Ok, it’s official, I have Covid. So much for the Superman cape. Complete waste of money.
That said I got a pathetic pale line on my test. My wife’s was solid. But, being a man, mine is obviously worse. 😉
Get well soon, hope it’s not too bad for you.
How many PBers still in the “Not had Covid” club? (Raises hand).
It’s like a really bad cold. Headaches, cough, runny nose, utter exhaustion and pains in my arms and legs. Proper man flu.
That's the same as I had at the end of last year. Had it not been for the line on the test I'd have just thought it was man flu, that's kind of what Covid has become now post-vaccines just another man flu.
Hopefully it passes for you before long, the worst of my symptoms were over within 48 hours.
I approve. A simple system that delivers proportionality (when each constituency has enough seats).
Way, way better than STV.
A the danger of starting down a rabbit hole, I wholly disagree. D'Hondt gives far too much power to parties, and too little to voters. Simplicity isn't itself a virtue.
If simplicity is a virtue, stick with FPTP...
Fairness is also a virtue. Switch to d'Hondt.
Simplicity and fairness.
Define "fairness", taking into account Arrow's theorem.
Fairness:
20% of the votes gets you 20% of the seats.
Resulting, in nearly all cases, in a government that 0% has voted for.
Surely resulting in nearly all cases in a government that 50%+ have voted for?
(maybe under 50% depending on thresholds for representation at all, but higher % than most FPTP governments - the 2010 coalition was one of the few that >50% voted for)
See my comment two before yours for why this is a logical fallacy. Zero people voted for the 2010 coalition.
And yet the vast majority of those who voted for the two parties involved were quite happy about it at the time. Your point is a real world fallacy.
Yeah agreed. They have pressed self-destruct. When Her Maj goes all hell will break loose. Further murk about Prince Andrew's fiddling around, links to dirrrrty regimes and dodgy dealings, the hounding and death of Diana, the persecution of Meghan together with the racism. It will go on and on.
Rubbish.
Meghan is almost as unpopular as Andrew. The Queen passing will be no different to Victoria passing after a long reign and handing over to Edward VII.
Though of course if left liberals like you wish to push the issue it is another arrow in the bow of we Conservatives in the culture wars against you
The culture wars won't help, though. In the long run they're destroying Britain as they're wrecking America, and Johnson has a huge amount of the responsibility.
The culture wars are here to stay as the more the Liberal left push their agenda the more we Conservatives across the west will respond.
The big political divide of the 21st century is more culture than the economy which was the divide of the 20th century
The current Republican/Tory approach isn't always necessarily responsive. A lot of it is short-term expediency, essentially considering that accentuating cultural divisions is the only way to distract and redirect blame way from an unpopular economic model, which is woefully politically short-sighted.
The Republicans and Tories are economically actually more centrist than they were under Reagan and Thatcher.
It is the culture wars where they are still pushing the Conservative agenda to protect from the attacks of the Liberal left elite and it often works because it maximises appeal to rural and town and suburbs areas, pensioners and the working and lower middle classes
Maximising their appeal there is one way of describing it ; covering up for their vacuum of economic appeal there would be another.
PB Republicans need to imagine what a UK (except it would then be something else - the UR?) would look like
The crown is woven into every corner of our national life, from the law to parliament to the army and navy to our stamps and money and shared and collective memory
It would be an act of near-impossible vandalism to get rid of all that. A huge emotional and constitutional wrench. And for what? To what end? How would we be better? We’d need some elected figurehead so it would be president fuck knows. Ed sheeran? President Mister Tumble off of CBBC?
It’s just never going to happen. Even if republican sentiment went over 50% people would look at the pointless chaos and say Nah
I would agree, but then I look at the Brexit vote. You can argue about whether being in or out was better and whether having monarchy or republic is better, but either way there's a fair bit of pain changing it. So you'd better be sure that the alternative is better. That was a chunk of my remain vote and would make me hesitant if there was a vote to rejoin in the near future. Yet it happened.
Destroying the monarchy would be an emotional convulsion that would make Brexit look like the great Hertfordshire earthquake of 2013
I can only see it happening if we were horribly conquered in a war or some such utter catastrophe
Hardly.
Brexit fucked the British economy, wrecked travel and stoked culture wars.
Abolishing the monarchy would be a total 'meh' for most people. It would make zero difference to our lives, except lighten the mood.
“Wrecked travel”
Er, OK. I’ve just come directly from the USA to Turkey (with a stopover in Munich). I am now staring at my raki wondering whether to eat more pistachios. I’m sailing to Greece in a day or two. And In about ten days I will smoothly go on from there
For someone who is big on world travel you don’t know much about travel
Brexit made it slightly harder to get into Schengen but that's about it really.
Taking track only cars and bikes into the EU is now a colossal pain in the dick.
PB Republicans need to imagine what a UK (except it would then be something else - the UR?) would look like
The crown is woven into every corner of our national life, from the law to parliament to the army and navy to our stamps and money and shared and collective memory
It would be an act of near-impossible vandalism to get rid of all that. A huge emotional and constitutional wrench. And for what? To what end? How would we be better? We’d need some elected figurehead so it would be president fuck knows. Ed sheeran? President Mister Tumble off of CBBC?
It’s just never going to happen. Even if republican sentiment went over 50% people would look at the pointless chaos and say Nah
I would agree, but then I look at the Brexit vote. You can argue about whether being in or out was better and whether having monarchy or republic is better, but either way there's a fair bit of pain changing it. So you'd better be sure that the alternative is better. That was a chunk of my remain vote and would make me hesitant if there was a vote to rejoin in the near future. Yet it happened.
Destroying the monarchy would be an emotional convulsion that would make Brexit look like the great Hertfordshire earthquake of 2013
I can only see it happening if we were horribly conquered in a war or some such utter catastrophe
Hardly.
Brexit fucked the British economy, wrecked travel and stoked culture wars.
Abolishing the monarchy would be a total 'meh' for most people. It would make zero difference to our lives, except lighten the mood.
“Wrecked travel”
Er, OK. I’ve just come directly from the USA to Turkey (with a stopover in Munich). I am now staring at my raki wondering whether to eat more pistachios. I’m sailing to Greece in a day or two. And In about ten days I will smoothly go on from there
For someone who is big on world travel you don’t know much about travel
Brexit made it slightly harder to get into Schengen but that's about it really.
No, it took away the legal right to live, work, study and travel freely at will in around 30 European countries. But, to be fair, most people will just notice the extra queues in airports and seaports.
I approve. A simple system that delivers proportionality (when each constituency has enough seats).
Way, way better than STV.
A the danger of starting down a rabbit hole, I wholly disagree. D'Hondt gives far too much power to parties, and too little to voters. Simplicity isn't itself a virtue.
If simplicity is a virtue, stick with FPTP...
Fairness is also a virtue. Switch to d'Hondt.
Simplicity and fairness.
Define "fairness", taking into account Arrow's theorem.
Fairness:
20% of the votes gets you 20% of the seats.
Resulting, in nearly all cases, in a government that 0% has voted for.
That's a glass-half-empty view. How many people voted for the 2010-15 government? Over half in my view.
Zero. You've fallen into a logical fallacy, I'm afraid.
(Support for party A + support for party B ) ≠ support for (party A + party B ).
But the government benches consisted of representatives of Party A + Party B.
And virtually impossible to live in the EU for anything more than 90 days. Godawful screw up.
A tiny percentage of people want to holiday more than 90 days. So you’re talking about Freedom of movement to Work. A different thing entirely
many of us used to like spending longer periods abroad. You know, as opposed to getting an onanistic view of a place actually spending time there, immersing. One of my happiest experiences was spending 3 months in the south of France. I've spent whole winters in several countries, including La Palma. Likewise in Italy.
For entirely spurious and spiteful reasons we decided to mutilate ourselves.
I'm not convinced that the difference between "three months," a "whole winter," and "90 days" constitutes self-mutilation.
I really really really hope that the Labour Party goes heavy - in the next election - on how *horrible Brexit* has ruined the chances of histrionic “women” like @Heathener to “over-winter in several countries including La Palma, likewise in Italy”
Anyway, I shall leave Leon to his smug self-satisfaction and I shall make sure I never read a single thing on travel he writes. He clearly drops in and out like the superficial sex writer of old.
Not my kind of thing, thanks.
I prefer real living. Real immersion in other cultures, peoples and places. No offence.
Hahahaha. Real living! Spending your winters sunning yourself in some fancy holiday home in the south of France or Italy is not 'Real Immersion'.
Actually living and working in another country - earning a living rather than spending your holiday savings - is 'real immersion'. You are nothing more than a fancy tourist pretending you understand a country because you know the waiter at the local restaurant by name.
PB Republicans need to imagine what a UK (except it would then be something else - the UR?) would look like
The crown is woven into every corner of our national life, from the law to parliament to the army and navy to our stamps and money and shared and collective memory
It would be an act of near-impossible vandalism to get rid of all that. A huge emotional and constitutional wrench. And for what? To what end? How would we be better? We’d need some elected figurehead so it would be president fuck knows. Ed sheeran? President Mister Tumble off of CBBC?
It’s just never going to happen. Even if republican sentiment went over 50% people would look at the pointless chaos and say Nah
I would agree, but then I look at the Brexit vote. You can argue about whether being in or out was better and whether having monarchy or republic is better, but either way there's a fair bit of pain changing it. So you'd better be sure that the alternative is better. That was a chunk of my remain vote and would make me hesitant if there was a vote to rejoin in the near future. Yet it happened.
Destroying the monarchy would be an emotional convulsion that would make Brexit look like the great Hertfordshire earthquake of 2013
I can only see it happening if we were horribly conquered in a war or some such utter catastrophe
Hardly.
Brexit fucked the British economy, wrecked travel and stoked culture wars.
Abolishing the monarchy would be a total 'meh' for most people. It would make zero difference to our lives, except lighten the mood.
“Wrecked travel”
Er, OK. I’ve just come directly from the USA to Turkey (with a stopover in Munich). I am now staring at my raki wondering whether to eat more pistachios. I’m sailing to Greece in a day or two. And In about ten days I will smoothly go on from there
For someone who is big on world travel you don’t know much about travel
Brexit made it slightly harder to get into Schengen but that's about it really.
Taking track only cars and bikes into the EU is now a colossal pain in the dick.
Is that why so many massive twats are riding them round the streets here all of a sudden?
And? He could be removed the coterie of wastrels can't.
I'm so glad you have that much faith in the quality of our politicians that you think having more of them is a good idea.
Some of our politicians are brilliant. I've got a lot of time Hunt, Starmer, Sturgeon, Davis. Just because we get twats like Boris, Corbyn, Salmond, Patel, doesn't mean they're all bad.
Oh fer fucks sake. Starmer. Not even starmer’s mum would call Starmer “a brilliant politician”
Salmond on the other hand WAS quite brilliant. Nearly single handedly broke up one of the grandest old nations in the world, pretty much by sheer force of personality
He is now a corpulent sleaze bag but all political careers end thusly
Previous post highlights why UK is so F***ed up, not one of the supposed good ones has ever done anything other than line their own pockets , lie , cheat or be incompetent.
Yes. A pretty desperate list
Vanishingly few politicians are “brilliant”. In the last 40 years of British political life I’d suggest salmond and thatcher. With the possibility of early Blair. That’s it
Hate to say it, but when you start to look back wistfully on how things were better back in the day, it's a sign
Yes , 70's were happy days , 8 pints for a pound, pay rises every month, sunny uplands indeed.
Get real, when I started pub drinking in 1972 (about) 8 pints cost as much as £1.12p. Which then was nearly half a crown more than a pound. Big money. Happy days.
I approve. A simple system that delivers proportionality (when each constituency has enough seats).
Way, way better than STV.
A the danger of starting down a rabbit hole, I wholly disagree. D'Hondt gives far too much power to parties, and too little to voters. Simplicity isn't itself a virtue.
If simplicity is a virtue, stick with FPTP...
Fairness is also a virtue. Switch to d'Hondt.
Simplicity and fairness.
Define "fairness", taking into account Arrow's theorem.
Fairness:
20% of the votes gets you 20% of the seats.
Resulting, in nearly all cases, in a government that 0% has voted for.
As opposed to 100% of the power based on 40% of the vote.
40% > 0%, so I don't see the problem.
40% is not a majority.
Still better than 0%.
No truly democratic system provides a majority, because it turns out people have different viewpoints, so it makes sense to settle with the plurality working.
A directly elected executive with a multi-round system means you get a government >50% voted for.
It’s notable that for all the supposed benefits of FPTP, the Conservative Party uses a different system to elect its leader, the House of Lords uses a different system to fill its hereditary peer vacancies, and the UK government introduced a different system when faced with the challenges of Northern Ireland and another when re-building German democracy after the war.
I approve. A simple system that delivers proportionality (when each constituency has enough seats).
Way, way better than STV.
A the danger of starting down a rabbit hole, I wholly disagree. D'Hondt gives far too much power to parties, and too little to voters. Simplicity isn't itself a virtue.
If simplicity is a virtue, stick with FPTP...
Fairness is also a virtue. Switch to d'Hondt.
Simplicity and fairness.
Define "fairness", taking into account Arrow's theorem.
Fairness:
20% of the votes gets you 20% of the seats.
Resulting, in nearly all cases, in a government that 0% has voted for.
Surely resulting in nearly all cases in a government that 50%+ have voted for?
(maybe under 50% depending on thresholds for representation at all, but higher % than most FPTP governments - the 2010 coalition was one of the few that >50% voted for)
See my comment two before yours for why this is a logical fallacy. Zero people voted for the 2010 coalition.
And yet the vast majority of those who voted for the two parties involved were quite happy about it at the time. Your point is a real world fallacy.
That's the same fallacy as HYUFD saying "a majority of Tory voters agree with extreme position here so therefore that's fine".
A majority of those who voted for a party is not all of those who voted for the party and would not generally be enough to win an election.
If we guess that 60% of 2010 Lib Dems and 60% of 2010 Tories (a strong majority of both) were quite happy about it then that's just under 36% of the vote not a majority of it.
Unless a coalition is agreed before the election (like Australia's "Coalition") adding up its votes afterwards is a fallacy.
PB Republicans need to imagine what a UK (except it would then be something else - the UR?) would look like
The crown is woven into every corner of our national life, from the law to parliament to the army and navy to our stamps and money and shared and collective memory
It would be an act of near-impossible vandalism to get rid of all that. A huge emotional and constitutional wrench. And for what? To what end? How would we be better? We’d need some elected figurehead so it would be president fuck knows. Ed sheeran? President Mister Tumble off of CBBC?
It’s just never going to happen. Even if republican sentiment went over 50% people would look at the pointless chaos and say Nah
I would agree, but then I look at the Brexit vote. You can argue about whether being in or out was better and whether having monarchy or republic is better, but either way there's a fair bit of pain changing it. So you'd better be sure that the alternative is better. That was a chunk of my remain vote and would make me hesitant if there was a vote to rejoin in the near future. Yet it happened.
Destroying the monarchy would be an emotional convulsion that would make Brexit look like the great Hertfordshire earthquake of 2013
I can only see it happening if we were horribly conquered in a war or some such utter catastrophe
Hardly.
Brexit fucked the British economy, wrecked travel and stoked culture wars.
Abolishing the monarchy would be a total 'meh' for most people. It would make zero difference to our lives, except lighten the mood.
“Wrecked travel”
Er, OK. I’ve just come directly from the USA to Turkey (with a stopover in Munich). I am now staring at my raki wondering whether to eat more pistachios. I’m sailing to Greece in a day or two. And In about ten days I will smoothly go on from there
For someone who is big on world travel you don’t know much about travel
Brexit made it slightly harder to get into Schengen but that's about it really.
No, it took away the legal right to live, work, study and travel freely at will in around 30 European countries. But, to be fair, most people will just notice the extra queues in airports and seaports.
Strange. I still manage to live, work and travel around the EU quite nicely thankyou. I am too busy for the study bit at the moment. Apart from a couple of extra bits of paper, working inside the EEA is no harder now than it was 5 years ago.
I'm going to break my self-denying ordinance of not quoting this individual's comments because the irony and sheer fucking chutzpah of the below just has to be acknowledged.
The statement from Mark Drakeford, the Labour leader, and Adam Price, the Plaid Cymru leader, says:
The Senedd should have 96 members - up from the current 60 It should be elected using closed proportional lists with integrated statutory gender quotas and mandatory zipping - which requires parties to put forward equal numbers of male and female candidates and alternating between men and women when preparing their candidate lists Seats should be allocated to parties using the D’Hondt formula (which is the current formula for electing members of the Senedd)
So presumably they are happy for this to go to a referendum in Wales, so that the people can decide if public money is best spent on 60% more politicians, their hangers-on, office space and generous expenses?
No, just needs 2/3 of the Senedd to get it through (Labour and PC have 43 out of 60 seats).
Aren’t they about to get into lots of hot water on the gender thing? Seems like an unnecessary introduction of a trans argument they could have ducked.
Oh I do hope so.
I'm looking forward to Drakeford ordering the Women's Equality party to increase the sausage content of its list
I thought women could have penises?
Not a day goes by without the old gammons on here coming out with this vile crap.
Why can't you just drop it? And be nice and kind and understanding to others?
I suspect the monarchy will just fizzle out as the UK does.
Neither the monarchy or the UK will fizzle out
@SouthamObserver just WANTS the UK to fizzle out, because Brexit
They see it as a deserved punishment on ordinary Britons, for daring to upset the second home plans of their betters
Ordinary Britons really don't care that much about the UK. It's only the privileged right that get all hot and bothered about it - and that's largely driven by English nationalism. Most ordinary Britons are much more focused on their English, Scottish and Welsh identities. Even in Northern Ireland notions of Britishness are declining. I regret that, but it was happening way before Brexit. As for the monarchy, the Queen is the glue that keeps it all together, not the institution itself. If I think of my kids and their mates, it's something that doesn't even register with them.
And virtually impossible to live in the EU for anything more than 90 days. Godawful screw up.
A tiny percentage of people want to holiday more than 90 days. So you’re talking about Freedom of movement to Work. A different thing entirely
many of us used to like spending longer periods abroad. You know, as opposed to getting an onanistic view of a place actually spending time there, immersing. One of my happiest experiences was spending 3 months in the south of France. I've spent whole winters in several countries, including La Palma. Likewise in Italy.
For entirely spurious and spiteful reasons we decided to mutilate ourselves.
I'm not convinced that the difference between "three months," a "whole winter," and "90 days" constitutes self-mutilation.
I really really really hope that the Labour Party goes heavy - in the next election - on how *horrible Brexit* has ruined the chances of histrionic “women” like @Heathener to “over-winter in several countries including La Palma, likewise in Italy”
It's made me regret Brexit. What have we done?! James O'Brien was right!
I approve. A simple system that delivers proportionality (when each constituency has enough seats).
Way, way better than STV.
A the danger of starting down a rabbit hole, I wholly disagree. D'Hondt gives far too much power to parties, and too little to voters. Simplicity isn't itself a virtue.
If simplicity is a virtue, stick with FPTP...
Fairness is also a virtue. Switch to d'Hondt.
Simplicity and fairness.
Define "fairness", taking into account Arrow's theorem.
Fairness:
20% of the votes gets you 20% of the seats.
Resulting, in nearly all cases, in a government that 0% has voted for.
Nobody votes for a government in that way unless they list out the cabinet on the ballot paper. How do I vote out Sajid Javid?
Vote for your local Labour candidate. Sajid Javid only has a place in covenment because the leader of the Conservative party has a majority in parliament - so to change the government you need to vote for the alternative.
How did Ed Davey become a minister, then?
The leader of the Conservative party had a majority in parliament and chose him.
The statement from Mark Drakeford, the Labour leader, and Adam Price, the Plaid Cymru leader, says:
The Senedd should have 96 members - up from the current 60 It should be elected using closed proportional lists with integrated statutory gender quotas and mandatory zipping - which requires parties to put forward equal numbers of male and female candidates and alternating between men and women when preparing their candidate lists Seats should be allocated to parties using the D’Hondt formula (which is the current formula for electing members of the Senedd)
Do we know what is to happen if a candidate is turfed out of the party under which s/he got a list seat? That was not resolved at Holyrood before it happened (the person stayed).
Just thinking, more generally, the Tories must be really panicking in Wales if they feel the need to have a d'Hondt system in order to survive at all, as in Scotland.
Also - for those of us who can't bear the thought of forever being haunted by the Drake, Mr Davies ART, etc., fill in gap for your worst dreams:
bear in mind that all they have to do is to put themselves at the head of the list for a suitable area and they can in practice never be voted out even if not one would win a FPTP. That's how a lot of ScoTories, including some of those who constituted what Ms Davidson pretentiously called the Opposition Front Bench (as if there was one at Holyrood!), managed to stay MSPs at all. .
The Sxcottish experience is that dHondt is a Tory Preservation Order.
The Tories are against d'Hondt in Wales. It's Drakeford and Adam Price that are proposing it.
I'm pro PR in principle, but I find closed list PR the worst system. Can only vote for a party and you have no single representative for smaller areas so it means the bigger settlements usually get all the attention (see EU PR regions which had 8 MEPs for the North West for example, but all the attention went to Manchester and sometimes Liverpool). There's nothing wrong with the current AMS system where you get your local representative and then a top up to make the Parliament more proportional.
Thanks to you and others for comments. I'd actually feel the Tories in Wales might do well to stop and reconsider.
I approve. A simple system that delivers proportionality (when each constituency has enough seats).
Way, way better than STV.
A the danger of starting down a rabbit hole, I wholly disagree. D'Hondt gives far too much power to parties, and too little to voters. Simplicity isn't itself a virtue.
If simplicity is a virtue, stick with FPTP...
Fairness is also a virtue. Switch to d'Hondt.
Simplicity and fairness.
Define "fairness", taking into account Arrow's theorem.
Fairness:
20% of the votes gets you 20% of the seats.
Resulting, in nearly all cases, in a government that 0% has voted for.
As opposed to 100% of the power based on 40% of the vote.
40% > 0%, so I don't see the problem.
40% is not a majority.
No, but in a multi party system it's impossible to guarantee a majority exists.
I suspect the monarchy will just fizzle out as the UK does.
Neither the monarchy or the UK will fizzle out
All this thousand year empire talk, where did I hear that before and what happened to the last one?
The monarchy has already lasted 1000 years in England and the UK has been around for centuries too
Longer than that. William the Conqueror (possibly my ggggggg grandad, his concubine maud angelric was my gggggg mother) derived his claim to the throne, in part, from his multiple dynastic relationships with the Anglo Saxon state (including Maud)
The English crown can be plausibly traced back to about the 6th or 7th century AD. The Queen is a provably direct descendant of Alfred the Great
Ok, it’s official, I have Covid. So much for the Superman cape. Complete waste of money.
That said I got a pathetic pale line on my test. My wife’s was solid. But, being a man, mine is obviously worse. 😉
Get well soon, hope it’s not too bad for you.
How many PBers still in the “Not had Covid” club? (Raises hand).
Me + wife + 3 out of 4 kids. We're special (apart from one kid).
I have a teacher friend who never stopped having to do in person lessons throughout the pandemic and whose own kids have had it twice. Never had it (and obviously because teaching regular testing). Got to be one of those super special types.
I dodged last month when my whole team got it after a meeting that i could only attend virtually.
Is there something genetic going on? Can't believe my wife and I have dodged it, what with eldest child getting it and wife socialising widely (inc in her council role). She and I hardly ever get colds either. I may have had one, maybe two, colds in last ten years. I've also never had a headache, which people tell me is weird.
There may be a genetic component in terms of your resistance to SARS-CoV-2 or other infection. It’s also possible that you have been infected, but were asymptomatic, but again there could be a genetic component in how you respond to SARS-CoV-2 or other infection.
I’ve not knowingly had COVID-19. I remember getting swine flu in the last respiratory disease pandemic. That was very unpleasant…
PB Republicans need to imagine what a UK (except it would then be something else - the UR?) would look like
The crown is woven into every corner of our national life, from the law to parliament to the army and navy to our stamps and money and shared and collective memory
It would be an act of near-impossible vandalism to get rid of all that. A huge emotional and constitutional wrench. And for what? To what end? How would we be better? We’d need some elected figurehead so it would be president fuck knows. Ed sheeran? President Mister Tumble off of CBBC?
It’s just never going to happen. Even if republican sentiment went over 50% people would look at the pointless chaos and say Nah
I would agree, but then I look at the Brexit vote. You can argue about whether being in or out was better and whether having monarchy or republic is better, but either way there's a fair bit of pain changing it. So you'd better be sure that the alternative is better. That was a chunk of my remain vote and would make me hesitant if there was a vote to rejoin in the near future. Yet it happened.
Destroying the monarchy would be an emotional convulsion that would make Brexit look like the great Hertfordshire earthquake of 2013
I can only see it happening if we were horribly conquered in a war or some such utter catastrophe
Hardly.
Brexit fucked the British economy, wrecked travel and stoked culture wars.
Abolishing the monarchy would be a total 'meh' for most people. It would make zero difference to our lives, except lighten the mood.
“Wrecked travel”
Er, OK. I’ve just come directly from the USA to Turkey (with a stopover in Munich). I am now staring at my raki wondering whether to eat more pistachios. I’m sailing to Greece in a day or two. And In about ten days I will smoothly go on from there
For someone who is big on world travel you don’t know much about travel
Brexit made it slightly harder to get into Schengen but that's about it really.
No, it took away the legal right to live, work, study and travel freely at will in around 30 European countries. But, to be fair, most people will just notice the extra queues in airports and seaports.
Strange. I still manage to live, work and travel around the EU quite nicely thankyou. I am too busy for the study bit at the moment. Apart from a couple of extra bits of paper, working inside the EEA is no harder now than it was 5 years ago.
If you are a UK citizen, you cannot now just move from, say, Norway to Sweden to live and work. You now need the permission of the Swedish government and must fulfil the criteria they set for non-EU/EEA citizens to stay in their country. That never used to be the case. But, as I say, this will not have an impact on most people. They'll just spend longer in queues.
PB Republicans need to imagine what a UK (except it would then be something else - the UR?) would look like
The crown is woven into every corner of our national life, from the law to parliament to the army and navy to our stamps and money and shared and collective memory
It would be an act of near-impossible vandalism to get rid of all that. A huge emotional and constitutional wrench. And for what? To what end? How would we be better? We’d need some elected figurehead so it would be president fuck knows. Ed sheeran? President Mister Tumble off of CBBC?
It’s just never going to happen. Even if republican sentiment went over 50% people would look at the pointless chaos and say Nah
I would agree, but then I look at the Brexit vote. You can argue about whether being in or out was better and whether having monarchy or republic is better, but either way there's a fair bit of pain changing it. So you'd better be sure that the alternative is better. That was a chunk of my remain vote and would make me hesitant if there was a vote to rejoin in the near future. Yet it happened.
Destroying the monarchy would be an emotional convulsion that would make Brexit look like the great Hertfordshire earthquake of 2013
I can only see it happening if we were horribly conquered in a war or some such utter catastrophe
Hardly.
Brexit fucked the British economy, wrecked travel and stoked culture wars.
Abolishing the monarchy would be a total 'meh' for most people. It would make zero difference to our lives, except lighten the mood.
“Wrecked travel”
Er, OK. I’ve just come directly from the USA to Turkey (with a stopover in Munich). I am now staring at my raki wondering whether to eat more pistachios. I’m sailing to Greece in a day or two. And In about ten days I will smoothly go on from there
For someone who is big on world travel you don’t know much about travel
Brexit made it slightly harder to get into Schengen but that's about it really.
Taking track only cars and bikes into the EU is now a colossal pain in the dick.
Your new inability to move around your illegally modified motorbikes, designed to have overloud exhausts which drive people mad, causes me no more pain than your astonishing new angst re the institution of the British monarchy. To be honest
I approve. A simple system that delivers proportionality (when each constituency has enough seats).
Way, way better than STV.
A the danger of starting down a rabbit hole, I wholly disagree. D'Hondt gives far too much power to parties, and too little to voters. Simplicity isn't itself a virtue.
If simplicity is a virtue, stick with FPTP...
Fairness is also a virtue. Switch to d'Hondt.
Simplicity and fairness.
Define "fairness", taking into account Arrow's theorem.
Fairness:
20% of the votes gets you 20% of the seats.
Resulting, in nearly all cases, in a government that 0% has voted for.
Nobody votes for a government in that way unless they list out the cabinet on the ballot paper. How do I vote out Sajid Javid?
Vote for your local Labour candidate. Sajid Javid only has a place in covenment because the leader of the Conservative party has a majority in parliament - so to change the government you need to vote for the alternative.
How did Ed Davey become a minister, then?
The leader of the Conservative party had a majority in parliament and chose him.
Cameron did NOT have a majority in 2010. He needed LD support.
I approve. A simple system that delivers proportionality (when each constituency has enough seats).
Way, way better than STV.
A the danger of starting down a rabbit hole, I wholly disagree. D'Hondt gives far too much power to parties, and too little to voters. Simplicity isn't itself a virtue.
If simplicity is a virtue, stick with FPTP...
Fairness is also a virtue. Switch to d'Hondt.
Simplicity and fairness.
Define "fairness", taking into account Arrow's theorem.
Fairness:
20% of the votes gets you 20% of the seats.
Resulting, in nearly all cases, in a government that 0% has voted for.
Surely resulting in nearly all cases in a government that 50%+ have voted for?
(maybe under 50% depending on thresholds for representation at all, but higher % than most FPTP governments - the 2010 coalition was one of the few that >50% voted for)
See my comment two before yours for why this is a logical fallacy. Zero people voted for the 2010 coalition.
And yet the vast majority of those who voted for the two parties involved were quite happy about it at the time. Your point is a real world fallacy.
If the "vast majority" was, say, 90%, that would still have brought support below 50%.
Yeah agreed. They have pressed self-destruct. When Her Maj goes all hell will break loose. Further murk about Prince Andrew's fiddling around, links to dirrrrty regimes and dodgy dealings, the hounding and death of Diana, the persecution of Meghan together with the racism. It will go on and on.
Rubbish.
Meghan is almost as unpopular as Andrew. The Queen passing will be no different to Victoria passing after a long reign and handing over to Edward VII.
Though of course if left liberals like you wish to push the issue it is another arrow in the bow of we Conservatives in the culture wars against you
As a left leaning LibDem I think it would be a sad loss to lose the Monarchy. I like tradition and values as much as the next man.
I approve. A simple system that delivers proportionality (when each constituency has enough seats).
Way, way better than STV.
A the danger of starting down a rabbit hole, I wholly disagree. D'Hondt gives far too much power to parties, and too little to voters. Simplicity isn't itself a virtue.
If simplicity is a virtue, stick with FPTP...
Fairness is also a virtue. Switch to d'Hondt.
Simplicity and fairness.
Define "fairness", taking into account Arrow's theorem.
Fairness:
20% of the votes gets you 20% of the seats.
Resulting, in nearly all cases, in a government that 0% has voted for.
That's a glass-half-empty view. How many people voted for the 2010-15 government? Over half in my view.
Zero. You've fallen into a logical fallacy, I'm afraid.
(Support for party A + support for party B ) ≠ support for (party A + party B ).
But the government benches consisted of representatives of Party A + Party B.
I suspect the monarchy will just fizzle out as the UK does.
Neither the monarchy or the UK will fizzle out
@SouthamObserver just WANTS the UK to fizzle out, because Brexit
They see it as a deserved punishment on ordinary Britons, for daring to upset the second home plans of their betters
Ordinary Britons really don't care that much about the UK. It's only the privileged right that get all hot and bothered about it - and that's largely driven by English nationalism. Most ordinary Britons are much more focused on their English, Scottish and Welsh identities. Even in Northern Ireland notions of Britishness are declining. I regret that, but it was happening way before Brexit. As for the monarchy, the Queen is the glue that keeps it all together, not the institution itself. If I think of my kids and their mates, it's something that doesn't even register with them.
Scots still voted to stay in the UK, every other home nation still has a majority of Unionist parties in England and Wales and in Northern Ireland Unionist parties still win more seats than Nationalists.
The monarchy was there for centuries before the Queen and will be there centuries after she dies. She was a reasonably good monarch but the monarchy is far more than her
I approve. A simple system that delivers proportionality (when each constituency has enough seats).
Way, way better than STV.
A the danger of starting down a rabbit hole, I wholly disagree. D'Hondt gives far too much power to parties, and too little to voters. Simplicity isn't itself a virtue.
If simplicity is a virtue, stick with FPTP...
Fairness is also a virtue. Switch to d'Hondt.
Simplicity and fairness.
Define "fairness", taking into account Arrow's theorem.
Fairness:
20% of the votes gets you 20% of the seats.
Resulting, in nearly all cases, in a government that 0% has voted for.
As opposed to 100% of the power based on 40% of the vote.
40% > 0%, so I don't see the problem.
40% is not a majority.
Still better than 0%.
No truly democratic system provides a majority, because it turns out people have different viewpoints, so it makes sense to settle with the plurality working.
A directly elected executive with a multi-round system means you get a government >50% voted for.
It’s notable that for all the supposed benefits of FPTP, the Conservative Party uses a different system to elect its leader
The election of the leader of the Conservative Party takes place between two candidates, so the electoral system is irrelevant.
The selection of the candidates is a different matter.
PB Republicans need to imagine what a UK (except it would then be something else - the UR?) would look like
The crown is woven into every corner of our national life, from the law to parliament to the army and navy to our stamps and money and shared and collective memory
It would be an act of near-impossible vandalism to get rid of all that. A huge emotional and constitutional wrench. And for what? To what end? How would we be better? We’d need some elected figurehead so it would be president fuck knows. Ed sheeran? President Mister Tumble off of CBBC?
It’s just never going to happen. Even if republican sentiment went over 50% people would look at the pointless chaos and say Nah
I would agree, but then I look at the Brexit vote. You can argue about whether being in or out was better and whether having monarchy or republic is better, but either way there's a fair bit of pain changing it. So you'd better be sure that the alternative is better. That was a chunk of my remain vote and would make me hesitant if there was a vote to rejoin in the near future. Yet it happened.
Destroying the monarchy would be an emotional convulsion that would make Brexit look like the great Hertfordshire earthquake of 2013
I can only see it happening if we were horribly conquered in a war or some such utter catastrophe
Hardly.
Brexit fucked the British economy, wrecked travel and stoked culture wars.
Abolishing the monarchy would be a total 'meh' for most people. It would make zero difference to our lives, except lighten the mood.
“Wrecked travel”
Er, OK. I’ve just come directly from the USA to Turkey (with a stopover in Munich). I am now staring at my raki wondering whether to eat more pistachios. I’m sailing to Greece in a day or two. And In about ten days I will smoothly go on from there
For someone who is big on world travel you don’t know much about travel
Brexit made it slightly harder to get into Schengen but that's about it really.
Taking track only cars and bikes into the EU is now a colossal pain in the dick.
Your new inability to move around your illegally modified motorbikes, designed to have overloud exhausts which drive people mad, causes me no more pain than your astonishing new angst re the institution of the British monarchy. To be honest
Why would anyone want an overloud exhaust? I just don't get it.
I approve. A simple system that delivers proportionality (when each constituency has enough seats).
Way, way better than STV.
A the danger of starting down a rabbit hole, I wholly disagree. D'Hondt gives far too much power to parties, and too little to voters. Simplicity isn't itself a virtue.
If simplicity is a virtue, stick with FPTP...
Fairness is also a virtue. Switch to d'Hondt.
Simplicity and fairness.
Define "fairness", taking into account Arrow's theorem.
Fairness:
20% of the votes gets you 20% of the seats.
Resulting, in nearly all cases, in a government that 0% has voted for.
Surely resulting in nearly all cases in a government that 50%+ have voted for?
(maybe under 50% depending on thresholds for representation at all, but higher % than most FPTP governments - the 2010 coalition was one of the few that >50% voted for)
See my comment two before yours for why this is a logical fallacy. Zero people voted for the 2010 coalition.
I voted (well, hoped for) a LD-Lab coalition. I got a LD-Con coalition. Closer to what I voted for than any government before or since.
More than 50% of voters voted in 2010 for a party that actually had a voice in government. Is that worse than the ~40% (lower in later Blair years, of course) that normally have the party they voted for having a say in government? How many 2015 Conservative voters voted for a May-led government? How many 2017 Conservative voters voted for a Johnson-led government?
One could probably go through manifesto commitments and calculate the % delivery by e.g. % of promises from manifesto delivered x share of vote. I suspect the 2010 government would do OK on that.
I approve. A simple system that delivers proportionality (when each constituency has enough seats).
Way, way better than STV.
A the danger of starting down a rabbit hole, I wholly disagree. D'Hondt gives far too much power to parties, and too little to voters. Simplicity isn't itself a virtue.
If simplicity is a virtue, stick with FPTP...
Fairness is also a virtue. Switch to d'Hondt.
Simplicity and fairness.
Define "fairness", taking into account Arrow's theorem.
Fairness:
20% of the votes gets you 20% of the seats.
Resulting, in nearly all cases, in a government that 0% has voted for.
Nobody votes for a government in that way unless they list out the cabinet on the ballot paper. How do I vote out Sajid Javid?
Vote for your local Labour candidate. Sajid Javid only has a place in covenment because the leader of the Conservative party has a majority in parliament - so to change the government you need to vote for the alternative.
How did Ed Davey become a minister, then?
The leader of the Conservative party had a majority in parliament and chose him.
Cameron did NOT have a majority in 2010. He needed LD support.
I worded my comment very specifically. I did not state that the Conservative party had a majority in parliament.
I approve. A simple system that delivers proportionality (when each constituency has enough seats).
Way, way better than STV.
A the danger of starting down a rabbit hole, I wholly disagree. D'Hondt gives far too much power to parties, and too little to voters. Simplicity isn't itself a virtue.
If simplicity is a virtue, stick with FPTP...
Fairness is also a virtue. Switch to d'Hondt.
Simplicity and fairness.
Define "fairness", taking into account Arrow's theorem.
Fairness:
20% of the votes gets you 20% of the seats.
Resulting, in nearly all cases, in a government that 0% has voted for.
That's a glass-half-empty view. How many people voted for the 2010-15 government? Over half in my view.
Zero. You've fallen into a logical fallacy, I'm afraid.
(Support for party A + support for party B ) ≠ support for (party A + party B ).
But the government benches consisted of representatives of Party A + Party B.
Yes, and?
They represented more than 50% of those wot voted.
PB Republicans need to imagine what a UK (except it would then be something else - the UR?) would look like
The crown is woven into every corner of our national life, from the law to parliament to the army and navy to our stamps and money and shared and collective memory
It would be an act of near-impossible vandalism to get rid of all that. A huge emotional and constitutional wrench. And for what? To what end? How would we be better? We’d need some elected figurehead so it would be president fuck knows. Ed sheeran? President Mister Tumble off of CBBC?
It’s just never going to happen. Even if republican sentiment went over 50% people would look at the pointless chaos and say Nah
I would agree, but then I look at the Brexit vote. You can argue about whether being in or out was better and whether having monarchy or republic is better, but either way there's a fair bit of pain changing it. So you'd better be sure that the alternative is better. That was a chunk of my remain vote and would make me hesitant if there was a vote to rejoin in the near future. Yet it happened.
Destroying the monarchy would be an emotional convulsion that would make Brexit look like the great Hertfordshire earthquake of 2013
I can only see it happening if we were horribly conquered in a war or some such utter catastrophe
Hardly.
Brexit fucked the British economy, wrecked travel and stoked culture wars.
Abolishing the monarchy would be a total 'meh' for most people. It would make zero difference to our lives, except lighten the mood.
“Wrecked travel”
Er, OK. I’ve just come directly from the USA to Turkey (with a stopover in Munich). I am now staring at my raki wondering whether to eat more pistachios. I’m sailing to Greece in a day or two. And In about ten days I will smoothly go on from there
For someone who is big on world travel you don’t know much about travel
Brexit made it slightly harder to get into Schengen but that's about it really.
Taking track only cars and bikes into the EU is now a colossal pain in the dick.
The Brexit crows are coming home to roost for British holiday makers to Europe this summer in so many imaginative ways.
But it's not Brexit, it's Covid, the war in Ukraine and the Labour Party, I hear the Brexiteer cry. Anyway enjoy!
PB Republicans need to imagine what a UK (except it would then be something else - the UR?) would look like
The crown is woven into every corner of our national life, from the law to parliament to the army and navy to our stamps and money and shared and collective memory
It would be an act of near-impossible vandalism to get rid of all that. A huge emotional and constitutional wrench. And for what? To what end? How would we be better? We’d need some elected figurehead so it would be president fuck knows. Ed sheeran? President Mister Tumble off of CBBC?
It’s just never going to happen. Even if republican sentiment went over 50% people would look at the pointless chaos and say Nah
I would agree, but then I look at the Brexit vote. You can argue about whether being in or out was better and whether having monarchy or republic is better, but either way there's a fair bit of pain changing it. So you'd better be sure that the alternative is better. That was a chunk of my remain vote and would make me hesitant if there was a vote to rejoin in the near future. Yet it happened.
Destroying the monarchy would be an emotional convulsion that would make Brexit look like the great Hertfordshire earthquake of 2013
I can only see it happening if we were horribly conquered in a war or some such utter catastrophe
Hardly.
Brexit fucked the British economy, wrecked travel and stoked culture wars.
Abolishing the monarchy would be a total 'meh' for most people. It would make zero difference to our lives, except lighten the mood.
“Wrecked travel”
Er, OK. I’ve just come directly from the USA to Turkey (with a stopover in Munich). I am now staring at my raki wondering whether to eat more pistachios. I’m sailing to Greece in a day or two. And In about ten days I will smoothly go on from there
For someone who is big on world travel you don’t know much about travel
Brexit made it slightly harder to get into Schengen but that's about it really.
Taking track only cars and bikes into the EU is now a colossal pain in the dick.
Your new inability to move around your illegally modified motorbikes, designed to have overloud exhausts which drive people mad, causes me no more pain than your astonishing new angst re the institution of the British monarchy. To be honest
They are not illegally modified if track only. Or do you think a F1 car is illegal? If it is it is surprising nobody is arresting anyone as there are plenty of witnesses. And why are we making it more difficult for people to do perfectly legal things.
PB Republicans need to imagine what a UK (except it would then be something else - the UR?) would look like
The crown is woven into every corner of our national life, from the law to parliament to the army and navy to our stamps and money and shared and collective memory
It would be an act of near-impossible vandalism to get rid of all that. A huge emotional and constitutional wrench. And for what? To what end? How would we be better? We’d need some elected figurehead so it would be president fuck knows. Ed sheeran? President Mister Tumble off of CBBC?
It’s just never going to happen. Even if republican sentiment went over 50% people would look at the pointless chaos and say Nah
I would agree, but then I look at the Brexit vote. You can argue about whether being in or out was better and whether having monarchy or republic is better, but either way there's a fair bit of pain changing it. So you'd better be sure that the alternative is better. That was a chunk of my remain vote and would make me hesitant if there was a vote to rejoin in the near future. Yet it happened.
Destroying the monarchy would be an emotional convulsion that would make Brexit look like the great Hertfordshire earthquake of 2013
I can only see it happening if we were horribly conquered in a war or some such utter catastrophe
Hardly.
Brexit fucked the British economy, wrecked travel and stoked culture wars.
Abolishing the monarchy would be a total 'meh' for most people. It would make zero difference to our lives, except lighten the mood.
“Wrecked travel”
Er, OK. I’ve just come directly from the USA to Turkey (with a stopover in Munich). I am now staring at my raki wondering whether to eat more pistachios. I’m sailing to Greece in a day or two. And In about ten days I will smoothly go on from there
For someone who is big on world travel you don’t know much about travel
Brexit made it slightly harder to get into Schengen but that's about it really.
Taking track only cars and bikes into the EU is now a colossal pain in the dick.
Your new inability to move around your illegally modified motorbikes, designed to have overloud exhausts which drive people mad, causes me no more pain than your astonishing new angst re the institution of the British monarchy. To be honest
Why would anyone want an overloud exhaust? I just don't get it.
Selfish insecure “macho” wankers who never outgrew their teens. Is my best guess
And I speak as a selfish wanker, I’ve just never had the desire to make the lives of my fellow humans that bit more miserable with a modified exhaust
You might have said that 25 years ago. The suspicious demise of Princess Di, scrapping Brittania etc. it all looked bleak for Buck House.
And here we are 25 years later heralding King George and Queen Camilla and of course the commissioning of the Royal Yacht Boris Johnson.
If I am wrong I am afraid I won't be around to congratulate you on your soothsaying.
Is there any modern polling on this?
Ie has there ever been a reliable poll which showed “abolishing the monarchy” as the wish of 50% or more?
Genuine question. Maybe during the death of Diana spasm? I doubt it, but it would be fascinating, if so
The monarchy was probably more unpopular at the end of George III's and Victoria's reigns than now at the end of Elizabeth II's.
While the Prince Regent George IVth was then a pretty awful monarchy the institution survived (Charles is bound to be better than him) and Edward VIIth was a better than expected King for his short 9 year reign
PB Republicans need to imagine what a UK (except it would then be something else - the UR?) would look like
The crown is woven into every corner of our national life, from the law to parliament to the army and navy to our stamps and money and shared and collective memory
It would be an act of near-impossible vandalism to get rid of all that. A huge emotional and constitutional wrench. And for what? To what end? How would we be better? We’d need some elected figurehead so it would be president fuck knows. Ed sheeran? President Mister Tumble off of CBBC?
It’s just never going to happen. Even if republican sentiment went over 50% people would look at the pointless chaos and say Nah
I would agree, but then I look at the Brexit vote. You can argue about whether being in or out was better and whether having monarchy or republic is better, but either way there's a fair bit of pain changing it. So you'd better be sure that the alternative is better. That was a chunk of my remain vote and would make me hesitant if there was a vote to rejoin in the near future. Yet it happened.
Destroying the monarchy would be an emotional convulsion that would make Brexit look like the great Hertfordshire earthquake of 2013
I can only see it happening if we were horribly conquered in a war or some such utter catastrophe
Hardly.
Brexit fucked the British economy, wrecked travel and stoked culture wars.
Abolishing the monarchy would be a total 'meh' for most people. It would make zero difference to our lives, except lighten the mood.
“Wrecked travel”
Er, OK. I’ve just come directly from the USA to Turkey (with a stopover in Munich). I am now staring at my raki wondering whether to eat more pistachios. I’m sailing to Greece in a day or two. And In about ten days I will smoothly go on from there
For someone who is big on world travel you don’t know much about travel
Brexit made it slightly harder to get into Schengen but that's about it really.
Taking track only cars and bikes into the EU is now a colossal pain in the dick.
Your new inability to move around your illegally modified motorbikes, designed to have overloud exhausts which drive people mad, causes me no more pain than your astonishing new angst re the institution of the British monarchy. To be honest
Why would anyone want an overloud exhaust? I just don't get it.
I advise going to Greece and Italy to find out. They're crazy for them there, particularly in some of the less fashionable spots.
PB Republicans need to imagine what a UK (except it would then be something else - the UR?) would look like
The crown is woven into every corner of our national life, from the law to parliament to the army and navy to our stamps and money and shared and collective memory
It would be an act of near-impossible vandalism to get rid of all that. A huge emotional and constitutional wrench. And for what? To what end? How would we be better? We’d need some elected figurehead so it would be president fuck knows. Ed sheeran? President Mister Tumble off of CBBC?
It’s just never going to happen. Even if republican sentiment went over 50% people would look at the pointless chaos and say Nah
I would agree, but then I look at the Brexit vote. You can argue about whether being in or out was better and whether having monarchy or republic is better, but either way there's a fair bit of pain changing it. So you'd better be sure that the alternative is better. That was a chunk of my remain vote and would make me hesitant if there was a vote to rejoin in the near future. Yet it happened.
Destroying the monarchy would be an emotional convulsion that would make Brexit look like the great Hertfordshire earthquake of 2013
I can only see it happening if we were horribly conquered in a war or some such utter catastrophe
Hardly.
Brexit fucked the British economy, wrecked travel and stoked culture wars.
Abolishing the monarchy would be a total 'meh' for most people. It would make zero difference to our lives, except lighten the mood.
“Wrecked travel”
Er, OK. I’ve just come directly from the USA to Turkey (with a stopover in Munich). I am now staring at my raki wondering whether to eat more pistachios. I’m sailing to Greece in a day or two. And In about ten days I will smoothly go on from there
For someone who is big on world travel you don’t know much about travel
Brexit made it slightly harder to get into Schengen but that's about it really.
No, it took away the legal right to live, work, study and travel freely at will in around 30 European countries. But, to be fair, most people will just notice the extra queues in airports and seaports.
Strange. I still manage to live, work and travel around the EU quite nicely thankyou. I am too busy for the study bit at the moment. Apart from a couple of extra bits of paper, working inside the EEA is no harder now than it was 5 years ago.
If you are a UK citizen, you cannot now just move from, say, Norway to Sweden to live and work. You now need the permission of the Swedish government and must fulfil the criteria they set for non-EU/EEA citizens to stay in their country. That never used to be the case. But, as I say, this will not have an impact on most people. They'll just spend longer in queues.
Personally I am all in favour of complete freedom of movement for everyone from anywhere - something even the most ardent of Europhiles seem to be strangely averse to. But on a practical level, the actual work involved in going to live or work in Norway, France, Italy, Spain or anywhere else in the EU is no worse than it was before. It is a bit more paperwork. Hardly the end of the world.
I suspect the monarchy will just fizzle out as the UK does.
Neither the monarchy or the UK will fizzle out
@SouthamObserver just WANTS the UK to fizzle out, because Brexit
They see it as a deserved punishment on ordinary Britons, for daring to upset the second home plans of their betters
A little harsh there. I suspect the UK will break up of it's own accord anyway. I can see NI becoming a self governing part of Ireland within the next 10 years along with Scotland becoming an Independent country in a similar timespan.
Also Leon knows only full well that the Brexit debate was about more than 2nd homes
I suspect the monarchy will just fizzle out as the UK does.
Neither the monarchy or the UK will fizzle out
All this thousand year empire talk, where did I hear that before and what happened to the last one?
The monarchy has already lasted 1000 years in England and the UK has been around for centuries too
Longer than that. William the Conqueror (possibly my ggggggg grandad, his concubine maud angelric was my gggggg mother) derived his claim to the throne, in part, from his multiple dynastic relationships with the Anglo Saxon state (including Maud)
The English crown can be plausibly traced back to about the 6th or 7th century AD. The Queen is a provably direct descendant of Alfred the Great
Given the knonw illegitimacy rates in human society, I find that last difficult to believe. Or did they dig up Alfred of Wessex for a DNA sample? Genuinely curious.
Yeah agreed. They have pressed self-destruct. When Her Maj goes all hell will break loose. Further murk about Prince Andrew's fiddling around, links to dirrrrty regimes and dodgy dealings, the hounding and death of Diana, the persecution of Meghan together with the racism. It will go on and on.
Rubbish.
Meghan is almost as unpopular as Andrew. The Queen passing will be no different to Victoria passing after a long reign and handing over to Edward VII.
Though of course if left liberals like you wish to push the issue it is another arrow in the bow of we Conservatives in the culture wars against you
As a left leaning LibDem I think it would be a sad loss to lose the Monarchy. I like tradition and values as much as the next man.
Indeed Tories and LDs are united on the whole in favour of keeping our constitutional monarchy even if they disagree on Brexit.
Republicans are generally miserable socialists in the UK with a few exceptions like TSE
I approve. A simple system that delivers proportionality (when each constituency has enough seats).
Way, way better than STV.
A the danger of starting down a rabbit hole, I wholly disagree. D'Hondt gives far too much power to parties, and too little to voters. Simplicity isn't itself a virtue.
If simplicity is a virtue, stick with FPTP...
Fairness is also a virtue. Switch to d'Hondt.
Simplicity and fairness.
Define "fairness", taking into account Arrow's theorem.
Fairness:
20% of the votes gets you 20% of the seats.
Resulting, in nearly all cases, in a government that 0% has voted for.
As opposed to 100% of the power based on 40% of the vote.
40% > 0%, so I don't see the problem.
40% is not a majority.
Still better than 0%.
No truly democratic system provides a majority, because it turns out people have different viewpoints, so it makes sense to settle with the plurality working.
A directly elected executive with a multi-round system means you get a government >50% voted for.
It’s notable that for all the supposed benefits of FPTP, the Conservative Party uses a different system to elect its leader
The election of the leader of the Conservative Party takes place between two candidates, so the electoral system is irrelevant.
The selection of the candidates is a different matter.
I suspect the monarchy will just fizzle out as the UK does.
Neither the monarchy or the UK will fizzle out
@SouthamObserver just WANTS the UK to fizzle out, because Brexit
They see it as a deserved punishment on ordinary Britons, for daring to upset the second home plans of their betters
Ordinary Britons really don't care that much about the UK. It's only the privileged right that get all hot and bothered about it - and that's largely driven by English nationalism. Most ordinary Britons are much more focused on their English, Scottish and Welsh identities. Even in Northern Ireland notions of Britishness are declining. I regret that, but it was happening way before Brexit. As for the monarchy, the Queen is the glue that keeps it all together, not the institution itself. If I think of my kids and their mates, it's something that doesn't even register with them.
Scots still voted to stay in the UK, every other home nation still has a majority of Unionist parties in England and Wales and in Northern Ireland Unionist parties still win more seats than Nationalists.
The monarchy was there for centuries before the Queen and will be there centuries after she dies. She was a reasonably good monarch but the monarchy is far more than her
Neither you nor I know what it's like to have another head of state - one that linked us to a pivotal time in our country's history. I don't think there will be any kind of mass movement to end the monarchy, I just think that there will come a time, relatively soon (but probably after I'm dead) when not enough people will care about keeping it, allowing those who feel strongly about getting rid of it to prevail.
PB Republicans need to imagine what a UK (except it would then be something else - the UR?) would look like
The crown is woven into every corner of our national life, from the law to parliament to the army and navy to our stamps and money and shared and collective memory
It would be an act of near-impossible vandalism to get rid of all that. A huge emotional and constitutional wrench. And for what? To what end? How would we be better? We’d need some elected figurehead so it would be president fuck knows. Ed sheeran? President Mister Tumble off of CBBC?
It’s just never going to happen. Even if republican sentiment went over 50% people would look at the pointless chaos and say Nah
I would agree, but then I look at the Brexit vote. You can argue about whether being in or out was better and whether having monarchy or republic is better, but either way there's a fair bit of pain changing it. So you'd better be sure that the alternative is better. That was a chunk of my remain vote and would make me hesitant if there was a vote to rejoin in the near future. Yet it happened.
Destroying the monarchy would be an emotional convulsion that would make Brexit look like the great Hertfordshire earthquake of 2013
I can only see it happening if we were horribly conquered in a war or some such utter catastrophe
Hardly.
Brexit fucked the British economy, wrecked travel and stoked culture wars.
Abolishing the monarchy would be a total 'meh' for most people. It would make zero difference to our lives, except lighten the mood.
“Wrecked travel”
Er, OK. I’ve just come directly from the USA to Turkey (with a stopover in Munich). I am now staring at my raki wondering whether to eat more pistachios. I’m sailing to Greece in a day or two. And In about ten days I will smoothly go on from there
For someone who is big on world travel you don’t know much about travel
Brexit made it slightly harder to get into Schengen but that's about it really.
No, it took away the legal right to live, work, study and travel freely at will in around 30 European countries. But, to be fair, most people will just notice the extra queues in airports and seaports.
Strange. I still manage to live, work and travel around the EU quite nicely thankyou. I am too busy for the study bit at the moment. Apart from a couple of extra bits of paper, working inside the EEA is no harder now than it was 5 years ago.
If you are a UK citizen, you cannot now just move from, say, Norway to Sweden to live and work. You now need the permission of the Swedish government and must fulfil the criteria they set for non-EU/EEA citizens to stay in their country. That never used to be the case. But, as I say, this will not have an impact on most people. They'll just spend longer in queues.
Personally I am all in favour of complete freedom of movement for everyone from anywhere - something even the most ardent of Europhiles seem to be strangely averse to. But on a practical level, the actual work involved in going to live or work in Norway, France, Italy, Spain or anywhere else in the EU is no worse than it was before. It is a bit more paperwork. Hardly the end of the world.
Do you think I could apply for a job in France/Germany without a work permit or work visa? Like before 2016? I don't think so...
Thus confirming the absurd level of influence of the Mail - yet again.
The Mail's campaign against Johnson lasted from Paterson, through sleaze and Partygate, up to the Ukraine War, and took in two separate editors. During that period the Labour lead was strong most of the time.
The Mail only turned on Starmer two weeks ago, properly for the first time. Now look what happens.
But in the last thread you told us that this was all great for Labour and the Tories were running scared?
Confused now
Not me. I've only put in a couple of comments on Beergate, and have been off the site for a few weeks.
Yeah agreed. They have pressed self-destruct. When Her Maj goes all hell will break loose. Further murk about Prince Andrew's fiddling around, links to dirrrrty regimes and dodgy dealings, the hounding and death of Diana, the persecution of Meghan together with the racism. It will go on and on.
Rubbish.
Meghan is almost as unpopular as Andrew. The Queen passing will be no different to Victoria passing after a long reign and handing over to Edward VII.
Though of course if left liberals like you wish to push the issue it is another arrow in the bow of we Conservatives in the culture wars against you
As a left leaning LibDem I think it would be a sad loss to lose the Monarchy. I like tradition and values as much as the next man.
Indeed Tories and LDs are united on the whole in favour of keeping our constitutional monarchy even if they disagree on Brexit.
Republicans are generally miserable socialists in the UK with a few exceptions like TSE
And in the US? Republicans are generally miserable right-wingers!
I suspect the monarchy will just fizzle out as the UK does.
Neither the monarchy or the UK will fizzle out
All this thousand year empire talk, where did I hear that before and what happened to the last one?
The monarchy has already lasted 1000 years in England and the UK has been around for centuries too
Longer than that. William the Conqueror (possibly my ggggggg grandad, his concubine maud angelric was my gggggg mother) derived his claim to the throne, in part, from his multiple dynastic relationships with the Anglo Saxon state (including Maud)
The English crown can be plausibly traced back to about the 6th or 7th century AD. The Queen is a provably direct descendant of Alfred the Great
Given the knonw illegitimacy rates in human society, I find that last difficult to believe. Or did they dig up Alfred of Wessex for a DNA sample? Genuinely curious.
Queen Victoria’s descendants carry the haemophilia gene. Her supposed parents and ancestors did not. So, either there was a mutation before Victoria’s conception or Victoria’s dad isn’t her dad. The former is very rare. The latter was speculated about at the time.
That may break the chain of genetic descent (not that I see anything wrong with hereditary positions passing to, say, adopted children personally).
I suspect the monarchy will just fizzle out as the UK does.
Neither the monarchy or the UK will fizzle out
@SouthamObserver just WANTS the UK to fizzle out, because Brexit
They see it as a deserved punishment on ordinary Britons, for daring to upset the second home plans of their betters
Ordinary Britons really don't care that much about the UK. It's only the privileged right that get all hot and bothered about it - and that's largely driven by English nationalism. Most ordinary Britons are much more focused on their English, Scottish and Welsh identities. Even in Northern Ireland notions of Britishness are declining. I regret that, but it was happening way before Brexit. As for the monarchy, the Queen is the glue that keeps it all together, not the institution itself. If I think of my kids and their mates, it's something that doesn't even register with them.
Scots still voted to stay in the UK, every other home nation still has a majority of Unionist parties in England and Wales and in Northern Ireland Unionist parties still win more seats than Nationalists.
The monarchy was there for centuries before the Queen and will be there centuries after she dies. She was a reasonably good monarch but the monarchy is far more than her
Neither you nor I know what it's like to have another head of state - one that linked us to a pivotal time in our country's history. I don't think there will be any kind of mass movement to end the monarchy, I just think that there will come a time, relatively soon (but probably after I'm dead) when not enough people will care about keeping it, allowing those who feel strongly about getting rid of it to prevail.
Nope because monarchists like me will fight to keep it.
The only alternative being a non entity ceremonial president nobody has heard of or a grand imperial President Johnson or Blair more likely given our status which will be more than enough to keep it as it is part of our culture
I approve. A simple system that delivers proportionality (when each constituency has enough seats).
Way, way better than STV.
A the danger of starting down a rabbit hole, I wholly disagree. D'Hondt gives far too much power to parties, and too little to voters. Simplicity isn't itself a virtue.
If simplicity is a virtue, stick with FPTP...
Fairness is also a virtue. Switch to d'Hondt.
Simplicity and fairness.
Define "fairness", taking into account Arrow's theorem.
Fairness:
20% of the votes gets you 20% of the seats.
Resulting, in nearly all cases, in a government that 0% has voted for.
That's a glass-half-empty view. How many people voted for the 2010-15 government? Over half in my view.
Zero. You've fallen into a logical fallacy, I'm afraid.
(Support for party A + support for party B ) ≠ support for (party A + party B ).
But the government benches consisted of representatives of Party A + Party B.
Yes, and?
They represented more than 50% of those wot voted.
Representation and support aren't the same thing, but even if they were I'm not sure your claim is valid - is a Green voter in Newcastle-under-Lyme represented by Aaron Bell or by Caroline Lucas?
Rest of South Con 41% Lab 29% LD 14% Grn 9% Ref 5%
Midlands and Wales Con 42% Lab 38% LD 8% Grn 5% PC 3% Ref 2%
North Lab 45% Con 31% Grn 9% LD 6% Ref 4%
Scotland SNP 51% Con 18% Lab 16% LD 8% Grn 6%
(YouGov/The Times; Sample Size: 1707; Fieldwork: 5-6 May 2022)
There seems to be a bit of a caesura in the SLab and Anas will save the Union clamour since their 'historic' damp squib in the locals. Of course sooner or later it'll start again..
I suspect the monarchy will just fizzle out as the UK does.
Neither the monarchy or the UK will fizzle out
All this thousand year empire talk, where did I hear that before and what happened to the last one?
The monarchy has already lasted 1000 years in England and the UK has been around for centuries too
Longer than that. William the Conqueror (possibly my ggggggg grandad, his concubine maud angelric was my gggggg mother) derived his claim to the throne, in part, from his multiple dynastic relationships with the Anglo Saxon state (including Maud)
The English crown can be plausibly traced back to about the 6th or 7th century AD. The Queen is a provably direct descendant of Alfred the Great
Given the knonw illegitimacy rates in human society, I find that last difficult to believe. Or did they dig up Alfred of Wessex for a DNA sample? Genuinely curious.
Yes yes. Always the dreary nay sayers
Of course you are quite right. 😉
All I am saying I that my family has a provable paper record going back to Maud Ingelric, the concubine of William 1 and alleged descendent of Alfred, and mother of one strand of the Peverells
As you rightly say, the rates of bastardy mean this direct link is at least questionable. But then we are all directly descended from julius ceasar and genghis khan, are we not? We just can’t prove it
The documented paper link is the genuinely interesting thing. Came as a total surprise to my family, some of whom went from militant Cornish working class-ness (grandsons of tin miners!!) to affecting airs and graces (we are, after all, the descendants of Athelstan and Rollo!) in about two days
You might have said that 25 years ago. The suspicious demise of Princess Di, scrapping Brittania etc. it all looked bleak for Buck House.
And here we are 25 years later heralding King George and Queen Camilla and of course the commissioning of the Royal Yacht Boris Johnson.
If I am wrong I am afraid I won't be around to congratulate you on your soothsaying.
Is there any modern polling on this?
Ie has there ever been a reliable poll which showed “abolishing the monarchy” as the wish of 50% or more?
Genuine question. Maybe during the death of Diana spasm? I doubt it, but it would be fascinating, if so
No poll has ever shown that. Even in early 98 it was a Wipeout for republicanism. In the latest poll, 18 to 24 year olds favour republicanism, all other age groups retain
Yeah agreed. They have pressed self-destruct. When Her Maj goes all hell will break loose. Further murk about Prince Andrew's fiddling around, links to dirrrrty regimes and dodgy dealings, the hounding and death of Diana, the persecution of Meghan together with the racism. It will go on and on.
Rubbish.
Meghan is almost as unpopular as Andrew. The Queen passing will be no different to Victoria passing after a long reign and handing over to Edward VII.
Though of course if left liberals like you wish to push the issue it is another arrow in the bow of we Conservatives in the culture wars against you
As a left leaning LibDem I think it would be a sad loss to lose the Monarchy. I like tradition and values as much as the next man.
Indeed Tories and LDs are united on the whole in favour of keeping our constitutional monarchy even if they disagree on Brexit.
Republicans are generally miserable socialists in the UK with a few exceptions like TSE
PB Republicans need to imagine what a UK (except it would then be something else - the UR?) would look like
The crown is woven into every corner of our national life, from the law to parliament to the army and navy to our stamps and money and shared and collective memory
It would be an act of near-impossible vandalism to get rid of all that. A huge emotional and constitutional wrench. And for what? To what end? How would we be better? We’d need some elected figurehead so it would be president fuck knows. Ed sheeran? President Mister Tumble off of CBBC?
It’s just never going to happen. Even if republican sentiment went over 50% people would look at the pointless chaos and say Nah
I would agree, but then I look at the Brexit vote. You can argue about whether being in or out was better and whether having monarchy or republic is better, but either way there's a fair bit of pain changing it. So you'd better be sure that the alternative is better. That was a chunk of my remain vote and would make me hesitant if there was a vote to rejoin in the near future. Yet it happened.
Destroying the monarchy would be an emotional convulsion that would make Brexit look like the great Hertfordshire earthquake of 2013
I can only see it happening if we were horribly conquered in a war or some such utter catastrophe
Hardly.
Brexit fucked the British economy, wrecked travel and stoked culture wars.
Abolishing the monarchy would be a total 'meh' for most people. It would make zero difference to our lives, except lighten the mood.
“Wrecked travel”
Er, OK. I’ve just come directly from the USA to Turkey (with a stopover in Munich). I am now staring at my raki wondering whether to eat more pistachios. I’m sailing to Greece in a day or two. And In about ten days I will smoothly go on from there
For someone who is big on world travel you don’t know much about travel
Brexit made it slightly harder to get into Schengen but that's about it really.
No, it took away the legal right to live, work, study and travel freely at will in around 30 European countries. But, to be fair, most people will just notice the extra queues in airports and seaports.
Strange. I still manage to live, work and travel around the EU quite nicely thankyou. I am too busy for the study bit at the moment. Apart from a couple of extra bits of paper, working inside the EEA is no harder now than it was 5 years ago.
If you are a UK citizen, you cannot now just move from, say, Norway to Sweden to live and work. You now need the permission of the Swedish government and must fulfil the criteria they set for non-EU/EEA citizens to stay in their country. That never used to be the case. But, as I say, this will not have an impact on most people. They'll just spend longer in queues.
Personally I am all in favour of complete freedom of movement for everyone from anywhere - something even the most ardent of Europhiles seem to be strangely averse to. But on a practical level, the actual work involved in going to live or work in Norway, France, Italy, Spain or anywhere else in the EU is no worse than it was before. It is a bit more paperwork. Hardly the end of the world.
That depends on the country and what you want to do. You can't just hop on an Easyjet and go get a bar job for the summer in Spain anymore, for example. Like the UK, many EU countries will have salary bands for non-EU/EEA workers and income requirements for those who want to settle. Again, Spain does. For example, if you want to retire there now you need to prove an income of around €2150 per month for the first individual, plus another €500 or so for a partner and any dependents. On top of that you have to pay health insurance.
I suspect the monarchy will just fizzle out as the UK does.
Neither the monarchy or the UK will fizzle out
@SouthamObserver just WANTS the UK to fizzle out, because Brexit
They see it as a deserved punishment on ordinary Britons, for daring to upset the second home plans of their betters
Ordinary Britons really don't care that much about the UK. It's only the privileged right that get all hot and bothered about it - and that's largely driven by English nationalism. Most ordinary Britons are much more focused on their English, Scottish and Welsh identities. Even in Northern Ireland notions of Britishness are declining. I regret that, but it was happening way before Brexit. As for the monarchy, the Queen is the glue that keeps it all together, not the institution itself. If I think of my kids and their mates, it's something that doesn't even register with them.
Scots still voted to stay in the UK, every other home nation still has a majority of Unionist parties in England and Wales and in Northern Ireland Unionist parties still win more seats than Nationalists.
The monarchy was there for centuries before the Queen and will be there centuries after she dies. She was a reasonably good monarch but the monarchy is far more than her
Neither you nor I know what it's like to have another head of state - one that linked us to a pivotal time in our country's history. I don't think there will be any kind of mass movement to end the monarchy, I just think that there will come a time, relatively soon (but probably after I'm dead) when not enough people will care about keeping it, allowing those who feel strongly about getting rid of it to prevail.
At the moment I can't see labour going into an election on a republican ticket nor offering a referendum until it was clearly favoured so I don't see any mechanism by which it ends. Running on an abolishionist manifesto would at the moment lose them any election on its own.
I approve. A simple system that delivers proportionality (when each constituency has enough seats).
Way, way better than STV.
A the danger of starting down a rabbit hole, I wholly disagree. D'Hondt gives far too much power to parties, and too little to voters. Simplicity isn't itself a virtue.
If simplicity is a virtue, stick with FPTP...
Fairness is also a virtue. Switch to d'Hondt.
Simplicity and fairness.
Define "fairness", taking into account Arrow's theorem.
Fairness:
20% of the votes gets you 20% of the seats.
Resulting, in nearly all cases, in a government that 0% has voted for.
Nobody votes for a government in that way unless they list out the cabinet on the ballot paper. How do I vote out Sajid Javid?
Vote for your local Labour candidate. Sajid Javid only has a place in covenment because the leader of the Conservative party has a majority in parliament - so to change the government you need to vote for the alternative.
How did Ed Davey become a minister, then?
The leader of the Conservative party had a majority in parliament and chose him.
I don't really want to rehash a very painful period in LibDem History, But......
I think Clegg chose him, as Clegg was given the ability to choose a certain number of SoS and Ministers.
PB Republicans need to imagine what a UK (except it would then be something else - the UR?) would look like
The crown is woven into every corner of our national life, from the law to parliament to the army and navy to our stamps and money and shared and collective memory
It would be an act of near-impossible vandalism to get rid of all that. A huge emotional and constitutional wrench. And for what? To what end? How would we be better? We’d need some elected figurehead so it would be president fuck knows. Ed sheeran? President Mister Tumble off of CBBC?
It’s just never going to happen. Even if republican sentiment went over 50% people would look at the pointless chaos and say Nah
I would agree, but then I look at the Brexit vote. You can argue about whether being in or out was better and whether having monarchy or republic is better, but either way there's a fair bit of pain changing it. So you'd better be sure that the alternative is better. That was a chunk of my remain vote and would make me hesitant if there was a vote to rejoin in the near future. Yet it happened.
Destroying the monarchy would be an emotional convulsion that would make Brexit look like the great Hertfordshire earthquake of 2013
I can only see it happening if we were horribly conquered in a war or some such utter catastrophe
Hardly.
Brexit fucked the British economy, wrecked travel and stoked culture wars.
Abolishing the monarchy would be a total 'meh' for most people. It would make zero difference to our lives, except lighten the mood.
“Wrecked travel”
Er, OK. I’ve just come directly from the USA to Turkey (with a stopover in Munich). I am now staring at my raki wondering whether to eat more pistachios. I’m sailing to Greece in a day or two. And In about ten days I will smoothly go on from there
For someone who is big on world travel you don’t know much about travel
Brexit made it slightly harder to get into Schengen but that's about it really.
Taking track only cars and bikes into the EU is now a colossal pain in the dick.
Your new inability to move around your illegally modified motorbikes, designed to have overloud exhausts which drive people mad, causes me no more pain than your astonishing new angst re the institution of the British monarchy. To be honest
Why would anyone want an overloud exhaust? I just don't get it.
You don't for the track as they have stringently policed noise limits. 92dB(A) at Brands Hatch!
I suspect the monarchy will just fizzle out as the UK does.
Neither the monarchy or the UK will fizzle out
@SouthamObserver just WANTS the UK to fizzle out, because Brexit
They see it as a deserved punishment on ordinary Britons, for daring to upset the second home plans of their betters
Ordinary Britons really don't care that much about the UK. It's only the privileged right that get all hot and bothered about it - and that's largely driven by English nationalism. Most ordinary Britons are much more focused on their English, Scottish and Welsh identities. Even in Northern Ireland notions of Britishness are declining. I regret that, but it was happening way before Brexit. As for the monarchy, the Queen is the glue that keeps it all together, not the institution itself. If I think of my kids and their mates, it's something that doesn't even register with them.
Scots still voted to stay in the UK, every other home nation still has a majority of Unionist parties in England and Wales and in Northern Ireland Unionist parties still win more seats than Nationalists.
The monarchy was there for centuries before the Queen and will be there centuries after she dies. She was a reasonably good monarch but the monarchy is far more than her
Neither you nor I know what it's like to have another head of state - one that linked us to a pivotal time in our country's history. I don't think there will be any kind of mass movement to end the monarchy, I just think that there will come a time, relatively soon (but probably after I'm dead) when not enough people will care about keeping it, allowing those who feel strongly about getting rid of it to prevail.
But those who “feel strongly about getting rid of it” are a small rump of miserable incel non binary Remoanering volcano-loving republican Fascisto-socialists, like you - as @HYUFD correctly points out, with his normal forensic accuracy
Persuading the rest of the country to adopt your position will be like persuading Malaga holiday makers to become breatharians
PB Republicans need to imagine what a UK (except it would then be something else - the UR?) would look like
The crown is woven into every corner of our national life, from the law to parliament to the army and navy to our stamps and money and shared and collective memory
It would be an act of near-impossible vandalism to get rid of all that. A huge emotional and constitutional wrench. And for what? To what end? How would we be better? We’d need some elected figurehead so it would be president fuck knows. Ed sheeran? President Mister Tumble off of CBBC?
It’s just never going to happen. Even if republican sentiment went over 50% people would look at the pointless chaos and say Nah
I would agree, but then I look at the Brexit vote. You can argue about whether being in or out was better and whether having monarchy or republic is better, but either way there's a fair bit of pain changing it. So you'd better be sure that the alternative is better. That was a chunk of my remain vote and would make me hesitant if there was a vote to rejoin in the near future. Yet it happened.
Destroying the monarchy would be an emotional convulsion that would make Brexit look like the great Hertfordshire earthquake of 2013
I can only see it happening if we were horribly conquered in a war or some such utter catastrophe
Hardly.
Brexit fucked the British economy, wrecked travel and stoked culture wars.
Abolishing the monarchy would be a total 'meh' for most people. It would make zero difference to our lives, except lighten the mood.
For someone who is big on world travel you don’t know much about travel
Travelling from the UK to the EU is a complete pain in the ass now. Literally a 'mare. It's chaos. As most anyone who actually does it will tell you, if you bother to listen.
And virtually impossible to live in the EU for anything more than 90 days. Godawful screw up.
I’ve been to the EU multiple times since Brexit. Passport queues are generally a bit longer, sometimes shorter. That’s it
The only thing that annoys me is the stamp in the passport every time. I used to like getting stamps but now they are using up my spare pages
A tiny percentage of people want to holiday more than 90 days. So you’re talking about Freedom of movement to Work. A different thing entirely
It's chaos at Dover. Just a 'mare. I know so many people who have had dreadful experiences at airports and ports.
And many of us used to like spending longer periods abroad. You know, as opposed to getting an onanistic view of a place actually spending time there, immersing. One of my happiest experiences was spending 3 months in the south of France. I've spent whole winters in several countries, including La Palma. Likewise in Italy.
For entirely spurious and spiteful reasons we decided to mutilate ourselves.
The UK has been ruined by people like you.
You live in fucking Surrey you stupid, self pitying hysterectomy
PB Republicans need to imagine what a UK (except it would then be something else - the UR?) would look like
The crown is woven into every corner of our national life, from the law to parliament to the army and navy to our stamps and money and shared and collective memory
It would be an act of near-impossible vandalism to get rid of all that. A huge emotional and constitutional wrench. And for what? To what end? How would we be better? We’d need some elected figurehead so it would be president fuck knows. Ed sheeran? President Mister Tumble off of CBBC?
It’s just never going to happen. Even if republican sentiment went over 50% people would look at the pointless chaos and say Nah
I would agree, but then I look at the Brexit vote. You can argue about whether being in or out was better and whether having monarchy or republic is better, but either way there's a fair bit of pain changing it. So you'd better be sure that the alternative is better. That was a chunk of my remain vote and would make me hesitant if there was a vote to rejoin in the near future. Yet it happened.
Destroying the monarchy would be an emotional convulsion that would make Brexit look like the great Hertfordshire earthquake of 2013
I can only see it happening if we were horribly conquered in a war or some such utter catastrophe
Hardly.
Brexit fucked the British economy, wrecked travel and stoked culture wars.
Abolishing the monarchy would be a total 'meh' for most people. It would make zero difference to our lives, except lighten the mood.
“Wrecked travel”
Er, OK. I’ve just come directly from the USA to Turkey (with a stopover in Munich). I am now staring at my raki wondering whether to eat more pistachios. I’m sailing to Greece in a day or two. And In about ten days I will smoothly go on from there
For someone who is big on world travel you don’t know much about travel
Brexit made it slightly harder to get into Schengen but that's about it really.
No, it took away the legal right to live, work, study and travel freely at will in around 30 European countries. But, to be fair, most people will just notice the extra queues in airports and seaports.
Strange. I still manage to live, work and travel around the EU quite nicely thankyou. I am too busy for the study bit at the moment. Apart from a couple of extra bits of paper, working inside the EEA is no harder now than it was 5 years ago.
If you are a UK citizen, you cannot now just move from, say, Norway to Sweden to live and work. You now need the permission of the Swedish government and must fulfil the criteria they set for non-EU/EEA citizens to stay in their country. That never used to be the case. But, as I say, this will not have an impact on most people. They'll just spend longer in queues.
Personally I am all in favour of complete freedom of movement for everyone from anywhere - something even the most ardent of Europhiles seem to be strangely averse to. But on a practical level, the actual work involved in going to live or work in Norway, France, Italy, Spain or anywhere else in the EU is no worse than it was before. It is a bit more paperwork. Hardly the end of the world.
That depends on the country and what you want to do. You can't just hop on an Easyjet and go get a bar job for the summer in Spain anymore, for example. Like the UK, many EU countries will have salary bands for non-EU/EEA workers and income requirements for those who want to settle. Again, Spain does. For example, if you want to retire there now you need to prove an income of around €2150 per month for the first individual, plus another €500 or so for a partner and any dependents. On top of that you have to pay health insurance.
Indeed correct. Meaning it is much harder to settle in an EU country armed with just a UK passport. Before, it was a right. Now you need to apply for it.
I suspect the monarchy will just fizzle out as the UK does.
Neither the monarchy or the UK will fizzle out
All this thousand year empire talk, where did I hear that before and what happened to the last one?
The monarchy has already lasted 1000 years in England and the UK has been around for centuries too
Longer than that. William the Conqueror (possibly my ggggggg grandad, his concubine maud angelric was my gggggg mother) derived his claim to the throne, in part, from his multiple dynastic relationships with the Anglo Saxon state (including Maud)
The English crown can be plausibly traced back to about the 6th or 7th century AD. The Queen is a provably direct descendant of Alfred the Great
Given the knonw illegitimacy rates in human society, I find that last difficult to believe. Or did they dig up Alfred of Wessex for a DNA sample? Genuinely curious.
Queen Victoria’s descendants carry the haemophilia gene. Her supposed parents and ancestors did not. So, either there was a mutation before Victoria’s conception or Victoria’s dad isn’t her dad. The former is very rare. The latter was speculated about at the time.
That may break the chain of genetic descent (not that I see anything wrong with hereditary positions passing to, say, adopted children personally).
IIRC the chance of inheriting a preexisting allele is much greater than having it arise by mutation. QED.
But at the time, 1820sd etc, the law was quite clear on bastardry, etc. So that's the divine right and the chain of inheritance broken, and we end up with a rather odd reality TV crew.
PB Republicans need to imagine what a UK (except it would then be something else - the UR?) would look like
The crown is woven into every corner of our national life, from the law to parliament to the army and navy to our stamps and money and shared and collective memory
It would be an act of near-impossible vandalism to get rid of all that. A huge emotional and constitutional wrench. And for what? To what end? How would we be better? We’d need some elected figurehead so it would be president fuck knows. Ed sheeran? President Mister Tumble off of CBBC?
It’s just never going to happen. Even if republican sentiment went over 50% people would look at the pointless chaos and say Nah
I would agree, but then I look at the Brexit vote. You can argue about whether being in or out was better and whether having monarchy or republic is better, but either way there's a fair bit of pain changing it. So you'd better be sure that the alternative is better. That was a chunk of my remain vote and would make me hesitant if there was a vote to rejoin in the near future. Yet it happened.
Destroying the monarchy would be an emotional convulsion that would make Brexit look like the great Hertfordshire earthquake of 2013
I can only see it happening if we were horribly conquered in a war or some such utter catastrophe
Hardly.
Brexit fucked the British economy, wrecked travel and stoked culture wars.
Abolishing the monarchy would be a total 'meh' for most people. It would make zero difference to our lives, except lighten the mood.
For someone who is big on world travel you don’t know much about travel
Travelling from the UK to the EU is a complete pain in the ass now. Literally a 'mare. It's chaos. As most anyone who actually does it will tell you, if you bother to listen.
And virtually impossible to live in the EU for anything more than 90 days. Godawful screw up.
I’ve been to the EU multiple times since Brexit. Passport queues are generally a bit longer, sometimes shorter. That’s it
The only thing that annoys me is the stamp in the passport every time. I used to like getting stamps but now they are using up my spare pages
A tiny percentage of people want to holiday more than 90 days. So you’re talking about Freedom of movement to Work. A different thing entirely
It's chaos at Dover. Just a 'mare. I know so many people who have had dreadful experiences at airports and ports.
And many of us used to like spending longer periods abroad. You know, as opposed to getting an onanistic view of a place actually spending time there, immersing. One of my happiest experiences was spending 3 months in the south of France. I've spent whole winters in several countries, including La Palma. Likewise in Italy.
For entirely spurious and spiteful reasons we decided to mutilate ourselves.
The UK has been ruined by people like you.
You live in fucking Surrey you stupid, self pitying hysterectomy
That's not nice, Leon
No, it’s not. But “she” accused me of personally “ruining the country”. So she gives and she must take
The statement from Mark Drakeford, the Labour leader, and Adam Price, the Plaid Cymru leader, says:
The Senedd should have 96 members - up from the current 60 It should be elected using closed proportional lists with integrated statutory gender quotas and mandatory zipping - which requires parties to put forward equal numbers of male and female candidates and alternating between men and women when preparing their candidate lists Seats should be allocated to parties using the D’Hondt formula (which is the current formula for electing members of the Senedd)
So presumably they are happy for this to go to a referendum in Wales, so that the people can decide if public money is best spent on 60% more politicians, their hangers-on, office space and generous expenses?
No, just needs 2/3 of the Senedd to get it through (Labour and PC have 43 out of 60 seats).
Aren’t they about to get into lots of hot water on the gender thing? Seems like an unnecessary introduction of a trans argument they could have ducked.
Oh I do hope so.
I'm looking forward to Drakeford ordering the Women's Equality party to increase the sausage content of its list
I thought women could have penises?
Not a day goes by without the old gammons on here coming out with this vile crap.
Why can't you just drop it? And be nice and kind and understanding to others?
Things might not be going as well for Ukraine as we all (well, perhaps all) hope. The next few days might show whether Russia makes a breakthrough in Donbass and on the south coast.
I suspect the monarchy will just fizzle out as the UK does.
Neither the monarchy or the UK will fizzle out
All this thousand year empire talk, where did I hear that before and what happened to the last one?
The monarchy has already lasted 1000 years in England and the UK has been around for centuries too
Longer than that. William the Conqueror (possibly my ggggggg grandad, his concubine maud angelric was my gggggg mother) derived his claim to the throne, in part, from his multiple dynastic relationships with the Anglo Saxon state (including Maud)
The English crown can be plausibly traced back to about the 6th or 7th century AD. The Queen is a provably direct descendant of Alfred the Great
Given the knonw illegitimacy rates in human society, I find that last difficult to believe. Or did they dig up Alfred of Wessex for a DNA sample? Genuinely curious.
The trick is to trace ancestry on the matrilineal line, where it is, to say the least, harder for it all to go radically wrong.
And, BTW, that mother line can be a thing on which much hinges. Where would our beloved queen be without Katherine Swynford, sister in law of Chaucer, or Margaret Beaufort, who may well be the only mother at 13 years old also to found a Cambridge College.
Anyway, I shall leave Leon to his smug self-satisfaction and I shall make sure I never read a single thing on travel he writes. He clearly drops in and out like the superficial sex writer of old.
Not my kind of thing, thanks.
I prefer real living. Real immersion in other cultures, peoples and places. No offence.
Hahahaha. Real living! Spending your winters sunning yourself in some fancy holiday home in the south of France or Italy is not 'Real Immersion'.
Actually living and working in another country - earning a living rather than spending your holiday savings - is 'real immersion'. You are nothing more than a fancy tourist pretending you understand a country because you know the waiter at the local restaurant by name.
Ahem - Manuel is a really nice man and has lived in Barcelona all his life apart from a couple of summers in Torquay!
PB Republicans need to imagine what a UK (except it would then be something else - the UR?) would look like
The crown is woven into every corner of our national life, from the law to parliament to the army and navy to our stamps and money and shared and collective memory
It would be an act of near-impossible vandalism to get rid of all that. A huge emotional and constitutional wrench. And for what? To what end? How would we be better? We’d need some elected figurehead so it would be president fuck knows. Ed sheeran? President Mister Tumble off of CBBC?
It’s just never going to happen. Even if republican sentiment went over 50% people would look at the pointless chaos and say Nah
I would agree, but then I look at the Brexit vote. You can argue about whether being in or out was better and whether having monarchy or republic is better, but either way there's a fair bit of pain changing it. So you'd better be sure that the alternative is better. That was a chunk of my remain vote and would make me hesitant if there was a vote to rejoin in the near future. Yet it happened.
Destroying the monarchy would be an emotional convulsion that would make Brexit look like the great Hertfordshire earthquake of 2013
I can only see it happening if we were horribly conquered in a war or some such utter catastrophe
Hardly.
Brexit fucked the British economy, wrecked travel and stoked culture wars.
Abolishing the monarchy would be a total 'meh' for most people. It would make zero difference to our lives, except lighten the mood.
“Wrecked travel”
Er, OK. I’ve just come directly from the USA to Turkey (with a stopover in Munich). I am now staring at my raki wondering whether to eat more pistachios. I’m sailing to Greece in a day or two. And In about ten days I will smoothly go on from there
For someone who is big on world travel you don’t know much about travel
Brexit made it slightly harder to get into Schengen but that's about it really.
No, it took away the legal right to live, work, study and travel freely at will in around 30 European countries. But, to be fair, most people will just notice the extra queues in airports and seaports.
Strange. I still manage to live, work and travel around the EU quite nicely thankyou. I am too busy for the study bit at the moment. Apart from a couple of extra bits of paper, working inside the EEA is no harder now than it was 5 years ago.
If you are a UK citizen, you cannot now just move from, say, Norway to Sweden to live and work. You now need the permission of the Swedish government and must fulfil the criteria they set for non-EU/EEA citizens to stay in their country. That never used to be the case. But, as I say, this will not have an impact on most people. They'll just spend longer in queues.
Personally I am all in favour of complete freedom of movement for everyone from anywhere - something even the most ardent of Europhiles seem to be strangely averse to. But on a practical level, the actual work involved in going to live or work in Norway, France, Italy, Spain or anywhere else in the EU is no worse than it was before. It is a bit more paperwork. Hardly the end of the world.
As we are now in school examination period:” could you show your workings please?”
PB Republicans need to imagine what a UK (except it would then be something else - the UR?) would look like
The crown is woven into every corner of our national life, from the law to parliament to the army and navy to our stamps and money and shared and collective memory
It would be an act of near-impossible vandalism to get rid of all that. A huge emotional and constitutional wrench. And for what? To what end? How would we be better? We’d need some elected figurehead so it would be president fuck knows. Ed sheeran? President Mister Tumble off of CBBC?
It’s just never going to happen. Even if republican sentiment went over 50% people would look at the pointless chaos and say Nah
I would agree, but then I look at the Brexit vote. You can argue about whether being in or out was better and whether having monarchy or republic is better, but either way there's a fair bit of pain changing it. So you'd better be sure that the alternative is better. That was a chunk of my remain vote and would make me hesitant if there was a vote to rejoin in the near future. Yet it happened.
Destroying the monarchy would be an emotional convulsion that would make Brexit look like the great Hertfordshire earthquake of 2013
I can only see it happening if we were horribly conquered in a war or some such utter catastrophe
Hardly.
Brexit fucked the British economy, wrecked travel and stoked culture wars.
Abolishing the monarchy would be a total 'meh' for most people. It would make zero difference to our lives, except lighten the mood.
“Wrecked travel”
Er, OK. I’ve just come directly from the USA to Turkey (with a stopover in Munich). I am now staring at my raki wondering whether to eat more pistachios. I’m sailing to Greece in a day or two. And In about ten days I will smoothly go on from there
For someone who is big on world travel you don’t know much about travel
Brexit made it slightly harder to get into Schengen but that's about it really.
No, it took away the legal right to live, work, study and travel freely at will in around 30 European countries. But, to be fair, most people will just notice the extra queues in airports and seaports.
Strange. I still manage to live, work and travel around the EU quite nicely thankyou. I am too busy for the study bit at the moment. Apart from a couple of extra bits of paper, working inside the EEA is no harder now than it was 5 years ago.
If you are a UK citizen, you cannot now just move from, say, Norway to Sweden to live and work. You now need the permission of the Swedish government and must fulfil the criteria they set for non-EU/EEA citizens to stay in their country. That never used to be the case. But, as I say, this will not have an impact on most people. They'll just spend longer in queues.
Personally I am all in favour of complete freedom of movement for everyone from anywhere - something even the most ardent of Europhiles seem to be strangely averse to. But on a practical level, the actual work involved in going to live or work in Norway, France, Italy, Spain or anywhere else in the EU is no worse than it was before. It is a bit more paperwork. Hardly the end of the world.
That depends on the country and what you want to do. You can't just hop on an Easyjet and go get a bar job for the summer in Spain anymore, for example. Like the UK, many EU countries will have salary bands for non-EU/EEA workers and income requirements for those who want to settle. Again, Spain does. For example, if you want to retire there now you need to prove an income of around €2150 per month for the first individual, plus another €500 or so for a partner and any dependents. On top of that you have to pay health insurance.
In practice, the number of people who want to go and work in another EU country is minuscule. Because (with the exception of the ROI), they don't speak English, and we are, unfortunately, a nation of monoglots. A language barrier is in practice a far bigger barrier to living and working in another country than any administrative hurdles.
I approve. A simple system that delivers proportionality (when each constituency has enough seats).
Way, way better than STV.
A the danger of starting down a rabbit hole, I wholly disagree. D'Hondt gives far too much power to parties, and too little to voters. Simplicity isn't itself a virtue.
If simplicity is a virtue, stick with FPTP...
Fairness is also a virtue. Switch to d'Hondt.
Simplicity and fairness.
Define "fairness", taking into account Arrow's theorem.
Fairness:
20% of the votes gets you 20% of the seats.
Resulting, in nearly all cases, in a government that 0% has voted for.
Surely resulting in nearly all cases in a government that 50%+ have voted for?
(maybe under 50% depending on thresholds for representation at all, but higher % than most FPTP governments - the 2010 coalition was one of the few that >50% voted for)
See my comment two before yours for why this is a logical fallacy. Zero people voted for the 2010 coalition.
And yet the vast majority of those who voted for the two parties involved were quite happy about it at the time. Your point is a real world fallacy.
That's the same fallacy as HYUFD saying "a majority of Tory voters agree with extreme position here so therefore that's fine".
A majority of those who voted for a party is not all of those who voted for the party and would not generally be enough to win an election.
If we guess that 60% of 2010 Lib Dems and 60% of 2010 Tories (a strong majority of both) were quite happy about it then that's just under 36% of the vote not a majority of it.
Unless a coalition is agreed before the election (like Australia's "Coalition") adding up its votes afterwards is a fallacy.
Did I suggest you should ? Just pointing out that Applicant's 'zero' comment was nonsense.
I suspect the monarchy will just fizzle out as the UK does.
Neither the monarchy or the UK will fizzle out
All this thousand year empire talk, where did I hear that before and what happened to the last one?
The monarchy has already lasted 1000 years in England and the UK has been around for centuries too
Longer than that. William the Conqueror (possibly my ggggggg grandad, his concubine maud angelric was my gggggg mother) derived his claim to the throne, in part, from his multiple dynastic relationships with the Anglo Saxon state (including Maud)
The English crown can be plausibly traced back to about the 6th or 7th century AD. The Queen is a provably direct descendant of Alfred the Great
Given the knonw illegitimacy rates in human society, I find that last difficult to believe. Or did they dig up Alfred of Wessex for a DNA sample? Genuinely curious.
The trick is to trace ancestry on the matrilineal line, where it is, to say the least, harder for it all to go radically wrong.
And, BTW, that mother line can be a thing on which much hinges. Where would our beloved queen be without Katherine Swynford, sister in law of Chaucer, or Margaret Beaufort, who may well be the only mother at 13 years old also to found a Cambridge College.
Maternal mtDNA, I presume.
And yet inheritance of crown and estate is through the male line, so it's not enough to be descended from mediaeval king's daughter x through mum or ggggmum. One also has to be descended through the male line to inherit the crown (until the very recent law changes). So ...
I suspect the monarchy will just fizzle out as the UK does.
Neither the monarchy or the UK will fizzle out
@SouthamObserver just WANTS the UK to fizzle out, because Brexit
They see it as a deserved punishment on ordinary Britons, for daring to upset the second home plans of their betters
Ordinary Britons really don't care that much about the UK. It's only the privileged right that get all hot and bothered about it - and that's largely driven by English nationalism. Most ordinary Britons are much more focused on their English, Scottish and Welsh identities. Even in Northern Ireland notions of Britishness are declining. I regret that, but it was happening way before Brexit. As for the monarchy, the Queen is the glue that keeps it all together, not the institution itself. If I think of my kids and their mates, it's something that doesn't even register with them.
Scots still voted to stay in the UK, every other home nation still has a majority of Unionist parties in England and Wales and in Northern Ireland Unionist parties still win more seats than Nationalists.
The monarchy was there for centuries before the Queen and will be there centuries after she dies. She was a reasonably good monarch but the monarchy is far more than her
Neither you nor I know what it's like to have another head of state - one that linked us to a pivotal time in our country's history. I don't think there will be any kind of mass movement to end the monarchy, I just think that there will come a time, relatively soon (but probably after I'm dead) when not enough people will care about keeping it, allowing those who feel strongly about getting rid of it to prevail.
Nope because monarchists like me will fight to keep it.
The only alternative being a non entity ceremonial president nobody has heard of or a grand imperial President Johnson or Blair more likely given our status which will be more than enough to keep it as it is part of our culture
Lol. Yes, but the point is that if "monarchists like (you)" are in the minority then you can fight to keep it all you like but you will fail in that endeavour. In the same way that those of us like me (and you) who voted Remain failed in our endeavour. I am in favour of retaining the monarchy for the same reason I was against Brexit; the division and upheaval ain't worth it except to a few swivel-eyed nutjobs. That doesn't mean it wont happen though, if the swivel-eyed nutjobs convince a gullible nation it is not a waste of time, and perhaps they might be ably assisted by a little manipulation of opinion via social media by a mischievous hostile power.
PB Republicans need to imagine what a UK (except it would then be something else - the UR?) would look like
The crown is woven into every corner of our national life, from the law to parliament to the army and navy to our stamps and money and shared and collective memory
It would be an act of near-impossible vandalism to get rid of all that. A huge emotional and constitutional wrench. And for what? To what end? How would we be better? We’d need some elected figurehead so it would be president fuck knows. Ed sheeran? President Mister Tumble off of CBBC?
It’s just never going to happen. Even if republican sentiment went over 50% people would look at the pointless chaos and say Nah
I would agree, but then I look at the Brexit vote. You can argue about whether being in or out was better and whether having monarchy or republic is better, but either way there's a fair bit of pain changing it. So you'd better be sure that the alternative is better. That was a chunk of my remain vote and would make me hesitant if there was a vote to rejoin in the near future. Yet it happened.
Destroying the monarchy would be an emotional convulsion that would make Brexit look like the great Hertfordshire earthquake of 2013
I can only see it happening if we were horribly conquered in a war or some such utter catastrophe
Hardly.
Brexit fucked the British economy, wrecked travel and stoked culture wars.
Abolishing the monarchy would be a total 'meh' for most people. It would make zero difference to our lives, except lighten the mood.
For someone who is big on world travel you don’t know much about travel
Travelling from the UK to the EU is a complete pain in the ass now. Literally a 'mare. It's chaos. As most anyone who actually does it will tell you, if you bother to listen.
And virtually impossible to live in the EU for anything more than 90 days. Godawful screw up.
I’ve been to the EU multiple times since Brexit. Passport queues are generally a bit longer, sometimes shorter. That’s it
The only thing that annoys me is the stamp in the passport every time. I used to like getting stamps but now they are using up my spare pages
A tiny percentage of people want to holiday more than 90 days. So you’re talking about Freedom of movement to Work. A different thing entirely
It's chaos at Dover. Just a 'mare. I know so many people who have had dreadful experiences at airports and ports.
And many of us used to like spending longer periods abroad. You know, as opposed to getting an onanistic view of a place actually spending time there, immersing. One of my happiest experiences was spending 3 months in the south of France. I've spent whole winters in several countries, including La Palma. Likewise in Italy.
For entirely spurious and spiteful reasons we decided to mutilate ourselves.
The UK has been ruined by people like you.
You live in fucking Surrey you stupid, self pitying hysterectomy
That's not nice, Leon
No, it’s not. But “she” accused me of personally “ruining the country”. So she gives and she must take
PB Republicans need to imagine what a UK (except it would then be something else - the UR?) would look like
The crown is woven into every corner of our national life, from the law to parliament to the army and navy to our stamps and money and shared and collective memory
It would be an act of near-impossible vandalism to get rid of all that. A huge emotional and constitutional wrench. And for what? To what end? How would we be better? We’d need some elected figurehead so it would be president fuck knows. Ed sheeran? President Mister Tumble off of CBBC?
It’s just never going to happen. Even if republican sentiment went over 50% people would look at the pointless chaos and say Nah
I would agree, but then I look at the Brexit vote. You can argue about whether being in or out was better and whether having monarchy or republic is better, but either way there's a fair bit of pain changing it. So you'd better be sure that the alternative is better. That was a chunk of my remain vote and would make me hesitant if there was a vote to rejoin in the near future. Yet it happened.
Destroying the monarchy would be an emotional convulsion that would make Brexit look like the great Hertfordshire earthquake of 2013
I can only see it happening if we were horribly conquered in a war or some such utter catastrophe
Hardly.
Brexit fucked the British economy, wrecked travel and stoked culture wars.
Abolishing the monarchy would be a total 'meh' for most people. It would make zero difference to our lives, except lighten the mood.
“Wrecked travel”
Er, OK. I’ve just come directly from the USA to Turkey (with a stopover in Munich). I am now staring at my raki wondering whether to eat more pistachios. I’m sailing to Greece in a day or two. And In about ten days I will smoothly go on from there
For someone who is big on world travel you don’t know much about travel
Brexit made it slightly harder to get into Schengen but that's about it really.
Taking track only cars and bikes into the EU is now a colossal pain in the dick.
Your new inability to move around your illegally modified motorbikes, designed to have overloud exhausts which drive people mad, causes me no more pain than your astonishing new angst re the institution of the British monarchy. To be honest
Why would anyone want an overloud exhaust? I just don't get it.
It the case of my old turbo diesel Landrover, because none of the standard exhaust systems would fit, and the easiest solution was a lump of flexi pipe off the turbo and out of the side just behind the passenger door. It wasn't stupidly loud, and one generally refrained from flooring it in residential areas in the small hours.
PB Republicans need to imagine what a UK (except it would then be something else - the UR?) would look like
The crown is woven into every corner of our national life, from the law to parliament to the army and navy to our stamps and money and shared and collective memory
It would be an act of near-impossible vandalism to get rid of all that. A huge emotional and constitutional wrench. And for what? To what end? How would we be better? We’d need some elected figurehead so it would be president fuck knows. Ed sheeran? President Mister Tumble off of CBBC?
It’s just never going to happen. Even if republican sentiment went over 50% people would look at the pointless chaos and say Nah
I would agree, but then I look at the Brexit vote. You can argue about whether being in or out was better and whether having monarchy or republic is better, but either way there's a fair bit of pain changing it. So you'd better be sure that the alternative is better. That was a chunk of my remain vote and would make me hesitant if there was a vote to rejoin in the near future. Yet it happened.
Destroying the monarchy would be an emotional convulsion that would make Brexit look like the great Hertfordshire earthquake of 2013
I can only see it happening if we were horribly conquered in a war or some such utter catastrophe
Hardly.
Brexit fucked the British economy, wrecked travel and stoked culture wars.
Abolishing the monarchy would be a total 'meh' for most people. It would make zero difference to our lives, except lighten the mood.
For someone who is big on world travel you don’t know much about travel
Travelling from the UK to the EU is a complete pain in the ass now. Literally a 'mare. It's chaos. As most anyone who actually does it will tell you, if you bother to listen.
And virtually impossible to live in the EU for anything more than 90 days. Godawful screw up.
I’ve been to the EU multiple times since Brexit. Passport queues are generally a bit longer, sometimes shorter. That’s it
The only thing that annoys me is the stamp in the passport every time. I used to like getting stamps but now they are using up my spare pages
A tiny percentage of people want to holiday more than 90 days. So you’re talking about Freedom of movement to Work. A different thing entirely
It's chaos at Dover. Just a 'mare. I know so many people who have had dreadful experiences at airports and ports.
And many of us used to like spending longer periods abroad. You know, as opposed to getting an onanistic view of a place actually spending time there, immersing. One of my happiest experiences was spending 3 months in the south of France. I've spent whole winters in several countries, including La Palma. Likewise in Italy.
For entirely spurious and spiteful reasons we decided to mutilate ourselves.
The UK has been ruined by people like you.
You live in fucking Surrey you stupid, self pitying hysterectomy
That's not nice, Leon
No, it’s not. But “she” accused me of personally “ruining the country”. So she gives and she must take
I've travelled to a few countries in the EU multiple times since Brexit and have not detected any difference in wait times at customs. Coming back to UK though ... Very unpleasant wait at E Mids last time.
PB Republicans need to imagine what a UK (except it would then be something else - the UR?) would look like
The crown is woven into every corner of our national life, from the law to parliament to the army and navy to our stamps and money and shared and collective memory
It would be an act of near-impossible vandalism to get rid of all that. A huge emotional and constitutional wrench. And for what? To what end? How would we be better? We’d need some elected figurehead so it would be president fuck knows. Ed sheeran? President Mister Tumble off of CBBC?
It’s just never going to happen. Even if republican sentiment went over 50% people would look at the pointless chaos and say Nah
I would agree, but then I look at the Brexit vote. You can argue about whether being in or out was better and whether having monarchy or republic is better, but either way there's a fair bit of pain changing it. So you'd better be sure that the alternative is better. That was a chunk of my remain vote and would make me hesitant if there was a vote to rejoin in the near future. Yet it happened.
Destroying the monarchy would be an emotional convulsion that would make Brexit look like the great Hertfordshire earthquake of 2013
I can only see it happening if we were horribly conquered in a war or some such utter catastrophe
Hardly.
Brexit fucked the British economy, wrecked travel and stoked culture wars.
Abolishing the monarchy would be a total 'meh' for most people. It would make zero difference to our lives, except lighten the mood.
“Wrecked travel”
Er, OK. I’ve just come directly from the USA to Turkey (with a stopover in Munich). I am now staring at my raki wondering whether to eat more pistachios. I’m sailing to Greece in a day or two. And In about ten days I will smoothly go on from there
For someone who is big on world travel you don’t know much about travel
Brexit made it slightly harder to get into Schengen but that's about it really.
No, it took away the legal right to live, work, study and travel freely at will in around 30 European countries. But, to be fair, most people will just notice the extra queues in airports and seaports.
Strange. I still manage to live, work and travel around the EU quite nicely thankyou. I am too busy for the study bit at the moment. Apart from a couple of extra bits of paper, working inside the EEA is no harder now than it was 5 years ago.
If you are a UK citizen, you cannot now just move from, say, Norway to Sweden to live and work. You now need the permission of the Swedish government and must fulfil the criteria they set for non-EU/EEA citizens to stay in their country. That never used to be the case. But, as I say, this will not have an impact on most people. They'll just spend longer in queues.
Personally I am all in favour of complete freedom of movement for everyone from anywhere - something even the most ardent of Europhiles seem to be strangely averse to. But on a practical level, the actual work involved in going to live or work in Norway, France, Italy, Spain or anywhere else in the EU is no worse than it was before. It is a bit more paperwork. Hardly the end of the world.
That depends on the country and what you want to do. You can't just hop on an Easyjet and go get a bar job for the summer in Spain anymore, for example. Like the UK, many EU countries will have salary bands for non-EU/EEA workers and income requirements for those who want to settle. Again, Spain does. For example, if you want to retire there now you need to prove an income of around €2150 per month for the first individual, plus another €500 or so for a partner and any dependents. On top of that you have to pay health insurance.
Indeed correct. Meaning it is much harder to settle in an EU country armed with just a UK passport. Before, it was a right. Now you need to apply for it.
Settling is not the same thing as travel, though.
Travel to an EU country is more difficult than 3 years ago, but more of the difference is because of silly covid rules than because of slightly longer queues at the border.
Rest of South Con 41% Lab 29% LD 14% Grn 9% Ref 5%
Midlands and Wales Con 42% Lab 38% LD 8% Grn 5% PC 3% Ref 2%
North Lab 45% Con 31% Grn 9% LD 6% Ref 4%
Scotland SNP 51% Con 18% Lab 16% LD 8% Grn 6%
(YouGov/The Times; Sample Size: 1707; Fieldwork: 5-6 May 2022)
There seems to be a bit of a caesura in the SLab and Anas will save the Union clamour since their 'historic' damp squib in the locals. Of course sooner or later it'll start again..
SLab winning 10 seats in Scotland is quite possible, even likely. I think SLab was ahead of the SNPin 1st prefs in East Lothian, Lanark and Hamilton East and some of the Glasgow seats plus only narrowly behind in Kircaldy&Cowdenbeath, West Dunbartonshire and Inverclyde.
The Scottish local elections were in line with what I expected voteshare wise for SNP and Labour (I predicted SNP 35% Lab 23%) although the SNP profited a lot more than I expected in seats from the Tory collapse.
Also lib dems will be very happy and more confident about holding their 4 seats now with boundary changes even Caithness.
The Tories did terribly although are still likely to hold Banff and Buchan and the 3 south of Scotland seats.
I suspect the monarchy will just fizzle out as the UK does.
Neither the monarchy or the UK will fizzle out
All this thousand year empire talk, where did I hear that before and what happened to the last one?
The monarchy has already lasted 1000 years in England and the UK has been around for centuries too
Longer than that. William the Conqueror (possibly my ggggggg grandad, his concubine maud angelric was my gggggg mother) derived his claim to the throne, in part, from his multiple dynastic relationships with the Anglo Saxon state (including Maud)
The English crown can be plausibly traced back to about the 6th or 7th century AD. The Queen is a provably direct descendant of Alfred the Great
Given the knonw illegitimacy rates in human society, I find that last difficult to believe. Or did they dig up Alfred of Wessex for a DNA sample? Genuinely curious.
Queen Victoria’s descendants carry the haemophilia gene. Her supposed parents and ancestors did not. So, either there was a mutation before Victoria’s conception or Victoria’s dad isn’t her dad. The former is very rare. The latter was speculated about at the time.
That may break the chain of genetic descent (not that I see anything wrong with hereditary positions passing to, say, adopted children personally).
IIRC the chance of inheriting a preexisting allele is much greater than having it arise by mutation. QED.
But at the time, 1820sd etc, the law was quite clear on bastardry, etc. So that's the divine right and the chain of inheritance broken, and we end up with a rather odd reality TV crew.
Some Family Historians welcomed the introduction of genetic testing and linking.
Others found much of their paperwork no longer relevant. There were some arguments!
I suspect the monarchy will just fizzle out as the UK does.
Neither the monarchy or the UK will fizzle out
@SouthamObserver just WANTS the UK to fizzle out, because Brexit
They see it as a deserved punishment on ordinary Britons, for daring to upset the second home plans of their betters
Ordinary Britons really don't care that much about the UK. It's only the privileged right that get all hot and bothered about it - and that's largely driven by English nationalism. Most ordinary Britons are much more focused on their English, Scottish and Welsh identities. Even in Northern Ireland notions of Britishness are declining. I regret that, but it was happening way before Brexit. As for the monarchy, the Queen is the glue that keeps it all together, not the institution itself. If I think of my kids and their mates, it's something that doesn't even register with them.
Scots still voted to stay in the UK, every other home nation still has a majority of Unionist parties in England and Wales and in Northern Ireland Unionist parties still win more seats than Nationalists.
The monarchy was there for centuries before the Queen and will be there centuries after she dies. She was a reasonably good monarch but the monarchy is far more than her
Neither you nor I know what it's like to have another head of state - one that linked us to a pivotal time in our country's history. I don't think there will be any kind of mass movement to end the monarchy, I just think that there will come a time, relatively soon (but probably after I'm dead) when not enough people will care about keeping it, allowing those who feel strongly about getting rid of it to prevail.
Nope because monarchists like me will fight to keep it.
The only alternative being a non entity ceremonial president nobody has heard of or a grand imperial President Johnson or Blair more likely given our status which will be more than enough to keep it as it is part of our culture
Lol. Yes, but the point is that if "monarchists like (you)" are in the minority then you can fight to keep it all you like but you will fail in that endeavour. In the same way that those of us like me (and you) who voted Remain failed in our endeavour. I am in favour of retaining the monarchy for the same reason I was against Brexit; the division and upheaval ain't worth it except to a few swivel-eyed nutjobs. That doesn't mean it wont happen though, if the swivel-eyed nutjobs convince a gullible nation it is not a waste of time, and perhaps they might be ably assisted by a little manipulation of opinion via social media by a mischievous hostile power.
I may have voted Remain but vote for Brexit to regain sovereignty and control immigration has a rather better ring to it than vote to appease a few left wing inner city Republicans so you remove all the pomp and pageantry and royal weddings and jubilees and bank holidays we enjoy for a non entity ceremonial president or an all powerful President Johnson or Blair!
I approve. A simple system that delivers proportionality (when each constituency has enough seats).
Way, way better than STV.
A the danger of starting down a rabbit hole, I wholly disagree. D'Hondt gives far too much power to parties, and too little to voters. Simplicity isn't itself a virtue.
If simplicity is a virtue, stick with FPTP...
Fairness is also a virtue. Switch to d'Hondt.
Simplicity and fairness.
Define "fairness", taking into account Arrow's theorem.
Fairness:
20% of the votes gets you 20% of the seats.
Resulting, in nearly all cases, in a government that 0% has voted for.
Surely resulting in nearly all cases in a government that 50%+ have voted for?
(maybe under 50% depending on thresholds for representation at all, but higher % than most FPTP governments - the 2010 coalition was one of the few that >50% voted for)
See my comment two before yours for why this is a logical fallacy. Zero people voted for the 2010 coalition.
And yet the vast majority of those who voted for the two parties involved were quite happy about it at the time. Your point is a real world fallacy.
That's the same fallacy as HYUFD saying "a majority of Tory voters agree with extreme position here so therefore that's fine".
A majority of those who voted for a party is not all of those who voted for the party and would not generally be enough to win an election.
If we guess that 60% of 2010 Lib Dems and 60% of 2010 Tories (a strong majority of both) were quite happy about it then that's just under 36% of the vote not a majority of it.
Unless a coalition is agreed before the election (like Australia's "Coalition") adding up its votes afterwards is a fallacy.
Did I suggest you should ? Just pointing out that Applicant's 'zero' comment was nonsense.
I stated that zero people voted for it, which is simply true as the coalition was not on the ballot paper.
PB Republicans need to imagine what a UK (except it would then be something else - the UR?) would look like
The crown is woven into every corner of our national life, from the law to parliament to the army and navy to our stamps and money and shared and collective memory
It would be an act of near-impossible vandalism to get rid of all that. A huge emotional and constitutional wrench. And for what? To what end? How would we be better? We’d need some elected figurehead so it would be president fuck knows. Ed sheeran? President Mister Tumble off of CBBC?
It’s just never going to happen. Even if republican sentiment went over 50% people would look at the pointless chaos and say Nah
I would agree, but then I look at the Brexit vote. You can argue about whether being in or out was better and whether having monarchy or republic is better, but either way there's a fair bit of pain changing it. So you'd better be sure that the alternative is better. That was a chunk of my remain vote and would make me hesitant if there was a vote to rejoin in the near future. Yet it happened.
Destroying the monarchy would be an emotional convulsion that would make Brexit look like the great Hertfordshire earthquake of 2013
I can only see it happening if we were horribly conquered in a war or some such utter catastrophe
Hardly.
Brexit fucked the British economy, wrecked travel and stoked culture wars.
Abolishing the monarchy would be a total 'meh' for most people. It would make zero difference to our lives, except lighten the mood.
“Wrecked travel”
Er, OK. I’ve just come directly from the USA to Turkey (with a stopover in Munich). I am now staring at my raki wondering whether to eat more pistachios. I’m sailing to Greece in a day or two. And In about ten days I will smoothly go on from there
For someone who is big on world travel you don’t know much about travel
Brexit made it slightly harder to get into Schengen but that's about it really.
No, it took away the legal right to live, work, study and travel freely at will in around 30 European countries. But, to be fair, most people will just notice the extra queues in airports and seaports.
Strange. I still manage to live, work and travel around the EU quite nicely thankyou. I am too busy for the study bit at the moment. Apart from a couple of extra bits of paper, working inside the EEA is no harder now than it was 5 years ago.
If you are a UK citizen, you cannot now just move from, say, Norway to Sweden to live and work. You now need the permission of the Swedish government and must fulfil the criteria they set for non-EU/EEA citizens to stay in their country. That never used to be the case. But, as I say, this will not have an impact on most people. They'll just spend longer in queues.
Personally I am all in favour of complete freedom of movement for everyone from anywhere - something even the most ardent of Europhiles seem to be strangely averse to. But on a practical level, the actual work involved in going to live or work in Norway, France, Italy, Spain or anywhere else in the EU is no worse than it was before. It is a bit more paperwork. Hardly the end of the world.
That depends on the country and what you want to do. You can't just hop on an Easyjet and go get a bar job for the summer in Spain anymore, for example. Like the UK, many EU countries will have salary bands for non-EU/EEA workers and income requirements for those who want to settle. Again, Spain does. For example, if you want to retire there now you need to prove an income of around €2150 per month for the first individual, plus another €500 or so for a partner and any dependents. On top of that you have to pay health insurance.
Correct - although I think there are signs from Portugal of some relaxation going on there. Anecdotally there are signs in Spain of many second homers selling up and clearly the new arrivals will slow down. It remains to be seen what Spain will do if the property market stall badly again. The growth from Belgium, etc. will not fill the gap.
Comments
Hopefully it passes for you before long, the worst of my symptoms were over within 48 hours.
Your point is a real world fallacy.
Actually living and working in another country - earning a living rather than spending your holiday savings - is 'real immersion'. You are nothing more than a fancy tourist pretending you understand a country because you know the waiter at the local restaurant by name.
It’s notable that for all the supposed benefits of FPTP, the Conservative Party uses a different system to elect its leader, the House of Lords uses a different system to fill its hereditary peer vacancies, and the UK government introduced a different system when faced with the challenges of Northern Ireland and another when re-building German democracy after the war.
A majority of those who voted for a party is not all of those who voted for the party and would not generally be enough to win an election.
If we guess that 60% of 2010 Lib Dems and 60% of 2010 Tories (a strong majority of both) were quite happy about it then that's just under 36% of the vote not a majority of it.
Unless a coalition is agreed before the election (like Australia's "Coalition") adding up its votes afterwards is a fallacy.
Lab 54%
Con 22%
LD 11%
Grn 6%
Ref 3%
Rest of South
Con 41%
Lab 29%
LD 14%
Grn 9%
Ref 5%
Midlands and Wales
Con 42%
Lab 38%
LD 8%
Grn 5%
PC 3%
Ref 2%
North
Lab 45%
Con 31%
Grn 9%
LD 6%
Ref 4%
Scotland
SNP 51%
Con 18%
Lab 16%
LD 8%
Grn 6%
(YouGov/The Times; Sample Size: 1707; Fieldwork: 5-6 May 2022)
The English crown can be plausibly traced back to about the 6th or 7th century AD. The Queen is a provably direct descendant of Alfred the Great
I’ve not knowingly had COVID-19. I remember getting swine flu in the last respiratory disease pandemic. That was very unpleasant…
exhausts which drive people mad, causes me no more pain than your astonishing new angst re the institution of the British monarchy. To be honest
And here we are 25 years later heralding King George and Queen Camilla and of course the commissioning of the Royal Yacht Boris Johnson.
If I am wrong I am afraid I won't be around to congratulate you on your soothsaying.
The monarchy was there for centuries before the Queen and will be there centuries after she dies. She was a reasonably good monarch but the monarchy is far more than her
Ie has there ever been a reliable poll which showed “abolishing the monarchy” as the wish of 50% or more?
Genuine question. Maybe during the death of Diana spasm? I doubt it, but it would be fascinating, if so
The selection of the candidates is a different matter.
More than 50% of voters voted in 2010 for a party that actually had a voice in government. Is that worse than the ~40% (lower in later Blair years, of course) that normally have the party they voted for having a say in government? How many 2015 Conservative voters voted for a May-led government? How many 2017 Conservative voters voted for a Johnson-led government?
One could probably go through manifesto commitments and calculate the % delivery by e.g. % of promises from manifesto delivered x share of vote. I suspect the 2010 government would do OK on that.
But it's not Brexit, it's Covid, the war in Ukraine and the Labour Party, I hear the Brexiteer cry. Anyway enjoy!
And I speak as a selfish wanker, I’ve just never had the desire to make the lives of my fellow humans that bit more miserable with a modified exhaust
While the Prince Regent George IVth was then a pretty awful monarchy the institution survived (Charles is bound to be better than him) and Edward VIIth was a better than expected King for his short 9 year reign
Also Leon knows only full well that the Brexit debate was about more than 2nd homes
Republicans are generally miserable socialists in the UK with a few exceptions like TSE
* double you… I know there are at least a dozen but Whatever…
That may break the chain of genetic descent (not that I see anything wrong with hereditary positions passing to, say, adopted children personally).
The only alternative being a non entity ceremonial president nobody has heard of or a grand imperial President Johnson or Blair more likely given our status which will be more than enough to keep it as it is part of our culture
Of course sooner or later it'll start again..
Of course you are quite right. 😉
All I am saying I that my family has a provable paper record going back to Maud Ingelric, the concubine of William 1 and alleged descendent of Alfred, and mother of one strand of the Peverells
As you rightly say, the rates of bastardy mean this direct link is at least questionable. But then we are all directly descended from julius ceasar and genghis khan, are we not? We just can’t prove it
The documented paper link is the genuinely interesting thing. Came as a total surprise to my family, some of whom went from militant Cornish working class-ness (grandsons of tin miners!!) to affecting airs and graces (we are, after all, the descendants of Athelstan and Rollo!) in about two days
In the latest poll, 18 to 24 year olds favour republicanism, all other age groups retain
Running on an abolishionist manifesto would at the moment lose them any election on its own.
I think Clegg chose him, as Clegg was given the ability to choose a certain number of SoS and Ministers.
https://twitter.com/InfoResist/status/1523981032650903555
Persuading the rest of the country to adopt your position will be like persuading Malaga holiday makers to become breatharians
But at the time, 1820sd etc, the law was quite clear on bastardry, etc. So that's the divine right and the chain of inheritance broken, and we end up with a rather odd reality TV crew.
Things might not be going as well for Ukraine as we all (well, perhaps all) hope. The next few days might show whether Russia makes a breakthrough in Donbass and on the south coast.
Fingers crossed for Ukraine!
And, BTW, that mother line can be a thing on which much hinges. Where would our beloved queen be without Katherine Swynford, sister in law of Chaucer, or Margaret Beaufort, who may well be the only mother at 13 years old also to found a Cambridge College.
A language barrier is in practice a far bigger barrier to living and working in another country than any administrative hurdles.
Just pointing out that Applicant's 'zero' comment was nonsense.
And yet inheritance of crown and estate is through the male line, so it's not enough to be descended from mediaeval king's daughter x through mum or ggggmum. One also has to be descended through the male line to inherit the crown (until the very recent law changes). So ...
I've called you tipsy, you've called me traitor....seems about right
It wasn't stupidly loud, and one generally refrained from flooring it in residential areas in the small hours.
What is the etiquette here? I’m flattered by it, at my advanced age, I’m also slightly drunk on raki.
Here’s a picture of my nuts
Perhaps he wants to go to the loo.
I am in a hotel aimed at closeted British gays in Hetero marriages
😶
Travel to an EU country is more difficult than 3 years ago, but more of the difference is because of silly covid rules than because of slightly longer queues at the border.
The Scottish local elections were in line with what I expected voteshare wise for SNP and Labour (I predicted SNP 35% Lab 23%) although the SNP profited a lot more than I expected in seats from the Tory collapse.
Also lib dems will be very happy and more confident about holding their 4 seats now with boundary changes even Caithness.
The Tories did terribly although are still likely to hold Banff and Buchan and the 3 south of Scotland seats.
Others found much of their paperwork no longer relevant. There were some arguments!
I didn't say that zero people supported it.