is unthinkable that Australia, NZ, or Canada will continue indefinitely to have our monarch as their head of state
We are in a rapidly changing world and only those who accept change and even welcome it will survive
The Caribbean tour struggled to straddle the obvious fissures between the monarchy and the modern world, with only partial success. Once HMQ has risen to her throne in the sky, a lot of questions are going to come to the fore.
I think that's a key issue. There's enough accrued sentiment that it seems best to let her live our her life in peace rather than upset a very old lady. Not entirely rational, but a politically interfering middle-aged chap with a poor reputation for marital stability is a very different kettle of fish when ti comes to people claiming the Divine Right (prop: James VI and I). And remember the very concept of an Established Church, let alone one with the King or Queen as head and the bishops as state employees, was explosive politically from 1540s to the 20th century (and was resolved in part by eradicating the concept, as in Scotland). It's only because of the decline in religion that the insistence of retaining a mediaeval theocracy, complete with legislative seats for the shamans of only one religion out of many, is not still more explosive today.
Rubbish, we had and have an established church to ensure its authority comes from the monarch not the Pope. The Parish system it provides also ensures any Parishioner can get married or buried in their Parish Church.
The Bishops represent less than 5% of a House of Lords which is still completely unelected anyway
Our whole constitutional arrangement centred around the monarch drawing their power from God is outdated:
“Of the 16% of people who define as belonging to the Church of England, 51.9% never attend services and in fact only 10.7% of people who identify with the Church of England report attending church at least weekly.”
The only reason we still have what we have is inertia and a lack of consensus on what to have instead. Rather like the Tory parliamentary party’s view of the PM incidentally.
So what, it must still be the established church. Otherwise by definition the established church returns to the Papacy and to Rome.
Hence in mamy of the non Roman Catholic majority nations of Western Europe like Denmark and Norway the Lutheran Church remains the established church.
Plus you end the Church of England as the established church you end the right of residents of the Parish to an automatic church wedding or funeral. Only regular churchgoers would keep that right
Just get rid of the established church, drop the bishops from the Lords, and those people who want to cling to their superstitions can do so in private.
It seems my comments on the royal family last night triggered @HYUFD into a fierce debate which looks to have carried on into this morning
As I said last night I have been a republican most of my life but of recent times have had nothing but praise and admiration for HMQ but it has become an anachronism and the media coverage of William and Kate talking to children contained behind a wire fence and standing on the back of a land rover waving at the people gives credence to it
80% of my 78 years have been lived in Scotland and Wales and maybe I just do not get this Queen appointed by God and we are subservient to their position and must bow when meeting them etc
I am content for Charles to be king and William and Kate to succeed him but they do need to modernise and accept attitudes change
I give William full marks when he told the Caribbean nations that he will support any decisions to become republics and it is unthinkable that Australia, NZ, or Canada will continue indefinitely to have our monarch as their head of state
We are in a rapidly changing world and only those who accept change and even welcome it will survive
The Caribbean tour struggled to straddle the obvious fissures between the monarchy and the modern world, with only partial success. Once HMQ has risen to her throne in the sky, a lot of questions are going to come to the fore.
I think that's a key issue. There's enough accrued sentiment that it seems best to let her live our her life in peace rather than upset a very old lady. Not entirely rational, but a politically interfering middle-aged chap with a poor reputation for marital stability is a very different kettle of fish when ti comes to people claiming the Divine Right (prop: James VI and I). And remember the very concept of an Established Church, let alone one with the King or Queen as head and the bishops as state employees, was explosive politically from 1540s to the 20th century (and was resolved in part by eradicating the concept, as in Scotland). It's only because of the decline in religion that the insistence of retaining a mediaeval theocracy, complete with legislative seats for the shamans of only one religion out of many, is not still more explosive today.
Rubbish, we had and have an established church to ensure its authority comes from the monarch not the Pope. The Parish system it provides also ensures any Parishioner can get married or buried in their Parish Church.
The Bishops represent less than 5% of a House of Lords which is still completely unelected anyway
But you're making my point for me. "authority from the monarch". That's like saying that Mr Johnson or HMTQ should decide on philosophy, or nuclear physics, or medicine.
In any case, the bishops should not be in the HoL at all. "Yes, Officer, those Xboxes in their cartons in the back room I stole, but they are less than 5% of my net wealth."
No it isn't, the established church should derive its authority from the monarchy as well as God. Before it derived its authority from the Pope. Nonconformist, non established churches derive authority solely from God and Christ but the Church of England is a Catholic Church not a purely evangelical Baptist or Pentecostal or Presbyterian or Methodist Church as you so often remind us.
Yes the Bishops must be in the Lords, indeed they are more educated and qualified than many if not most of those who get appointed to be Lords today.
As long as the Lords is an appointed chamber the Bishops must be there as they have always had a place in the upper house since Medieval times
Your reference to medieval times is the perfect description of your attitudes, medieval
I respect our heritage, even if you as a republican former Labour general election voter do not
It seems my comments on the royal family last night triggered @HYUFD into a fierce debate which looks to have carried on into this morning
As I said last night I have been a republican most of my life but of recent times have had nothing but praise and admiration for HMQ but it has become an anachronism and the media coverage of William and Kate talking to children contained behind a wire fence and standing on the back of a land rover waving at the people gives credence to it
80% of my 78 years have been lived in Scotland and Wales and maybe I just do not get this Queen appointed by God and we are subservient to their position and must bow when meeting them etc
I am content for Charles to be king and William and Kate to succeed him but they do need to modernise and accept attitudes change
I give William full marks when he told the Caribbean nations that he will support any decisions to become republics and it is unthinkable that Australia, NZ, or Canada will continue indefinitely to have our monarch as their head of state
We are in a rapidly changing world and only those who accept change and even welcome it will survive
The Caribbean tour struggled to straddle the obvious fissures between the monarchy and the modern world, with only partial success. Once HMQ has risen to her throne in the sky, a lot of questions are going to come to the fore.
Absolutely, and I am a little surprised how tone deaf the Palace has been to the issues. Perhaps if they still had Harry and Meghan in the room they might have addressed the issues a bit better. Not just the slavery one, but also the issues around post colonial development.
say what you like about flsoj, the odd phrase does cut through. They are trapped in piccaninny think. That Land Rover was a serious disaster.
Shaking hands with black children through a chain linkfence too. Ouch!
That is absolutely shocking and unacceptable
Would you have rather that the Cambridges ignored the kids?
Lots of people twisting themselves in knots to defend what I think is a fairly bad decision by the church court, which was made with laughable justifications.
"white muppets" wrong "everyone was at it" not everyone "we'd have to cancel a whole century" no we wouldn't
Just have a look at the case itself, and read the judgment itself.
My point is not to justify it because everyone was at it, quite the reverse. But it was a *national* enterprise, it is what we as a country fundamentally did. It therfore seems a bit pointless to pick off arbitrary individuals.
Yes, seems a pointless endeavour in that respect.
I suppose you drop litter everywhere because of the vast amounts of pollution that will still be made everywhere else.
Amazingly, not every issue is the same or requires the same solutions.
Thanks for explaining that to me.
Your "argument" is an exact equivalent of dropping litter everywhere. Hope that helps you to understand a relatively simple point.
It seems my comments on the royal family last night triggered @HYUFD into a fierce debate which looks to have carried on into this morning
As I said last night I have been a republican most of my life but of recent times have had nothing but praise and admiration for HMQ but it has become an anachronism and the media coverage of William and Kate talking to children contained behind a wire fence and standing on the back of a land rover waving at the people gives credence to it
80% of my 78 years have been lived in Scotland and Wales and maybe I just do not get this Queen appointed by God and we are subservient to their position and must bow when meeting them etc
I am content for Charles to be king and William and Kate to succeed him but they do need to modernise and accept attitudes change
I give William full marks when he told the Caribbean nations that he will support any decisions to become republics and it is unthinkable that Australia, NZ, or Canada will continue indefinitely to have our monarch as their head of state
We are in a rapidly changing world and only those who accept change and even welcome it will survive
Why should Australia and New Zealand and Canada not continue with the British monarch as head of state? Most of their population would not be there if their ancestors had not come from the British Isles so a rather different context to the Caribbean nations most of whose population are still non white and not of British origin.
Only 15 out of 54 Commonwealth nations remain Commonwealth realms as we near the end of the Queen's reign anyway
Pretty sure most of the population of the Caribbean nations wouldn’t be there if British plantation owners and ‘businessmen’ hadn’t forcibly transported their ancestors there.
With the ultimate result the Caribbean having numerous black republics.
They've had some there for a long time after all. Not that Haiti has gone great of course but that's hardly solely down to government style.
It seems my comments on the royal family last night triggered @HYUFD into a fierce debate which looks to have carried on into this morning
As I said last night I have been a republican most of my life but of recent times have had nothing but praise and admiration for HMQ but it has become an anachronism and the media coverage of William and Kate talking to children contained behind a wire fence and standing on the back of a land rover waving at the people gives credence to it
80% of my 78 years have been lived in Scotland and Wales and maybe I just do not get this Queen appointed by God and we are subservient to their position and must bow when meeting them etc
I am content for Charles to be king and William and Kate to succeed him but they do need to modernise and accept attitudes change
I give William full marks when he told the Caribbean nations that he will support any decisions to become republics and it is unthinkable that Australia, NZ, or Canada will continue indefinitely to have our monarch as their head of state
We are in a rapidly changing world and only those who accept change and even welcome it will survive
The Caribbean tour struggled to straddle the obvious fissures between the monarchy and the modern world, with only partial success. Once HMQ has risen to her throne in the sky, a lot of questions are going to come to the fore.
Absolutely, and I am a little surprised how tone deaf the Palace has been to the issues. Perhaps if they still had Harry and Meghan in the room they might have addressed the issues a bit better. Not just the slavery one, but also the issues around post colonial development.
say what you like about flsoj, the odd phrase does cut through. They are trapped in piccaninny think. That Land Rover was a serious disaster.
Shaking hands with black children through a chain linkfence too. Ouch!
That is absolutely shocking and unacceptable
Trenchtown is a place where security issues would be significant, but that seems a poor way of addressing them.
A good place to have addressed the slavery issue might well have been Mico University College, now the Anglophone teacher training college for the region, and founded by the Mico foundation to educate the newly free slaves of Jamaica. My GGG grandfather was one of the earliest teachers there, my own personal connection to slavery and its abolition.
It seems my comments on the royal family last night triggered @HYUFD into a fierce debate which looks to have carried on into this morning
As I said last night I have been a republican most of my life but of recent times have had nothing but praise and admiration for HMQ but it has become an anachronism and the media coverage of William and Kate talking to children contained behind a wire fence and standing on the back of a land rover waving at the people gives credence to it
80% of my 78 years have been lived in Scotland and Wales and maybe I just do not get this Queen appointed by God and we are subservient to their position and must bow when meeting them etc
I am content for Charles to be king and William and Kate to succeed him but they do need to modernise and accept attitudes change
I give William full marks when he told the Caribbean nations that he will support any decisions to become republics and it is unthinkable that Australia, NZ, or Canada will continue indefinitely to have our monarch as their head of state
We are in a rapidly changing world and only those who accept change and even welcome it will survive
The Caribbean tour struggled to straddle the obvious fissures between the monarchy and the modern world, with only partial success. Once HMQ has risen to her throne in the sky, a lot of questions are going to come to the fore.
Absolutely, and I am a little surprised how tone deaf the Palace has been to the issues. Perhaps if they still had Harry and Meghan in the room they might have addressed the issues a bit better. Not just the slavery one, but also the issues around post colonial development.
say what you like about flsoj, the odd phrase does cut through. They are trapped in piccaninny think. That Land Rover was a serious disaster.
Shaking hands with black children through a chain linkfence too. Ouch!
No-one seems to be thinking "how will this look when it's photographed and filmed?"
Presumably it wasn't planned. Presumably the Cambridge's saw the children and decided to go over to them.
I actually have a lot of respect for the Cambridge's for not giving a flying fuck about "optics" in such situations.
If they saw the risk, considered it but decided that meeting the children was more important, then fair enough.
Other incidents on the tour rather suggest that no-one really had an eye on the optics at all.
The whole thing is bad for optics if you are of a certain mindset.
It seems my comments on the royal family last night triggered @HYUFD into a fierce debate which looks to have carried on into this morning
As I said last night I have been a republican most of my life but of recent times have had nothing but praise and admiration for HMQ but it has become an anachronism and the media coverage of William and Kate talking to children contained behind a wire fence and standing on the back of a land rover waving at the people gives credence to it
80% of my 78 years have been lived in Scotland and Wales and maybe I just do not get this Queen appointed by God and we are subservient to their position and must bow when meeting them etc
I am content for Charles to be king and William and Kate to succeed him but they do need to modernise and accept attitudes change
I give William full marks when he told the Caribbean nations that he will support any decisions to become republics and it is unthinkable that Australia, NZ, or Canada will continue indefinitely to have our monarch as their head of state
We are in a rapidly changing world and only those who accept change and even welcome it will survive
The Caribbean tour struggled to straddle the obvious fissures between the monarchy and the modern world, with only partial success. Once HMQ has risen to her throne in the sky, a lot of questions are going to come to the fore.
Absolutely, and I am a little surprised how tone deaf the Palace has been to the issues. Perhaps if they still had Harry and Meghan in the room they might have addressed the issues a bit better. Not just the slavery one, but also the issues around post colonial development.
say what you like about flsoj, the odd phrase does cut through. They are trapped in piccaninny think. That Land Rover was a serious disaster.
Shaking hands with black children through a chain linkfence too. Ouch!
No-one seems to be thinking "how will this look when it's photographed and filmed?"
Presumably it wasn't planned. Presumably the Cambridge's saw the children and decided to go over to them.
I actually have a lot of respect for the Cambridge's for not giving a flying fuck about "optics" in such situations.
If they saw the risk, considered it but decided that meeting the children was more important, then fair enough.
Other incidents on the tour rather suggest that no-one really had an eye on the optics at all.
Regardless of whether the tour was sensible this photo is a bit like the “Boris has no friends” selective choice of photos this week.
It’s a press photo of an event at a football kickabout - don’t think the palace had any control over it.
Here is a photo at the very same event moments apart where a very privileged wealthy star also greets the same kids behind a fence.
The decision by the church of England Court to refuse Jesus College (Cambridge) request to remove a memorial to a slave trader from its chapel is a gem
"The true position, as set out in the historians’ expert reports and their joint statement, is that Rustat’s investments in the Company of Royal Adventurers Trading into Africa (the Royal Adventurers) brought him no financial returns at all; that Rustat only realised his investments in the Royal African Company in May 1691, some 20 years after he had made his gifts to the College, and some five years after the completion of the Rustat memorial and its inscription; and that any moneys Rustat did realise as a result of his involvement in the slave trade comprised only a small part of his great wealth, and they made no contribution to his gifts to the College."
It's ok so many of the slaves he "invested" in died en route that he didn't really make much money from it during his lifetime.
And
" I recognise also that it does not excuse Rustat’s involvement in the slave trade, although it may help to explain it, that, in the words of L. P. Hartley (in his 1953 novel, The Go-Between), “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.”
I'm sure the slaves themselves were fine with it for that very reason.
And the classic:
"... buying certain clothes or other consumer goods, or eating certain foods, or investing in the companies that produce them, we are ourselves contributing to, or supporting, conditions akin to modern slavery, or to the degradation and impoverishment of our planet."
As Jesus said: Let he who has never eaten anything be the first to ask us not commemorate a slave trader
I always like to raise “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.” with "The past is never dead. It's not even past" (faulkner). With slavery the latter is true: the causal nexus between what Rustat did in the 1600s and what happened to George Floyd is absolutely solid.
There's a lot in HYUFD's point, though. The Royal African Company was called Royal for a reason. We did this as a nation, and we can hardly, cancel a whole century
Nevermind cancelling a whole century. Maybe we should just cancel our whole country. Or cancel the whole of civilisation, because the reality is that it is all built on slavery of various forms.
The whole thing is pathetic and tragic.
All civilisation in the west, surely? It derives from classical Hellenism and that was built on slavery.
don't think so. "Built on slavery" overstates the importance of it. neither Greeks nor romans afaik ever went to war with the *primary purpose* of scoring more slaves, unlike the Mesopotamians and Egyptians
Oh well, so long as it was just dabbling in slavery a bit that's fine.
Personally I'm all for slavery so long as we make it non racist slavery. 10,000 years of tradition can't be wrong. And we treat the children making our clothes little better than slaves anyway.
Slavery was a big part of the economic motivation of Roman conquest, particularly on a personal decision making level, of e.g. the generals in the Republican period wanting to make money for themselves and money to keep the legionary booties - or sandalies - happy. Ship them off to the slave markets at e.g. Delos and make a quick buck or rather as.
Caesar was probably not exaggerating, when he said he enslaved a million Gauls. It made him the richest man in Rome.
The last hundred years of the Roman Republic must have been an utter horror show for their neighbours, and the provincials. Slavery in that period was every bit as horrible as it was in the 18th century Carribbean.
Wasn't the everyday definition of abject poverty in the late Roman Republic being unable to afford a slave ?
It seems my comments on the royal family last night triggered @HYUFD into a fierce debate which looks to have carried on into this morning
As I said last night I have been a republican most of my life but of recent times have had nothing but praise and admiration for HMQ but it has become an anachronism and the media coverage of William and Kate talking to children contained behind a wire fence and standing on the back of a land rover waving at the people gives credence to it
80% of my 78 years have been lived in Scotland and Wales and maybe I just do not get this Queen appointed by God and we are subservient to their position and must bow when meeting them etc
I am content for Charles to be king and William and Kate to succeed him but they do need to modernise and accept attitudes change
I give William full marks when he told the Caribbean nations that he will support any decisions to become republics and it is unthinkable that Australia, NZ, or Canada will continue indefinitely to have our monarch as their head of state
We are in a rapidly changing world and only those who accept change and even welcome it will survive
The Caribbean tour struggled to straddle the obvious fissures between the monarchy and the modern world, with only partial success. Once HMQ has risen to her throne in the sky, a lot of questions are going to come to the fore.
I think that's a key issue. There's enough accrued sentiment that it seems best to let her live our her life in peace rather than upset a very old lady. Not entirely rational, but a politically interfering middle-aged chap with a poor reputation for marital stability is a very different kettle of fish when ti comes to people claiming the Divine Right (prop: James VI and I). And remember the very concept of an Established Church, let alone one with the King or Queen as head and the bishops as state employees, was explosive politically from 1540s to the 20th century (and was resolved in part by eradicating the concept, as in Scotland). It's only because of the decline in religion that the insistence of retaining a mediaeval theocracy, complete with legislative seats for the shamans of only one religion out of many, is not still more explosive today.
Rubbish, we had and have an established church to ensure its authority comes from the monarch not the Pope. The Parish system it provides also ensures any Parishioner can get married or buried in their Parish Church.
The Bishops represent less than 5% of a House of Lords which is still completely unelected anyway
Our whole constitutional arrangement centred around the monarch drawing their power from God is outdated:
“Of the 16% of people who define as belonging to the Church of England, 51.9% never attend services and in fact only 10.7% of people who identify with the Church of England report attending church at least weekly.”
The only reason we still have what we have is inertia and a lack of consensus on what to have instead. Rather like the Tory parliamentary party’s view of the PM incidentally.
So what, it must still be the established church. Otherwise by definition the established church returns to the Papacy and to Rome.
Hence in mamy of the non Roman Catholic majority nations of Western Europe like Sweden the Lutheran Church remains the established church.
Plus you end the Church of England as the established church you end the right of residents of the Parish to an automatic church wedding or funeral. Only regular churchgoers would keep that right
?.
Why would the established church return to Rome. Why not just not have an established church? Churches should thrive or not in their own right.
And why shouldn't a church wedding be restricted (if they want) to church goers. If you don't belong to a society/club why should you expect to benefit from it.
Also why does it remove that right? If the church of England wants to provide it to residents of the parish, it can if it wishes.
It seems my comments on the royal family last night triggered @HYUFD into a fierce debate which looks to have carried on into this morning
As I said last night I have been a republican most of my life but of recent times have had nothing but praise and admiration for HMQ but it has become an anachronism and the media coverage of William and Kate talking to children contained behind a wire fence and standing on the back of a land rover waving at the people gives credence to it
80% of my 78 years have been lived in Scotland and Wales and maybe I just do not get this Queen appointed by God and we are subservient to their position and must bow when meeting them etc
I am content for Charles to be king and William and Kate to succeed him but they do need to modernise and accept attitudes change
I give William full marks when he told the Caribbean nations that he will support any decisions to become republics and it is unthinkable that Australia, NZ, or Canada will continue indefinitely to have our monarch as their head of state
We are in a rapidly changing world and only those who accept change and even welcome it will survive
The Caribbean tour struggled to straddle the obvious fissures between the monarchy and the modern world, with only partial success. Once HMQ has risen to her throne in the sky, a lot of questions are going to come to the fore.
Absolutely, and I am a little surprised how tone deaf the Palace has been to the issues. Perhaps if they still had Harry and Meghan in the room they might have addressed the issues a bit better. Not just the slavery one, but also the issues around post colonial development.
say what you like about flsoj, the odd phrase does cut through. They are trapped in piccaninny think. That Land Rover was a serious disaster.
Shaking hands with black children through a chain linkfence too. Ouch!
That is absolutely shocking and unacceptable
Would you have rather that the Cambridges ignored the kids?
It should not have happened and someone comprehensively failed to see the optics
It seems my comments on the royal family last night triggered @HYUFD into a fierce debate which looks to have carried on into this morning
As I said last night I have been a republican most of my life but of recent times have had nothing but praise and admiration for HMQ but it has become an anachronism and the media coverage of William and Kate talking to children contained behind a wire fence and standing on the back of a land rover waving at the people gives credence to it
80% of my 78 years have been lived in Scotland and Wales and maybe I just do not get this Queen appointed by God and we are subservient to their position and must bow when meeting them etc
I am content for Charles to be king and William and Kate to succeed him but they do need to modernise and accept attitudes change
I give William full marks when he told the Caribbean nations that he will support any decisions to become republics and it is unthinkable that Australia, NZ, or Canada will continue indefinitely to have our monarch as their head of state
We are in a rapidly changing world and only those who accept change and even welcome it will survive
The Caribbean tour struggled to straddle the obvious fissures between the monarchy and the modern world, with only partial success. Once HMQ has risen to her throne in the sky, a lot of questions are going to come to the fore.
Absolutely, and I am a little surprised how tone deaf the Palace has been to the issues. Perhaps if they still had Harry and Meghan in the room they might have addressed the issues a bit better. Not just the slavery one, but also the issues around post colonial development.
I think the truth is that young William is still learning on the job.
He has been doing it a while, he is nearly 40.
A lot of the problem with the monarchy is not so much the individuals, flawed as they are, but the obsequious funkiest around the household. The archaic protocols and stuffy orders of precedence pander to the worst of the Royal individuals.
I note a murmur on twitter that the current clusterfuck of royal pr is down to all the ‘good’ advisors being got rid of in 2017. I was unaware of this cull but I’m not sure that the huge, ramshackle Firm of Windsor can be marketed into relevance, nor if it’s all worth it just to prevent the supposed horror of an elected head of state.
Even when that head of state is Johnson? It would be you know.
The decision by the church of England Court to refuse Jesus College (Cambridge) request to remove a memorial to a slave trader from its chapel is a gem
"The true position, as set out in the historians’ expert reports and their joint statement, is that Rustat’s investments in the Company of Royal Adventurers Trading into Africa (the Royal Adventurers) brought him no financial returns at all; that Rustat only realised his investments in the Royal African Company in May 1691, some 20 years after he had made his gifts to the College, and some five years after the completion of the Rustat memorial and its inscription; and that any moneys Rustat did realise as a result of his involvement in the slave trade comprised only a small part of his great wealth, and they made no contribution to his gifts to the College."
It's ok so many of the slaves he "invested" in died en route that he didn't really make much money from it during his lifetime.
And
" I recognise also that it does not excuse Rustat’s involvement in the slave trade, although it may help to explain it, that, in the words of L. P. Hartley (in his 1953 novel, The Go-Between), “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.”
I'm sure the slaves themselves were fine with it for that very reason.
And the classic:
"... buying certain clothes or other consumer goods, or eating certain foods, or investing in the companies that produce them, we are ourselves contributing to, or supporting, conditions akin to modern slavery, or to the degradation and impoverishment of our planet."
As Jesus said: Let he who has never eaten anything be the first to ask us not commemorate a slave trader
Given almost anyone with any capital at all in the 17th century would have invested in a company with some connection to the slave trade, sound decision by the Church of England Court.
Otherwise there would be virtually no memorials to 17th century figures left.
Source for your claime? I'm not sure how that tallies with the church's own argument that investments in slavery were only an insignificant part of Rustat's "great wealth".
At peak slave trade, it amounted to about 12% gdp. In a massively agrarian economy they is pretty much everything which isn't farming. It is therefore quite likely that Rustat was say 10% slaves 90% landowner
Mind you HYUFD s claim doesn't excuse anything it just spreads the blame more widely
One corollary of those statistics is that Britain took a voluntary hit of 12% GDP in ending slavery and the slave trade. The country did the right thing — eventually! — knowing the cost.
Really? Ending the slave trade was a 12% hit to British GDP? Doesn't sound right
If we accept the 12 per cent figure. I've no way of knowing if that is correct but it comes from earlier in the thread.
The 12% was claimed to be the peak percentage - was the peak when the slave trade was abolished? Surely not.
The decision by the church of England Court to refuse Jesus College (Cambridge) request to remove a memorial to a slave trader from its chapel is a gem
"The true position, as set out in the historians’ expert reports and their joint statement, is that Rustat’s investments in the Company of Royal Adventurers Trading into Africa (the Royal Adventurers) brought him no financial returns at all; that Rustat only realised his investments in the Royal African Company in May 1691, some 20 years after he had made his gifts to the College, and some five years after the completion of the Rustat memorial and its inscription; and that any moneys Rustat did realise as a result of his involvement in the slave trade comprised only a small part of his great wealth, and they made no contribution to his gifts to the College."
It's ok so many of the slaves he "invested" in died en route that he didn't really make much money from it during his lifetime.
And
" I recognise also that it does not excuse Rustat’s involvement in the slave trade, although it may help to explain it, that, in the words of L. P. Hartley (in his 1953 novel, The Go-Between), “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.”
I'm sure the slaves themselves were fine with it for that very reason.
And the classic:
"... buying certain clothes or other consumer goods, or eating certain foods, or investing in the companies that produce them, we are ourselves contributing to, or supporting, conditions akin to modern slavery, or to the degradation and impoverishment of our planet."
As Jesus said: Let he who has never eaten anything be the first to ask us not commemorate a slave trader
Given almost anyone with any capital at all in the 17th century would have invested in a company with some connection to the slave trade, sound decision by the Church of England Court.
Otherwise there would be virtually no memorials to 17th century figures left.
Source for your claime? I'm not sure how that tallies with the church's own argument that investments in slavery were only an insignificant part of Rustat's "great wealth".
Most of the large companies on the Stock Exchange in the 17th century would have had some investment in slavery and the slave trade.
It was not the Church's argument as such, Justin Welby backed removing the memorial but the argument of the Judge at the Church Court. It was a sound one as Rustat was not a slave trader
You seem to be making the opposite argument to the one in the church court judgment. They are saying he had great wealth but most of it was unconnected to slavery, you are saying that all wealth at the time was connected to slavery. You can't both be right.
They are saying he still had some wealth connected to slavery, as did virtually anyone with significant capital at the time
Just like most greens today, especially those working in the public sector, will own fossil fuel shares in their pension funds.
Teachers don’t have a pension fund…
yes most public sector pension schemes are unfunded. Exceptions are the Local Government Pension Scheme (if you put all councils together it is by far the largest funded pension scheme =public or private in the country) and the parliamentary pensions scheme for MPs.
The biggest quasi private sector definded benefit pension scheme is the universities scheme with about £80 billion of assets . But the local government one is far bigger. Also the NEST pension scheme (for staff of smaller employees and the default one if employers do not choose another) is growing rapidly since auto-enrolment but of course is defined contribution not benefit
The Royal Mail (incl Post Office) fund was massive and also used to have tons of assets, until Osborne nicked them and spent the proceeds, leaving future taxpayers to pay for postal pensions.
It seems my comments on the royal family last night triggered @HYUFD into a fierce debate which looks to have carried on into this morning
As I said last night I have been a republican most of my life but of recent times have had nothing but praise and admiration for HMQ but it has become an anachronism and the media coverage of William and Kate talking to children contained behind a wire fence and standing on the back of a land rover waving at the people gives credence to it
80% of my 78 years have been lived in Scotland and Wales and maybe I just do not get this Queen appointed by God and we are subservient to their position and must bow when meeting them etc
I am content for Charles to be king and William and Kate to succeed him but they do need to modernise and accept attitudes change
I give William full marks when he told the Caribbean nations that he will support any decisions to become republics and it is unthinkable that Australia, NZ, or Canada will continue indefinitely to have our monarch as their head of state
We are in a rapidly changing world and only those who accept change and even welcome it will survive
The Caribbean tour struggled to straddle the obvious fissures between the monarchy and the modern world, with only partial success. Once HMQ has risen to her throne in the sky, a lot of questions are going to come to the fore.
I think that's a key issue. There's enough accrued sentiment that it seems best to let her live our her life in peace rather than upset a very old lady. Not entirely rational, but a politically interfering middle-aged chap with a poor reputation for marital stability is a very different kettle of fish when ti comes to people claiming the Divine Right (prop: James VI and I). And remember the very concept of an Established Church, let alone one with the King or Queen as head and the bishops as state employees, was explosive politically from 1540s to the 20th century (and was resolved in part by eradicating the concept, as in Scotland). It's only because of the decline in religion that the insistence of retaining a mediaeval theocracy, complete with legislative seats for the shamans of only one religion out of many, is not still more explosive today.
Rubbish, we had and have an established church to ensure its authority comes from the monarch not the Pope. The Parish system it provides also ensures any Parishioner can get married or buried in their Parish Church.
The Bishops represent less than 5% of a House of Lords which is still completely unelected anyway
But you're making my point for me. "authority from the monarch". That's like saying that Mr Johnson or HMTQ should decide on philosophy, or nuclear physics, or medicine.
In any case, the bishops should not be in the HoL at all. "Yes, Officer, those Xboxes in their cartons in the back room I stole, but they are less than 5% of my net wealth."
No it isn't, the established church should derive its authority from the monarchy as well as God. Before it derived its authority from the Pope. Nonconformist, non established churches derive authority solely from God and Christ but the Church of England is a Catholic Church not a purely evangelical Baptist or Pentecostal or Presbyterian or Methodist Church as you so often remind us.
Yes the Bishops must be in the Lords, indeed they are more educated and qualified than many if not most of those who get appointed to be Lords today.
As long as the Lords is an appointed chamber the Bishops must be there as they have always had a place in the upper house since Medieval times
Your reference to medieval times is the perfect description of your attitudes, medieval
I respect our heritage, even if you as a republican former Labour general election voter do not
I acknowledge change and resisting change is pointless
The decision by the church of England Court to refuse Jesus College (Cambridge) request to remove a memorial to a slave trader from its chapel is a gem
"The true position, as set out in the historians’ expert reports and their joint statement, is that Rustat’s investments in the Company of Royal Adventurers Trading into Africa (the Royal Adventurers) brought him no financial returns at all; that Rustat only realised his investments in the Royal African Company in May 1691, some 20 years after he had made his gifts to the College, and some five years after the completion of the Rustat memorial and its inscription; and that any moneys Rustat did realise as a result of his involvement in the slave trade comprised only a small part of his great wealth, and they made no contribution to his gifts to the College."
It's ok so many of the slaves he "invested" in died en route that he didn't really make much money from it during his lifetime.
And
" I recognise also that it does not excuse Rustat’s involvement in the slave trade, although it may help to explain it, that, in the words of L. P. Hartley (in his 1953 novel, The Go-Between), “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.”
I'm sure the slaves themselves were fine with it for that very reason.
And the classic:
"... buying certain clothes or other consumer goods, or eating certain foods, or investing in the companies that produce them, we are ourselves contributing to, or supporting, conditions akin to modern slavery, or to the degradation and impoverishment of our planet."
As Jesus said: Let he who has never eaten anything be the first to ask us not commemorate a slave trader
I always like to raise “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.” with "The past is never dead. It's not even past" (faulkner). With slavery the latter is true: the causal nexus between what Rustat did in the 1600s and what happened to George Floyd is absolutely solid.
There's a lot in HYUFD's point, though. The Royal African Company was called Royal for a reason. We did this as a nation, and we can hardly, cancel a whole century
Nevermind cancelling a whole century. Maybe we should just cancel our whole country. Or cancel the whole of civilisation, because the reality is that it is all built on slavery of various forms.
The whole thing is pathetic and tragic.
All civilisation in the west, surely? It derives from classical Hellenism and that was built on slavery.
don't think so. "Built on slavery" overstates the importance of it. neither Greeks nor romans afaik ever went to war with the *primary purpose* of scoring more slaves, unlike the Mesopotamians and Egyptians
Oh well, so long as it was just dabbling in slavery a bit that's fine.
Personally I'm all for slavery so long as we make it non racist slavery. 10,000 years of tradition can't be wrong. And we treat the children making our clothes little better than slaves anyway.
Slavery was a big part of the economic motivation of Roman conquest, particularly on a personal decision making level, of e.g. the generals in the Republican period wanting to make money for themselves and money to keep the legionary booties - or sandalies - happy. Ship them off to the slave markets at e.g. Delos and make a quick buck or rather as.
Caesar was probably not exaggerating, when he said he enslaved a million Gauls. It made him the richest man in Rome.
The last hundred years of the Roman Republic must have been an utter horror show for their neighbours, and the provincials. Slavery in that period was every bit as horrible as it was in the 18th century Carribbean.
Wasn't the everyday definition of abject poverty in the late Roman Republic being unable to afford a slave ?
Pretty much. Rome was divided into five classes, based upon wealth, and then a sixth, without property (including slaves) the Head Count, who actually formed the majority of the citizen population. Members of the fifth class would mostly still own a slave each.
It seems my comments on the royal family last night triggered @HYUFD into a fierce debate which looks to have carried on into this morning
As I said last night I have been a republican most of my life but of recent times have had nothing but praise and admiration for HMQ but it has become an anachronism and the media coverage of William and Kate talking to children contained behind a wire fence and standing on the back of a land rover waving at the people gives credence to it
80% of my 78 years have been lived in Scotland and Wales and maybe I just do not get this Queen appointed by God and we are subservient to their position and must bow when meeting them etc
I am content for Charles to be king and William and Kate to succeed him but they do need to modernise and accept attitudes change
I give William full marks when he told the Caribbean nations that he will support any decisions to become republics and it is unthinkable that Australia, NZ, or Canada will continue indefinitely to have our monarch as their head of state
We are in a rapidly changing world and only those who accept change and even welcome it will survive
The Caribbean tour struggled to straddle the obvious fissures between the monarchy and the modern world, with only partial success. Once HMQ has risen to her throne in the sky, a lot of questions are going to come to the fore.
Absolutely, and I am a little surprised how tone deaf the Palace has been to the issues. Perhaps if they still had Harry and Meghan in the room they might have addressed the issues a bit better. Not just the slavery one, but also the issues around post colonial development.
But they choose to give up a life of luxury, privilege and wealth in the UK with some Royal duties required in exchange and opted instead for penury in a Californian mansion surrounded by film stars and icons of the world of fashion. Good luck to them.
It seems my comments on the royal family last night triggered @HYUFD into a fierce debate which looks to have carried on into this morning
As I said last night I have been a republican most of my life but of recent times have had nothing but praise and admiration for HMQ but it has become an anachronism and the media coverage of William and Kate talking to children contained behind a wire fence and standing on the back of a land rover waving at the people gives credence to it
80% of my 78 years have been lived in Scotland and Wales and maybe I just do not get this Queen appointed by God and we are subservient to their position and must bow when meeting them etc
I am content for Charles to be king and William and Kate to succeed him but they do need to modernise and accept attitudes change
I give William full marks when he told the Caribbean nations that he will support any decisions to become republics and it is unthinkable that Australia, NZ, or Canada will continue indefinitely to have our monarch as their head of state
We are in a rapidly changing world and only those who accept change and even welcome it will survive
The Caribbean tour struggled to straddle the obvious fissures between the monarchy and the modern world, with only partial success. Once HMQ has risen to her throne in the sky, a lot of questions are going to come to the fore.
I think that's a key issue. There's enough accrued sentiment that it seems best to let her live our her life in peace rather than upset a very old lady. Not entirely rational, but a politically interfering middle-aged chap with a poor reputation for marital stability is a very different kettle of fish when ti comes to people claiming the Divine Right (prop: James VI and I). And remember the very concept of an Established Church, let alone one with the King or Queen as head and the bishops as state employees, was explosive politically from 1540s to the 20th century (and was resolved in part by eradicating the concept, as in Scotland). It's only because of the decline in religion that the insistence of retaining a mediaeval theocracy, complete with legislative seats for the shamans of only one religion out of many, is not still more explosive today.
Rubbish, we had and have an established church to ensure its authority comes from the monarch not the Pope. The Parish system it provides also ensures any Parishioner can get married or buried in their Parish Church.
The Bishops represent less than 5% of a House of Lords which is still completely unelected anyway
Our whole constitutional arrangement centred around the monarch drawing their power from God is outdated:
“Of the 16% of people who define as belonging to the Church of England, 51.9% never attend services and in fact only 10.7% of people who identify with the Church of England report attending church at least weekly.”
The only reason we still have what we have is inertia and a lack of consensus on what to have instead. Rather like the Tory parliamentary party’s view of the PM incidentally.
So what, it must still be the established church. Otherwise by definition the established church returns to the Papacy and to Rome.
Hence in mamy of the non Roman Catholic majority nations of Western Europe like Denmark and Norway the Lutheran Church remains the established church.
Plus you end the Church of England as the established church you end the right of residents of the Parish to an automatic church wedding or funeral. Only regular churchgoers would keep that right
Just get rid of the established church, drop the bishops from the Lords, and those people who want to cling to their superstitions can do so in private.
Absolutely not.
We must fight the left agenda of the likes of you to continue to destroy yet more of our heritage.
It is in some respects yet another battle in the culture wars.
The Church of England must remain the established church with the monarch as the Supreme Governor and Bishops in the Lords. It links the monarch to God, ensures a Parish wedding and funeral available to every Parishioner. Otherwise too established authority within the Church would return to Rome and the Pope
forgot to add the railworkers pension scheme is funded as well .Although employers are both public and private given the nature of the rail system.Frank field had a big argument with the trsutees of it a couple of years ago saying it had deficits which the trustees said was rubbish I think.
Lots of people twisting themselves in knots to defend what I think is a fairly bad decision by the church court, which was made with laughable justifications.
"white muppets" wrong "everyone was at it" not everyone "we'd have to cancel a whole century" no we wouldn't
Just have a look at the case itself, and read the judgment itself.
My point is not to justify it because everyone was at it, quite the reverse. But it was a *national* enterprise, it is what we as a country fundamentally did. It therfore seems a bit pointless to pick off arbitrary individuals.
Yes, seems a pointless endeavour in that respect.
I suppose you drop litter everywhere because of the vast amounts of pollution that will still be made everywhere else.
Amazingly, not every issue is the same or requires the same solutions.
Thanks for explaining that to me.
Your "argument" is an exact equivalent of dropping litter everywhere. Hope that helps you to understand a relatively simple point.
I understood your point just fine, thanks. You're extrapolating way more about what I believe than can be gleaned from a single comment, and then expanding it with an extremely stupid comparison, so you'll forgive me if I didn't see the point of addressing it. It was the equivalent of attempting a 'when did you stop beating your wife?' question when I'm not even married - both misconceived and unreasonable.
In actual fact I think recognising the nation's historical involvement in slavery and addressing any lingering impacts from that requires something a bit more than picking off whichever person is the random slavery adjacent person of the week to get attention. National monuments, our laws against discrimination and actually tackling matters of indirect discrimination which exist, these I think address current problems a bit more. I think a focus on statues including of people with very limited connections to the trade is high profile, but can serve as a distraction from less visible efforts that are needed. Yes you could do both, but campaigns against visible things are more dramatic.
What you seem to have done is the idiot's approach to 'They don't agree about specific point X, therefore they must not care at all about Y' with an, again, really dumb attempt at a comparison.
It seems my comments on the royal family last night triggered @HYUFD into a fierce debate which looks to have carried on into this morning
As I said last night I have been a republican most of my life but of recent times have had nothing but praise and admiration for HMQ but it has become an anachronism and the media coverage of William and Kate talking to children contained behind a wire fence and standing on the back of a land rover waving at the people gives credence to it
80% of my 78 years have been lived in Scotland and Wales and maybe I just do not get this Queen appointed by God and we are subservient to their position and must bow when meeting them etc
I am content for Charles to be king and William and Kate to succeed him but they do need to modernise and accept attitudes change
I give William full marks when he told the Caribbean nations that he will support any decisions to become republics and it is unthinkable that Australia, NZ, or Canada will continue indefinitely to have our monarch as their head of state
We are in a rapidly changing world and only those who accept change and even welcome it will survive
The Caribbean tour struggled to straddle the obvious fissures between the monarchy and the modern world, with only partial success. Once HMQ has risen to her throne in the sky, a lot of questions are going to come to the fore.
Absolutely, and I am a little surprised how tone deaf the Palace has been to the issues. Perhaps if they still had Harry and Meghan in the room they might have addressed the issues a bit better. Not just the slavery one, but also the issues around post colonial development.
But they choose to give up a life of luxury, privilege and wealth in the UK with some Royal duties required in exchange and opted instead for penury in a Californian mansion surrounded by film stars and icons of the world of fashion. Good luck to them.
It seems my comments on the royal family last night triggered @HYUFD into a fierce debate which looks to have carried on into this morning
As I said last night I have been a republican most of my life but of recent times have had nothing but praise and admiration for HMQ but it has become an anachronism and the media coverage of William and Kate talking to children contained behind a wire fence and standing on the back of a land rover waving at the people gives credence to it
80% of my 78 years have been lived in Scotland and Wales and maybe I just do not get this Queen appointed by God and we are subservient to their position and must bow when meeting them etc
I am content for Charles to be king and William and Kate to succeed him but they do need to modernise and accept attitudes change
I give William full marks when he told the Caribbean nations that he will support any decisions to become republics and it is unthinkable that Australia, NZ, or Canada will continue indefinitely to have our monarch as their head of state
We are in a rapidly changing world and only those who accept change and even welcome it will survive
The Caribbean tour struggled to straddle the obvious fissures between the monarchy and the modern world, with only partial success. Once HMQ has risen to her throne in the sky, a lot of questions are going to come to the fore.
I think that's a key issue. There's enough accrued sentiment that it seems best to let her live our her life in peace rather than upset a very old lady. Not entirely rational, but a politically interfering middle-aged chap with a poor reputation for marital stability is a very different kettle of fish when ti comes to people claiming the Divine Right (prop: James VI and I). And remember the very concept of an Established Church, let alone one with the King or Queen as head and the bishops as state employees, was explosive politically from 1540s to the 20th century (and was resolved in part by eradicating the concept, as in Scotland). It's only because of the decline in religion that the insistence of retaining a mediaeval theocracy, complete with legislative seats for the shamans of only one religion out of many, is not still more explosive today.
Rubbish, we had and have an established church to ensure its authority comes from the monarch not the Pope. The Parish system it provides also ensures any Parishioner can get married or buried in their Parish Church.
The Bishops represent less than 5% of a House of Lords which is still completely unelected anyway
Our whole constitutional arrangement centred around the monarch drawing their power from God is outdated:
“Of the 16% of people who define as belonging to the Church of England, 51.9% never attend services and in fact only 10.7% of people who identify with the Church of England report attending church at least weekly.”
The only reason we still have what we have is inertia and a lack of consensus on what to have instead. Rather like the Tory parliamentary party’s view of the PM incidentally.
So what, it must still be the established church. Otherwise by definition the established church returns to the Papacy and to Rome.
Hence in mamy of the non Roman Catholic majority nations of Western Europe like Denmark and Norway the Lutheran Church remains the established church.
Plus you end the Church of England as the established church you end the right of residents of the Parish to an automatic church wedding or funeral. Only regular churchgoers would keep that right
Just get rid of the established church, drop the bishops from the Lords, and those people who want to cling to their superstitions can do so in private.
Absolutely not.
We must fight the left agenda of the likes of you to continue to destroy yet more of our heritage.
It is in some respects yet another battle in the culture wars.
The Church of England must remain the established church with the monarch as the Supreme Governor and Bishops in the Lords. It links the monarch to God, ensures a Parish wedding and funeral available to every Parishioner. Otherwise too established authority within the Church would return to Rome and the Pope
Are you actually saying that Non-Conformist churches have returned established authority to Rome?
I would need a large bucket of popcorn to hear you explain that to Mr Paisley!
It seems my comments on the royal family last night triggered @HYUFD into a fierce debate which looks to have carried on into this morning
As I said last night I have been a republican most of my life but of recent times have had nothing but praise and admiration for HMQ but it has become an anachronism and the media coverage of William and Kate talking to children contained behind a wire fence and standing on the back of a land rover waving at the people gives credence to it
80% of my 78 years have been lived in Scotland and Wales and maybe I just do not get this Queen appointed by God and we are subservient to their position and must bow when meeting them etc
I am content for Charles to be king and William and Kate to succeed him but they do need to modernise and accept attitudes change
I give William full marks when he told the Caribbean nations that he will support any decisions to become republics and it is unthinkable that Australia, NZ, or Canada will continue indefinitely to have our monarch as their head of state
We are in a rapidly changing world and only those who accept change and even welcome it will survive
The Caribbean tour struggled to straddle the obvious fissures between the monarchy and the modern world, with only partial success. Once HMQ has risen to her throne in the sky, a lot of questions are going to come to the fore.
Absolutely, and I am a little surprised how tone deaf the Palace has been to the issues. Perhaps if they still had Harry and Meghan in the room they might have addressed the issues a bit better. Not just the slavery one, but also the issues around post colonial development.
say what you like about flsoj, the odd phrase does cut through. They are trapped in piccaninny think. That Land Rover was a serious disaster.
Shaking hands with black children through a chain linkfence too. Ouch!
That is absolutely shocking and unacceptable
Would you have rather that the Cambridges ignored the kids?
It should not have happened and someone comprehensively failed to see the optics
It seems my comments on the royal family last night triggered @HYUFD into a fierce debate which looks to have carried on into this morning
As I said last night I have been a republican most of my life but of recent times have had nothing but praise and admiration for HMQ but it has become an anachronism and the media coverage of William and Kate talking to children contained behind a wire fence and standing on the back of a land rover waving at the people gives credence to it
80% of my 78 years have been lived in Scotland and Wales and maybe I just do not get this Queen appointed by God and we are subservient to their position and must bow when meeting them etc
I am content for Charles to be king and William and Kate to succeed him but they do need to modernise and accept attitudes change
I give William full marks when he told the Caribbean nations that he will support any decisions to become republics and it is unthinkable that Australia, NZ, or Canada will continue indefinitely to have our monarch as their head of state
We are in a rapidly changing world and only those who accept change and even welcome it will survive
The Caribbean tour struggled to straddle the obvious fissures between the monarchy and the modern world, with only partial success. Once HMQ has risen to her throne in the sky, a lot of questions are going to come to the fore.
I think that's a key issue. There's enough accrued sentiment that it seems best to let her live our her life in peace rather than upset a very old lady. Not entirely rational, but a politically interfering middle-aged chap with a poor reputation for marital stability is a very different kettle of fish when ti comes to people claiming the Divine Right (prop: James VI and I). And remember the very concept of an Established Church, let alone one with the King or Queen as head and the bishops as state employees, was explosive politically from 1540s to the 20th century (and was resolved in part by eradicating the concept, as in Scotland). It's only because of the decline in religion that the insistence of retaining a mediaeval theocracy, complete with legislative seats for the shamans of only one religion out of many, is not still more explosive today.
Rubbish, we had and have an established church to ensure its authority comes from the monarch not the Pope. The Parish system it provides also ensures any Parishioner can get married or buried in their Parish Church.
The Bishops represent less than 5% of a House of Lords which is still completely unelected anyway
Our whole constitutional arrangement centred around the monarch drawing their power from God is outdated:
“Of the 16% of people who define as belonging to the Church of England, 51.9% never attend services and in fact only 10.7% of people who identify with the Church of England report attending church at least weekly.”
The only reason we still have what we have is inertia and a lack of consensus on what to have instead. Rather like the Tory parliamentary party’s view of the PM incidentally.
So what, it must still be the established church. Otherwise by definition the established church returns to the Papacy and to Rome.
Hence in mamy of the non Roman Catholic majority nations of Western Europe like Denmark and Norway the Lutheran Church remains the established church.
Plus you end the Church of England as the established church you end the right of residents of the Parish to an automatic church wedding or funeral. Only regular churchgoers would keep that right
Just get rid of the established church, drop the bishops from the Lords, and those people who want to cling to their superstitions can do so in private.
The assumption "I have a worldview, other views about the nature of reality are superstitions" is about as superstitious and fantastical as any set of ideas really.
It seems my comments on the royal family last night triggered @HYUFD into a fierce debate which looks to have carried on into this morning
As I said last night I have been a republican most of my life but of recent times have had nothing but praise and admiration for HMQ but it has become an anachronism and the media coverage of William and Kate talking to children contained behind a wire fence and standing on the back of a land rover waving at the people gives credence to it
80% of my 78 years have been lived in Scotland and Wales and maybe I just do not get this Queen appointed by God and we are subservient to their position and must bow when meeting them etc
I am content for Charles to be king and William and Kate to succeed him but they do need to modernise and accept attitudes change
I give William full marks when he told the Caribbean nations that he will support any decisions to become republics and it is unthinkable that Australia, NZ, or Canada will continue indefinitely to have our monarch as their head of state
We are in a rapidly changing world and only those who accept change and even welcome it will survive
The Caribbean tour struggled to straddle the obvious fissures between the monarchy and the modern world, with only partial success. Once HMQ has risen to her throne in the sky, a lot of questions are going to come to the fore.
I think that's a key issue. There's enough accrued sentiment that it seems best to let her live our her life in peace rather than upset a very old lady. Not entirely rational, but a politically interfering middle-aged chap with a poor reputation for marital stability is a very different kettle of fish when ti comes to people claiming the Divine Right (prop: James VI and I). And remember the very concept of an Established Church, let alone one with the King or Queen as head and the bishops as state employees, was explosive politically from 1540s to the 20th century (and was resolved in part by eradicating the concept, as in Scotland). It's only because of the decline in religion that the insistence of retaining a mediaeval theocracy, complete with legislative seats for the shamans of only one religion out of many, is not still more explosive today.
Rubbish, we had and have an established church to ensure its authority comes from the monarch not the Pope. The Parish system it provides also ensures any Parishioner can get married or buried in their Parish Church.
The Bishops represent less than 5% of a House of Lords which is still completely unelected anyway
But you're making my point for me. "authority from the monarch". That's like saying that Mr Johnson or HMTQ should decide on philosophy, or nuclear physics, or medicine.
In any case, the bishops should not be in the HoL at all. "Yes, Officer, those Xboxes in their cartons in the back room I stole, but they are less than 5% of my net wealth."
No it isn't, the established church should derive its authority from the monarchy as well as God. Before it derived its authority from the Pope. Nonconformist, non established churches derive authority solely from God and Christ but the Church of England is a Catholic Church not a purely evangelical Baptist or Pentecostal or Presbyterian or Methodist Church as you so often remind us.
Yes the Bishops must be in the Lords, indeed they are more educated and qualified than many if not most of those who get appointed to be Lords today.
As long as the Lords is an appointed chamber the Bishops must be there as they have always had a place in the upper house since Medieval times
Your reference to medieval times is the perfect description of your attitudes, medieval
I respect our heritage, even if you as a republican former Labour general election voter do not
Should we still burn witches then or is it better to evolve.
Lots of people twisting themselves in knots to defend what I think is a fairly bad decision by the church court, which was made with laughable justifications.
"white muppets" wrong "everyone was at it" not everyone "we'd have to cancel a whole century" no we wouldn't
Just have a look at the case itself, and read the judgment itself.
My point is not to justify it because everyone was at it, quite the reverse. But it was a *national* enterprise, it is what we as a country fundamentally did. It therfore seems a bit pointless to pick off arbitrary individuals.
Yes, seems a pointless endeavour in that respect.
I suppose you drop litter everywhere because of the vast amounts of pollution that will still be made everywhere else.
Amazingly, not every issue is the same or requires the same solutions.
Thanks for explaining that to me.
Your "argument" is an exact equivalent of dropping litter everywhere. Hope that helps you to understand a relatively simple point.
Actually, I think you are being fooled. Going after Rustat and Colston promotes a spurious "few bad apples" narrative which minimises the *institutional* involvement of the country in all this. Rustat was a mere sidekick of Charles II and James II (as was Colston)
It seems my comments on the royal family last night triggered @HYUFD into a fierce debate which looks to have carried on into this morning
As I said last night I have been a republican most of my life but of recent times have had nothing but praise and admiration for HMQ but it has become an anachronism and the media coverage of William and Kate talking to children contained behind a wire fence and standing on the back of a land rover waving at the people gives credence to it
80% of my 78 years have been lived in Scotland and Wales and maybe I just do not get this Queen appointed by God and we are subservient to their position and must bow when meeting them etc
I am content for Charles to be king and William and Kate to succeed him but they do need to modernise and accept attitudes change
I give William full marks when he told the Caribbean nations that he will support any decisions to become republics and it is unthinkable that Australia, NZ, or Canada will continue indefinitely to have our monarch as their head of state
We are in a rapidly changing world and only those who accept change and even welcome it will survive
The Caribbean tour struggled to straddle the obvious fissures between the monarchy and the modern world, with only partial success. Once HMQ has risen to her throne in the sky, a lot of questions are going to come to the fore.
Absolutely, and I am a little surprised how tone deaf the Palace has been to the issues. Perhaps if they still had Harry and Meghan in the room they might have addressed the issues a bit better. Not just the slavery one, but also the issues around post colonial development.
But they choose to give up a life of luxury, privilege and wealth in the UK with some Royal duties required in exchange and opted instead for penury in a Californian mansion surrounded by film stars and icons of the world of fashion. Good luck to them.
The pair are the very archetypes of idle rich.
As indiviudals I like them just fine, but their current approach of trying to be impactful whilst having pulled back from the institutional which gave them attention seems a bit confused to me. I'm also not clear what about them makes people think they would have a greater insight into managing royal PR.
It seems my comments on the royal family last night triggered @HYUFD into a fierce debate which looks to have carried on into this morning
As I said last night I have been a republican most of my life but of recent times have had nothing but praise and admiration for HMQ but it has become an anachronism and the media coverage of William and Kate talking to children contained behind a wire fence and standing on the back of a land rover waving at the people gives credence to it
80% of my 78 years have been lived in Scotland and Wales and maybe I just do not get this Queen appointed by God and we are subservient to their position and must bow when meeting them etc
I am content for Charles to be king and William and Kate to succeed him but they do need to modernise and accept attitudes change
I give William full marks when he told the Caribbean nations that he will support any decisions to become republics and it is unthinkable that Australia, NZ, or Canada will continue indefinitely to have our monarch as their head of state
We are in a rapidly changing world and only those who accept change and even welcome it will survive
The Caribbean tour struggled to straddle the obvious fissures between the monarchy and the modern world, with only partial success. Once HMQ has risen to her throne in the sky, a lot of questions are going to come to the fore.
Absolutely, and I am a little surprised how tone deaf the Palace has been to the issues. Perhaps if they still had Harry and Meghan in the room they might have addressed the issues a bit better. Not just the slavery one, but also the issues around post colonial development.
But they choose to give up a life of luxury, privilege and wealth in the UK with some Royal duties required in exchange and opted instead for penury in a Californian mansion surrounded by film stars and icons of the world of fashion. Good luck to them.
The pair are the very archetypes of idle rich.
So, how different to the rest of the Royal Family?
The decision by the church of England Court to refuse Jesus College (Cambridge) request to remove a memorial to a slave trader from its chapel is a gem
"The true position, as set out in the historians’ expert reports and their joint statement, is that Rustat’s investments in the Company of Royal Adventurers Trading into Africa (the Royal Adventurers) brought him no financial returns at all; that Rustat only realised his investments in the Royal African Company in May 1691, some 20 years after he had made his gifts to the College, and some five years after the completion of the Rustat memorial and its inscription; and that any moneys Rustat did realise as a result of his involvement in the slave trade comprised only a small part of his great wealth, and they made no contribution to his gifts to the College."
It's ok so many of the slaves he "invested" in died en route that he didn't really make much money from it during his lifetime.
And
" I recognise also that it does not excuse Rustat’s involvement in the slave trade, although it may help to explain it, that, in the words of L. P. Hartley (in his 1953 novel, The Go-Between), “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.”
I'm sure the slaves themselves were fine with it for that very reason.
And the classic:
"... buying certain clothes or other consumer goods, or eating certain foods, or investing in the companies that produce them, we are ourselves contributing to, or supporting, conditions akin to modern slavery, or to the degradation and impoverishment of our planet."
As Jesus said: Let he who has never eaten anything be the first to ask us not commemorate a slave trader
Given almost anyone with any capital at all in the 17th century would have invested in a company with some connection to the slave trade, sound decision by the Church of England Court.
Otherwise there would be virtually no memorials to 17th century figures left.
Source for your claime? I'm not sure how that tallies with the church's own argument that investments in slavery were only an insignificant part of Rustat's "great wealth".
At peak slave trade, it amounted to about 12% gdp. In a massively agrarian economy they is pretty much everything which isn't farming. It is therefore quite likely that Rustat was say 10% slaves 90% landowner
Mind you HYUFD s claim doesn't excuse anything it just spreads the blame more widely
One corollary of those statistics is that Britain took a voluntary hit of 12% GDP in ending slavery and the slave trade. The country did the right thing — eventually! — knowing the cost.
I expect that the proportion of GDP contributed from slavery was far less than 12% by 1833. The slave trade had ended, and the profitability of sugar plantations had declined.
It seems my comments on the royal family last night triggered @HYUFD into a fierce debate which looks to have carried on into this morning
As I said last night I have been a republican most of my life but of recent times have had nothing but praise and admiration for HMQ but it has become an anachronism and the media coverage of William and Kate talking to children contained behind a wire fence and standing on the back of a land rover waving at the people gives credence to it
80% of my 78 years have been lived in Scotland and Wales and maybe I just do not get this Queen appointed by God and we are subservient to their position and must bow when meeting them etc
I am content for Charles to be king and William and Kate to succeed him but they do need to modernise and accept attitudes change
I give William full marks when he told the Caribbean nations that he will support any decisions to become republics and it is unthinkable that Australia, NZ, or Canada will continue indefinitely to have our monarch as their head of state
We are in a rapidly changing world and only those who accept change and even welcome it will survive
The Caribbean tour struggled to straddle the obvious fissures between the monarchy and the modern world, with only partial success. Once HMQ has risen to her throne in the sky, a lot of questions are going to come to the fore.
Absolutely, and I am a little surprised how tone deaf the Palace has been to the issues. Perhaps if they still had Harry and Meghan in the room they might have addressed the issues a bit better. Not just the slavery one, but also the issues around post colonial development.
I think the truth is that young William is still learning on the job.
He has been doing it a while, he is nearly 40.
A lot of the problem with the monarchy is not so much the individuals, flawed as they are, but the obsequious funkiest around the household. The archaic protocols and stuffy orders of precedence pander to the worst of the Royal individuals.
I note a murmur on twitter that the current clusterfuck of royal pr is down to all the ‘good’ advisors being got rid of in 2017. I was unaware of this cull but I’m not sure that the huge, ramshackle Firm of Windsor can be marketed into relevance, nor if it’s all worth it just to prevent the supposed horror of an elected head of state.
Even when that head of state is Johnson? It would be you know.
I would rather that since it would be England electing him that they suffered the consequence alone, but as I prefer the ceremonial model, yeah, bring it on. Johnson with only symbolic value is vastly preferable to him having actual executive power.
The decision by the church of England Court to refuse Jesus College (Cambridge) request to remove a memorial to a slave trader from its chapel is a gem
"The true position, as set out in the historians’ expert reports and their joint statement, is that Rustat’s investments in the Company of Royal Adventurers Trading into Africa (the Royal Adventurers) brought him no financial returns at all; that Rustat only realised his investments in the Royal African Company in May 1691, some 20 years after he had made his gifts to the College, and some five years after the completion of the Rustat memorial and its inscription; and that any moneys Rustat did realise as a result of his involvement in the slave trade comprised only a small part of his great wealth, and they made no contribution to his gifts to the College."
It's ok so many of the slaves he "invested" in died en route that he didn't really make much money from it during his lifetime.
And
" I recognise also that it does not excuse Rustat’s involvement in the slave trade, although it may help to explain it, that, in the words of L. P. Hartley (in his 1953 novel, The Go-Between), “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.”
I'm sure the slaves themselves were fine with it for that very reason.
And the classic:
"... buying certain clothes or other consumer goods, or eating certain foods, or investing in the companies that produce them, we are ourselves contributing to, or supporting, conditions akin to modern slavery, or to the degradation and impoverishment of our planet."
As Jesus said: Let he who has never eaten anything be the first to ask us not commemorate a slave trader
Given almost anyone with any capital at all in the 17th century would have invested in a company with some connection to the slave trade, sound decision by the Church of England Court.
Otherwise there would be virtually no memorials to 17th century figures left.
Source for your claime? I'm not sure how that tallies with the church's own argument that investments in slavery were only an insignificant part of Rustat's "great wealth".
At peak slave trade, it amounted to about 12% gdp. In a massively agrarian economy they is pretty much everything which isn't farming. It is therefore quite likely that Rustat was say 10% slaves 90% landowner
Mind you HYUFD s claim doesn't excuse anything it just spreads the blame more widely
One corollary of those statistics is that Britain took a voluntary hit of 12% GDP in ending slavery and the slave trade. The country did the right thing — eventually! — knowing the cost.
Really? Ending the slave trade was a 12% hit to British GDP? Doesn't sound right
If we accept the 12 per cent figure. I've no way of knowing if that is correct but it comes from earlier in the thread.
The 12% was claimed to be the peak percentage - was the peak when the slave trade was abolished? Surely not.
The decision by the church of England Court to refuse Jesus College (Cambridge) request to remove a memorial to a slave trader from its chapel is a gem
"The true position, as set out in the historians’ expert reports and their joint statement, is that Rustat’s investments in the Company of Royal Adventurers Trading into Africa (the Royal Adventurers) brought him no financial returns at all; that Rustat only realised his investments in the Royal African Company in May 1691, some 20 years after he had made his gifts to the College, and some five years after the completion of the Rustat memorial and its inscription; and that any moneys Rustat did realise as a result of his involvement in the slave trade comprised only a small part of his great wealth, and they made no contribution to his gifts to the College."
It's ok so many of the slaves he "invested" in died en route that he didn't really make much money from it during his lifetime.
And
" I recognise also that it does not excuse Rustat’s involvement in the slave trade, although it may help to explain it, that, in the words of L. P. Hartley (in his 1953 novel, The Go-Between), “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.”
I'm sure the slaves themselves were fine with it for that very reason.
And the classic:
"... buying certain clothes or other consumer goods, or eating certain foods, or investing in the companies that produce them, we are ourselves contributing to, or supporting, conditions akin to modern slavery, or to the degradation and impoverishment of our planet."
As Jesus said: Let he who has never eaten anything be the first to ask us not commemorate a slave trader
Given almost anyone with any capital at all in the 17th century would have invested in a company with some connection to the slave trade, sound decision by the Church of England Court.
Otherwise there would be virtually no memorials to 17th century figures left.
Source for your claime? I'm not sure how that tallies with the church's own argument that investments in slavery were only an insignificant part of Rustat's "great wealth".
Most of the large companies on the Stock Exchange in the 17th century would have had some investment in slavery and the slave trade.
It was not the Church's argument as such, Justin Welby backed removing the memorial but the argument of the Judge at the Church Court. It was a sound one as Rustat was not a slave trader
You seem to be making the opposite argument to the one in the church court judgment. They are saying he had great wealth but most of it was unconnected to slavery, you are saying that all wealth at the time was connected to slavery. You can't both be right.
They are saying he still had some wealth connected to slavery, as did virtually anyone with significant capital at the time
Just like most greens today, especially those working in the public sector, will own fossil fuel shares in their pension funds.
Teachers don’t have a pension fund…
yes most public sector pension schemes are unfunded. Exceptions are the Local Government Pension Scheme (if you put all councils together it is by far the largest funded pension scheme =public or private in the country) and the parliamentary pensions scheme for MPs.
The biggest quasi private sector definded benefit pension scheme is the universities scheme with about £80 billion of assets . But the local government one is far bigger. Also the NEST pension scheme (for staff of smaller employees and the default one if employers do not choose another) is growing rapidly since auto-enrolment but of course is defined contribution not benefit
The Royal Mail (incl Post Office) fund was massive and also used to have tons of assets, until Osborne nicked them and spent the proceeds, leaving future taxpayers to pay for postal pensions.
A disgraceful act which I'm amazed was legal.
A big part of the motivation was that the pension deficit was so big that it could have scuppered the government's intention to sell it off - no buyer would want to take on the risk (even though, compared to many, the fund was reasonably funded)
It seems my comments on the royal family last night triggered @HYUFD into a fierce debate which looks to have carried on into this morning
As I said last night I have been a republican most of my life but of recent times have had nothing but praise and admiration for HMQ but it has become an anachronism and the media coverage of William and Kate talking to children contained behind a wire fence and standing on the back of a land rover waving at the people gives credence to it
80% of my 78 years have been lived in Scotland and Wales and maybe I just do not get this Queen appointed by God and we are subservient to their position and must bow when meeting them etc
I am content for Charles to be king and William and Kate to succeed him but they do need to modernise and accept attitudes change
I give William full marks when he told the Caribbean nations that he will support any decisions to become republics and it is unthinkable that Australia, NZ, or Canada will continue indefinitely to have our monarch as their head of state
We are in a rapidly changing world and only those who accept change and even welcome it will survive
Why should Australia and New Zealand and Canada not continue with the British monarch as head of state? Most of their population would not be there if their ancestors had not come from the British Isles so a rather different context to the Caribbean nations most of whose population are still non white and not of British origin.
Only 15 out of 54 Commonwealth nations remain Commonwealth realms as we near the end of the Queen's reign anyway
Pretty sure most of the population of the Caribbean nations wouldn’t be there if British plantation owners and ‘businessmen’ hadn’t forcibly transported their ancestors there.
With the ultimate result the Caribbean having numerous black republics.
They've had some there for a long time after all. Not that Haiti has gone great of course but that's hardly solely down to government style.
The descendants of the slaves transported to Haiti have certainly been worse off than those transported to Martinique.
It would be interesting to see at what year the descendants of slaves started benefitting from their ancestors transportation country by country.
And region by region - a descendant of a slave would have moved into the positive column earlier in New England than the deep south.
It seems my comments on the royal family last night triggered @HYUFD into a fierce debate which looks to have carried on into this morning
As I said last night I have been a republican most of my life but of recent times have had nothing but praise and admiration for HMQ but it has become an anachronism and the media coverage of William and Kate talking to children contained behind a wire fence and standing on the back of a land rover waving at the people gives credence to it
80% of my 78 years have been lived in Scotland and Wales and maybe I just do not get this Queen appointed by God and we are subservient to their position and must bow when meeting them etc
I am content for Charles to be king and William and Kate to succeed him but they do need to modernise and accept attitudes change
I give William full marks when he told the Caribbean nations that he will support any decisions to become republics and it is unthinkable that Australia, NZ, or Canada will continue indefinitely to have our monarch as their head of state
We are in a rapidly changing world and only those who accept change and even welcome it will survive
The Caribbean tour struggled to straddle the obvious fissures between the monarchy and the modern world, with only partial success. Once HMQ has risen to her throne in the sky, a lot of questions are going to come to the fore.
I think that's a key issue. There's enough accrued sentiment that it seems best to let her live our her life in peace rather than upset a very old lady. Not entirely rational, but a politically interfering middle-aged chap with a poor reputation for marital stability is a very different kettle of fish when ti comes to people claiming the Divine Right (prop: James VI and I). And remember the very concept of an Established Church, let alone one with the King or Queen as head and the bishops as state employees, was explosive politically from 1540s to the 20th century (and was resolved in part by eradicating the concept, as in Scotland). It's only because of the decline in religion that the insistence of retaining a mediaeval theocracy, complete with legislative seats for the shamans of only one religion out of many, is not still more explosive today.
Rubbish, we had and have an established church to ensure its authority comes from the monarch not the Pope. The Parish system it provides also ensures any Parishioner can get married or buried in their Parish Church.
The Bishops represent less than 5% of a House of Lords which is still completely unelected anyway
Our whole constitutional arrangement centred around the monarch drawing their power from God is outdated:
“Of the 16% of people who define as belonging to the Church of England, 51.9% never attend services and in fact only 10.7% of people who identify with the Church of England report attending church at least weekly.”
The only reason we still have what we have is inertia and a lack of consensus on what to have instead. Rather like the Tory parliamentary party’s view of the PM incidentally.
So what, it must still be the established church. Otherwise by definition the established church returns to the Papacy and to Rome.
Hence in mamy of the non Roman Catholic majority nations of Western Europe like Denmark and Norway the Lutheran Church remains the established church.
Plus you end the Church of England as the established church you end the right of residents of the Parish to an automatic church wedding or funeral. Only regular churchgoers would keep that right
Just get rid of the established church, drop the bishops from the Lords, and those people who want to cling to their superstitions can do so in private.
Absolutely not.
We must fight the left agenda of the likes of you to continue to destroy yet more of our heritage.
It is in some respects yet another battle in the culture wars.
The Church of England must remain the established church with the monarch as the Supreme Governor and Bishops in the Lords. It links the monarch to God, ensures a Parish wedding and funeral available to every Parishioner. Otherwise too established authority within the Church would return to Rome and the Pope
If defending the CofE is a culture war, you've lost already, pal. And long ago, too.
One of the few bodies whose dwindling active membership is older than that of your party.
It seems my comments on the royal family last night triggered @HYUFD into a fierce debate which looks to have carried on into this morning
As I said last night I have been a republican most of my life but of recent times have had nothing but praise and admiration for HMQ but it has become an anachronism and the media coverage of William and Kate talking to children contained behind a wire fence and standing on the back of a land rover waving at the people gives credence to it
80% of my 78 years have been lived in Scotland and Wales and maybe I just do not get this Queen appointed by God and we are subservient to their position and must bow when meeting them etc
I am content for Charles to be king and William and Kate to succeed him but they do need to modernise and accept attitudes change
I give William full marks when he told the Caribbean nations that he will support any decisions to become republics and it is unthinkable that Australia, NZ, or Canada will continue indefinitely to have our monarch as their head of state
We are in a rapidly changing world and only those who accept change and even welcome it will survive
The Caribbean tour struggled to straddle the obvious fissures between the monarchy and the modern world, with only partial success. Once HMQ has risen to her throne in the sky, a lot of questions are going to come to the fore.
I think that's a key issue. There's enough accrued sentiment that it seems best to let her live our her life in peace rather than upset a very old lady. Not entirely rational, but a politically interfering middle-aged chap with a poor reputation for marital stability is a very different kettle of fish when ti comes to people claiming the Divine Right (prop: James VI and I). And remember the very concept of an Established Church, let alone one with the King or Queen as head and the bishops as state employees, was explosive politically from 1540s to the 20th century (and was resolved in part by eradicating the concept, as in Scotland). It's only because of the decline in religion that the insistence of retaining a mediaeval theocracy, complete with legislative seats for the shamans of only one religion out of many, is not still more explosive today.
Rubbish, we had and have an established church to ensure its authority comes from the monarch not the Pope. The Parish system it provides also ensures any Parishioner can get married or buried in their Parish Church.
The Bishops represent less than 5% of a House of Lords which is still completely unelected anyway
Our whole constitutional arrangement centred around the monarch drawing their power from God is outdated:
“Of the 16% of people who define as belonging to the Church of England, 51.9% never attend services and in fact only 10.7% of people who identify with the Church of England report attending church at least weekly.”
The only reason we still have what we have is inertia and a lack of consensus on what to have instead. Rather like the Tory parliamentary party’s view of the PM incidentally.
So what, it must still be the established church. Otherwise by definition the established church returns to the Papacy and to Rome.
Hence in mamy of the non Roman Catholic majority nations of Western Europe like Sweden the Lutheran Church remains the established church.
Plus you end the Church of England as the established church you end the right of residents of the Parish to an automatic church wedding or funeral. Only regular churchgoers would keep that right
?.
Why would the established church return to Rome. Why not just not have an established church? Churches should thrive or not in their own right.
And why shouldn't a church wedding be restricted (if they want) to church goers. If you don't belong to a society/club why should you expect to benefit from it.
Also why does it remove that right? If the church of England wants to provide it to residents of the parish, it can if it wishes.
As by definition the main Christian authority in this country outside of God would automatically be the Pope again as it was before the Reformation if the Monarch ceased to be Supreme Governor of the Church of England.
I personally value our Parish system and the fact everyone can get a Church wedding or funeral even if they rarely go to Church, it is part of what makes England great. Lose that and the Church of England would become more closed off from the community around it. It would of course have to be removed if the Church of England was no longer the established church as it would no longer have any obligation or connection to the community around it except its worshippers and some help for the poor and homeless via Christian charity
It seems my comments on the royal family last night triggered @HYUFD into a fierce debate which looks to have carried on into this morning
As I said last night I have been a republican most of my life but of recent times have had nothing but praise and admiration for HMQ but it has become an anachronism and the media coverage of William and Kate talking to children contained behind a wire fence and standing on the back of a land rover waving at the people gives credence to it
80% of my 78 years have been lived in Scotland and Wales and maybe I just do not get this Queen appointed by God and we are subservient to their position and must bow when meeting them etc
I am content for Charles to be king and William and Kate to succeed him but they do need to modernise and accept attitudes change
I give William full marks when he told the Caribbean nations that he will support any decisions to become republics and it is unthinkable that Australia, NZ, or Canada will continue indefinitely to have our monarch as their head of state
We are in a rapidly changing world and only those who accept change and even welcome it will survive
The Caribbean tour struggled to straddle the obvious fissures between the monarchy and the modern world, with only partial success. Once HMQ has risen to her throne in the sky, a lot of questions are going to come to the fore.
Absolutely, and I am a little surprised how tone deaf the Palace has been to the issues. Perhaps if they still had Harry and Meghan in the room they might have addressed the issues a bit better. Not just the slavery one, but also the issues around post colonial development.
But they choose to give up a life of luxury, privilege and wealth in the UK with some Royal duties required in exchange and opted instead for penury in a Californian mansion surrounded by film stars and icons of the world of fashion. Good luck to them.
The pair are the very archetypes of idle rich.
As indiviudals I like them just fine, but their current approach of trying to be impactful whilst having pulled back from the institutional which gave them attention seems a bit confused to me. I'm also not clear what about them makes people think they would have a greater insight into managing royal PR.
I think the reasons that Harry and Meghan were forced out, are much the same as the reasons for all the PR disasters of this Royal Tour. Basically the Palace is a fossilised institution that cannot cope with the modern world. That is stark outside these islands, but increasingly evident here too.
The decision by the church of England Court to refuse Jesus College (Cambridge) request to remove a memorial to a slave trader from its chapel is a gem
"The true position, as set out in the historians’ expert reports and their joint statement, is that Rustat’s investments in the Company of Royal Adventurers Trading into Africa (the Royal Adventurers) brought him no financial returns at all; that Rustat only realised his investments in the Royal African Company in May 1691, some 20 years after he had made his gifts to the College, and some five years after the completion of the Rustat memorial and its inscription; and that any moneys Rustat did realise as a result of his involvement in the slave trade comprised only a small part of his great wealth, and they made no contribution to his gifts to the College."
It's ok so many of the slaves he "invested" in died en route that he didn't really make much money from it during his lifetime.
And
" I recognise also that it does not excuse Rustat’s involvement in the slave trade, although it may help to explain it, that, in the words of L. P. Hartley (in his 1953 novel, The Go-Between), “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.”
I'm sure the slaves themselves were fine with it for that very reason.
And the classic:
"... buying certain clothes or other consumer goods, or eating certain foods, or investing in the companies that produce them, we are ourselves contributing to, or supporting, conditions akin to modern slavery, or to the degradation and impoverishment of our planet."
As Jesus said: Let he who has never eaten anything be the first to ask us not commemorate a slave trader
Given almost anyone with any capital at all in the 17th century would have invested in a company with some connection to the slave trade, sound decision by the Church of England Court.
Otherwise there would be virtually no memorials to 17th century figures left.
Source for your claime? I'm not sure how that tallies with the church's own argument that investments in slavery were only an insignificant part of Rustat's "great wealth".
At peak slave trade, it amounted to about 12% gdp. In a massively agrarian economy they is pretty much everything which isn't farming. It is therefore quite likely that Rustat was say 10% slaves 90% landowner
Mind you HYUFD s claim doesn't excuse anything it just spreads the blame more widely
One corollary of those statistics is that Britain took a voluntary hit of 12% GDP in ending slavery and the slave trade. The country did the right thing — eventually! — knowing the cost.
Really? Ending the slave trade was a 12% hit to British GDP? Doesn't sound right
If we accept the 12 per cent figure. I've no way of knowing if that is correct but it comes from earlier in the thread.
The 12% was claimed to be the peak percentage - was the peak when the slave trade was abolished? Surely not.
The decision by the church of England Court to refuse Jesus College (Cambridge) request to remove a memorial to a slave trader from its chapel is a gem
"The true position, as set out in the historians’ expert reports and their joint statement, is that Rustat’s investments in the Company of Royal Adventurers Trading into Africa (the Royal Adventurers) brought him no financial returns at all; that Rustat only realised his investments in the Royal African Company in May 1691, some 20 years after he had made his gifts to the College, and some five years after the completion of the Rustat memorial and its inscription; and that any moneys Rustat did realise as a result of his involvement in the slave trade comprised only a small part of his great wealth, and they made no contribution to his gifts to the College."
It's ok so many of the slaves he "invested" in died en route that he didn't really make much money from it during his lifetime.
And
" I recognise also that it does not excuse Rustat’s involvement in the slave trade, although it may help to explain it, that, in the words of L. P. Hartley (in his 1953 novel, The Go-Between), “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.”
I'm sure the slaves themselves were fine with it for that very reason.
And the classic:
"... buying certain clothes or other consumer goods, or eating certain foods, or investing in the companies that produce them, we are ourselves contributing to, or supporting, conditions akin to modern slavery, or to the degradation and impoverishment of our planet."
As Jesus said: Let he who has never eaten anything be the first to ask us not commemorate a slave trader
Given almost anyone with any capital at all in the 17th century would have invested in a company with some connection to the slave trade, sound decision by the Church of England Court.
Otherwise there would be virtually no memorials to 17th century figures left.
Source for your claime? I'm not sure how that tallies with the church's own argument that investments in slavery were only an insignificant part of Rustat's "great wealth".
Most of the large companies on the Stock Exchange in the 17th century would have had some investment in slavery and the slave trade.
It was not the Church's argument as such, Justin Welby backed removing the memorial but the argument of the Judge at the Church Court. It was a sound one as Rustat was not a slave trader
You seem to be making the opposite argument to the one in the church court judgment. They are saying he had great wealth but most of it was unconnected to slavery, you are saying that all wealth at the time was connected to slavery. You can't both be right.
They are saying he still had some wealth connected to slavery, as did virtually anyone with significant capital at the time
Just like most greens today, especially those working in the public sector, will own fossil fuel shares in their pension funds.
I didn't follow the Royal Caribbean tour closely. But what I saw of it made me think it was from 50 years ago. It was a stage-managed show that was patronising and condescending, where grateful 'natives' were corralled into showing their gratitude for...... I don't quite know what.
In another world, I could imagine a certain Boris Johnson writing a coruscating account of the tour for a daily newspaper, full of rich metaphors to illustrate how such tours are out of kilter in the modern world, while trying to avoid racial epithets.
It seems my comments on the royal family last night triggered @HYUFD into a fierce debate which looks to have carried on into this morning
As I said last night I have been a republican most of my life but of recent times have had nothing but praise and admiration for HMQ but it has become an anachronism and the media coverage of William and Kate talking to children contained behind a wire fence and standing on the back of a land rover waving at the people gives credence to it
80% of my 78 years have been lived in Scotland and Wales and maybe I just do not get this Queen appointed by God and we are subservient to their position and must bow when meeting them etc
I am content for Charles to be king and William and Kate to succeed him but they do need to modernise and accept attitudes change
I give William full marks when he told the Caribbean nations that he will support any decisions to become republics and it is unthinkable that Australia, NZ, or Canada will continue indefinitely to have our monarch as their head of state
We are in a rapidly changing world and only those who accept change and even welcome it will survive
The Caribbean tour struggled to straddle the obvious fissures between the monarchy and the modern world, with only partial success. Once HMQ has risen to her throne in the sky, a lot of questions are going to come to the fore.
Absolutely, and I am a little surprised how tone deaf the Palace has been to the issues. Perhaps if they still had Harry and Meghan in the room they might have addressed the issues a bit better. Not just the slavery one, but also the issues around post colonial development.
say what you like about flsoj, the odd phrase does cut through. They are trapped in piccaninny think. That Land Rover was a serious disaster.
Shaking hands with black children through a chain linkfence too. Ouch!
No-one seems to be thinking "how will this look when it's photographed and filmed?"
Presumably it wasn't planned. Presumably the Cambridge's saw the children and decided to go over to them.
I actually have a lot of respect for the Cambridge's for not giving a flying fuck about "optics" in such situations.
Agreed - all this pearl clutching and faux outrage is nauseating.
On the Royal tour ,presumably Jamaica asked for /were quite happy with the tour so canto see a problem in it . It would have been rude not to go . As for "gaffes" on it I dont see many or any in fact . A misplaced photo here or there is par for the course in social media world but Prince William was diplomatic enough to keep a neutral face when the Pm talked about a republic (not sure what else he could have done) . Dont see the fuss on here . Actually i dont see much fuss outside of PB of it
I didn't follow the Royal Caribbean tour closely. But what I saw of it made me think it was from 50 years ago. It was a stage-managed show that was patronising and condescending, where grateful 'natives' were corralled into showing their gratitude for...... I don't quite know what.
In another world, I could imagine a certain Boris Johnson writing a coruscating account of the tour for a daily newspaper, full of rich metaphors to illustrate how such tours are out of kilter in the modern world, while trying to avoid racial epithets.
..and then writing two letters, monarchist and republican, to try and decide which he prefers....
It seems my comments on the royal family last night triggered @HYUFD into a fierce debate which looks to have carried on into this morning
As I said last night I have been a republican most of my life but of recent times have had nothing but praise and admiration for HMQ but it has become an anachronism and the media coverage of William and Kate talking to children contained behind a wire fence and standing on the back of a land rover waving at the people gives credence to it
80% of my 78 years have been lived in Scotland and Wales and maybe I just do not get this Queen appointed by God and we are subservient to their position and must bow when meeting them etc
I am content for Charles to be king and William and Kate to succeed him but they do need to modernise and accept attitudes change
I give William full marks when he told the Caribbean nations that he will support any decisions to become republics and it is unthinkable that Australia, NZ, or Canada will continue indefinitely to have our monarch as their head of state
We are in a rapidly changing world and only those who accept change and even welcome it will survive
The Caribbean tour struggled to straddle the obvious fissures between the monarchy and the modern world, with only partial success. Once HMQ has risen to her throne in the sky, a lot of questions are going to come to the fore.
Absolutely, and I am a little surprised how tone deaf the Palace has been to the issues. Perhaps if they still had Harry and Meghan in the room they might have addressed the issues a bit better. Not just the slavery one, but also the issues around post colonial development.
say what you like about flsoj, the odd phrase does cut through. They are trapped in piccaninny think. That Land Rover was a serious disaster.
Isn't theatre what the Royal Family's all about? The more over the top the better. I thought that Land Rover shot was the perfect stunt for Oscar night. At last someone at the palace was earning their money.
Here is a photo of Prince William cruelly mocking descendants of Anglo Saxon serfs suppressed under the Norman royal yoke. They are behind bars as their ancestors were if they were naughty.
It seems my comments on the royal family last night triggered @HYUFD into a fierce debate which looks to have carried on into this morning
As I said last night I have been a republican most of my life but of recent times have had nothing but praise and admiration for HMQ but it has become an anachronism and the media coverage of William and Kate talking to children contained behind a wire fence and standing on the back of a land rover waving at the people gives credence to it
80% of my 78 years have been lived in Scotland and Wales and maybe I just do not get this Queen appointed by God and we are subservient to their position and must bow when meeting them etc
I am content for Charles to be king and William and Kate to succeed him but they do need to modernise and accept attitudes change
I give William full marks when he told the Caribbean nations that he will support any decisions to become republics and it is unthinkable that Australia, NZ, or Canada will continue indefinitely to have our monarch as their head of state
We are in a rapidly changing world and only those who accept change and even welcome it will survive
The Caribbean tour struggled to straddle the obvious fissures between the monarchy and the modern world, with only partial success. Once HMQ has risen to her throne in the sky, a lot of questions are going to come to the fore.
Absolutely, and I am a little surprised how tone deaf the Palace has been to the issues. Perhaps if they still had Harry and Meghan in the room they might have addressed the issues a bit better. Not just the slavery one, but also the issues around post colonial development.
I think the truth is that young William is still learning on the job.
It seems my comments on the royal family last night triggered @HYUFD into a fierce debate which looks to have carried on into this morning
As I said last night I have been a republican most of my life but of recent times have had nothing but praise and admiration for HMQ but it has become an anachronism and the media coverage of William and Kate talking to children contained behind a wire fence and standing on the back of a land rover waving at the people gives credence to it
80% of my 78 years have been lived in Scotland and Wales and maybe I just do not get this Queen appointed by God and we are subservient to their position and must bow when meeting them etc
I am content for Charles to be king and William and Kate to succeed him but they do need to modernise and accept attitudes change
I give William full marks when he told the Caribbean nations that he will support any decisions to become republics and it is unthinkable that Australia, NZ, or Canada will continue indefinitely to have our monarch as their head of state
We are in a rapidly changing world and only those who accept change and even welcome it will survive
Why should Australia and New Zealand and Canada not continue with the British monarch as head of state? Most of their population would not be there if their ancestors had not come from the British Isles so a rather different context to the Caribbean nations most of whose population are still non white and not of British origin.
Only 15 out of 54 Commonwealth nations remain Commonwealth realms as we near the end of the Queen's reign anyway
Pretty sure most of the population of the Caribbean nations wouldn’t be there if British plantation owners and ‘businessmen’ hadn’t forcibly transported their ancestors there.
With the ultimate result the Caribbean having numerous black republics.
They've had some there for a long time after all. Not that Haiti has gone great of course but that's hardly solely down to government style.
The descendants of the slaves transported to Haiti have certainly been worse off than those transported to Martinique.
It would be interesting to see at what year the descendants of slaves started benefitting from their ancestors transportation country by country.
And region by region - a descendant of a slave would have moved into the positive column earlier in New England than the deep south.
The relative affluence of Haitians vs Martinique has a number of factors, but a significant part must have been the vast sums that the Haitian Republic had to pay as compensation to France, finally paid off in 1947.
I didn't follow the Royal Caribbean tour closely. But what I saw of it made me think it was from 50 years ago. It was a stage-managed show that was patronising and condescending, where grateful 'natives' were corralled into showing their gratitude for...... I don't quite know what.
In another world, I could imagine a certain Boris Johnson writing a coruscating account of the tour for a daily newspaper, full of rich metaphors to illustrate how such tours are out of kilter in the modern world, while trying to avoid racial epithets.
I doubt anyone was forced to attend who did not want to go .Most locals would be curious enough to turn out i would think of their own accord - If a royal was going to visit my local town I would probably go out of casual interest.i think a lot of people would where i live as well
Lots of people twisting themselves in knots to defend what I think is a fairly bad decision by the church court, which was made with laughable justifications.
"white muppets" wrong "everyone was at it" not everyone "we'd have to cancel a whole century" no we wouldn't
Just have a look at the case itself, and read the judgment itself.
My point is not to justify it because everyone was at it, quite the reverse. But it was a *national* enterprise, it is what we as a country fundamentally did. It therfore seems a bit pointless to pick off arbitrary individuals.
I still don’t understand why there isn’t a national monument to Britain’s part in slavery and the slave trade (though I have suspicions verging on certainties).
If by some accident of history and geography the UK had been responsible for the Holocaust, all the people who had stolen Jewish property and moved into houses vacated by deported Jews would have been financially compensated, the British Armed forces would have flip flopped to roaming Europe to prevent pogroms and been held up as a virtuous ideal, the Royals would be dispatched to patronise the denuded shtetls of the east, and instead of a huge memorial to the attempted extermination of a race in our capital city there would be a few blue plaques.
Hasn't happened with Germany. My wife's great grandparents were driven out of their home in Munich by the Nazis. A Nazi seized the (sizeable) house and all of the possessions, including sketches by Edvard Munch. Said Nazis descendants still live there and enjoy all possessions.
It seems my comments on the royal family last night triggered @HYUFD into a fierce debate which looks to have carried on into this morning
As I said last night I have been a republican most of my life but of recent times have had nothing but praise and admiration for HMQ but it has become an anachronism and the media coverage of William and Kate talking to children contained behind a wire fence and standing on the back of a land rover waving at the people gives credence to it
80% of my 78 years have been lived in Scotland and Wales and maybe I just do not get this Queen appointed by God and we are subservient to their position and must bow when meeting them etc
I am content for Charles to be king and William and Kate to succeed him but they do need to modernise and accept attitudes change
I give William full marks when he told the Caribbean nations that he will support any decisions to become republics and it is unthinkable that Australia, NZ, or Canada will continue indefinitely to have our monarch as their head of state
We are in a rapidly changing world and only those who accept change and even welcome it will survive
The Caribbean tour struggled to straddle the obvious fissures between the monarchy and the modern world, with only partial success. Once HMQ has risen to her throne in the sky, a lot of questions are going to come to the fore.
I think that's a key issue. There's enough accrued sentiment that it seems best to let her live our her life in peace rather than upset a very old lady. Not entirely rational, but a politically interfering middle-aged chap with a poor reputation for marital stability is a very different kettle of fish when ti comes to people claiming the Divine Right (prop: James VI and I). And remember the very concept of an Established Church, let alone one with the King or Queen as head and the bishops as state employees, was explosive politically from 1540s to the 20th century (and was resolved in part by eradicating the concept, as in Scotland). It's only because of the decline in religion that the insistence of retaining a mediaeval theocracy, complete with legislative seats for the shamans of only one religion out of many, is not still more explosive today.
Rubbish, we had and have an established church to ensure its authority comes from the monarch not the Pope. The Parish system it provides also ensures any Parishioner can get married or buried in their Parish Church.
The Bishops represent less than 5% of a House of Lords which is still completely unelected anyway
Our whole constitutional arrangement centred around the monarch drawing their power from God is outdated:
“Of the 16% of people who define as belonging to the Church of England, 51.9% never attend services and in fact only 10.7% of people who identify with the Church of England report attending church at least weekly.”
The only reason we still have what we have is inertia and a lack of consensus on what to have instead. Rather like the Tory parliamentary party’s view of the PM incidentally.
So what, it must still be the established church. Otherwise by definition the established church returns to the Papacy and to Rome.
Hence in mamy of the non Roman Catholic majority nations of Western Europe like Denmark and Norway the Lutheran Church remains the established church.
Plus you end the Church of England as the established church you end the right of residents of the Parish to an automatic church wedding or funeral. Only regular churchgoers would keep that right
Just get rid of the established church, drop the bishops from the Lords, and those people who want to cling to their superstitions can do so in private.
Absolutely not.
We must fight the left agenda of the likes of you to continue to destroy yet more of our heritage.
It is in some respects yet another battle in the culture wars.
The Church of England must remain the established church with the monarch as the Supreme Governor and Bishops in the Lords. It links the monarch to God, ensures a Parish wedding and funeral available to every Parishioner. Otherwise too established authority within the Church would return to Rome and the Pope
If defending the CofE is a culture war, you've lost already, pal. And long ago, too.
One of the few bodies whose dwindling active membership is older than that of your party.
Actually 47% in England still define themselves as Church of England, if anything slightly more than the percentage who voted Tory in 2019.
The Church of England being the established church means you can still be a part of it in every parish even if you rarely ever go to Church except for the odd wedding or funeral or Christmas or Easter or Remembrance Sunday
On the Royal tour ,presumably Jamaica asked for /were quite happy with the tour so canto see a problem in it . It would have been rude not to go . As for "gaffes" on it I dont see many or any in fact . A misplaced photo here or there is par for the course in social media world but Prince William was diplomatic enough to keep a neutral face when the Pm talked about a republic (not sure what else he could have done) . Dont see the fuss on here . Actually i dont see much fuss outside of PB of it
I agree with every part of that post. In principle I am a Republican, but I don't have much of an issue with the monarchy, so when I become our benign dictator getting rid of the monarchy will be so low on the to do list it won't happen. However if @hyufd keeps coming out with his nonsense it will start creeping up the to do list rapidly.
Disestablishing the church will be high up on the list. I don't have any problem with people following some mythical god, but that is a choice that should not impact other's lives.
@oleksiireznikov For the 1st time, meeting in 2+2 format. With @DmytroKuleba we discuss current issues & cooperation in political & defense directions between 🇺🇦-🇺🇸 with @SecDef & @SecBlinken. In the evening we’ll also be present at @POTUS speech on the russian war against Ukraine. Details later.
Lots of people twisting themselves in knots to defend what I think is a fairly bad decision by the church court, which was made with laughable justifications.
"white muppets" wrong "everyone was at it" not everyone "we'd have to cancel a whole century" no we wouldn't
Just have a look at the case itself, and read the judgment itself.
My point is not to justify it because everyone was at it, quite the reverse. But it was a *national* enterprise, it is what we as a country fundamentally did. It therfore seems a bit pointless to pick off arbitrary individuals.
I still don’t understand why there isn’t a national monument to Britain’s part in slavery and the slave trade (though I have suspicions verging on certainties).
I'm genuinely surprised to learn from your post that there isnt. I think it's a good idea.
I suppose it's one of those things where if it doesnt happen in the immediate aftermath of the repudiation of bad thing/person then as time passes people are no more in favour of the bad thing, but see no reason to monumentalise now, or take things down etc.
I am always surprised when I pass Grey's Monument (for those who may not know it is slap bang in the centre of Newcastle and bloody enormous), that almost nothing is made of the fact that he was the PM who oversaw the abolition. OK, the Great Reform Act was his baby, but the fact is left in passing to a tiny information board behind the steps to the Metro station that is super easy to miss. It is given as much billing as having 15 kids and his affair with the Duchess of Devonshire.
The decision by the church of England Court to refuse Jesus College (Cambridge) request to remove a memorial to a slave trader from its chapel is a gem
"The true position, as set out in the historians’ expert reports and their joint statement, is that Rustat’s investments in the Company of Royal Adventurers Trading into Africa (the Royal Adventurers) brought him no financial returns at all; that Rustat only realised his investments in the Royal African Company in May 1691, some 20 years after he had made his gifts to the College, and some five years after the completion of the Rustat memorial and its inscription; and that any moneys Rustat did realise as a result of his involvement in the slave trade comprised only a small part of his great wealth, and they made no contribution to his gifts to the College."
It's ok so many of the slaves he "invested" in died en route that he didn't really make much money from it during his lifetime.
And
" I recognise also that it does not excuse Rustat’s involvement in the slave trade, although it may help to explain it, that, in the words of L. P. Hartley (in his 1953 novel, The Go-Between), “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.”
I'm sure the slaves themselves were fine with it for that very reason.
And the classic:
"... buying certain clothes or other consumer goods, or eating certain foods, or investing in the companies that produce them, we are ourselves contributing to, or supporting, conditions akin to modern slavery, or to the degradation and impoverishment of our planet."
As Jesus said: Let he who has never eaten anything be the first to ask us not commemorate a slave trader
Given almost anyone with any capital at all in the 17th century would have invested in a company with some connection to the slave trade, sound decision by the Church of England Court.
Otherwise there would be virtually no memorials to 17th century figures left.
Source for your claime? I'm not sure how that tallies with the church's own argument that investments in slavery were only an insignificant part of Rustat's "great wealth".
At peak slave trade, it amounted to about 12% gdp. In a massively agrarian economy they is pretty much everything which isn't farming. It is therefore quite likely that Rustat was say 10% slaves 90% landowner
Mind you HYUFD s claim doesn't excuse anything it just spreads the blame more widely
One corollary of those statistics is that Britain took a voluntary hit of 12% GDP in ending slavery and the slave trade. The country did the right thing — eventually! — knowing the cost.
Really? Ending the slave trade was a 12% hit to British GDP? Doesn't sound right
If we accept the 12 per cent figure. I've no way of knowing if that is correct but it comes from earlier in the thread.
The 12% was claimed to be the peak percentage - was the peak when the slave trade was abolished? Surely not.
The decision by the church of England Court to refuse Jesus College (Cambridge) request to remove a memorial to a slave trader from its chapel is a gem
"The true position, as set out in the historians’ expert reports and their joint statement, is that Rustat’s investments in the Company of Royal Adventurers Trading into Africa (the Royal Adventurers) brought him no financial returns at all; that Rustat only realised his investments in the Royal African Company in May 1691, some 20 years after he had made his gifts to the College, and some five years after the completion of the Rustat memorial and its inscription; and that any moneys Rustat did realise as a result of his involvement in the slave trade comprised only a small part of his great wealth, and they made no contribution to his gifts to the College."
It's ok so many of the slaves he "invested" in died en route that he didn't really make much money from it during his lifetime.
And
" I recognise also that it does not excuse Rustat’s involvement in the slave trade, although it may help to explain it, that, in the words of L. P. Hartley (in his 1953 novel, The Go-Between), “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.”
I'm sure the slaves themselves were fine with it for that very reason.
And the classic:
"... buying certain clothes or other consumer goods, or eating certain foods, or investing in the companies that produce them, we are ourselves contributing to, or supporting, conditions akin to modern slavery, or to the degradation and impoverishment of our planet."
As Jesus said: Let he who has never eaten anything be the first to ask us not commemorate a slave trader
Given almost anyone with any capital at all in the 17th century would have invested in a company with some connection to the slave trade, sound decision by the Church of England Court.
Otherwise there would be virtually no memorials to 17th century figures left.
Source for your claime? I'm not sure how that tallies with the church's own argument that investments in slavery were only an insignificant part of Rustat's "great wealth".
Most of the large companies on the Stock Exchange in the 17th century would have had some investment in slavery and the slave trade.
It was not the Church's argument as such, Justin Welby backed removing the memorial but the argument of the Judge at the Church Court. It was a sound one as Rustat was not a slave trader
You seem to be making the opposite argument to the one in the church court judgment. They are saying he had great wealth but most of it was unconnected to slavery, you are saying that all wealth at the time was connected to slavery. You can't both be right.
They are saying he still had some wealth connected to slavery, as did virtually anyone with significant capital at the time
Just like most greens today, especially those working in the public sector, will own fossil fuel shares in their pension funds.
Teachers don’t have a pension fund…
Except in Scotland……..
I didn’t know that. Does that make it difficult to move from teaching in England to Scotland, (or vice versa)? Are Scottish teacher pensions still defined benefit?
On the Royal tour ,presumably Jamaica asked for /were quite happy with the tour so canto see a problem in it . It would have been rude not to go . As for "gaffes" on it I dont see many or any in fact . A misplaced photo here or there is par for the course in social media world but Prince William was diplomatic enough to keep a neutral face when the Pm talked about a republic (not sure what else he could have done) . Dont see the fuss on here . Actually i dont see much fuss outside of PB of it
I agree with every part of that post. In principle I am a Republican, but I don't have much of an issue with the monarchy, so when I become our benign dictator getting rid of the monarchy will be so low on the to do list it won't happen. However if @hyufd keeps coming out with his nonsense it will start creeping up the to do list rapidly.
Disestablishing the church will be high up on the list. I don't have any problem with people following some mythical god, but that is a choice that should not impact other's lives.
Yes but you are a left liberal so no surprise that is on your agenda
The decision by the church of England Court to refuse Jesus College (Cambridge) request to remove a memorial to a slave trader from its chapel is a gem
"The true position, as set out in the historians’ expert reports and their joint statement, is that Rustat’s investments in the Company of Royal Adventurers Trading into Africa (the Royal Adventurers) brought him no financial returns at all; that Rustat only realised his investments in the Royal African Company in May 1691, some 20 years after he had made his gifts to the College, and some five years after the completion of the Rustat memorial and its inscription; and that any moneys Rustat did realise as a result of his involvement in the slave trade comprised only a small part of his great wealth, and they made no contribution to his gifts to the College."
It's ok so many of the slaves he "invested" in died en route that he didn't really make much money from it during his lifetime.
And
" I recognise also that it does not excuse Rustat’s involvement in the slave trade, although it may help to explain it, that, in the words of L. P. Hartley (in his 1953 novel, The Go-Between), “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.”
I'm sure the slaves themselves were fine with it for that very reason.
And the classic:
"... buying certain clothes or other consumer goods, or eating certain foods, or investing in the companies that produce them, we are ourselves contributing to, or supporting, conditions akin to modern slavery, or to the degradation and impoverishment of our planet."
As Jesus said: Let he who has never eaten anything be the first to ask us not commemorate a slave trader
I always like to raise “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.” with "The past is never dead. It's not even past" (faulkner). With slavery the latter is true: the causal nexus between what Rustat did in the 1600s and what happened to George Floyd is absolutely solid.
Is it?
Can you explain why there's been so much progress on race relations in Western countries in the last 50 years but racism is still absolutely rife in countries like Bulgaria, Romania, Russia and China then who didn't have overseas colonial empires nor participated in the Atlantic slave trade?
On the Royal tour ,presumably Jamaica asked for /were quite happy with the tour so canto see a problem in it . It would have been rude not to go . As for "gaffes" on it I dont see many or any in fact . A misplaced photo here or there is par for the course in social media world but Prince William was diplomatic enough to keep a neutral face when the Pm talked about a republic (not sure what else he could have done) . Dont see the fuss on here . Actually i dont see much fuss outside of PB of it
I agree with every part of that post. In principle I am a Republican, but I don't have much of an issue with the monarchy, so when I become our benign dictator getting rid of the monarchy will be so low on the to do list it won't happen. However if @hyufd keeps coming out with his nonsense it will start creeping up the to do list rapidly.
Disestablishing the church will be high up on the list. I don't have any problem with people following some mythical god, but that is a choice that should not impact other's lives.
Yes but you are a left liberal so no surprise that is on your agenda
Well I am not left. In fact I am to the right of you on many many things. But I am liberal because I believe in freedom of the individual and not have stuff imposed on them as you seem to want.
Comments
You're right about the Palace, though. I had passing dealings with them in my old job, and to say that they are stuck in the past is an understatement.
https://twitter.com/AdamBienkov/status/1507628022152712194/photo/1
https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn03861/
The only gnarly bit, as I see it, is disentangling state wealth from private wealth.
“Of the 16% of people who define as belonging to the Church of England, 51.9% never attend services and in fact only 10.7% of people who identify with the Church of England report attending church at least weekly.”
The only reason we still have what we have is inertia and a lack of consensus on what to have instead. Rather like the Tory parliamentary party’s view of the PM incidentally.
But 'modernising' an archaic institution is tough to do. If you try to keep a lid on change, pressure builds up until suddenly too much change happens at once (cf. Tsar Alexander, Charles I, Louis the whatever). On the other hand, if you try to enact gradual change, it has a habit of running away from you (cf. Gorbachev) or not working out as you intended (cf. Cromwell)
Yes the Bishops must be in the Lords, indeed they are more educated and qualified than many if not most of those who get appointed to be Lords today.
As long as the Lords is an appointed chamber the Bishops must be there as they have always had a place in the upper house since Medieval times
*not surprised
There are no bad intentions on display there, yet that photograph is dreadful.
Charles has already made clear he will cut it back and open the palaces more to make it more like the Scandinavian monarchies
Mind you they could teach the Russian army a thing or two about vehicle maintenance, esp if those are the same white wall tyres.
The biggest quasi private sector definded benefit pension scheme is the universities scheme with about £80 billion of assets . But the local government one is far bigger. Also the NEST pension scheme (for staff of smaller employees and the default one if employers do not choose another) is growing rapidly since auto-enrolment but of course is defined contribution not benefit.
I find pension schemes fascinating (mad I know ) , the most fascinating ones are the Mineworkers scheme and the British Coal supperannuiation scheme (for senior coal board staff) as both have about £9 billion in assets at the moment but nobody is joining (as pits shut) and loads die every year. Will the last ex-miner standing become a billionaire?
I actually have a lot of respect for the Cambridge's for not giving a flying fuck about "optics" in such situations.
Presumably ending our slavery to the EU has much the same effect...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LqSMk2IzK2o&ab_channel=ElsaAnnaArendelle
Hence in many of the non Roman Catholic majority nations of Western Europe like Denmark and Norway the Lutheran Church remains the established church.
Plus you end the Church of England as the established church you end the right of residents of the Parish to an automatic church wedding or funeral. Only regular churchgoers would keep that right
Now shorn of that protection we see the true results
What a load of f***ing cobblers. It's amazing how quickly any logic or common sense goes out of the window.
The last hundred years of the Roman Republic must have been an utter horror show for their neighbours, and the provincials. Slavery in that period was every bit as horrible as it was in the 18th century Carribbean.
Other incidents on the tour rather suggest that no-one really had an eye on the optics at all.
Your "argument" is an exact equivalent of dropping litter everywhere. Hope that helps you to understand a relatively simple point.
A good place to have addressed the slavery issue might well have been Mico University College, now the Anglophone teacher training college for the region, and founded by the Mico foundation to educate the newly free slaves of Jamaica. My GGG grandfather was one of the earliest teachers there, my own personal connection to slavery and its abolition.
It’s a press photo of an event at a football kickabout - don’t think the palace had any control over it.
Here is a photo at the very same event moments apart where a very privileged wealthy star also greets the same kids behind a fence.
Why would the established church return to Rome. Why not just not have an established church? Churches should thrive or not in their own right.
And why shouldn't a church wedding be restricted (if they want) to church goers. If you don't belong to a society/club why should you expect to benefit from it.
Also why does it remove that right? If the church of England wants to provide it to residents of the parish, it can if it wishes.
But they choose to give up a life of luxury, privilege and wealth in the UK with some Royal duties required in exchange and opted instead for penury in a Californian mansion surrounded by film stars and icons of the world of fashion. Good luck to them.
We must fight the left agenda of the likes of you to continue to destroy yet more of our heritage.
It is in some respects yet another battle in the culture wars.
The Church of England must remain the established church with the monarch as the Supreme Governor and Bishops in the Lords. It links the monarch to God, ensures a Parish wedding and funeral available to every Parishioner. Otherwise too established authority within the Church would return to Rome and the Pope
In actual fact I think recognising the nation's historical involvement in slavery and addressing any lingering impacts from that requires something a bit more than picking off whichever person is the random slavery adjacent person of the week to get attention. National monuments, our laws against discrimination and actually tackling matters of indirect discrimination which exist, these I think address current problems a bit more. I think a focus on statues including of people with very limited connections to the trade is high profile, but can serve as a distraction from less visible efforts that are needed. Yes you could do both, but campaigns against visible things are more dramatic.
What you seem to have done is the idiot's approach to 'They don't agree about specific point X, therefore they must not care at all about Y' with an, again, really dumb attempt at a comparison.
Ah yes, it was Liam Fox:
https://news.sky.com/story/fox-says-lazy-uk-bosses-prefer-playing-golf-to-boosting-trade-10571922
I would need a large bucket of popcorn to hear you explain that to Mr Paisley!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobias_Rustat
It would be interesting to see at what year the descendants of slaves started benefitting from their ancestors transportation country by country.
And region by region - a descendant of a slave would have moved into the positive column earlier in New England than the deep south.
One of the few bodies whose dwindling active membership is older than that of your party.
I personally value our Parish system and the fact everyone can get a Church wedding or funeral even if they rarely go to Church, it is part of what makes England great. Lose that and the Church of England would become more closed off from the community around it. It would of course have to be removed if the Church of England was no longer the established church as it would no longer have any obligation or connection to the community around it except its worshippers and some help for the poor and homeless via Christian charity
In another world, I could imagine a certain Boris Johnson writing a coruscating account of the tour for a daily newspaper, full of rich metaphors to illustrate how such tours are out of kilter in the modern world, while trying to avoid racial epithets.
Oldest looking 39 year old in UK.
Must have a tough life..
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/External_debt_of_Haiti#:~:text=In 2004, the Haitian government,result of the slaves' freedom.
My wife's great grandparents were driven out of their home in Munich by the Nazis.
A Nazi seized the (sizeable) house and all of the possessions, including sketches by Edvard Munch.
Said Nazis descendants still live there and enjoy all possessions.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_England
The Church of England being the established church means you can still be a part of it in every parish even if you rarely ever go to Church except for the odd wedding or funeral or Christmas or Easter or Remembrance Sunday
Disestablishing the church will be high up on the list. I don't have any problem with people following some mythical god, but that is a choice that should not impact other's lives.
For the 1st time, meeting in 2+2 format. With @DmytroKuleba we discuss current issues & cooperation in political & defense directions between 🇺🇦-🇺🇸 with @SecDef & @SecBlinken.
In the evening we’ll also be present at @POTUS speech on the russian war against Ukraine.
Details later.
https://twitter.com/oleksiireznikov/status/1507656513011298306
It is given as much billing as having 15 kids and his affair with the Duchess of Devonshire.
I hope it is a false alarm
Can you explain why there's been so much progress on race relations in Western countries in the last 50 years but racism is still absolutely rife in countries like Bulgaria, Romania, Russia and China then who didn't have overseas colonial empires nor participated in the Atlantic slave trade?
Grab the cakes and run