https://www.politico.eu/article/queen-elizabeth-death-plan-b...
It's mind-boggling to me to think about how long 70 years of reign actually is. How many world leaders she has seen come and go. How much the world changed since then.
But seriously, this is a momentous day for Britain and the world. She was a titan of public life, known to billions. The world will never be the same without her. I don't know what these means for Britain but I expect it will be quite destabilising.
May she rest in peace. Long live the king!
Winston Churchill born in 1874 and Liz Truss born in 1975 were her first and last Prime Ministers.
Hearing "The King" in this context will take a long time getting used to.
"Whoever had created humanity had left in a major design flaw. It was its tendency to bend at the knees.”
Like the first radio stations had just started broadcasting when she was born, now we're all discussing her passing on a communications network that connects the entire globe. Possibly some of us while on flights from one side of the world to the other.
Anthony Eden (1955–57)
Harold Macmillan (1957–63)
Alec Douglas-Home (1963–64)
Harold Wilson (1964–70)
Edward Heath (1970–74)
Harold Wilson (1974–76)
James Callaghan (1976–79)
Margaret Thatcher (1979–90)
John Major (1990–97)
Tony Blair (1997–07)
Gordon Brown (2007–10)
David Cameron (2010–16)
Theresa May (2016–19)
Boris Johnson (2019–22)
Liz Truss (2022 (two days ago) - current)
Quite the reign! Can't help but feel a bit sad really.
Is there another monarch alive with this many subjects?
Definitely destabilising.
I suspect a collective mourning and unity of the country followed closely by civil unrest the likes of which hasn't been seen in living British memory.
She was fighting fascist and Nazis before your parents were even born
(For context, this politician's ability to keep outliving his peers is a local running joke.)
Rest in peace.
Telegraphy had allowed current news to rapidly flow around the globe for decades.
>>Queen Elizabeth II doesn’t even have a driver’s license. As Queen, she doesn’t need one
Didn't know that either.
Next day, all the news in my country were mentioning the death as breaking news. My mind was blown over how I knew about this very important event the night before Mexico TV broke the news.
May the Queen rest in Peace.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_heade...
It will be very interesting to see how the population J curve flatlining affects global society. We live in interesting times.
(credit for observation goes to Matt Glassman)
They were born without electricity, and everything it brought, and without cars or planes, and they lived to have pretty much all modern comfort and watch a man on the Moon on TV.
It feels like a minor part of our personal history died. I definitely feel saddened, even if I don't have a connection with royalty.
A list, British Kings & Queens - by Length of Reign: https://britroyals.com/reigned.asp
These two women take the two top spots.
By the way, in the otherwise completely unremarkable hobby-writer webnovel "Monroe" (https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/35398/monroe) the queen was a - very popular - side character. After the introduction of "magic" in our universe she got her youth back and started killing monsters using armor and huge sword used by her ancestors hundreds of years earlier, in a sword and magic and levels fantasy universe. The author kept writing chapters about this initially not very important side character after it turned out a lot of readers found the Queen returning to youth and becoming a sword fighting and magic throwing monster killer at least as if not more appealing than following the story's actual main character.
Sample chapter where she appears (look for "queen", it's down the middle of this chapter): https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/35398/monroe/chapter/84715...
Seems like Scotland is going to go independent, and if Scotland do Wales will only be a matter of time so may as well just can it now?
If you start counting what we'd usually call dictators, there definitely are bigger ones. The monarch/dictator line gets a little blurry and subjective/political I believe.
It's also true that she cannot be prosecuted for any crime except that of treason against the British people, but that's contestable. Since crimes are prosecuted in her name.
Mary I, Elizabeth I, Mary II (joint monarch with Willam III), Anne, Victoria, Elizabeth II.
Australia had an example of this where the Governor General (the Queen's representative in the Australian government) sacked the government and formed a caretaker governmen tin the 1970s.
The American system of relying on centuries of tenuous interpretation of a fairly short document just isn't as much of an improvement as you think.
The Australian constitution allows for the Governor General to have "reserve powers" without specifying what they are.
Ultimately all these systems rely on trust.
It's wild to think the Queen began her reign with having weekly chats with Winston Churchill all the way up to appointing Liz Truss just this week. Her father fought in World War I. She lived through World War II. It's wild to think about.
It's also wild to consider the Queen never had an exepctation of ruling. An abdication caused that to happen. The happiest and freest time of her life may well have been living on Malta prior to that, living a fairly normal life with her husband and young family.
Institutions exist to protect the people, not the institutions themselves. Never forget that.
I don't think so. My grandmother was born in 1900 and died in 2003. Cars, airplanes, electricity, radio, TV, computers, space ships, etc..., all were invented or became commonplace in her lifetime. Queen Elizabeth was born between the birth years of my parents, who didn't remember the "horse and buggy days".
You don’t get to become a PM by playing nice.
I used to take comfort in the idea that all things pass in time, now not so much. Probably because I realised that includes everyone I love, and myself!
I’ve no great love for the monarchy, but this is certainly the end of an era in British public life and likely in UK international relations - I can’t see the commonwealth nations welcoming King Charles as their new head of state.
And it is weird, there are some things you just never expect to change. I’m hardly a spring chicken, but Queen Elizabeth was not only there my entire life, but Queen far enough into the past before I was born to have interacted with historical figures (like Churchill).
* Matilda (Rarely listed)
* Jane (1553 for 9 days)
* Mary I (1553-1558)
* Elisabeth I (1558-1603)
* Mary II (1689-1694, joint with William III)
* Anne (1702-1714)
* Victoria (1837-1901)
* Elisabeth II (1952-2022)
A throne is never empty. The second Elizabeth died, Charles became king.
Elizabeth nor Charles are claiming devine right. They are a unfiying vestige of times past, providing as she did a human constant, an embodiment of the Commonwealth.
So long as their heredity isn't overtly providing them the ability or write or enforce law, it does not seem an affront to democracy.
At current continual growth rates (assuming the decline comes to a dead stop and remains steady), we will see 10 billion people late 2044.
If the decline of the last 10 years continues indefinitely, humanity would go extinct around 3913.
The Monarch of Canada is a ceremonial position. The Monarch's representative (the Governor General) is appointed by the Prime Minister and has no real power (see: the King-Bing Affair for legal precedent), and therefore could technically be done by anyone from anywhere (even beyond the grave). Politically speaking, absolutely nothing would have to change. The Monarch's effective power in our political system would go from basically zero to literally zero, thus eliminating an avenue for potential abuse of power that we risk by keeping a living Monarch as head-of-state. We could achieve this without having to re-open difficult constitutional questions. Traditionalist Canadian institutions with "Royal" in their names (Mounted Police, Army, Airforce, etc) would not have to change their names or branding. Heck, we wouldn't even have to change the designs on our money. Literally nothing would change except closing a loop-hole (albeit a very low-risk one) for potential power abuse in our political system.
The only down side is that smug know-it-alls can say "actually Canada is not a democracy, it's a Constitutional Necrocracy"
They represent a "superior bloodline" only if you have a chip on your shoulder.
I always remember this letter she wrote in a old copy of Burke's Peerage, on why she was banning the use of foreign titles.
"As chaste women ought not to cast their eyes on any other than their own husbands, so neither ought subjects to cast their eyes upon any other prince than him whom God hath set over them. I would not have my sheep branded with another man's mark; I would not have them follow the whistle of a strange shepherd." -Queen Elizabeth II 1926 - 2022
God save the Queen. And protect us all from strange shepherds.
It is remarkable how much the Queen's standing has improved during the time since that song (1977). My (UK) family are (as far as I know) staunch republicans, but the last couple of decades have seen all of us soften our disgust with the monarchy as Elizabeth represented it. We might still want the whole concept destroyed, but there is nothing close to the vehemence of Johnny Rotten (Lydon)'s lyrics from that song.
Nevertheless, that is how a bunch of people felt in 1977, and as our memories become even more gilded and rose goggled now that she has died, it may be worth remembering those feelings too:
God save the queen / The fascist regime / They made you a moron / A potential H bomb / God save the queen / She's not a human being / and There's no future / And England's dreaming
These days, I think even us staunch republicans/anti-monarchists would begrudgingly admit that "She could have been worse" and that she actually was a human being.
Maybe Charles will have the guts to end it all, but it doesn't seem likely.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles,_King_of_the_United_Ki...
I wouldn't assume anyone to be as bold as Mr Cromwell was.
I agree on the idea of dropping the monarchy on a high though, as long as we go for a presidential system similar to Ireland rather than the USA...
The Commonwealth of Nations an association of countries, but the Commonwealth of Nations does not control the government of any member country (even ceremonially). India and Pakistan are members of the Commonwealth of Nations, but are not Commonwealth Realms.
A book by Robert J. Gordon from 2015, "The Rise and Fall of American Growth," goes through this in great and fascinating detail. The life of an everyday American in 1870, starting off with the chamber pot and ending with an early bedtime by candlelight, was hard to even imagine by 1940. As he lays it out , life in that year would be familiar to us: toilets and plumbing, mass media via radio & hardcopy webpage (i.e. newspapers), worldwide communication from home (telephone), refrigeration, etc.
This includes all nobility and royalty titles.
Historically and traditionally, nobles are/were the owners of the land. Shoddy job they've done at taking care of the environment. Overpowered by the industrialists, the new ruling hegemonic class (since the aftermath of WWII); who have been clever to stay out of the public view, unlike these historical noble and royal icons.
Arguably it's not particularly different now than, say, 1995 - 2000, which is the half decade of web search indexes (AltaVisa = 1995) and banner ads (1998 = DoubleClick IPO).
Travel, media, appliances, transportation, Internet, perhaps even music and fashion, haven't as fundamentally changed since then.
If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
While Elizabeth has CHOSEN to not use these powers much, any future monarch can. Just look at the U.S. in the last 6 years to see what happens when a country relies more on historical norms rather than law.
However, I have to confess that to whenever I hear that someone aged 90+ (80+, even) died, I don't really feel sad. Actually, I feel an urge to praise this person's achievements, as I'm aware we are all mortals, and death is unavoidable.
I prefer to rejoice in how much this person has witnessed throughout her life, how she had enough health to keep her wits until the end, how she could raise children, grandchildren, and even know her great-grandchildren.
What else can we humans aspire? Living forever is out of question. As soon as we are born, we are bound to die. So it's a pretty good life to be able to reach a good age, knowing that all our dear ones are set for life, raising families of their own, and living their lives the way that is best suited for them.
This is not just theory. I felt this when my grandfather died, aged 95, when my grandmother died aged 96, and when other people I knew died old enough for their deaths not really come as a surprise.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_longest-reigning_monar...
(2022 - 1952) / (2022 - 1789) = 0.30
You're right if one starts counting from the declaration of independence, however, yielding 28.5%.
She considered company websites as fancy brochures, but thought individual access to almost free global publishing was astonishing.
She claims fealty by right of blood, reigned as the crown of an extraordinarily cruel empire, and frequently interceded in the democratic government of Britain to protect her private interests.
However, there is also the historical idea of the monarch needing to be a good one and keep up their end of the bargain. Interesting times ahead!
Never forget that Beth used all of those skills to further enrich herself and her family, and protecting her pedofile son.
And, I think, show-me-the-achievements represents a misunderstanding of the role of the monarch in the British government and British culture. It's not comparable to the Prime Minister or the US President, for example.
Brexit is a disaster, Prince Charles is not really a charming person, Scotland wants to leave Great Britain and join the EU, Northern Ireland is split as ever.
God save the king.
It works because she receives extensive training to be apolitical. (And if she is political, there are repercussions.)
Well this is precisely what is about to happen. There may be some hand wringing articles in major newspapers about whether the Royal head of state is still relevant, appropriate, blah blah blah, but there is approximately zero chance that anything will change in reaction to this news.
> Australia had an example of this where the Governor General (the Queen's representative in the Australian government) sacked the government and formed a caretaker governmen tin the 1970s.
Australia was ruled by a Liberal/Country coalition from the 1940s to the end of 1972. Finally the workers of Australia elect a Labor PM, and he was thwarted for three years and then removed at the behest of a hereditary monarch thousands of miles away. That sounds like abuse, but not of the type you mean.
One thing is for sure. She did leave a mark. Winston God damn Churchill was her first time minister! When I will be old and have grandchildren, I will tell my grandchildren how I became a British citizen. And when they’ll ask me when, I’ll tell them during the reign of The Queen. And they will know who I mean.
God rest her soul.
That being said, given the geopolitical situation, I would not want to be responsible for the sitting arrangement of international dignitaires at the funeral.
(In a fantasy book, it would be the "perfect" occasion for every one to meet on "sacred ground", observe a truce, and get so drunk that unexpected settlements get found.
Sadly, we don't live in a fantasy book.)
Still, I do really respect the person and work that Elizabeth II did thorough her entire life, I really believe she helped improve the world with her limited power.
Many purely democratic countries - mine included - would be so lucky to have her as the head of state.
Why do we feel we need to worship these people, be it royalty or celebrities? They are just people, like you and me who happen to be famous.
People are dying in Gaza too, maybe spare a tear for them.
"The Queen died peacefully at Balmoral this afternoon.
The King and The Queen Consort will remain at Balmoral this evening and will return to London tomorrow."
Both of my grandmothers died at 91 without much warning. Cherish your time with your elders, and don't procrastinate a visit.
I don't know, living to anywhere between 1'000 to 1'000'000 years of age would surely be quite the interesting experience, lots of things to learn, lots of things to experience. Such numbers might seem humorous but in the grand scheme of things that's still nothing, given the age of Earth and all that.
I get the feeling that if humans approached aging and death as an engineering problem, in a few centuries to a few thousands of years a viable solution might just spring up.
If nothing else, then fighting aging and everything that comes with it is definitely worth it, so the last decades of your life don't consist of being trapped in a degrading flesh prison and possibly suffering from ailments that will take away your ability to be a person (e.g. Alzheimer's or other neurodegenerative conditions, or serious health conditions due to aging).
Of course, most people don't like to think about their own mortality or consider it (or diseases that may affect them later in life) a serious problem, much less a solvable one. For some religion is enough, for others ignorance does nicely. It feels like we might benefit from more focus on this and research in this direction.
Realistically, one just has to take care of themselves as best as they can and spend their time well.
> Actually, I feel an urge to praise this person's achievements...
Regardless, this is admirable. A life well lived is one worth celebrating, with its many achievements and its impact on the people around them.
[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/health-coronavirus-britain-q...
Since the Governor General must have real power, it follows that the Monarch must have real power regarding the appointment of the Governor General - rejecting the Prime Minister's request to dismiss or appoint a Governor General when this is clearly an attempt to fill the position with someone who will allow the Prime Minister to act non-democratically.
A dead person will not be able to fulfill this role.
> She remains the only female member of the royal family to join the military, and is the only living head of state to serve in WWII.
Personally speaking, I definitely respect her for that.
Dying in your thirties or forties? “Tragic.” Fifties? “Such a shame.” Sixties? “Too soon.” Seventies? “A good run.” Eighties? “A life well lived.” Nineties? “Hell of a ride.”
I’m pretty sure that (for instance) Australia was just hanging on until we could be sure she was gone, the current government have already planned a referendum on it in a few years if they get a second term.
(I say ‘we’, I am a relatively recent British migrant, and not a citizen yet)
"Soap opera situations" seems like a gentle way to put it. Several of her family members have been accused of serious crimes, and associated with some very nasty people. For years they were shielded by their association with her.
At least this is true for Canada. I have to imagine it’s very similar for the rest of the Commonwealth. Every instance of involvement that wasn’t ceremonial has been doing precisely what the Prime Minister has requested of her via the Governor General, such as dissolving parliament. Which I guess makes that ceremonial too.
"In many [Commonwealth countries] constitutions state that the Queen, specifically, is the head of state. In these countries, constitutions will need to be amended to refer to her successor. In countries such as Jamaica, where there is a strong independence movement, and Belize, these constitutional changes will also require a referendum, according to Commonwealth experts. This is expected to bring about a moment of political peril for the new monarch, who, after Barbados became independent in 2021, could face the loss of another prominent part of the Caribbean Commonwealth."
I believe it is in the tens of billions when a monarch dies (changes of money, ceremonies, etc). Dude is in his 70s.
Save your country a bit of money unless you want to foot the bill for maybe 10 years of being King.
I suspect that you don't realize how bizarre this phrasing is for the vast majority of the world.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgQpcC-ne64
Given that all the countries with more population than that have a constitution and not a sovereign, it's safe to say yesterday she was the most prolific monarch alive.
It’s technically easier for a muslim to become king/queen than for a Catholic.
Catholics are the only ones who are banned by law to become English royals.
I have been a republican for most of my life and don't like to have her name in my passport. Nevertheless the first time we brought our young son to the UK we had a picture of him in front of Buckingham Palace (and I have the same picture of myself at that same location).
Having an unelected, unaccountable individual who leeches off the tax system: this is anachronistic but fair, it's about balance of powers, its an important part of our cultural heritage, it doesn't even cost that much why do you care.
Having strong founding principles and rights that are cautiously amended: this is tenuous, this goes too far, free speech too extremist, why bad man own gun.
This story is on topic because it's a major historical event and history has always been on topic here. If it doesn't produce an intellectually curious response in you, you're welcome to find something else that does—there are plenty of other things to read—but in that case please refrain from posting.
Positive-empty comments aren't substantive either, but as pg pointed out way back when HN was getting started (https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html), those are benign. The comments we need to avoid are the malignant ones.
Edit: by positive-empty I just meant comments like these:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32770030
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32769786
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32769037
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32769019
I'm not telling you guys to be royalists! I'm just asking you not to post crap comments, which this thread was filled with when I first saw it. We don't care what you're for or against, we just care about people using HN as intended.
Edit 2: I think the problem is that this comment has outlived its usefulness at the top of the thread because the bottom of the barrel comments have mostly been moderated away, whether by user flags or by us. I'm going to unpin this and mark it offtopic now. Please don't post any more bottom-of-barrel comments!—and if you see some, please flag them.
"People who are not expecting to cry will cry."
Looks like they were right!
Interesting read by the way which touches on many aspects.
[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/mar/16/what-happens...
Queen Elizabeth presided over its dismantlement. No famines occurred during her reign and no rebellions violently suppressed.
The Empire was cruel, but it's unfair to wash her with the cloth of empire.
People like to make out her life was easy and that it's not fair that she inherited such a privileged position, but I think the exact opposite. Her life seemed like living hell to me. Every day for the last 70 years she's had to serve this largely ungrateful country, and she did so without complaint. Even in her 90s she took her duties extremely seriously, and I respect the hell out of her for that.
It was only a couple of days ago she invited our new PM to Balmoral Castle to form a government. She was clearly looking weak and it's been no secret that she's been struggling to fulfil her duties as Queen for a while, but even just two days before her death at the age of 96 she put on the performance that was expected of her. And she did this practically every day of her life.
RIP. I doubt anyone will ever live up to her legacy. Despite all the problems I have with the royal family, I couldn't feel more pride that she was our Queen.
By all means let's have a reasoned discussion about the legacy of the empire, but this is not the place.
Would our minds scale to timescales that vast? Would we just start forgetting things as time went on?
Yet, likewise to me the Queen always earned the respect shown her. Colouring the establishment by the actions of some is just too black and white thinking for me.
That kind of improvement benefits poor people.
It’s like the opposite of tariffs or sanctions: the people at the top are unaffected.
Meanwhile my daughter is 6 months old and will likely live to see a half a dozen monarchs.
[0]https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=%28June+2%2C+1953+to+no...
I'd vote no, because then we'd end up with people like Boris Johnson or Liz Truss as our head of state(!!) The monarch nowadays is important for what they prevent. The Queen stood in the way of someone like Boris getting access to all the 'bling' of state. A big shift would need to occur before we could become a sensible republic, particularly in dismantling a lot of the ceremonial aspects of British life. Perhaps even a collective head of state like the Swiss could work.
leaving a trade bloc (Brexit) is hardly notable by comparison
I think it's a very understandably human urge to hold up someone for emulation. The only odd thing about a noble class in that sense is that we decide the job of "role model and leader" should be hereditary.
But I think it's a very understandably human reaction to feel sorrow when someone who millions of people have invested so much energy into making the best person that can be is still mortal.
Harry and Megan are capitalizing on their circumstances, as are William and Kate.
One has to remember she took upon her shoulders a lot (essentialy from WWII to everything we've all gone through in recent memory, plus a lot of responsibility we can only guess at), and yet, by all accounts[1], was an amazing human being.
[1] https://twitter.com/davidmackau/status/1567894552744271872
This monarch and the following one will also witness great changes and they may play some role in it.
To me this is a demonstration of power of conditioning and media management.
Your emotions is a result of imparted and perceived.
In practice, pretty much any topic where people can remain civil is generally ok.
What are the empires you're comparing it against? To call it "extraordinary" makes the claim that its level of cruelty is substantially greater than the "ordinary" cruelty of other examples. Were the Russian, Japanese, Ottoman, and other 19th and early 20th century empires substantially less cruel than the British empire?
Not to mention, as other commenters point out Elizabeth was coronated during a period of decolonization, with India departing the empire less than a decade earlier and most of its colonies in Africa and Asia following suit over the next couple decades.
She was the last of the best, we'll see what comes next.
> A mix of June and 19th, Juneteenth has become a day to commemorate the end of slavery in America. Despite the fact that President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation was issued more than two years earlier on January 1, 1863, a lack of Union troops in the rebel state of Texas made the order difficult to enforce.
> Some historians blame the lapse in time on poor communication in that era, while others believe Texan slave-owners purposely withheld the information.
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/abolition-of-sla...
May she rest in peace.
- She ruled for 30% of the time since the American Revolution
- She oversaw the largest reduction of landholdings of any empire in the history of the world. Notable because it was also one of the most peaceful transitions in history -- Australia, Canada, South Africa, Israel, Egypt, etc.
- She oversaw the loss of Sterling the world reserve currency and the rise of another (the USD, EU).
she was still working (appointing ministers) on Tuesday
God Save the Queen
The succession is all men:
Charles (10 - 20 years of reign puts us in the 2030s)
William (30 - 50 years puts us between 2060 - 2080)
George (30 - 50 years puts us between 2120 - 2140)
The next possible female monarch is if George dies for some reason (passing onto Charlotte) or if George has a daughter first which would mean she'd take the throne well into the 2100s.
I'm not even British and find myself feeling likewise. The Queen has been a fixture for a long time (before my birth and even before my parent's birth as well). It is also probably because of Queen Elisabeth's story was somewhat moving. It will take some time to get used to King Charles III...
States that recognize the British monarch as head of state: 67 mil (UK) + 38 mil (Canada) + 26 mil (Australia) + 5 mil (New Zealand) + others less than mil people = 136+ mil
So pretty close, but this appears to be a correct statement.
A constitutional monarchy is an unreasonable construct, but its perseverance is a symbol of continuity and certainty in an existence that is so often chaotic and uncertain. It provides reassurance to many, and mutes the worst excesses of political turmoil. As long as it really stays out of the fray (and that's sadly not always been the case, with Elizabeth II, and it's likely her son will be even worse), then I don't have a problem with it. Like religion, I don't need it, you don't need it, but many do - and they might as well have it.
It may not be as big of a leap as no computers -> personal computers or no internet -> internet but I wouldn't say that the world is "not much different" than 2000.
Social media in particular has the potential to be extremely disrupting to society. There are things which seem possible that would have been unthinkable in 2000 like the fall of American democracy. And that sort of societal shift requires more than just the internet. It requires a hyper-online society which is enabled by smartphones and social media.
Anyways, it would be more surprising if the Commonwealth didn't lose a couple now and if a couple more didn't make plans for when Charles dies, which won't be all that long from now.
I wish Canada was one of those, but all I'm reasonably hoping for is that we drop monarch icons on our cash.
Unbelievable the history she was a witness to.
When you say "extraordinarily cruel" then maybe you refer to the 2,100,000 to 3,800,000 Bengals you starved to death
The murder of 13 people (the inciting incident of the troubles) by the British army is not exactly comparable; even taking into consideration the total losses during that time of 3,500~, hardly comparable at all.
In the 90s (the only era I can remember) things were quite different too: there was the whole hubub about Camilla who was (IMO unfairly) extensively vilified in the media, had private telephone conversations with Charles were leaked. I'm not sure that would happen today; or if it did, it would get considerably less attention. Then there was the whole bruhaha about Andrew and Fergie, and let's not even start about Diana.
Maybe today Kim Kardashian or whatnot have taken the place for the "gossip inclined". Or maybe I just don't pay as much attention to these things as I did back in the day. But it seems like reporting is completely different.
As for punk: that's basically intended to offend innit? I'm not sure if you can really tell the general mood of the country from punk.
I suspect there’s a strong biological reason we age and die. We compete against our children for the limited resources of our planet. Our genes need to recombine or else evolution stalls.
For now the only true path to immortality is through having children.
Counter-hypothetical: what if the Monarch decided to act against the Prime Minister and appoint a Governor General to act against their mandate? Both your hypothetical and mine are incidents of "bad-behaviour" going against norms to push agendas. We would prefer were that neither were possible. However in your hypothetical at least the person exhibiting "bad-behaviour" (the Prime Minister) has some mandate given that they were democratically elected. Whereas in my hypothetical the person exhibiting "bad-behaviour" is an inherited position held by someone in lives in a far-away place and may have only set foot in the nation they are meddling in a handful of times.
In either situation we're accepting the risk of bad-faith actors manipulating the structures of power, but if we ditch the Monarch, at least the person doing so is in someway accountable to the people. Harper was successfully able to dodge a confidence vote, but in the end he was ousted from power in a democratic process. I'd argue that's the better scenario.
European colonial power would have never left if they hadn't got into war of attrition with Hitlar.
British left their biggest colony India only when Indian soldiers revolted and they were too weak to crush it post WW2. It was simply not possible to rule after this incident.
I've never had strong views for or against the royal family but always felt genuine respect towards the Queen herself.
She always appeared to be a morally strong character who tried to do the right thing.
I always expected this would feel like a very strange moment when it finally arrived. I wasn't wrong.
Interesting there is no transition period or ceremony - he is just King.
A few years ago I looked into how much power she had and I was shocked. I was also shocked by how much that monarchy owns.
struck me as unfamiliar.
Nope, it’s been quite familiar to even someone several hundred years ago.
One clear advantage of monarchs that I can see, are that they have an incentive to grow and expand their tax base. That typically means long-term planning (but doesn't ensure it, which is a disadvantage the UK parliamentary system seems to mitigate).
There are lots of notable figures that have died recently (Gorbachev alone may have saved the world as we know it), that don’t get the same, almost pathological level of admiration. It’s not normal to break down crying because a person you never met died at age 97.. that’s hundreds of years of indoctrination, social, and religious manipulation at work.
That's probably not true. There's the Dalai Lama and Simeon II of Bulgaria, who were minors but at least Simeon surely remembers (his father died in suspicious circumstances, he had an unconstitutional regency, and then he was dethroned, expelled and spent his life in exile).
> Now that generation that remembered the horrors of fascism has mostly passed and we find ourselves in a period that seems to have many echos of the 1930s with a new rise of authoritarianism and fascism around the world
It's honestly infuriating that with the wealth of information available at everyone's fingertips so many people are so easily making the same mistakes as a century earlier.
It's quite a different context, however I felt sort of similar about John McCain, mostly for what he endured as a POW, and what he nevertheless went on to accomplish in politics.
Being in the Commonwealth doesn't mean "staying on" the British Empire - it just means belonging to a very, very loose trade block on which Britain temporarily exercised an outsized influence. Recent developments (like the inability of subsequent UK governments to replace Commonwealth leadership) have shown that even that influence has now gone. At this point the Commonwealth is little more than an administrative construct for trade-related issues.
1870-1970 (or about that range) probably would be bigger change. That would cover time from before commercial light bulbs to commercial computers[1] and man on the moon. Societally it would include WW1 and the series of Russian revolutions leading to wave of other revolutions in Europe[2], and major advances in Womens' suffrage[3] among other things.
[1] e.g. PDP-8 and S/360
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutions_of_1917%E2%80%9319...
[3] "The Representation of the People Act 1918 saw British women over 30 gain the vote. Dutch women won the vote in 1919, and American women on August 26, 1920, with the passage of the 19th Amendment" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women%27s_suffrage
Yes, but I don't think the gender-neutral titles are official quite yet!
Yes, the Queen took the throne at the twilight of the British Empire. But it was in the midst of the Malayan emergency, the Mau Mau uprising, the Suez crisis was on the horizon, and South Africa had just launched the apartheid regime. Those were all, in different ways, attempts to stamp out democratic independence. Britain didn't relinquish its sub-Saharan African and Caribbean territories until the 1960s. You cannot cleanly separate the Queen from the empire which she crowned.
I think what's "shocking" (not necessarily sad) thing about this is that she's been a presence for such a long time. Who here can remember a time from before Elizabeth II was the queen? She's been queen from before most people here were born and has always been present.
I don't think it's odd at all, in fact it's pretty normal when you look at a long stretch of history. I'd wager that heredity based monarchy is probably the most common form of regime.
I mean, that happens even in the short 70 years most people get.
Notably, without loosing their royal power over those landholdings.
Losing almost any former colony is not going to make the top ten list of problems for the new King and might solve a few problems.
(in the same way the United States absorbed the obligations and responsibilities of Great Britain in the 13 colonies)
(regardless, I got my dates wrong, I was thinking of Nice...)
I think that fact is absolutely incredible, and I'm just noticing how it works, the glimpses of feeling I get as I scroll news feed... images from real photos of the queen seamlessly woven in with flashes of scenes and emotions evoked from watching... Even emotional bits that I KNOW are not legit accurate/real.... My mind treats it all as one category anyway.
The show is an elegant testament to what fiction does, to portray a woman's epic coming of age and into the power and duty of something much bigger than her, across a century.
Our literature just doesn't have that grandness anymore, there are no literary novels by writers today about today that do this. Aesthetics there have changed in their scope somehow.
It's all on our film and tv technology to refresh these themes of responsibility, inner steeliness, honor, sacrifice, respectability etc... to make what's old new again.
I'm certain before the show I cared nothing, and after it, I care a lot.
If there is a Kingdom of God, I'm guessing God himself may be asking her for a tip or 2 right about now.
My only source is the show The Crown but I'm fairly certain her uncle abdicated the throne when she was still a child, putting her in line for the throne. It was not after she was married to Phillip.
I think even John Lydon has respect for the Queen nowadays. [1]
[1] https://www.loudersound.com/news/john-lydon-on-sex-pistols-g...
I'm particularly attached to leaders who make the best of a bad situation, in her case the retreat of the British Empire. I think courage in retreat is much more rare than courage in victory, and might bring more value to society.
My (our) relationship to Queen Elizabeth seems to stem less from the history or even events, and more from her extensive media depictions, mainly movies and series of late. Many of them focus on her as long-suffering: beset by crises she cannot really control, both emotional and political. Her stalwart response turns out to be the best available - at once non-intrusive, but pointing the way out. When she speaks, it is not to tell people what to do, or what is right and wrong, but to summon our better nature.
I understand this attachment may be seen as emotionally immature and even regressive. In her case, it seems benign. However, something like these sentiments underlies people's attachments to other leaders who seem disruptive to societies and companies.
Modeling heroes is in many ways deeper than even learning a trade, and yet we seem to leave it to chance. Can do better? Can we mourn Queen Elizabeth II without falling prey to false gods?
> The monarch and their immediate family undertake various official, ceremonial, diplomatic and representational duties. As the monarchy is constitutional, the monarch is limited to functions such as bestowing honours and appointing the prime minister, which are performed in a non-partisan manner. The monarch is also Head of the British Armed Forces. Though the ultimate executive authority over the government is still formally by and through the royal prerogative, these powers may only be used according to laws enacted in Parliament and, in practice, within the constraints of convention and precedent. The Government of the United Kingdom is known as His (Her) Majesty's Government.
I wasn't aware that the monarch appointed the prime minister, but here you have the last one the Queen made:
> Liz Truss has became Britain’s next prime minister after meeting with Queen Elizabeth II, who asked her to form a new government.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/9/6/uks-johnson-bows-out...
The Wikipedia article later notes that prime minister appointment appears to fall into the ceremonial category:
> The sovereign has the power to appoint the prime minister. In accordance with unwritten constitutional conventions, the monarch appoints the individual who commands the support of the House of Commons, usually the leader of the party or coalition that has a majority in that House. The prime minister takes office by attending the monarch in a private audience, and after "kissing hands" that appointment is immediately effective without any other formality or instrument.[15] The sovereign also has the power to dismiss the prime minister, but the last time this power was exercised was in 1834, when William IV dismissed Lord Melbourne; since then, prime ministers have only left office upon their resignation, which they are expected to offer to the monarch upon losing their majority in the House of Commons.
HN is NOT an unbiased, unaffiliated, open forum. They make no effort to hide that fact, but so many people here put it on a pedestal instead of understanding that it's just orange reddit with good moderation.
That doesn't sound right by an order of magnitude. The main "cost" would be the extra bank holiday, but that is difficult to quantify.
You mostly do a pretty good job of avoiding that, for which we're grateful, but on the other hand, (a) we have had to warn you about this before, and (b) this subthread is a classic generic flamewar tangent—just what we want to avoid on HN.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32769470.
I think there are probably a lot of people like me who, while anti monarchy in general, were not particularly anti-Elizabeth. However now that she’s passed I would quite like the whole thing to be further de-emphasised, de-legitimised and removed from any remaining levers of power, however ceremonial or theoretical, and any remaining state subsidy, palaces and lands to be taken into public ownership etc etc.
How many are of these opinions I am unsure.
The fact is the British foreign office had been trying to find ways to offload the islands on Argentina for ages. The British government felt they were an expensive nuisance that were an obstacle to better relations in the region. The Galtieri regime only invaded because they needed a boost in popularity. Negotiation is one thing, but military occupation quite another.
There is (or could have been) a legitimate discussion to be had about the history of control of the islands. Sure. But those who resort to pre-emptive military force, when facing no threat to themselves, have no business complaining when the resulting conflict goes against them. Suez is a good example of us learning that lesson the hard way.
That they can paint that as British Imperialism blows my mind.
In the grand scheme of things, Brexit and its consequences were much alike to what I imagine would happen were $STATE to leave the USA.
Isn't it without a doubt that Prince George is next in line? It would take quite a lot to displace him.
Technically there is no one who could authorize that split except the current monarch. I'd imagine things will continue just as they were
Put aside what you think about monarchies and royals and look at the actual person. She was completely dedicated to serving other people in the same way that the very best of our uniformed services are and it's why she gets so much respect from just about everyone.
In a way, it reminds me of musicians who aren't particularly known for their collectivism. I don't know for sure, but I can't imagine it's particularly fun to play the same song that made you famous in your twenties and play it every night for the next 50 years. A lot of them can't stand it and stop playing their old songs. Or stop touring all together.
This is kind of what the Queen has done but rather than just every night for an hour and a half, it's literally been every single day of her life. But she went to all those events and met all those people because even though it was the millionth time for her giving a medal to someone, it was the very first time for the other person receiving it. They were overjoyed getting to shake her hand and tell all their friends and family that they got to meet the Queen. And that's what she cared about.
She's done all this every day and not moaned once about it. Put yourself in her shoes. Yes, you get a fancy house and free money. But the life you have to live in exchange for it is not your own. You don't get to pursue your own individualist desires and dreams. All of those are put aside for your duties. At all times in public and most likely a lot of the time in public, you must act completely dignified. No emotional outbursts, you must be the rock that others lean on. You don't really get to retire, you just carry this on until you die.
There have been countless monarchs both in Britain and across the world who have not been up to the job. They've blamed others, shirked duties and abused their powers. But not this one. She really was the real deal.
She was a real queen, albeit with little power. What is a fake queen?
>Why do we feel we need to worship these people, be it royalty or celebrities?
Can you point to anybody worshipping her? Talking about a person or showing them respect is not worship.
>People are dying in Gaza too, maybe spare a tear for them.
Can people not do both?
Whether it's the most common form of government is unclear. In modern times, democracy is most common. I think what was most common historically might be a complicated question and changes in terms of how it's asked (in terms of distinct governments, total territory controlled, or total population loyal to?).
> Positive-empty comments aren't substantive either, but as pg pointed out way back when HN was getting started (https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html), those are benign
Pro status-quo bias. Monarchy isn't as relevant as it used to be but trusting the judgment and leadership of the elite is as relevant as ever and allowing positive-empty comments just reinforces that belief here. I guess that's just the sort of bias HN is ok with.
It's like wondering what 4chan thinks of this.
Ironically, Commonwealth is actually getting bigger. The last commonwealth games was surprisingly well attended and celebrated.
Let alone all of the Unionists are staunch monarchists and were tightly linked to government institutions.
I wasn't comparing anything to anything. You think that comparing The Troubles to bengal Famine, somehow excuses you from writing an obvious false sentence.
PS: Civil Unrest isn't Civil Unrest, when the army is literally shooting.
Monarchy is still the most common form of organization as well. For instance, every corporation is a monarchy with a board that acts as the king/queens court and executives that represent the remaining nobility. Same with Military arrangements. It's probably a reason that these forms of organization tend to dominate others, like collectives, etc. Strong leadership from the top will always be optimal. Of course, weak leadership from the top is fatal.
I'll add:
Consider there are 3 forms of organization:
Rule by 1, Rule by some, and Rule by many. These can be broken into 6 implementations, 2 for each form. Monarch/Tyrant, Aristocracy/Oligarchy, Democracy/Populism. There's interesting relationships between these 6 and what some historians believe are natural transitions from 1 to another: Monarch->Aristocracy->Democracy->Oligarchy->Populist->Tyrant
And yeah the British monarch's theoretical legal power is immense. For one thing the UK armed forces swear loyalty personally to the monarch, not to the government! The monarch could go to war with Parliament again and the military would be upholding their oath!
The late Queen was a woman of impeccable public ethics though. In some sense it's more admirable for a person who is not bound by the law to choose to follow it scrupulously, which she did.
In 70 years, the number of gaffes/crises linked to her person (rather than other members of her family) are few, perhaps the only dents were the Diana incident and the secret influencing of the law by the crown ("royal consent" and "royal assent" - e.g. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/feb/08/royals-vette...).
Hereditary absolute monarchy is the same thing, but for selecting heads of state. Who's in charge? The guy with the biggest army. What powers does he have? All of them. Who succeeds him when he dies? His firstborn. It's dead simple to implement, which made it an attractive solution in times before any semblance of mass communication. But in practice it means the quality of your head of state is totally detached from their actual talent at serving as head of state: the first guy in line was just good at leading an army, and the rest of his descendants are just randos who won the birth lottery. It's not a good solution unless you're willing to make loads of sacrifices in order to have the simplest system possible.
(And yes, of course, the UK is not currently an absolute monarchy, but you appeared to be asking in a general sense.)
Monarchy is not necessary hereditary. And replacing monarch with sovereign, doesn't change the fact that it's a monarchy.
And, of course, that centralization carries good and ill. At different points in time, it can be detrimental to centralize authority so. But even countries like the United States, which generally pride themselves on decentralized democratic rule, have various emergency powers abilities for wartime consolidation of authority behind the Executive (and President specifically).
Apart from that note, I agree with everything here.
Scots, welsh, the entire north of England, the working class all don’t feel that way.
If fact there’s probably only a small percentage of traditional elites who feel that way.
This is the broadcast she was referring to: https://youtu.be/VJI9LPFQth4
>the Sex Pistols GSTQ is a great song (also Anti-Nowhere Leagues 's "So F*king What!"..
I am against monarchies by principle.
Unfortunately the king/queen of England is also the Supreme Governor of the Church of England which goes against my principles as well since I am an atheist.
I do not wish ill will on the royal family, but as a humanist who believes that every man, woman and child born on this planet is equal in rights, I cannot accept nor promote a system of governance that deems certain people to be above others by simply being born in the right family.
I am sorry for the loss caused by her death and I feel sad for her loved ones but that loss should not stop people form pushing for the creation of genuine republics in the countries within the commonwealth.
I’m not saying she was perfect, but describing her reign as extraordinarily cruel is a real stretch.
I really don’t want to talk about the troubles but if I’m going to be a dick I will mention that the IRA intentionally targeted civilians, I don’t think the military at that time are as black as they’re painted. It’s all villains I’m afraid.
Not sure how much truth there was to all that but it was a family member who told me and they follow this stuff a lot more than I do. It sounds plausible at least, and if that's how he does things, and then William becomes King, the monarchy might stick around for a while longer yet.
I believe that she could have handed off power to her son sooner, but I understand that she was probably torn on that. She's probably the best monarch we could have hoped for, and any future monarch won't be able to live up to her standard.
With my grandfather, who was 101, someone did a blood test and told us he was going to die very soon. A few hours later, when I visited, he was pushing his wheelchair around and pestering the social worker about all of his funeral plans. It honestly reminds me of the end of the movie Zardoz. (He had his funeral planned for years.)
He died four days later.
- At least in the US, Canadian diplomatic residences are owned by her. Where I live, the owner of the consulate general's home is listed in public records as "Her Majesty the Queen Right Canada".
Here's another example from a few years ago:
> Charlie Zelle confirmed Wednesday he has purchased a five-bedroom, five-bathroom Minneapolis lakeshore home that has been the official residence of the Canadian consulate general.
> Records show Charles and Julie Zelle paid $1.65 million US for the property, with the seller listed as "Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth."
https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/canada-diplomatic-residence-so...
The "I'm not a racist, but" speech.
You're also missing a few words in your rant here.
I think the grandparent comment’s author forgot to insert a “British” in front of monarch.
Edit:
> [Simeon II] is, along with the current Dalai Lama, one of only two living people who were heads of state from the time of World War II. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simeon_Saxe-Coburg-Gotha
However, Elizabeth II did not become Queen until well after WW2.
(Removed erroneous statement about the Swedish king being old enough to remember WW2; he was born in 1946.)
In a fast changing world she was a constant, always doing her best. It's like a small Light Beacon in the world had been turned off.
Years ago, I remember reading about how her family remained during WW2 while it was being bombed, against what was certainly “sensible” advice, and sharing in the hardship that everyone else was going through.
Even generations and culturally separated, this sort of shared hardship left a lasting impression on me; and she certainly represented the best of the UK.
Downside: lots of bizarre complexities, bits of dead code, stuff that works as long as nobody touches it etc. Upsides: it's really stable.
I think being a monarch as prominent as Queen Elizabeth is a hard job mostly because there is very little you can do right and a whole lot you could do wrong. She avoided doing much wrong for her reign and I think she was an ideal monarch for the modern democratic age.
This doesn't really address why anyone is "ungrateful"...
And I realised that's exactly what she was. She was iconic in the religious sense - an embodied icon of a nationalist religion.
This suddenly made a lot of things about the current state of the UK much clearer.
There is no practical sense in which she was genuinely "grandma of the nation." That personification goes one way only - from the population to what psychologists would call a parental projection.
Objectively she paid almost no attention to her subjects, except for a tiny number who were socially or financially notable.
She may have been witty and personable socially - as reported by many people - and perhaps the most interesting thing about her as an individual is that she trained as a mechanic during the war, taking delight in a job that women didn't usually do, and continued that interest through her life.
But I find the crypto-religious elements of the UK's (actually mostly just England's) relationship with her very unsettling.
And I genuinely believe she could have done far more for the people of the UK than she did. Especially recently.
Monarchy is a strange thing. When I flew to Bali on a Thai airline in the 90s a fair few pages of the inflight magazine were full of carefully manicured praise for the talents of the reigning monarch.
It seemed bizarre and alien. But over time I realised the UK has a similar relationship with its monarchy.
And where Heads of State are nominally expected to work for the Greater Good, it seems to be assumed that monarchs do the same, mostly by modelling social ease and extreme privilege.
This is all quite odd. I'm sure there are reasons for it - possibly evolutionary - and I suspect they're not obvious.
Be very careful what you wish for. As a French, living under the rule of an elected monarch who changes often, but doesn't answer to anyone during their reign, there is something extraordinary to see the British PM bow to the Queen, and do that (I think?) every week.
If there are any disasters, making a 9 year old next in line to the throne voluntarily sounds like it.
So it would go all the way to Beatrice at number nine on the list. Most people don't even know who she is, so I think they'd probably call it quits.
She could have done so much more, spoken out against so many atrocities, in her own family and Britain's role in the world in general. She could have attempted to use the last vestiges of monarchical power - likely ending the monarchy in the process - and stopped Brexit, or this turmoil that has ensued because of it.
But she chose not to do any of this. Because the "prestige" of this disgusting tradition was worth more to her than the lives of any of the citizens she "rules" (symbolically) over.
It would have been hard to have had a worse monarch than her.
All kinds of republicans(anti-monarchists, not American republicans) are content.
Europeans civilization are 1000s of years old, America is a baby compared to them, the history and memory are very different.
All that pomp just makes one pompous.
Could we not solve the problem of the PM appointing a lackey as Governor General with other form of check-and-balance that requires zero input from individuals with no connections to a democratic process? Perhaps a similar way that Supreme Court Justices are appointed (candidates recommended by the Prime Minister and approved by the federal cabinet). While not immune to abuses of power, I would like this better than a Monarch being that check-and-balance.
This would make for a good read and understanding of how the royalty works.
On the topic, I think what Queen Elizabeth has done despite of the challenges within her sovereignty is being a living example on how to rule and govern, without negatively interfering with how the affairs and progress of the state needs to be carried out.
There are many countries in the world who run different system of governments, and many as doing it quite successfully.
No... Not at all. Not that many large cap corporations(large capital organizations, not Mom and Pop Inc) have one exclusive owner. None of the publicly traded corporations are monarchies at all.
Nothing arises "naturally"; It's the education and access to vast support resources that creates exceptional people, and if you want more of those, you should want to ensure that the greatest number of people have access to enough resources that anyone can have a chance to make the most of their inborn advantages (whatever they may be) regardless of the circumstances of their birth.
She wasn't doing it from the kindness of her heart. This was her job, she was obscenely rich off of taxpayer money and she could retire any second she wanted to. You make it sound like she was sentenced to sign paperwork for her entire life, when the reality is she consciously chose to do so every day and in exchange she and her family was granted an immense wealth. It's not even remotely something that would warrant complaint. I'm not saying this to be snarky, just pointing out that although maybe parts of her job was boring, stressful, and unfulfilling, this is what she signed up for. And her "compensation" was unimaginable amount of money and power in the form of interpersonal relations.
She didn't lose her royal power when handing over those landholdings, nor did she loose it (militarily) to prevent those reductions in the first place.
Seems like she handled it well.
I'm not sure what point you're making here. I'm not claiming England has never had a King before, I'm pointing out that I'm used to seeing "Her Majesty the Queen" rather than "His Majesty the King" all over.
Allies against the Nazism . It’s peak tension between the West and Russia now but maybe a impromptu occasion to finally get to Peace
So does culture, for that matter.
I wonder what impact it will have if/when people do start living for 300 years or more (which some people claim we could see within our lifetime). What happens when racist, openly homophobic grandpa isn't just someone you uncomfortably bear and forgive, but someone with a lot of power and money because they've been around the longest? Investments, compound interests, connections, so many things that would mean that the younger generation would have less and less power and hope as time goes by.
I don’t doubt your sincerity, but these feelings in you and others were intentionally cultivated by decades of propaganda. There is no such thing as a rightful king or queen, and certainly no such thing as someone who rules by divine right.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
(for anyone rushing to post 'oh so you support $hideous-thing do you' – no, just trying to have an internet forum that doesn't suck)
0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Member_states_of_the_Commonwea...
> she consciously chose to do so every day and in exchange she and her family was granted an immense wealth
This! Saying that wealth and status is a burden for XYZ always elicits a "but they can give it all up in a singe day if they want to" response from me.
Btw, whilst Hong Kong has fallen and hence I do not expect much there the Hong Kong people like her very much. Called her the “Bossy Granny” and even with a sony on 1997 naming her as the righteous friend that help Hong Kong to trade well by being on the coin, always young and bring prosperity.
Miss her we will. God bless the Queen. RIP.
As it was recently discussed here [0], You have a sad feeling for a moment, then it passes. [1]
[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32252198
[1]: https://everything2.com/title/You+have+a+sad+feeling+for+a+m...
I am an American, and I am grateful to have been among her contemporaries in a way that I cannot say that about any other British monarch.
With the track record of successive Tory governments however... Interesting for perhaps the wrong reasons.
Unlikely to unite the nation either.
What about the legal system in the UK/Canada/Australia that have it in constitution that she as a veto to the passing of new laws as a balance.
Could the system be made not to require the monarchy anymore? Sure, it’s purely ceremonial and has been for her entire reign, but to say that the monarch can make that decision at whim on behalf of 15 countries is just not true.
(This is not the same as her mother being Queen Elizabeth I, which was the tudor queen from the 1500s, wife-of-king queens don't take up a number).
It's a weird bit of asymmetry to the husband-of-queen title being decided on an adhoc basis, having been a prince of denmark, prince-consort of the united kingdom and prince of the united kingdom respectively.
Plenty of monarchs have done just that including her very own uncle.
As a person making this claim, you are failing miserably to make a case that CEO is a monarch. (Mostly because you don't know what it means to be CEO or a monarch)
Alas, there is no algorithm yet for "truth".
The PM bows to the Queen, but that doesn't mean they have to listen to the people more than they do in France, no?
Doesn't the French Prime Minister answer to the President? How is that worse than having a monarch? Are they often from the same party, thus rendering this answering to the president less powerful? (I know the current PM and President are, not sure if that's the common case.)
My impression is that just by being less involved in politics, and generally (not 100%) staying away of corruption and other sorts of scandals (unlike others, looking at you Juan Carlos I) for a few decades, the figure of the Queen can be less jarring or seems more trustworthy than a President usually would.
To be honest, I live in a monarchy, and if I could choose we'd transition to a republic... but I've never felt like it would make a huge difference in the quality of our government or our electoral politics, so I just don't really care.
In the Top10 in every ranking with regards to real estate asset management.
Also all the planes and trains and cars. Top notch brand of each for the last 70 years were provided by the State.
Less theoretical than many seem to think: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/feb/08/royals-vette...
They do this in secret, to preserve the illusion.
But specifically saying not to comment negatively while allowing positive comments on what is clearly a hotly contested issue is ridiculous.
I’m not saying this doesn’t matter, of course it does. It’s sad like any death is, and it’s meaningful to many people. But there are many kings and queens out there, and just because this one meant a lot to you doesn’t mean you should start roleplaying a member of the British nobility.
The only decent and respectful way to approach this for all parts involved in my mind is to acknowledge it, pay your condolences and move on. That’s the respectful and sane common ground we can all agree on.
As soon as you start making business decisions based on this for a global company (like global days of mourning, for example) you are, in my humble opinion, treading on thin ice.
This type of cultural hegemony kills the employer-employee relationship.
Be professional. Be reserved.
As I wrote here three years ago[1]:
> Indignation isn't shallow or boring, it's the driving force behind social progress. Indeed, lack of indignation indicates either the inability to imagine a better world or perhaps the natural satisfaction with the status quo of someone who finds themself sitting on the upper rungs of society as currently structured. The latter no doubt describes many of us here.
Indignation isn't the arch-enemy of intellectual curiosity; apathy and bovine conformity are. This status-quo bias is what you would expect of a forum run for the benefit of a Silicon Valley for-profit institution, but it's still disappointing.
1. https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2013/jan/14/secret-papers-roy...
I am kind of curious about what this means exactly. Is any criticism of the monarchy off limits? Is the purpose of this thread for people to air their positive thoughts about this lady?
For example, I find non-British people that are genuinely sad about her passing to be pretty bizarre. It’s a fascinating event to look at how we tend to form parasocial relationships with carefully curated depictions of people.
It’s even more bizarre when we make actual rules to enforce orthodoxy and stifle criticism of parasocial relationships with carefully curated depictions of people.
This insistence on an arbitrary standard of decorum and the compulsion to play out a socially-prescribed bit of theater is pretty odd. Queen Elizabeth was paradoxically both not powerful enough to warrant lumping her in with British failings and at the same time so powerful that we are compelled to speak highly of her.
I am not a monarchist by any means, but I felt an attachment and affection for the Queen that made me value the institution. I know she led a privileged life but ceaseless service and consistency across literal generations is, to my view, no easy ride.
Rest in peace
If you can quit a job but you choose not to do so, in what sense did you not "sign up for it"? Her own uncle Edward VIII abdicated so he can marry Wallis Simpson without controversy. This has nothing to with anti-monarchism, I'm just pointing out that she was the queen only through her own free will.
There was little for the Royal Family to adjust to.
They were the sovereigns of those nations, if independent from the UK. They still "appoint" the PMs of those countries and have a fair amount of political influence via governors.
"We should take comfort that while we may have more still to endure, better days will return: we will be with our friends again; we will be with our families again; we will meet again."
I myself, am in agreement however. If governance of the UK would modernize, the removal of generational status like what a monarch represents would be a step in the right direction. Why one would do that, and loose the history in the process? Not sure if the UK populous is ready for that, since its still a beloved part of the country and outwardly is a hallmark of the country's brand.
I digress. I am probably just speaking ill of the dead to some, but just glad to be in the US for our representation structure of legislation and executive by proxy. Direct Democracy is the red headed step child of mob rule, and I'm content to not have that either.
Just in case anyone didn't know, the UK does not have a singular written constitution like you may find elsewhere.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_United_Kin...
She could have retired 40 years ago and never worked another day in her life if she’d wanted to. Charles would still have been King and her family would have been no worse off.
She was rich because she was part of the royal family; it's not the case that she was part of the royal family and then independent of that had private wealth. There was never a possibility of her being poor as long as she was the queen.
That ‘private’ wealth was acquired because she was head of state
That said, I do think it’s an unrealistic ask of someone who’s entire life and all those around her are dedicated to reinforcing her (absurd) status.
Those I really fault are the BBC who report her term heading this fundamentally antidemocratic institution so uncritically. Monarchy in the UK has majority support, but it is much more evenly split that you would imagine from our media.
Radio 4’s correspondent was on just now fondly telling tales of how the Queen had intervened by “raising an eyebrow” to save a favoured army regiment. If true this should be a national scandal in a constitutional monarchy. That it is reported with so little awareness of the media’s role in entrenching privilege is unforgivable.
This is a very common criticism when one happens to disagree with the target of some positivity. Sometimes it's a reasonable criticism, but usually it's an oversimplification we allow ourselves to indulge in. Positivity can have intrinsic value even in the absence of some accompanying objective substance.
On the other hand, and similarly to my first point, I agree that indignation too is not inherently value-less. However, there are miles between useful indignation and snarky tangents.
Many monarchies have been elective[1], and in some, the monarch is often picked from the same family. Even that is a better system than "first-born child".
Not getting a real day off for 73 years probably had more to do with it. Or, you know, just being 96.
Perhaps I should take bit out as it obviously wasn't clear enough.
This is a vastly underappreciated aspect of government, and of human social institutions in general. The principles-on-paper version of something can be mediocre, or just plain horrid. But if the actual people running things are sufficiently capable and caring, the on-paper failings doesn't much matter.
Flip-side, even a perfect-on-paper system, implemented with incompetent & uncaring people in charge, will be crap at best.
Also, three paragraphs do not a rant make. Nice try though.
It might be an interesting historical event for people who don’t live in the UK
But some of us have to live with this… a family that have got immensely rich from being head of state, a family that have interfered in laws to their advantage, a family that we have no choice over whether they continue to be the head of state
In theory, no, French PM answers only to Parliament. Only Parliament can dismiss them, not the President.
In practice, and in normal times, this isn't true at all. When the President tells the PM that their time is up, they immediately resign. (One tried to resist in the 70s and was immediately voted out by Parliament.) This makes the French PM effectively powerless. They simply implement the will of the President. The equivalent to the British PM is the French President, not the French PM.
Now there are non normal times where Parliament and the President are on opposite sides. When that happens (1986-1988; 1993-1995; 1997-2002), the PM is effectively in charge of most things, but even in those cases the President still has more powers than an typical constitutional monarch.
But my point wasn't about power but about humility. I think it's good and desirable that the ruler has to bow to someone else, and that that person, in turn, has no power whatsoever.
There are unwritten social contracts in play here - which get weaker with time.
Criticizing the oppression of colonies (under the eyes of the crown) is only allowed - sometime later.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/fabulous/18050875/queen-first-offic...
Queen Elizabeth II’s last official photograph from 2 days ago:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11185023/The-Queen-...
UK is in top-20 countries by democracy index.[1] It is classified as 'full democracy' (as opposed to 'flawed democracy', for example in the US).
[1] https://www.eiu.com/n/campaigns/democracy-index-2021/
UPD pdf version of the linked report: https://www.docdroid.net/xCeDvHc/eiu-democracy-index-2021-pd...
They all have massive limits on their powers as compared to a CEO. They work with parliaments, etc. They can be vetoed easily.
I'll grant it isn't a perfect analogy. A CEO doesn't have unlimited power granted by god and has to answer to a board and therefore shareholders. But in essence, the idea of having a singular ultimate decision maker/leader rather than having a small group vote on decisions or have the entire company vote makes it a de-facto monarchy.
That's something that has always struck me as indicative of her character.
The dominant paradigm is "if it is not permitted it is forbidden".
Those of us in the colonies went a long way to get away from that.
This media circus, is a form a worship.
Sure people can cry for a person such as the Queen, a person they do not know except for what they see on TV or in other forms of media. Personally I don't get it, I think Israel bombing Gaza killing children (just an example) is far more sad
I am not well versed about republic vs. monarchy apart from my limited experience, which might be more than many people, but not as valuable as someone that have studied that and can pitch in. Coming from BR, have lived in AU, NZ, and UK, and traveled a lot, I would take monarchy over a republic any day, extrapolating on that, and just looking at the current state of affairs of republic countries vs the ones coming from monarchy, which ones look in a better state, and makes you want to move to, live in and raise your family?
And mad props to UK for keeping --relatively to others-- really well so far.
Thank you and Rest in Peace.
Dangs top post irritated me because it felt like this has to be the time to remember the whole life - not just the fantasy we are typically sold.
The Articles of Confederation wouldn’t even be a footnote, just a dusty document in someone’s library, maybe, and the Constitution would never have been written.
(Sincere question about her legacy; not questioning whether she was important.)
My general sense is that of respect for the Queen as a symbol. She did it right and wasn't a useless numpty like ... oh... all of the rest of them. Primarily nothing but B list celebrities. William and Kate seem fine enough, Harry and Meghan are .. irrelevant except to the nonces who have no actual lives, and let's not discuss Andrew...
Hopefully Charles will use the "soft power" he supposedly has to corral the professional sociopaths destroying this country (e.g. wind and solar power, given his supposed environmental leanings) but I don't know.... it very well may be all downhill from now. England (and by extension all of the UK) is destined to become a failed state.
Which is why I am looking hard at moving to Scotland (soon to be independent!) or even the EU to get the F out of here ASAP. It really is a transitional point.
IANAL but I think an act of parliament, ironically signed by the monarch, would suffice to abolish the monarchy in England.
A hell of a way to end the Monarchy would have been to use the royal prerogative to install an anti-brexit Prime Minister a couple years ago (against convention, but that's the point). Presumably that'd be enough to get them to abolish the Monarchy. And it would have been an fitting end to the Monarchy, a legacy of the previous era, to have the Queen, who held it for the current era, expend it's last bit of power to stay in the EU, which might be one of the top players in the next era.
Well that's how it'd be written if it was a movie at least.
>she became Queen as a result of birth.
It is true that failing to live up to her responsibility was a path she could have chosen. She did not, and that is greatly to her credit. Choosing not to abandon your responsibility is a far cry from "signing up for it."
The British people reaped what they showed with that one.
They are not popular concepts these days, but the ideas you're grasping for are duty and service. She did her duty and she served her people.
Also, the Royal Family is not in receipt of taxpayer money. The Sovereign Grant is funded from income generated by the Crown Estate.
Money doesn’t solve all problems. It sure makes them less horrible though.
All that said, the queen was an impressive human. 70 years is a long time. I’d be bored in 3 years and quit
I mean, the Queen could just as well have been a made up figure to you or me, given the vanishing possibility she would affect any of our lives directly. Yet after watching those stories about her life, the monarchy, it manipulates your neurons to actually have a person to mourn. Funny, isn't it? And the length of her life certainly gave enough material to feel some story.
I imagine that before QE2, much state/people mourning of the sovereign was just symbolic, and though perhaps somewhat heartfelt (I daresay, but more for loss of the symbol), not deep. For all their quirks and personality problems revealed to us on TV, it actually caused them to mean more to us.
For some quality entertainment, read through the comments pretending they're talking about Kim Kardashian.
"I've never considered myself a ['celebrity worshipper'] but... I just burst into tears unexpectedly [upon hearing of Kim's death]."
I have, and now more than ever I am convinced Twitter brings out the worst in people. That platform is a carcinogen of the mind.
(Edit: that first sentence is really a template instantiation. When I post like this, it's never for or against <T>. It's always just about internet comments. People who are against <T> (or for it) often react like we're for <T> (or against it), but this is an illusion. It could quickly be cured by grokking the template, since at that level all these posts are entirely the same.)
It may not make so much sense now, but this thread was filling with the worst sort of dumb flamebait when it got started. That it isn't so now is because I've spent the last 3 hours refreshing the page and meticulously moderating it. If some of my comments are a little dyspeptic, that's because dealing with tedious comments is tedious, and I sort of pep myself up by letting loose a bit. Not the finest of practices but esprit de corps is also a need.
I think there is something to be said for, lack of a better word, the continuity of history. 70 years with the same monarch. A system of monarchy, for over a 1000 years.
It is a symbolic role, but symbols are powerful.
But for all the talk of duty, morals, and leadership I saw none of that in the Queen. I saw a figurehead. Shaking hands and listening but what did she contribute? Definitely not morals or direction.
People talk of her speech in 2020 during Covid in which she spoke about WW2 and how we need to stand together. And for me that just makes me feel that she could have made a huge difference in the global struggles that we are going to face coping with climate change. She could have made a real difference last year or 10 years ago. Or 40 years ago.
Her son has been more vocal about caring for the environment. Is it too much to hope that he will spend some of his influence swaying the new UK PM away from her reactionary pro-fossil fuel agenda. As the climate crisis starts to feel more and more like a existential threat is it foolish to hope for an ally.
The Queen is dead. Long live the King
Ruling by divine right is common and hasn't gone anywhere. Divine rulership hasn't had a real problem to fight in a long time, so we leave the governing up to parliament. Not an absolute parliament, mind you.
The peaceful diminishing of an empire should be remembered as one of the most remarkable achievements during her reign, a striking contrast to world leaders past and present who seek the reverse.
I think it's totally fair to feel that they have a life of immense luxury and privilege off of wealth that belongs to the people, while so many people in this country are wondering if they'll have heating this winter.
Humanity needs an alpha male/female to lead the flock because it would have a better chance of survival than if everyone went their separate ways.
Leadership and other corporate BS teaches nothing more than this truth: Ignore your own doubts, have a straight face and lead the herd where you want.
The queen and her family cost less than 2$/year/brit, less than a stupid game on the app store.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/08/world/europe/queen-elizab...
That phrase implies that she had PMs subservient to her. That's not how the UK monarchy is generally explained, at least not outside of the UK.
That's true, back then she'd have to move to the Bahamas: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallis_Simpson#Second_World_Wa...
For now, at least. I think we are all underestimating just how much Twitter impacts public perception. Not just on topics, but how people feel, act, and interact with others. Twitter seems to have a cancerous negativity it inflicts on its users.
Technically this occurred with the Bretton Woods agreement in 1944 [1] several years before Queen Elizabeth II ascended to the throne.
I can’t begin to imagine how many times she must have had to bite her tongue over the last 73 years.
There seems to be a reflexive, emotional and partly irrational hatred of the UK monarchy spending heavily and having assets and money, along with certain public benefits (which by the way are carefully circumscribed) by people who barely bat an eye at the fact that the absolute largest sources of resource and tax spending on a vast range of immensely expensive but often wasteful and even pointless things are perfectly modern government institutions that have nothing to do with monarchs. It's an absurd sort of blindness.
What the UK government spent on the idiocy of the Iraq War alone far exceeds all public funds given to the Monarchy in decades, but hey, let's complain about Elizabeth and the castles that have been in her family for centuries.
Look at the HDI: https://hdr.undp.org/data-center/human-development-index#/in...
Look at the top ten countries. How many are a constitutional monarchy? Which of them would you rather live in? :-)
Not really. The Greeks, the Arabs, yes. But 2,000 years ago the Europeans were were not "civilised" in the sense that we think of.
Oh gosh. It’s the exact opposite. The a principle of Common Law is ‘everything which is not forbidden is allowed’ (the US for example has done reasonably well on that principle).
That said, I think his statement is not quite accurate. Very few people are aware of (or think about) the monarchy at all, and of the ones that are, very few of them actually care one way or the other about it. Of those, I'm sure most agree that the monarchy is pointless, but unlike in the UK we don't spend a whole lot of money on it so in reality no one really cares much except on principle.
I have strong feelings about her, and exactly because this is HN I chose to not air them in this forum.
Arguably ignoring the negative aspects is spreading fake news disinformation, which is a problem on the Internet in general nowadays.
I found your point valid. Where other al say she was had no choice and did well under circumstances. I rather saw her end the monarchy all together, or at least step out of it herself.
The power the queen had was very minimal, but she did still have some power. Maybe you don't consider minimal power to be sufficient to be considered a monarch?
>This media circus, is a form a worship.
Are you using worship to just mean a high level of respect? If that is the case then fine, I assumed you were using it as thinking of the queen as divine.
>Sure people can cry for a person such as the Queen, a person they do not know except for what they see on TV or in other forms of media.
Most of us don't know any person in Gaza so it is just a number or image on a TV. It doesn't really seem any different than the queen in that respect.
Also, a random kid in Gaza likely doesn't impact us in the way the Queen can. If a kid in Gaza makes a speech are you going to hear about it? What about the queen?
>Personally I don't get it, I think Israel bombing Gaza killing children (just an example) is far more sad
It is irrelevant though? People can be sad for multiple things. There have been multiple threads on HN over the years about Israel / Palestine and other places going through turmoil. Why can't you just let people express sadness without trying to one up the sadness?
I've had the opposite experience. It's clear that real-time news is detrimental, and it's better for reporting to wait a bit for facts to come in and analysis to be done.
Early reporting is vague, light on facts, disjointed, facts are hedged, etc. It's really quite worthless.
Tourists would still want to see Buckingham Palace and visit the royal gallery even without a sitting royal family.
As a Canadian, the idea that she's gone is... strange? Every single time I've ever held a coin (in Canada), she's been on it. Every dime, every cent, every ten dollar bill. I have a difficult time with visual memory, but I know what those images look like because I've seen them a hundred thousand times.
Now it's going to be someone else? It makes sense, but it doesn't feel right.
The person. Not the institution.
I have the opposite POV
Might be worth pointing out that not all Commonwealth countries are part of the Commonwealth Realm.
The regular rotation of power is a feature, not a bug.
The introduction of trains in the early 1800s literally changed the DNA of England. As people started to regularly traveled 100's of miles away from their villages.
The transatlantic cable was carrying millions of messages by the late 1880s.
American history tends to be written in a bubble. Some people in the U.S.A. were using chamber pots in the 1870s, by the 1870s London had a sewer system.
Too often the U.S.A. plays up a fantasy pioneer past. While in the U.S.A. people tend of talk of the 1860s as a time of pioneers and wagons, in large Western European cities Maxwell's Equations were being discussed in mathematics departments.
India has been a republic since 1947 and is a member of the Commonwealth.
Has there been any real progress towards another referendum on independence? I know SNP still has the lion’s share of seats in Scottish parliament, but what else? As a Scottish ex-pat of sorts (born UAE, to Scottish parents, but raised and educated in the US), I have nostalgic notions of moving to Scotland. Then I remember its dark much of the year and rains a fair bit. Heck, it even snowed in June the last summer I visited (yes, that was up Glenshee, but still).
She didn't, Louis XIV is still up there.
I defer to the historian Niall Ferguson who said (I paraphrase) that purpose of monarchy is to protect the people from its government. From a UK perspective, it seems to work.
It starts with “this is a call to revolution…”
A philosopher king!
That being said, an important person died I can understand that it's generally not good style to start with the negative comments right away.
Which was a giant diplomatic incident. It wasn't without consequence.
I'm not sure if it is in any way clearly defined what should happen to the Estate should Britain choose to become a Republic, but I suppose the actual result would be that it would be taken over completely by the government.
But _formally_ it is still considered property of the Monarch.
I was not making a case for royalism! just a case against tedious internet battles, and boy is monarchism one of those. (I mean, "Good riddance. The world is rid of a horrible person who has done horrible things" - ? Good grief. At least give us something amusing.) (that was a random example I just ran across)
More at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32771818 if anyone cares.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/feb/08/royals-vette...
If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
Which makes sense, to me. The Canadian experience of the world wars and subsequent decades was decidedly different than the British experience, and the role that Elizabeth played, though meaningful, wasn't as important to our cultural identity. But now that those wars are generations past, and both nations have enjoyed relative peace and comfort for some decades, the sentiments toward the monarchy are beginning to align.
0: https://bc.ctvnews.ca/canadian-support-for-monarchy-hits-low...
1: https://www.statista.com/statistics/863893/support-for-the-m...
At the same time, if the monarch (in a system like that of Britain) actually started using and abusing their theoretical powers, they'd quickly have the whole of the country turn against them. And they have a lot to lose if that happens!
In a presidential system, the President is both the theoretical and actual head of state. They're already in the top spot, and the only thing preventing them from staying there is convention or laws which are subject to change, and enforcement of which is largely under the President's control.
A more ceremonial President might work as well, but the thing is, an elected head of state has less to lose by abusing his powers, and far more to lose by properly following convention and thus stepping down.
So BoJo was the first English Catholic PM, I think
You use words like "odd" and "bizarre" to describe many people's reactions to the QE's passing...
I humbly suggest that it's it is simply that you don't understand a certain perspective here. That's totally fine -- completely fine -- because there's no reason to expect we all could or should share the same perspective on this.
I humbly also suggest that, while there are certainly many criticism that could (and should, probably) be leveled in good reason against monarchies in general, and perhaps this monarchy in particular, today is maybe not the right day to do it.
Today a lady who was very meaningful to many people has passed. Why not let them grieve?
Imagine someone important to you died today. They surely weren't perfect, but is today the day to harp on their negatives? The monarchy has been around for centuries. If your criticisms have any merit, they will still have impact a few days from now.
Anyway, whether you're lucky enough that no one important to you has died (yet) or because you don't have that sensitivity, let me assure you: today isn't the day to pursue your criticisms of those that have passed today. Hang on to it for now andtell everyone about it later. If it's really something worthwhile, it will have legs later, too.
Although she was Commander-In-Chief, she gave responsibility to the prime minister and the Secretary of State for Defence, along with other officials. Theoretically she could have ordered a strike against the white house but this would be vetoed by the govt.
She had the ability to declar war, however the government doesn’t need the Queen’s permission.
She could have issued an order of Dissolution of Parliament, but parliament is not the same as the government. The British government is the one that actually rules in the UK. Also such an act would have caused an absolute uproar among UK citizens and probably ensured the beginning of a Republic
So she has "power" in name only, but no real power which was my point, everything has been taken away from her ... and now also King Charles.
Sure, now that the top position is entirely symbolic in the vast majority of monarchies, nobody fights over it. But the if the UK Monarch was in any sense "in charge" of anything, we'd surely see the US propping up Harry and Meghan as the true legitimate heirs and we might even let them borrow a couple carriers to "persuade" Parliament of the fact. Or whatever.
Constitutional monarchs do have their uses; it's good that someone can fire the head of government, especially if the people can invest in the head of state instead.
The US should have one picked from the top 10 Spotify chart. Even if half of them are Canadian.
If I were moderating myself I would now point out that the burden is on the commenter to disambiguate intent: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so....
I couldn't care less which side you guys are on re monarchs! If you want to make thoughtful critique, go for it. Just remember that the bar for that is rather high when it comes to a topic so filled with bombast as this one.
The idea that we'd be trying to preserve the royalist status quo and the elegance of railway travel is just so silly that I can't believe I have to say that. Clearly it was my mistake, though—that was no splash-free dive.
> The Tjapwurung, an Aboriginal people in what is now southern Australia, shared the story of this bird hunt from generation to generation across an unbelievably large slice of time—many more millennia than one might think possible. The birds (most likely the species with the scientific name Genyornis newtoni) memorialized in this tale are now long extinct. Yet the story of the Tjapwurung’s “tradition respecting the existence” of these birds conveys how people pursued the giant animals. At the time of this particular hunt, between 5,000 and 10,000 years ago, volcanoes in the area were erupting, wrote amateur ethnographer James Dawson in his 1881 book Australian Aborigines, and so scientists have been able to corroborate this oral history by dating volcanic rocks.
...
> What are the limits of such ancient memories? For what length of time can knowledge be transferred within oral societies before its essence becomes irretrievably lost? Under optimal conditions, as suggested by science-determined ages for events recalled in ancient stories, orally shared knowledge can demonstrably endure more than 7,000 years, quite possibly 10,000, but probably not much longer.
https://www.sapiens.org/language/oral-tradition/
So, anyway, be it 10k or 30k, definitely within an era of "history" and not "pre-history"
Obviously dang is free to moderate as he sees fit, but this attempt to rationalize bias as some philosophical ideal of fair high-quality moderation is worth criticizing. This all stems from the insistence that HN remain “politically neutral,” which is a mythical concept for comfortable people who want to be insulated from conversation that threatens their comfortable lives. Politically neutral is always politically defensive of the status quo, and moderation to that effect always ends up with threads like these that end up skewed in favor of the position deemed to be politically “neutral.”
The articles probably landed on the top 10 list of most read articles (due to Google hits) after the Buckingham Palace statement this morning that the doctors are recommending continuous monitoring of her health, which probably was British understatement for "Her situation is bad".
https://medium.com/dose/does-the-queen-of-england-have-any-r...
Not being a citizen of the commonwealth, I have no political beef in this, I can only admire her for holding her office for a longer time than most here (including me) have lived. Being the formal head of once a colonial empire turning into a commonwealth with these days most of the member nations rightfully going their own way, she was an important participant in the history of hundreds of millions of people.
Her role was one of constance over a long time in which the world changed a lot. She was a truck driver in WW2 and became queen not too long after that considering she was queen till today. Now an era ends and a new one begins.
It's generally understood by constitutional scholars that the Crown is essentially governmental rather than private and the Crown Estate would go with the government rather than the royal family if the assets were split up on the creation of a republic.
The Queen also had extensive private wealth, including Balmoral Castle which (unlike the royal places) was hers personally rather than as monarch. IIRC it was bought privately by either Victoria or Albert rather than via the Crown Estate. This mattered after the abdication of Edward VIII, where the property of the Crown passed to George VI as the new king, but the private possessions of Edward stayed with him. I think Balmoral and Sandringham had to be bought off him so they would stay as royal residences. Presumably most of that private wealth will be bequeathed to Charles, though we won't find out: the Queen's will is, uniquely, private by statute.
Can't the Brits abolish royalty, how they abolished slavery?
It's so strange that this even needs to be said out loud. It's not edgy to say that someone born into her position has benefitted from it. For a place that claims to be a meritocracy, the UK has some strangely dissonant beliefs.
Then, when you're 25, your daddy dies aged only 56 and after a rather brief period of mourning you get pushed into taking his job in a pompous ceremony. Now you're going to be doing this until you die. No retirement! I bet there were times where Lilibet just wanted to go to her room and cry.
I wouldn't have wanted her job for all the wealth and power that came with it.
[1] Well, you could make a big scandal about marrying an American divorcee, but that didn't go down too well for the last guy.
I wanted to reach a broader audience with my phrasing so I didn't call that point out, but I completely agree.
Basically he never wanted to be King, and seemed totally unsuitable for it anyway.
If we observed monkeys and saw that one was showered with gifts and jewellery their whole lives because they were offspring of two other particular monkeys.. we would chuckle at that. Not for being the strongest, tallest, biggest, smartest or best at something. Just for existing.
I've never heard of one.
Technically, I can take drastic action to negate things I received as an accident of birth if I don't mind getting flak for doing it, but it makes no sense at all to claim that on that basis my parents, physical appearance or manhood were all stuff I signed up for of my own free will.
Unless you're saying there are countries not in the Commonwealth that have her as the head of state which is news to me, but maybe i am mistaken.
Frankly, we don't.
Can't the Brits abolish royalty, how they abolished slavery?
We could. We won't, not yet.
I say this as a Brit in favour of an elected head of state. It's probably best we get out of the Brexit quagmire first, before we set off another political crisis that splits the country in two.
You're right that it would require international cooperation, though: the British parliament doesn't legislate for the other Commonwealth Realms any more.
I would like to choose the duty of being fabulously wealthy and literally immune to criminal or civil prosecution, too.
Princess Elizabeth wasn’t originally expected to become Queen. Her father was only the second son of King George V and was not expected to become King either. But, in a move that was deeply shocking at the time, the older son, King Edward VIII, abdicated in 1936 so that he could marry a divorcee.
The abdication crisis was complicated and further complicated by the Commonwealth. The members of the Commonwealth, all of whom had Edward VIII as their king, had to agree to the abdication. The government of the Irish Free State, as it was then known, used the opportunity to dramatically reduce the role of the King.
Elizabeth’s father became George VI and she became the heir presumptive. At this point (1936) it still wasn’t clear that she would become Queen. She was just 10 years old and if her parents had a son, he would leapfrog his older sisters and become the heir.
Edward VIII had become Duke of Windsor after the abdication and he remained something of a thorn in the sides of the royal family and British government. There were fights about money and titles and whether the Duke would be allowed to return to the UK. There were bad feelings all round. In 1937 the Duke visited Nazi Germany, which infuriated the British government. During World War II he was considered to be pro-Nazi and was for a while under surveillance by the Americans.
Things had in some ways calmed down by 1952, when George VI died. But the UK was still intensely feeling the effects of World War II. There were several financial crises, the country’s debt was enormous and rationing didn’t end until 1954.
The British Empire had also continued to fall apart. Today many people consider that a good thing, with countries gaining independence and people gaining self-determination. But from a monarch’s perspective, losing an empire is a pretty terrible failure.
I’ve missed out all sorts of things because this was already so long. But that, roughly speaking, was the situation when Princess Elizabeth became Queen Elizabeth II in 1952.
She was indeed an interesting character, witty, frail yet fierce, out of this time and truly royal.
It’s definitely the end of an era, that makes me a little bit nostalgic.
I have been thinking about this for the past two hours, rewatching the speech she gave at 21. She was hesitant, unsure, obviously unprepared for the death of her father, yet she became a queen at the blink of an eye.
One of my favorite speech, very human, a young lady suddenly realize the weight of her destiny, pledge to put her life, her only life, aside for the rest of her life. She spent the next 70 years being the Queen, no matter what, never complained, never showed any sign of weaknesses, relentlessly performing diplomatic duties.
Being right for 70 years is difficult. I think she genuinely tried.
That said, there is precedent. Victoria didn't inherit Hanover, which had been in personal union with the UK, because it had different succession laws (which excluded women). So it's just a matter of political will really.
I've thought for a long time that when the generation that fought in the war, or even grew up in it, has died out, that's when idiots like this student will be free to make something terrible rise. Fight for freedoms like speech while you can.
> In one instance the Queen completely vetoed the Military Actions Against Iraq Bill in 1999, a private member's bill that sought to transfer the power to authorise military strikes against Iraq from the monarch to parliament.
A wise move indeed, if Blair's record is to be taken into account.
But that's her role -- as figurehead. The job is to be a symbol, not a leader. Leading is left to the democratically elected politicians, and for good reason. And it's not the new king's job to sway the PM. It's literally the opposite of his job.
And if you don't think she contributed morals? Her behavior was impeccable. She contributed morals leading by example.
She was holding on to get rid of him.
https://theconversation.com/the-queens-gambit-new-evidence-s... https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2018/05/09/could-army-c...
But don't worry, as long as people live in a fantasy world where they believe they are just ceremonial figureheads and a benign presence, their position at the top will never be challenged. And at any moment when it does, peoples emotions/grief will be exploited to maintain the institutions by using north korea style propaganda campaigns and security operations:
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/mar/16/what-happens... https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/sep/03/security-ope...
I'm not keen on the idea of using this submission to flame the Queen, I obviously agree with the general rule of avoiding flamebait, what I mean is that other HN submissions on the deaths of people certainly didn't get this special treatment. It is also not at all enforced in both directions when looking at the obviously and comically over the top positive comments of low quality which contain no real substance.
Edit: I used the wording "stop negativity" which might be misleading, since (as far as I am aware) no comments are being deleted. What I'm talking about is moderation giving out a lot of warnings and keeping a closer watch on "flamebait" violations than I've ever seen before on any submission.
The queen can still secretly prevent legislation from ever being heard in parliament, so...
The point is that a president is a) elected and b) works openly.
Which is fully appropriate where it exists.
I would be 100% against the US having a 'Constitutional Monarch' but I'm 100% in support of the UK Constitutional Monarchy, given that it has come from their long established culture, nearly a 1000-year-old 'contiguous-ish' institution.
FYI in 1258 the Monarch signed documents which required him to 'Confer with Parliament' when changing rates of taxation. That's only 40 years past Magna Carta, and the first reference to 'Parliament'.
"she was the last British monarch to have any memory of WWII" is pretty weird too, though, since her father George VI was the only other monarch alive during WW2. I guess unless you also count her uncle Edward VIII who was alive throughout WW2 and had previously been a British monarch. If that counts then sure, she was the last of three British monarchs to remember WW2.
Under Charles III’s reign, it will be His Majesty’s government; how actively he takes an interest in its affairs will be on him, but at a minimum laws will not take effect without his assent and his permission will be asked for to form future governments.
That’s the system of the United Kingdom. It never stopped being a Kingdom, people just chose to view the late Queen as ceremonial because it was a convenient way to square the Throne with democratic ideals, but it really isn’t all that ceremonial. The reason the customs held fast is because Queen Elizabeth II worked to make the system work. A different sort of Queen may have sparked a constitutional crisis or two by now and there’s no guarantee she would have necessarily lost to the Commons.
I agree, but for me it's more infuriating how often I see this comparison used when when the modern version is primarily head-canon catastrophizing despite the same people making the comparison advocating and practicing behaviors that are even closer to what they decry, all while pretending they're not. Nuance and introspection are sorely lacking everywhere.
There’s no discernible difference on this count between Finland and its Nordic peers that are constitutional monarchies.
> Then there was the notorious incident that occurred during Charles and Madame de Gaulle’s state visit to Buckingham Palace. “Somebody asked Madame de Gaulle what she was most looking forward to in her retirement, which was imminent,” Blaikie writes. “Not speaking English much at all, she replied, ‘A penis.’ Consternation reigned for some time but it was the queen herself who came to the rescue. ‘Ah, happiness,’ she said.”
https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2021/08/behind-queen-elizab...
It's not exactly poverty, but the 'classist' arguments, to the extent they are rooted in 'wealth distribution' are ridiculous and naive with respect to Constitutional Monarchies.
The 'Head of State' gets a nice home, oh well, it's a drop in the bucket.
That's fundamentally different than some fat oligarch.
BTW Charles will be a fine King. He's nerdy and awkward and everyone loved the beloved Dianna because she was pretty and breezy, which is fine, but I don't believe that 'Instagrammable' qualities are those that fill the role.
Widespread unemployment, hunger, life expectancies in decline, 1,000 people are dying a month from the botched "response" to covid. Hundreds of thousands in early graves due to same covid response, and before that already over a hundred thousand in early graves as a result of austerity. The political system seems to have completely collapsed and be unable to respond to crises or meet even the most basic survival needs of its population.
I wouldn't lay this on the feet of the monarchy, cos the elected officials seem to be the main cause of it.
But which republics are you looking at? Because I live in one, and I can't imagine moving back to the UK any time soon. Again, I don't think that's because it's a republic, it just happens to have a basically functioning political an economic system that hasn't (yet) failed.
Second, now is a good time to figure out if Reptoids can hold their shape when dead. I’ve never seen a definitive answer in the literature.
Arsenic-laced baby-food would be tolerated, if not vaguely enjoyed, if it received that kind of positive coverage.
Mainstream UK press are regularly making North-Korea style calls for people who personally dislike the royals to be excluded from the media, eve when they are making even-handed reportage about them, just on the off-chance that their subconscious biases might seep through in to their work (or something? lol): https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10267447/Amol-Rajan...
Edit: to indicate irony..
Also the royal family pays taxes and lease lots of stuff to the government at no cost.
- https://slendertroll.tumblr.com/post/66114152363 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_Town_(Specials_song)
"Naivete can also be detected in my supposition that it would take something as melodramatic as a near-miss nuclear conflict to nudge England toward fascism. Although in fairness to myself and David, there were no better or more accurate predictions of our country’s future available in comic form at that time. The simple fact that much of the historical background of the story proceeds from a predicted Conservative defeat in the 1982 General Election should tell you how reliable we were in our role as Cassandras. It’s 1988 now. Margaret Thatcher is entering her third term of office and talking confidently of an unbroken Conservative leadership well into the next century. My youngest daughter is seven and the tabloid press are circulating the idea of concentration camps for persons with AIDS. The new riot police wear black visors, as do their horses, and their vans have rotating video cameras mounted on top. The government has expressed a desire to eradicate homosexuality, even as an abstract concept, and one can only speculate as to which minority will be the next legislated against. I’m thinking of taking my family and getting out of this country soon, sometime over the next couple of years. It’s cold and it’s mean-spirited and I don’t like it here anymore."
They are given a lot of money.
They can (and regularly do) veto legislation if it would harm their (vast) business empire.
They are not elected.
The burden of proof is on you to say why this is a good institution.
While we have these kinds of submissions pretty regularly on HN, this is the first time in multiple years I've seen a reminder about this under almost every single negative comment and every comment containing critique. The reminder about the rule was even expanded to the whole concept of royalty.
My point is not that speaking ill of the dead should be encouraged, my point is the selective enforcement of that sentiment with only a special, priviliged group benefitting from it.
Edit after consideration: Whether criticizing the dead or not criticizing the dead should follow a general rule, I can't and won't comment on.
My impression is that William benefited from just not being Charles, and some of the sheen rubbing off from his mother. Both of those things only go so far, and as he moves more and more into public responsibilities, he has more and more chances to bungle up. From the high of the early 2010s, the only way for him to trend was down, and its inevitable. William is, what, 40? Charles wasn't quite reviled when he was 40 too - he grew into that role.
Even if the monarchy isn't abolished outright before Louis or a sibling ascends, it's very possible that the United Kingdom in its current state may not. The unified crowns of England and Scotland may exist in title only, if that.
His actions among others weakened British image in the world. He was also a nazi sympatizer.
> ultimately taken from the people and maintained via favourable tax laws
Taken from the people and maintained via favorable tax laws. UK inheritance tax is 40% (over the threshold, which is so low as to be meaningless next to the royal estate). With 5 royal deaths since Victoria, Charles III would have less than 8% of what he actually does if that 40% were taken each time (which is obviously vastly oversimplifying to make a point).
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32769222
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32769043
Once that sort of comments were no longer so prominent, people thought I was asking them to say nice things about the monarchy. It took me a while to realize what was causing the misunderstanding, and once I did I demoted my post. It was basically a victim of its own success.
It is pretty obvious that she is regarded positively by the majority here. Are you under the impression that I think otherwise?
But...
Elizabeth was a remarkable person, filled with evident curiosity and willingness to connect with people despite being a reserved personality. She was a bit mischievous. She wasn't defined by her job, she defined it.
And beyond that, there are just so many constants that are about to change. I keep thinking how lucky we are that we have cashless transactions, because the abrupt switch from the ubiquity of Elizabeth's face would have been much more noticeable 15 years ago (which sounds like a non sequitur, but ... her face is everywhere on money).
I just think there is too much hype in the whole Royal Family than what it’s worth for.
(Sorry if this offends some Brits but being from one of the colonized countries I strongly feel this is not worth it)
You forgot to mention the part where Australia immediately held an election. The poor victimised Labour party, who you would have us believe was wrongly removed, lost the vote by a landslide.
If the people wanted Whitlam's government, and thought it was a grave injustice, they would have voted them back in. They were clearly unpopular given the election results. The end result was decided by the people, not the Queen/Governor General/Liberals.
In the UK, our Armed Forces actually pledge alliance to the monarch, not the government. And the monarch is meant to stay out of all politics. In theory, if a prime minister/government decided to go rogue and try to become a dictatorship, the monarch is a last line of defence that can stand in the way and restore order.
Of course one could argue that the monarch is in fact the dictator you’re trying to stop, or that there’s nothing to stop a monarch of bad moral character from becoming a dictator. Both systems have their strengths and weaknesses. But I no longer look as poorly at Constitutional Democracies as I once did or Republics as richly.
With a Republic you’re basically playing the “wisdom of numbers” card, and hoping that through the various votes, from party elections through to national elections, a person of decent enough moral character is elected into the highest position of power. With the British system, you’re putting faith that the strict rules, customs and ceremonies that dictate the education and behaviour of the Royal Family translate into monarchs that have the moral character to deal with the position. With Liz that worked out extraordinarily well. If it had been someone like Prince Andrew, probably not so much.
When seen through this lens, the pomp and ceremonies stop looking archaic and quaint and start to make a bit more sense. It’s why there’s such a massive divide between the Meghan/Harry camp and the Royal Family. Meghan and Harry see the strict protocols as constricting the individual and they’re completely right. However, that’s the whole point, the member of the royal family is meant to be constrained and molded into the function they’re meant to perform in service of the people as the individual instinct runs the greatest risk of turning the monarch into a dictator.
I would say this is the defining factor between US and UK culture and why there has always been a bit of confusion and misunderstanding of each other, going right back to the war of independence; America values that individual dream more than anything else whereas the Brits distrust it because of its potential dark side to tyranny. Brits gloss over the mental health issues (stiff upper lip) that accompany giving up your individual dreams in favour of slotting neatly into your allocated function in the class system and the Americans gloss over that chasing dreams can sometimes end up being purely self serving.
Based on current trends, the UK (and the world) is trending more towards the US way of things, driven primarily by technology and the internet. 30 years ago, if you wanted to watch anything on TV tonight your only option would have been coverage of the Queen’s death, which is mandated to run on all channels. This would have formed a pretty formidable “group mourning mentality” or “collective consciousness”. Today that is diluted somewhat by the fact that you can stream whatever you want whenever you want; the group no longer holds as much power over the individual.
It’s this ideological and psychological component that I actually think is an argument in favour of Republics or at least reforming the monarchy to enforce retirement at a certain age. Is it really fair to expect someone to dedicate their entire life in service of the people? Elizabeth did it from 25 to 96. She was literally performing duties 48 hours before her death. It’s an almost superhuman level of public service, like Frodo carrying the ring, and we shouldn’t really be asking anyone to do it for their entire lives. Even Sam had to carry it the final distance through Mordor. The woman deserved a rest. But then she loved doing it which is what made her such a great queen.
Without an objective way to measure "badness", all you're doing it reflecting what the TV told you to feel.
I guess the only real definition of monarch is social and cultural: someone who claims to be one and is broadly recognized as such.
She remember the poland of poles in rural areas and germans and jews in the cities, which is how the entirety of eastern Europe looked like up to the urals. So many different languages spoken by populations for centuries.
She never saw a car or listened to a radio as a child and definitely did not have electricity at home till ww2 ended. When she died there were videochats.
The paradox of the UK is that it has a lot of wealth, many institutions and industries which still function and have not yet collapsed. But the political system itself has completely collapsed, and the economy is faltering badly.
The US is in a similar situation. But, of course, still leading the world in many regards.
Not to mention, legoland UK brings in a lot of tourists, but we don't have an unelected lego man as the head of state, secretly vetoing laws or orchestrating coups.
It was because, when the thread was getting going, it flooded with crap comments (e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32769222, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32769043). I decided to come down hard on those to try to ward off a shitshow. It would have been the same in any thread that was filling up that way, but which we weren't going to downweight off the front page. And we weren't going to do that because (a) the story was on-topic, and (b) it's such a big story that we couldn't get rid of it if we wanted to—people would just repost it until one got past us.
I posted https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32769925 at the top of the thread as a bulwark against the crap comments. That's also standard moderation. At some point, though, the thread started to fill with plenty of more substantive comments and then it looked to people like I was taking a side on the royalist question. Nothing was further from my mind.
It took me a long time to figure this out, probably because after 4 hours of doing nothing but refreshing this page and posting moderation scoldings, my brain was fried. Eventually I got it and the fix was simply to unpin https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32769925 from the top and demote it as offtopic. That seems to have calmed things down (except maybe for https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=theirishrover).
Just last year there was the Guardian investigation that suggested she was trying to hide the true extent of her wealth: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/feb/07/revealed-que... (I've seen other sources disputing it, but one can't argue that this is at least a hint of scandal)
False dichotomy. Getting rid of the monarchy does not mean you have to follow the US model.
I recall (possibly faulty memory) from a documentary I watched once, that the bureaucracy stopped providing him with certain daily government briefing documents out of fears for national security.
In our current world wealth and royalty is preserved by free will and is nothing comparable to your manhood (which you can also give up if you want to, people do)
> RNZ stations are instructed not to play punk music, or songs by the band Queen during this period.
Part of the "London bridge down"-protocol for New Zealand
So while you're right that she is styled Her Majesty the Queen Consort, she is the same kind of queen that Queen Charlotte was. I think you're right that people are avoiding the phrase "Queen Camilla" at the moment but I think it will come into use.
(But she is definitely not the sovereign.)
I've dreaded writing these words for quite some time now, because to me, she's become the prototype of someone who hasn't been quite alive for some time now, but still embodied the spirit of a nation - a nation arguably in perceived decline, but still somehow held together by the almost poetic and optimistic belief that as long as the Queen is alive, the nation will prosper or, at the very least, persevere.
At the same time, I feel relief that even the Queen may die, and life still goes on. May she rest in peace.
The Queen is dead.
Charles is going to milk his kingship for everything it's worth.
My condolences to British people who held the Queen at high esteem. But frankly world is a bigger place than Britain and America. Not everyone from the British former colonies will appreciate the Queen. if they express the feelings about the monarchy in a respectful way; do you see an issue?
The ex-prime minister of the UK who led us through a pandemic where hundreds of thousands died has just said it's the UK darkest day. And, I have received an email to say my kids nursery will be closed due to the situation, and they will be talking about bereavement for the kids. He is 2.
But you're right that these have had less of an effect on the royal family itself and especially QEII
- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20661919
- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2504770
But it is to be expected. There are the good guys in the Western sphere of influence and the bad guys. And this is a Western site. It cannot be expected to do much but reflect what is this site's audience. The Elephant and The Rider, after all.
Besides, she's just a figurehead, and makes no real decisions. So it's a bit strange to lay the blame at her feet for the Mao-style starving of her subjects (as they would have been considered by her at the time) or the many wars.
Why did you listed a comment supporting abolishing the monarchy an example of "crap comments"?
here in Germany we have what is probably the most common setup in republics, a chancellor and a president as the ceremonial head of state.
Because they were crap comments. They'd have been crap comments if they were pro-monarchy, too. One of them was a one-liner "fuck the monarchy I don't care" comment, and the other, not much longer, ended in "cringe asf lmao".
It's quite possible to respect the person who happens to be a monarch and being against the institution of monarchy.
If you're not suppse to question monarchy when a ruling monarch dies, then when is it appropriate?
That's not quite how it felt as a 52 year old Brit off of mostly England wot lived here at that time, as well as West Germany. I got the full Cold War experience.
I'm not sure about V for Vendetta - that's a film released in 2005 so a retrospective of {something}. "Ghost Town" by the Specials is of its time and an absolute belter and it does evoke emotions.
I can understand that a Canadian that wasn't even born at the time might find it hard to usefully engage with the past of a foreign country.
However we as Canadians and Brits and many others shared a Queen and she has passed away to all our loss.
Remember that mobile phones were already "StarTac" sized in 1996:
https://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2009/05/the-evolution-of-ce...
As for social media, "Eternal September" was in 1993. In fact, I noted my grandmother's perception that people putting their thoughts out there was disruptive. In her mind that, like radio or TV that she saw get invented, this was obviously going to suddenly be everyone. So you're saying she was right. But she'd already seen it in the last millennium.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September
As for "fall of American Democracy", actually, the 1960s and early 1970s didn't feel a whole lot different from the recent summer of discontent, and remember that the LA Riots were 1992. And for someone around since 1900, 'fall of American democracy' was, at several points, not "unthinkable".
In any case, "social media" hundreds of years ago was called "pamphleteering" and, for example, contributed to French Revolution:
Not really. She's been the living figurehead and embodiment of "Britain" for nearly a century, and for colonized peoples that by definition includes the generational trauma and suffering from the British empire. You don't get to be Queen and wear a crown with the Kohinoor on it and just separate yourself from that history.
The Floppy Disk. ... Portable Cassette Player. ... The All-In-One Personal Computer. ... The Cell Phone. ... The VCR. ... The First “Real” Video Game. ... Digital Wristwatches.
I did not referred to that comment.
> and the other, not much longer, ended in "cringe asf lmao".
The comment you're trying to misrepresent was "Great time to abolish the monarchy. Monarchies are fucking stupid.", and afterwards, once the downvotes started to flow, was edited with "Edit: yall actually support monarchies? cringe asf lmao"
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32769043
Why do you feel that opposing the concept of a monarchy should be censored in a discussion on a topic which naturally involves replacing a monarch?
I think he was referring to the 1982 graphic novel of the same name that the film was based on.
EDIT for spelling
Serious question: name someone who might realistically be President who would not make you sad.
This should be obvious if you've read HN's rules: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
In the unlikely event that the UK were to abolish or deprecate its monarchy, Canada would still prefer not to re-open the Constitution. This might indeed lead to Canada worshipping "The Crown" without anybody to wear said ceremonial headgear.
In other words, the logical contortions of a democracy naming one family as being more important than anyone else, and it being a family without power anyway, are less painfully absurd in Canadian politics than discussing the Constitution. ^_^
That really depends on what's your definition of "Europeans" and "civilized". The Catholic church exists for around 2 thousand years,is still alive and well, has its capital in Italy, and has defined western society for centuries.
I believe I've answered your other question in a few places:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32772419
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32771874
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32772067
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32771818
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32770946
... as well as in the comment you're replying to (starting at "I'm not telling you guys to be royalists!"). If you read those comments and still have a question that isn't answered there, I'd be happy to take a crack at it.
Huh? Is a six year term rather than a four year term rally that much longer a horizon. Maybe this view made since when the senate seats were an appointed position. but ever since it became an elected position its ceased to have any appreciable difference from a seat in the house.
“2. Act to extend to the Queen's successors
The provisions of this Act referring to the Queen shall extend to Her Majesty's heirs and successors in the sovereignty of the United Kingdom.”
I’m surprised that apparently many Commonwealth countries don’t have similar.
If she had wanted to, at some point, abdicate in favour of Charles, that could have been arranged. It would have required a special Act of the UK Parliament (following the prior example of His Majesty's Declaration of Abdication Act 1936) [0] – and probably also supporting legislation in the other Commonwealth Realms (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, etc) – but no doubt the governments of the Commonwealth Realms would have obliged. It was her own decision that she did not want that. I would not be surprised if, in another 10 or 15 years, King Charles III makes a different decision, but we shall see. In recent years, monarchs abdicating due to advanced age has become rather common – the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Luxembourg, Japan, among others.
[0] http://www.bailii.org/uk/legis/num_act/1936/ukpga_19360003_e...
If you'd like a tale about the 1970-80s then feel free to ask and I'll tell you what I saw. With luck, my memories aren't too shot.
Living in W Germany in the 1970/80s was rather safer than Ukraine now. A threat of nuclear shenanigans back then is nothing compared to a rocket salvo now.
Ukraine is being attacked right now by Russia and has been for months. Civilians are dying daily in this revolting attack on common civility.
I'm not too sure how important V for whatevs is. It's a story.
Asus being a republic is doing to be 50 years of dumb, outdated ideas and strife. None of our pollies are going to be innovative (Kevin, Turnbull, and Gillard were the last attempts)
With Murdoch having such a strong grip on the public conversation, he's going to profit the most from shitty controversies over absolutely nothing.
There's already a "change" vacuum (think power vacuum) in Australia which really opens the door for totalitarianism in the future. And Australian nanny-state-ism hasn't been a good precedent so far.
I was born in UK but grew up in NZ and now I live in HK and wherever I have been over the decades the Queen is known, recognised and respected. She totally lived her role and the world is a better place for it.
(Spain is somewhat of an exception, but Juan Carlos' abdication was linked to corruption allegations over shady business dealings in Saudi Arabia; I very much doubt Elizabeth had any such skeletons lurking in her closets.)
Somehow I think those of us who also feel this way and dear Lilibet had very different experiences doing so.
but somehow the dozens of kobe bryant posts didn't get past you, even though it was just as big of a death and just as on-topic (anything piquing curiosity, right?). i'd suggest being even-handed about these kinds of posts, rather than allowing some to be flagged off the front page because [black, athlete, relentless winner, investor, entrepreneur, oscar awardee, loving father, ... ], would help temper the backlash.
none or all such posts should be allowed, but not the picking and choosing that happens currently, which is highly disrespectful in the same way you're criticizing others here.
Definitively, yes, Australia "began" with European settlement of the continent.
Yaa it was real decent of her to pin medals on the parachute regiment who shot down unarmed men in Derry protesting about the internment of political prisoners in concentration camps without trial. But they were "increasing nationalism" (against the nationalism of the foreign English occupiers) so it's ok.
https://twitter.com/grahamrkings/status/1567983024402305027?...
Take a counselling course and you’ll quickly learn that truly listening to people is a difficult and very valuable skill. Ask any counsellor and they’ll tell you that even for the most compassionate people, it can actually be quite emotionally exhausting to give their undivided attention to someone for hour after hour, day after day. It is in fact, best practice for BACP counsellors to schedule an hour with another BACP therapist for every 12? hours (this might not be the exact number but it’s somewhere in this ball park) spent with clients in order to discuss their own state of mind and decompress. The Queen had many luxuries but I doubt this was one of them.
Sure, I wouldn't necessarily be up for a lifestyle change involving playing Survivor with consonant-loving maniacs I wasn't actually related to and have never heard of before! However the Queen's situation is the exact opposite: she had a life built around being heir to the throne and whilst it was technically possible to give the middle finger to everyone in her life instead of fulfilling the role she'd been assigned at birth, that's a bit different from implying monarchy was the job she wanted or even a net positive.
Odd that a subthread which started with someone praising the late Queen for choosing not to run away from obligations requires so many followups pointing out that she could have run away from them...
> your manhood (which you can also give up if you want to, people do)
Well yeah, that was the point. You can change almost anything you're born with; the ability to give something up [at significant cost, and without necessarily getting a better alternative] clearly isn't remotely sufficient to describe it as something you "signed up for".
She did go beyond simply maintaining the monarchy - she worked to influence legislation to, among other things, hide her personal wealth, give her and her family an exemption from seatbelt laws, and make it easier to lease land for development. Pretty minor issues all things considered, probably much more mild than the average MP, but it does not sit right with me given that she was unelected and in office for life.
You can't just erase all those years of history or say they weren't part of our history, because they're "unpalatable". Ugh. Did you forget your history that you learned in school? :)
And that is in the first world countries, god help those in the 3rd world countries.
British imperialism is a bloodstain that I’m not gonna just forget about because the smile behind the menace has passed.
The Dalai Lama and Simeon II of Bulgaria were both heads of state during WW II. But China invaded Tibet in 1950, and by 1960 the Dalai Lama ruled nothing. And Simeon lost his throne in 1946 (though he did get elected prime minister many years later).
I wouldn't count them as monarchs any more.
That said, looking at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_current_monarchs_of_so... I find the following currently reigning monarchs who were born before WW II and probably remember something from it:
- Emir Nawaf Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah of Kuwait
- King Harald V of Norway
- King Salman of Saudi Arabia
- Pope Francis of Vatican State
Metric is where "I" would raise my family, and based on all other western options, monarchies would come first; Brasilians idolises US, I can tell you because I was one of them, but them once you grow up and have a little more exposure to the world and different cultures, the current state it encounters itself it would be one of the last places I would live, because of its recurrent issues, mainly gun control, healthcare, I would also included woman's health birth choices under healthcare, those being the top ones, are a sad joke.
Of course everything depends on which stage one is at life, at the moment this is what I think with a young family, maybe if I was single just leaving Brasil, I would have fell in love with it, but that is not my experience. * At the moment I am fortunate enough to work from NZ with an US salary, and maybe when I am older I might retire on a Spanish villa, who knows, but US is not what it used to be.
> ...1,000 people are dying a month from the botched "response" to covid...
How many republics appear before the first monarch country in this[1] list? [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1104709/coronavirus-deat...
> I wouldn't lay this on the feet of the monarchy, cos the elected officials seem to be the main cause of it. Me neither, but it is hard not to conclude that the further away a country have been "independent" the worse it is.
* I have been on some business trips to US. PS: Other countries I would consider would be AU, NZ, UK, CA and Nordics, also I could not care less who is running what, as long as my family is safe and I have peace of mind.
Perhaps this may seem like semantics to someone who doesn’t live here but I find this sentiment at best ignorant and at worst offensive.
Churchill faced down (figuratively) Hitler and Mussolini, which makes him a heroic and legendary figure. (He was also a racist monster). Until yesterday, she was a living person who had actually talked to him at length, regularly when he was alive. That's amazing to think about.
But I feel the exactly same as you do, and it's not even my damn country to boot.
But, we all know why, or at least it seems to me...a lifetime of dedicated service, consistent and steady service to UK and the world both. Calm, cool. Loyal to country, husband, the whole shooting match.
There's a LOT to admire about the woman that has nothing to do with monarchy. But, almost everyone likes tradition. The 60 second minute and 60 minute hour have been around since Sumerian epoch 5,000 years ago. Tradition. We still use the name of the months from Rome 2,000 years ago. When a head of government has been around for 70 years, the person is not a monarch, that person an institution.
So I had a lump in my throat, and felt some tears well up. Especially as I read that there was a double-rainbow as it was announced. I am not superstitious in the least, and still not about that, but still...
Michael Kirby, Marie Bashir–both too old now, but either could have been a fine President if we had become a republic sooner. Or, similarly, Ted Egan, former Administrator of the Northern Territory.
Frank Brennan–the whole his being a Catholic priest thing is somewhat of an obstacle, admittedly (although possibly not a completely insurmountable one.)
What about Susan Kiefel? Or Angus Campbell?
Ahh yes, that photo of Elizabeth changing an ambulance tire, one of the great public relations triumphs of the 20th century. So humble! She's just like one of us...
So, if the Dutch monarchy can survive it, why not the British? I think you are probably right about her own attitudes to the topic, likely irreversibly marked by the events of 1936. But I'd be surprised if the same is true of her son or grandson.
However, I think there is nothing further to be gained here as we would be arguing semantics.
As a second-generation immigrant from an Asian country, I have to admit that I was ecstatic at hearing the news. For someone who's family was poor to the point of drinking rotting bone stew and foraging grass partly due to the queen refusing to decolonize until Britian lacked the military might to do so, the only reaction anyone in my close circle could have is positive. This is juxtaposed with the prevailing sentiment here where it's socially unacceptable to celebrate her death. I wonder if all the moralist harping about how one should never celebrate a person's death felt about Stalin, or how they would react to the death of Carmen Ortiz or Vladimir Putin.
I really enjoy my time lurking here in this small corner of the internet and I hope that the moderators here step it up and either 1. ban politically divisive topics or 2. moderate away both trite positive and negative comments.
That name was inspired by the very real HMSO: Her Majesty's Stationary Office(!): a name that struck me as absurdly pretentious for something really mundane.
Saudi Arabia's King Salman was born in 1935
Maybe you're young, but this 'feeling of stability' really has only happened since 1991.
I remember before that, and it was very scary living with the Soviet Union and all those countries with nukes pointed at us.
Also, the 1960s-1980s wrought huge economic change, as the last phase of major 'Democratic Socialist' changes occurred, desegregation/civil rights in the US along with giant leap in crime, and most of the west moved out of a very chaotic political climate only towards the end of that.
1990-2010 was a bit of a calm period.
Also, 'Brexit' is not a net negative thing (I think it's neutral on the whole). The EEC (i.e. trade) is almost all of the benefit of the EU, some of the post EEC i.e. EU artifacts are actually quite a bad thing (though not all of course). Even Euro itself, is probably only 'neutral' in that it has very harsh externalities that are just not obvious.
Notably, we have seen a massive failure in the EU to not only protect itself, 100% dependent on US military defence, even in 2020 - but one of the 'root problems' was the EU powerhouse, Germany, abdicating it's defence responsibilities, and selling out the entirety of the EU to Russian energy dependence which put the EU in an existentially weak position vis-a-vis Russia. If the US did not exist, Putin would be dominating the EU via it's vast tentacles (like it is in Hungary, but much worse, and all over).
Obviously some nations, like France, Sweden and Finland are quite prepared, but on the whole, it's bad.
Europeans are know this, Macron himself has suggested 'something else' for Ukraine and Georgia.
It will literally take decades for Ukraine get into the EU, which is nary impossible for any normal country as they cannot maintain a consistent strategic orientation for that long, which speaks to the gigantic bureaucratic complexity of the EU.
Instead - UK, Turkey, Ukraine, Finland, Georgia, Switzerland will possibly join the 'expanded' EU (by another name), which will mostly be trade focused. The interesting thing about that however, the other nations, notably Spain, Italy, Greece will definitely start to wonder about 'the grass being greener' in those countries.
QE2's death is definitely a kind of geostrategic demarcation, along with the failure of Russia in Ukraine as it's 'last gasp' as a major power, and COVID. The rise of China as well, but that's in phases.
This is kind of a WW1 moment.
As for the future of the Royals? It's hard to say - some progressives may want to think more 'Republican' but I'm not so sure. We are choking on materialism and people are yearning for authentic things.
'Secular Ideologies' including Socialism and Capitalism have brought us some nice things, but we are fundamentally more hollow. 'De-culturlization' isn't going so well, people are spiritually empty, we lack community. Putting a 'Starbucks on Every Corner' of the world is good for the GDP, but it's woefully lacking otherwise. A trip to the suburubs of Toronto where things are actually technically 'good' from a culturally secular perspective (i.e. peace, jobs, people get along well) ... but you'll find it's a kind of cultural death: absolutely no local culture whatsoever, almost the entire population working for 'local offices' of international firms, nothing to even identify the area as belonging to it's actual nation, culture and values being dictated by the marketing rooms of foreign countries, mostly in the name of selling sneakers and iPhones. That's 'materialism' not true 'prosperity'. It's amazing if you were a poor kid from Hyderabad (i.e. to have material stability), but not so good otherwise.
In that context, everything that has cultural authenticity is basically worth more than anything else. Do you know what's exploding in value? Authentic Faberge eggs. As we also realize the value of cultural institutions. Other things, even neat things like iPhones, are ultimately just commodities.
I have never liked the queen or the British monarchy. To me they are the biggest symbol of oppression in history and set my people and continent several centuries back while they enriched themselves. Never an apology, never any reparations.
So while i will not jump around and rejoice, I would be lying if I said I did not feel some happiness and relief at the news. And i think always will as this monarchy chips away.
I am not alone in these sentiments, but our sentiments as Africans have never really mattered in the grand scheme of things.
This press release from one of South Africa's bigger political parties expresses this succinctly. They did not mince their words and i know there are plenty of Africans who feel the same.
LINK: https://www.politicsweb.co.za/documents/we-do-not-mourn-the-...
Perhaps I’m just jaded. I don’t see it happening. I see it being one of the same old dudes that we all basically can’t stand.
[0]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32769867
Yes, it's fiction, but the comment you were replying to mentions Alan Moore's foreword to his work where he mentions the context in which he created the comic -- and that context was the despair and hopelessness he felt in the UK of the 70s and 80s.
Alan Moore is talking about the reality that inspired his fiction (and in fact, mentions how his fiction fell short of what actually happened next).
> I'm not too sure how important V for whatevs is. It's a story.
"V for whatevs"? You are being needlessly dismissive. Alan Moore is a highly influential and political comics book author whose work has a lot to say about the 70s and 80s. Just like punk was also a reflection and a product of its era.
It's common for "Australia's history" to refer to pre-colonisation in addition to the last couple of hundred years.
This is almost certainly because Australians see the country and the continent as 'the same' for all intents and purposes.
Concisely: this argument is unconvincing.
> Bias wrapped in fake nuance is obvious and time-wasting.
But how do you know it is "fake nuance" rather than genuine explanation? By being uncharitable?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1937_tour_of_Germany_by_the_Du...
I couldn't tell you off-hand how many presidents I've lived through, how many prime minsters I've lived through, how many wars I've lived through ..
But I can tell you I've lived through one Queen.
Even just logistically, to replicate this takes a young start that's getting less and less likely. If we assume Charles has 10-20 years left on him, that'll make William 50-60.
I mean obviously Queen feels more normalized because there's only been a King for 0.002% of my life. But I do think Kings being the minority for the last two centuries adds its own impact too.
But I don’t see Dang censoring a robust, thoughtful discussion of abolishing the monarchy here. He shut down a cheap, childish comment that was followed by an even cheaper, vulgar dismissal of people who don’t already agree with the original “comment”.
So we have two options, pick good cults and cult leaders or live with bad ones. The Royal Family at the moment asks nothing from the devout. Literally, you don’t have to pray, believe ideologies, support politics, almost nothing. Just show up for the weddings, respect the titles and play along with the ceremony.
That’s the best version of religion we can get.
The oath itself wouldn't stop the British Parliament passing an Act of Parliament to abolish the Crown and replace it with some other system. In theory, the monarch could refuse to give their assent to the proposed law but given that would cause a constitutional crisis, in reality the chances are the monarch would assent and the system could be changed.
It seems it would take a republican government in power _or_ huge public demand that the monarchy to be abolished for that to happen which seems unlikely any time soon assuming King Charles III and his successors don't err massively.
Wait, you mean to tell me the King can veto laws in the UK? I thought you guys figured this loophole out? Who controls the military?
What you could blame her for is not doing more to dismantle the monarchy's non-figurehead powers from the inside. But what you're trying to do is something else entirely and rather gross.
The romantic in me likes to believe the Queen would step in if the British parliament tried passing some truly terrible bill. Basically acting as a last stop gap of human and British sensibility. Though with Queen Elizabeth II gone I'd have less trust in the judgement of a monarch.
Part of me does wonder if US politics would've been much different with a ceremonial figurehead. And that'd be a fun alt-history where a great-great-grandchild of George Washington is the ceremonial head of the US government and has to deal with intrigues of Washington politics while just wanting to live quietly on the ancestral Virginian home.
The President is a largely symbolic apolitical role – yet also popularly elected. To ensure only high quality candidates run, the hurdle to nominate is rather high – nomination by at least 20 members of the Irish Parliament (the Oireachtas), or by at least four county/city councils (Ireland only has 31). My impression is that people are generally happy with the outcome of the process.
In Australia, we could similarly require nomination by at least 20 MPs (the Parliament of Australia is only slightly larger than the Oireachtas, 227 vs 220). The four councils requirement is a bit harder to translate – but rough equivalents would be nomination by 1 state/territory government, or by 70 local councils.
People underestimate the atrocities done by British empire, one tiny example is when they chopped off thumbs of handloom weavers to stop the Indian business spread within India in order to sell their goods from Manchester produced from the stolen cotton from India again, my clan of people were the silk weavers since more than a millennium and were wiped out of existence. Even now I sometimes hear the horror stories from my Grandpa who lost a lot of kin and daily bread due to the greedy pigs and jealous barbarians that the empire was.
The words imperialism and colonialism don't do justice for the horrors they brought upon us.
I generally have empathy towards the dead, but for this incident, I hardly care.
In reality, if King Charles started vetoing then after a short constitutional crisis, parliament would basically just change the rules of the game to say that the monarch no longer has the power to veto laws.
Between the two...could you really picture Queen Elizabeth attempting to seize total control of the state--much less accomplishing it? Or the monarchs of Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands, or Japan?
I can picture a President attempting to seize power in a Republican system. In fact I can point to several specific examples from the past few decades, successful or otherwise.
I'm definitely not saying constitutional monarchy is the perfect system, at all. I'm just saying that after spending most of my life with the assumption that monarchies were just a quaint anachronism left over from days gone by, a sort of political appendix...I've started to notice that they seem to have interesting properties and robustness that other systems might lack. It's possible that the monarchy serves a useful purpose after all (actually...much like the appendix).
But the place she sits, is from the blood of millions who were enslaved, robbed and were dealt with a rather inhuman treatment to say the least. In the process empire also justified what they did was in the past and cautiously moved away from that without an inch of guilt. It is sad to see people in India/Pakistan/SriLanka mourn for her death, a pity case of Stockholm syndrome.
If as you say, she has done good in her life, she should have relinquished the power, disowned the wealth which was directly a result of the horrific colonialism and imperialism. Or at least have some decency and apologise, give back the stolen wealth as a good gesture. Now I wonder, if she would have given up imperialism out of her own volition if she was in power during that period. I am inclining towards No.. it was convenient she didn't have to oversee those horrors.
It has been more than 70 years and even now, they hold their crown so precious adorned with the Diamonds taken away forcefully from our lands. What an absolute shame!
There are unheard horrors from the colonial countries, which will ache even the stone hearted. Bringing all this in perspective, we don't think she's Kim, but we have the same respect or the lack of it for anyone in their legacy.
The commonwealth nation should also do that. It time for the UK to move into a new era.
For all of those Australians, having the democratically elected PM become president is clearly superior than having an unelected monarch be the head of state.
You're the one kidding, mate.
Totally fair criticism. But that's not what I've been seeing from any of the criticism until your post.
What I've been seeing has been collective filial guilt assignment. The same psychological process underlying racism and other forms of collective guilt assignment. Hatred directed to the Queen little to do with what she did or didn't do, but because of what British Imperialism did in past before she got the job. The post above ours exemplifies this.
Unbelievable.
I've posted the same here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32775652
Edit: With all those things in perspective I ask the same question, would the late Queen of England have given up imperialism and colonialism and gave the nations to themselves if she lived during that era? Or was it convenient that she or anyone in power now didn't have to oversee the imperialism.
And the multiple hundreds of "oh so sad rip i'm not a royalist but..." posts above are _curious_ and don't need discouraging?
And as a 'general rule', of course there are exceptions.
polishing by bells for the Putin death announcement celebration
The hatred though is coming from unresolved hurt, which the modern British era is trying hard to forget and won't be easy until they take some sensible directions towards reparations and an honest apology at least from whomever even got to witness, including the late Queen. She had a chance to resolve or ease it in our memories. We'll remember her as someone who lived their life in power, saw the horrors their parents designed upon others and didn't even have courtesy to apologise.
So much for the British decency..
Edit: Sorry for the rant. My Grandpa and his kin suffered a lot and was in freedom struggle, it is that lasting impact. I've put it here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32775488 If you're a brit, please know that I am not against you or anybody for that matter. Just the monarchy's horrific past.
> there’s probably only a small percentage of traditional elites who feel that way.
The way Ireland was publicly handled after 2016 shows that "small percentage" is still firmly in power, and winning solid majorities.
There is no clear '4 years to election' as they have in the US.
In my home country, Canada, it gets dicey as we wonder sometimes just what the 'Governor General' (Queen's rep in Canada) will do.
I don't think the Queen is going to be interjecting on any 'legislation' unless there is something fundamentally unconstitutional about how it was passed; but there's definitely some question marks about 'how and when government falls and is formed' - and especially, how 'minority governments' are formed. If there's no obvious winner, then minority situations form, and it can get weird.
That's still a thing.
I suggest the US would have been a better country were the American revolution to not have happened. Sounds totally crazy, but true. I think the US would have healthcare, be a bit more socially minded, slavery would have ended a lot sooner, and the US still have all of the 'good parts' (except a cool national anthem).
The British monarch is one of the least powerful heads of state on earth. The president of Barbados has more discretionary power.
I’ll admit growing up I had some affinity for all the good in the world Pincess Diana was doing. And then she died. Which was sad. Her life ruined by the royal family and a failed marriage to guy who wasn’t faithful. And then many years later after visiting the UK and learning how much the public supported them financially etc and how little power they had and other than being the face of the money I asked myself: “what is the point of it all? To sell tabloids?”
Or if you come from one of the countries like me that was colonized under her watch you might have this reaction: https://twitter.com/laurajedeed/status/1567940027279196170?s...
If you think WWII wasn't special in significance then I can only say you're entitled to your opinion.
Log out of Twitter, that's my advice.
The reality is that it’s consistently been the House of Lords that save us from the nuttier ideas.
The functions and powers of our Presidency are a much closer derivative of the British monarchy than we tell ourselves in our classrooms. The President signing bills into law is a copy of the requisite assent of the monarchy. Political appointments were a copy of how the King vested power, and as you guessed it, the King is the Head of the British Armed Forces.
Also I think even British folks are undersold on how powerful the late Queen really was. She may not have vetoed any legislation, but her Prime Ministers sought and received her advice regularly, consulting with her and unburdening themselves to her the problems they were faced with or tasked with resolving. Put another way, she was an active participant in how laws were formed and the business of Her Majesty’s governments proceeded even if she did not participate in the drafting of the texts or have any policy objectives per se. That isn’t ceremonial at all, although many of her duties as Queen and Defender of the Faith were ceremonial.
In America we celebrate the separation of powers, telling ourselves a few myths along the way about the co-equality of branches (essentially Nixon era propaganda from when he was facing down the gun barrel of impeachment, but Congress adopted the myth despite being head and shoulders the most powerful branch of Government under the Constitution). The King-in-Parliament—or under the late Queen, the Queen-in-Parliament—is absolute power in the United Kingdom and no one may question their directives because this is King, Lords and Commons speaking as one. Their power as one body is what we separated into the President, Senate, Representatives and Supreme Court. We then limited it further by conceiving of powers as enumerated, although clearly this was insufficient as a power limiter.
The royal family is little more then a Kabuki act at this point, no reason to throw out tradition on a whim.
However, I don't know many places where mainstream politics would accept political violence as anything but extreme in almost every case. I'm not sure the fringe is growing, but to come round to my initial point, I'm worried that it will after the last WWII generation dies out.
I hope you manage to find some meaning in what will happen in the next few weeks. For many, this is a great loss, perhaps can there be learning in being curious and compassionate regarding other people's experience of loss and grief, and their hopes and fears for the future
But let’s take one example: the monarchy and the ludicrous rules and conventions that go with it to govern parliament are just one way working class MPs are intimidated and given the information that they are not really welcome in the corridors of power.
Let’s remember also that the British people have not sacked Boris. Conservative mps worried for their personal survival sacked him and 300,000 old white people from the south east of England have, for the third time in recent years, made Truss our PM. She has no regard for the manifesto that her party was elected on. Everything is by convention in the UK, which means people with privilege can do whatever they like.
All totally reasonable things to say.
> The hatred though is coming from unresolved hurt
Yeah, that's the explanation, but we shouldn't confuse that with justification.
What puts me off about the reaction I'm seeing is more abstract than the details of this particular case. It's the same feeling I have when I see casual anti-White racism, justified as legitimate only because of the existence and history of white supremacy. It's filial guilt and collective guilt put on one individual who didn't perpetrate the crimes that are the actual source of the anger. And it's the cultural normalization and even promotion of such perverse group-based moral systems that I am speaking out against.
The asymmetry derives from an asymmetry in the titles themselves: the title "King" outranks the title "Queen", rather than those titles being of equal rank. You can't have someone other than the monarch outranking the monarch, so the husband of the reigning Queen can't be a King.
True equality comes when we realize both men and women screw up just as much, and have just as much good potential IMO.
It’s not edgy to explain something everyone already knows. The royal family benefits from the taxation of UK citizens.
“For a place that claims to be a meritocracy, the UK has some strangely dissonant beliefs”
Are you.. States-splaining.. to me right now?
“Elizabeth was not a passive victim of her birth circumstances.. the UK has some strangely dissonant beliefs”.
I don’t know if you’re from the US or not, but if so this is the most ironically hypocritical thing I’ve ever read.
Yeah, no. Countries don't care about who is on the throne. They nod along to the British monarchy because they value diplomatic relations with Britain. Just like how they put up with Trump's children.
> I can’t see the commonwealth nations welcoming King Charles as their new head of state.
If you meant the Commonwealth of Nations, Charles was confirmed as the successor in CHOGM 2018. If you meant Commonwealth Realms, their close economic and military ties to Britain are not going to change anyways.
I get that this is an emotional loss to Britain. But let's not pretend there's going to be a material difference.
Maybe it did fan the flames of controversy to question the deification of the Queen, but the deification of the Queen is controversial. I live in Scotland, I know. Surely the right thing is to just ban threads like this in the first place if you don't like ideology.
https://reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1rs5wr/did_the_b...
This goes in pair. You praise someone for the choices they make, it doesn’t make sense if it wasn’t a choice at all in the first place.
I think she was a brilliant and intelligent person, she proved it in so many occasions, and she didn’t become Queen or stayed for so long just because of social pressure and “daddy told me to”. So yes, I’m assuming it was a net positive for her, and that she dedicated her life to something she wanted to do.
Sure there are many shitty parts coming with the throne and the toxicity surrounding the whole royalty system, but I give be the benefit of the doubt on having done the right choices in her life.
Many people are saddened with a small s. Many people don't care much at all. Many people appose to it (and are saddened.)
You may suggest more. But you or I can't know for sure.
That's my point. Millions in the UK lost someone during the pandemic. I'm sure these were darker days. It's the perspective and balance that I feel is off.
I'm aware commenting on moderation/appropriateness of submission is also outside of guidelines, but I think given the gravity of this event and the clear slant evident in top comments resultant from the difficulty of moderation "crap comments" it does seem worth mentioning that this doesn't feel like it belongs here in the HN community.
Statement of my own biases: from a country that suffered the horrific hand of British colonial forces, both preceding and under Elizabeth's rule and finding the comments here repulsive. Positivity can be just as "crap" as ad hominem when expressed with such ignorance.
To answer your first question, yes, and she did. During her reign, Canada, Australia, South Africa, and other Commonwealth nations were all granted full state sovereignty. Prior to that, they had some independence, but were ultimately under the control of the UK. Some of these countries still retain her/King Charles as a head of state, but he holds no power over them, and he has an independent representative (in Canada, this is the governor-general, who theoretically holds more power than the prime minister).
Not really. In practice these powers belong to parliament and the monarch performs a merely ceremonial role; actions are performed in his or her name but not at her behest. In the English constitution parliament is sovereign and the monarch acts on its instructions.
Celebrities don't wield any power comparable to that of rulers or monarchs. We allow unbounded accumulation of wealth but that's a facet of our political and economic system.
Most social animals imbue their elders with some level of authority but this is easy to explain as an evolutionary habit to make use of lived experience and thus, hopefully, expertise. It's obvious why you'd ask the person with the most experience or the best domain knowledge for their assessment or even to lead you in that domain. It also makes sense to appoint a leader during times of war when the battlefield requires split second decisions that don't allow for consensus seeking.
But human nature is cooperative if nothing else. We resort to exclusion, hierarchy and domination/obedience only under duress, which our current system helpfully maintains perpetually.
No she didn't, the empire was effectively over by the time she became queen.
She did her best in a system that does it best to rob you of being an individual - her behind the scenes limited intervention to get the Commonwealth and misguided scumbag Thatcher to at least condemn the Apartheid regime.
I hope Charles does some of his more zany things like climate change and sustainability.
> passing a bill or something
this would be absurd, because all the bills are passed in the monarch's name.
Yet Thatcher is basically remembered as the devil.
I can't fathom the complete cognitive dissonance of people who believe these two things at once.
As for people preferring William to his father - I think if you give an inch to the notion that the public should have some choice over their head of state then the idea of a hereditary monarchy starts to look pretty absurd.
Reminds me of when when the rules of succession where changed so that the first-born child would inherit the title (rather than the first-born son). Any attempt to reconcile the monarchy with the concept of equality seems a kinda humourous to me.
Having said that while I am not the kind to wish for heads to roll I think it is a good time to realise you might not wish to allow someone else take her place and be an expensive parasite now =)
Those of us who make the effort to understand the truth of world affairs will always be targeted by those who wish to mould the world to their view. Such is the nature of imperialism.
Elizabeth and her empire is STILL TODAY responsible for much, much suffering - at immense scale. This is a truly scary fact for those who live inside the propaganda bubble that protects them from knowing anything about the victims of the empire.
I don't know, if I never had a job I am not sure I would want one at 76!
Is it not substantive to point this out?
The fact that the UK doesn't have the social capital to prosecute their known, actual war criminals - because they are factually protected by the crown - should be a clue of the malignant effect of the monarchy, in itself.
And I am against putting the blame on someone to feed our emotions, the hatred isn't going to serve any. This is unhealthy and what I am seeing at anti-white racism is absolutely narrow minded full of obtuse morals. I will support you and several others against such foolishness.
On a side note, this particular case is just one among many, many such happenings for over two centuries of british rule. The worst of the Black Racism and its horror history has mostly ended, and same is the case of colonial countries. But the scars run deep in both the camps, any person who has the decency and courage to come up say sorry and treat as equals would be welcomed with open arms.
Are you ignoring the fact that many British colonies did gain independence during Elizabeths reign?
Although, should George have children when he comes of age (which he most certainly will), they would be before Charlotte and Louis.
Reduction of UK public debt by Thatcher (visible in the second half of the eighties):
https://ercouncil.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/ercchart171...
Increase of US public debt throughout the eighties by Reagan:
https://zfacts.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/US-National-De...
I think it's perfectly plausible that one day the UK could be silently couped by elites using the monarchy as cover - much like Thailand was. The legal framework is all there. If the monarchy is on side, the army is on side.
Name-calling and other kinds of fulmination don't express much information.
Yes, my house is older than the United States. We found pieces of journals talking about the General Bonaparte. It's pretty common to find stuff from several centuries ago in old buildings.
There is no 'massive' failure in the EU to protect itself as it has no such objective nor a mandate to protect itself. It's up to individual countries to spend on their armed forces as was up to Britain to spend when it was part of it and the EU didn't stop it, it did so just fine. If the US did not exist that would have been taken into account by the member countries themselves and acted accordingly.
> Instead - UK, Turkey, Ukraine, Finland, Georgia, Switzerland will possibly join the 'expanded' EU (by another name), which will mostly be trade focused. The interesting thing about that however, the other nations, notably Spain, Italy, Greece will definitely start to wonder about 'the grass being greener' in those countries.
Spain, Italy and Greece have all joined the Eurozone (Italy is a founding member btw) for their own good reasons. If they wanted less integration they could have not adopted the Euro just like a number of other countries. People seem to forget what inflation looked like for their national currencies of these countries before getting the Euro and it was not very green.
This is the point I was trying to make at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32769925 by quoting pg's 15-year-old bit about how empty positive comments aren't so bad (https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html). It's true that they don't contain any more information than empty negative comments, but they don't degrade the threads the way empty negative comments do.
Unfortunately people took that as some sort of pro-monarchist stance!
For instance, I just found out that Norway, for instance, also has a monarch. So does Sweden (?), and several other countries. But they — the Nordic monarchs — are unheard of in my country, and don't seem to have the same level of influence internationally.
Is that your experience as well?
(FWIW, my country was a former British colony but the British royalty is NOT my country's head at all).
I imagine the reason is because the Queen is part of the national identity of the UK, much more than the other European countries.
Millions visit London annualy to visit Buckingham Palace - the Queen is a symbol of Britain.
It's true that there's an asymmetry in that it's much easier for the people making positive comments not to break the site guidelines. In a way that's not fair—but it applies to all threads equally, regardless of whether the topic is monarchy or something else. It's also an unfairness we can't do much about—it's intrinsic to the problem of how to operate this forum.
We do try to make special allowances for negative comments that break the site guidelines but also include enough information to explain why the person feels the way they do, in a way other commenters can learn from. I did that in a few cases in this thread. What we don't make special allowances for is garden-variety flamewar, which there was also a ton of in this thread.
If you see comments that did not break the site guidelines but were moderated anyhow, that's bad and I'd like to see links so we can correct our mistakes (or, in the case of user flags, user mistakes). Mistakes are inevitable when trying to moderate threads with 1500 comments or whatever; moderation is guesswork, and hasty guesswork at that. But we're always willing to take a second look, and when we do see a mistake, to acknowledge it and fix it.
The damage in both cases were mainly to their pride. If that was all she risked, I'm not impressed. Her uncle Edward was a literal Nazi, and yet even he was willing to give up power to marry the woman he loved.
But it could of course be that she risked more than that. What keeps elderly rulers clinging to power is often the knowledge that they and their close ones has done some very bad things, and that the descent may not be so graceful if they let go willingly.
> The way Ireland was publicly handled after 2016
Do you mean Northern Ireland? Northern Ireland is a different country from Ireland, and as far as I'm aware the reason it's still part of the UK is because a solid majority of its citizens want to be part of the UK, not because it's been imposed on them from outside.
That's not immortality, though, that's heritage.
In my eyes, immortality (if such a thing could even exist, entropy and unforeseen circumstances aside) would imply the continued existence of one's consciousness/mind.
Being "remembered", or other platitudes about "immortality" does nothing for you, when you no longer exist.
The pursuit of extended life might be seen as an expression of greed in fiction a lot of the time, but surely eating healthily is a good thing to do, right? What about exercise? What about having a good sleep schedule and not using harmful substances? Why would medicine be any different? Why would fixing one's faulty organs or other biological mechanisms be any different? In my eyes, it's just a scale of things you can do to have a better life, however long it might be.
As for the biological aspects, sure, nature didn't make us to live a thousand years. Then again, it didn't make us to fly through the sky in metal boxes close to the speed of sound.
I feel like people would be more environmentally and politically conscious if they knew that they'd need to live in the world that they create for the following millennia, instead of being able to ruin things for everyone with their greedy and megalomaniacal goals and then die.
Not a very interesting answer, but there you have it.
Her son and heir has literally been accepting suitcases full of cash from middle east despots (nominally for his charity), and her other son was up to his neck in Epstein's dealings. I wouldn't be so sure.
The 70s were crap because of high inflation and fuel costs. Winter of discontent etc.
The 80s were crap because Thatcher basically dismantled the working class.
Is it dissonance about Germans complaining about interwar issues and complaining about the leader they ended up with?
Where it was up to the queen and her government, it wasn't all that peaceful.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/h%C3%B4pital
So the occurrence is quite possible.
The Romans built roads, aqueducts, houses with central heating and massive great walls across the landscape.
They might have been violent but it’s hard to claim they weren’t a civilisation.
India alone had $45 trillion dollars of wealth looted from the country: https://video.vice.com/en_us/video/how-britain-stole-dollar4...
Literally millions of Indians died as a result of deliberate policies of colonization and economic enslavement by the British.
Their history in Africa is too chilling to even recount here.
In 7 decades as a figurehead and leader of her people, she never apologized for these crimes, and continued to quietly benefit from the spoils of war.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/true-story-koh-i-noor...
That's an oddly positive attitude to hatred.
Nonsense. Cromwell had to fight and win a very bloody civil war to abolish the monarchy. Despite that it was still restored after his death.
The Right of Parliament controls the constitution of the UK and has done since the Glorious Revolution of 1688, not the current reigning monarch.
Indeed. It is amazing to not starve and live a prosperous yet "boring" lives. Wouldn't have it any other way.
You have to remember how old she was. The Queen's first Prime Minister was Winston Churchill, born in the 1870s. A staunch Empire man to the last, he was one of only two Prime Ministers for whom the Queen attended their funeral. He is famous for successfully defeating Europe when it was united under a dictator determined to reduce Britain to rubble and ship its population to labour camps. She was Queen as the British Empire wound itself up and became the Commonwealth. She saw the nationalization of the British railways and then the re-privatization of them decades later. She saw the birth of the European Coal and Steel Community, she watched as it evolved into the European Economic Community, and then into the European Union. She saw Stalin fall, then she saw the Berlin wall fall, and then the USSR. She observed passively as millions of people from the former Eastern Bloc then moved to the UK a decade later to make a new life. She saw the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. She saw the space race. She was Queen throughout the Troubles, living with the constant threat of being assassinated by the IRA, who at one point dropped a concrete breeze block on her car. She visited over 100 countries. She watched as countries fell to communist revolutions. She watched her country be brought to the brink during the Winter of Discontent, she watched as European nations transitioned from dictatorship to democracy. She watched global COVID lockdowns. She watched the Euro debt crisis and a thousand other crises come and go.
In short, she saw political institutions far larger and more important than British membership of the EU rise and fall over her lifetime, and far more dramatically. She saw the UK join the EEC, she saw it transform into the EU and then she saw the UK leave it again. Of all the things she's seen and done, of all the life and death battles she witnessed or even took part in, EU related events were surely some of the less memorable and important, especially given the relatively imperceptible changes Brexit so far brought about.
If you really want to engage in speculation about the Queen's views on Brexit and the EU, consider this. I already said Churchill was one of only two Prime Ministers the Queen honored by attending their funeral. The other was Margaret Thatcher. Both had complex views on the merits of European integration, with both being positive in their earlier years but coming to regard it as a mistake in their later years.[1][2] Both were strongly committed throughout their lives to the strength and independence of the United Kingdom regardless of what Europe did.
The Duke of Cornwall, The Duke of Somerset, The Duke of Norfolk and The Duke of Richmond
Sign me up..!
The post-Brexit discourse in the UK regularly featured threats to Irish sovereignty of various kinds, including from prominent Tories, which makes it sufficiently mainstream to matter. I'd recommend you have a read over what Fintan O'Toole and Tony Connelly have written on Brexit over the past few years.
Do I think such opinions are representative of most Britons? No. But they have been a major part of the mainstream discourse peddled by people with prominent voices and in positions of power. There is some part of the English psyche that sees Ireland as a wayward province and not a real sovereign state: witness the moaning and complaining when the UK became a third country about Irish people using the EU lane in airports that we were being "treated specially" - that kind of thinking assumes that Ireland is not its own sovereign state.
Also, the "solid majority" in NI isn't so solid anymore. Unionism is on the decline, nationalism is gaining more of a foothold, and the broad apathetic middle is growing. There's a reason why Sinn Féin is now the largest party there.
[1] Let's leave out the multiple levels of historical irony in what she said, and just focus on the fact that Ireland can feed itself five times over even though agriculture is now a tiny part of the economy, but the UK doesn't produce enough food to feed itself.
Charles II decided that his brother would be his heir.
Parliament decided otherwise and replaced James with William of Orange in the Glorious Revolution of 1688.
Parliament rules supreme.
It’s why they ceremonially slam the door of the House of Commons in the face of Black Rod every State Opening of Parliament.
It’s a clear reminder of where power ultimately resides.
Our constitution looks “lumpy” because it’s evolved and not designed. Rather like the Common Law.
Look, this thread is the only result for exact phrasing:
https://www.google.com/search?channel=fs&client=ubuntu&q=%22...
However there is evidence Queen Elizabeth I (400 years ago) said part of it: https://books.google.co.nz/books?id=tayxm6fO1kIC&pg=PA528&lp...
Doesn't stop them from inheriting their parents assets though.
Would you be saying the same thing if we were talking about racist, or homophobic individuals? Let's not pretend that the monarchy doesn't have victims.
Queen Elizabeth could've just passed on the throne to her son any time she wanted to.
Why are positive but controversial comments fine, but negative but controversial comments bad? Why is what's positive and negative defined solely in relation to the thread being posted in?
What if Vladimir Putin had a heart attack and dropped dead tomorrow. Certainly, that would be far more historically consequential than the death of the Queen. It would therefore have even better claim to being posted on HN.
Would you only allow positive comments on that thread? Comments that eulogized Putin as an emblem of stability and moral authority? Would you freeze or delete any comments that questioned that response?
I say this not to be facetious. It's a more extreme example, but I don't think it's qualitatively different. Clearly, it doesn't make sense to allow only positive comments regardless of the subject. When it's highly ideological and contested - as is true of both Putin and the Queen - that just arbitrarily empowers one side of the debate and infuriates and alienates the other half.
I honestly think the only fair response - short of superhuman feats of moderation - is to delete the thread.
The Dutch royal family, by contrast, have a bit more privacy.
You were disappointed that there was a moderation warning when some people are celebrating her death? Her job was to take pictures and open hospitals. And random people who dislike the idea of royality or dislike the UK are posting some rancid patter.
Sure all, it's all over the top, sure many people don't care. The warning wasn't there for people who didn't care. It was there because there are literally people going around acting like this woman was a war criminal when she held no real power, if she ever tried to use any power she technically had it would have caused chaos and resulted in that power being removed and the royal family being removed. Some people acting like Indians would be dancing on her grave even though they've been indpendent for all of her reign and every Indian I've met has been interested in the Queen and royal family like all other people are. Or the Irish are happy she is dead, maybe in the 80s or 90s at the peak of the troubles but most people won't care just like most people in the UK don't care.
And let's be serious, you won't have to bite your tongue that much since most other people will be complaining about it all in a few days.
They were printing reports from all over the world.
As an example the modern sporting event the Tour de France was started by a newspaper in 1903 and was reported on daily. That wouldn't really have been viable financially without mass communication. In fact the race exists solely to generate those reports.
There's a very good book called The Victorian Internet that covers early mass communication if you're interested[2].
At this point it's just a real estate company with an opera front, at some point the brits will wake up and see it for what it is
But theory is not practice. In practice, if King Charles shivved someone in Trafalgar Square tomorrow, crowing about how he can't be prosecuted, what would happen would probably be something like:
- parliament would try to pass a law saying that we were a republic now (or that harry becomes king or whatever)
- charles would refuse royal assent
- parliament would amend the bill to remove the requirement for royal assent for primary legislation and then claim they'd pass it using itself
- people would point out that this is clearly invalid and self-referential
- it would go to the UK supreme court, who would twist themselves into knots to conclude that it's actually fine, because they know as well as anyone else that that's the only conclusion that wouldn't result in riots and the collapse of the state as a liberal democracy
- all the institutions who matter would agree that we're a republic now
There has been a lot of speculation over the years about whether Charles might be a more activist monarch, but I’ll be really surprised if he actually tries to exercise any of his theoretical powers. He might be a bit more outspoken in public, and do a lot more lobbying in private, at most.
And the long-term negative effects of Thatcher's legacy (much like Reagan's in the states) are being felt now. The homeless situation is (in large part) a product of Thatcher selling off public housing and turning actual care into "community care".
1. There was a sense of loyalty to Liz personally. She did a good job of Queening and it seemed almost rude to interrupt that.
2. No-one wants Charles as king. He's very weird, and has ideas that he actually wants to do things with.
I fully expect the referendum to be brought forward because of her death, and for it to get a strong "yes".
That's not what the comment says, though. It doesn't say anything about 'controversial', just that positive comments more readily avoid running into guideline trouble. Maybe it helps if you replace 'positive' with 'boring and anodyne', since the mechanism still applies. Boring and anodyne comments usually don't require as much moderation.
I think it's hilarious how the average person thinks that "the taxpayer" pays for the monarchy whereas realistically it's their family's holdings that pay for it. If they don't like that then strip them of their land, but strip everyone of their land; no inheritance for anyone.
And even then, whilst they have _some_ personal holdings, the majority of the royal estate cannot be sold by them for personal gain, it _must_ be passed down, it's not your typical inheritance.
As well as that, sure they live a cushy royal life, but I wouldn't want it for me. They are bound to royal duties, to act a certain way, do certain things, follow certain protocols - doing otherwise is shirking royal duties and that comes with its own consequences.
At the same time I think QEII was the last "true" royal. She was the last royal who exhibited at least some of what we would expect from the royals of old, King Arthur, etc. The modern royals, CIII onwards is the start of their decline, imo.
She lived for so long and through so much. Maybe she could have done more to help the everyman - but her power was limited, which is what the people chose - the Glorious Revolution.
People often propose mechanistic rules like "allow all such posts" or "allow no such posts". The simplicity of that has an obvious appeal in the abstract, but I don't think it's viable on HN. This place doesn't function mechanistically. Human interpretation is constantly required: messy, unsatisfying, flawed human interpretation.
We always complain that politicians work on a two-year cycle. If your position is permanent (pending death), you escape this cycle.
See also: the House of Lords.
It’s weird to think about, and I’m a working-class Labour voter from Sunderland whose grandad was a welder on the ships, but there’s something to be said for it.
In case you don't know what Paisley sounded like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ME45v08fQ0
As far as I can see, the PG principle that Dang refers back to is disanalogous. PG was speaking about the valence of comments - whether they were nice or mean - not whether they supported or opposed an ideological position.
Incidentally, we don't need you to change any of your views, nor do we need you to conform to the majority here (which, although highly international, is certainly mostly Western). But we need you to follow the site guidelines, which means using the site for intellectual curiosity and thoughtful conversation, avoiding name-calling and personal attacks, avoiding flamebait, and not using an account for a mostly-political agenda. There are other places on the internet to fight those wars. We're trying for a different sort of forum here.
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
The "e" might get pronounced as the "I" in penis by a good enough English speaker, but probably not by a bad English speaker.
I also believe that stress would be totally different, put only on the "a" by a French speaker.
Amusingly, Queen Anne was the last female head of state of America, too.
Early on, the Swedish king was elected at the Stones of Mora. The Holy Roman Emperor was nominally elected by prince-electors (who most of the time elected a Habsburg).
And even withing a hereditary framework, there are other alternatives to retirement in addition to outright abdication. An elderly monarch could for all intents and purposes retire and a let the crown prince (and I suppose in current British succession order, crown princess) rule, appointing them as a co-ruler.
In many other places of the world 1900-1990 had much less change in day to day life, whereas 1990-today has been a huge change.
The massive changes have just finally been getting spread around to everyone (still unevenly of course)
To give an extreme example, these two comments in different threads are basically the same in terms of sentiment, prose and effect, however, one criticizes the CCP for their genocide of Uighurs, and the other criticizes the Queen. The difference here is one comment is at the top of the discussion while the other got the user banned.[0][1]
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24881093
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32770904
The "likeliest explanation" of ignorance for [0] here doesn't hold since moderation has posted comments on the topic and again, it's the top comment of an extremely popular thread.
Here are some more examples of popular but off-topic for HN comments against Putin and Cloudflare respectively.
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6371615
[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32707053
and their equivalents in this thread:
[4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32771398
[5] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32769645
[6] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32769550
Dang, a million kudos to you for curating the site, but this topic has been an absolute train-wreck and I hope you can at least take it off the front page.
There is genuinely a lot for love for the Royals from a lot of people in the UK so there is a ton of media coverage of them, especially in some of the low end newspapers such as the Daily Express.
Further afield, the Royal family is aggressively marketed by those who stand to benefit from increased tourism.
Only if practice includes arguing against things that weren't said. Dang didn't say controversial, I didn't say praising the Queen as a moral authority is anodyne. You can work your way back to whatever conclusion you like that way, but don't substitute your own reasoning for that of your interlocutors.
“The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.”
Maybe it is not so universal, but an actual predictor of civilizational decline?
Her behind doors effects on laws and how they would effect her interests may have set an example[0], but not a positive one.
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/jul/14/queen-immuni...
There is no place in modern society for a family who got all their wealth from wars and stealing it. Only to parade it around infront of millions of people in poverty.
Lets get rid of them. Start by turning the palaces into social housing.
I think you're choosing to couple the British monarchy with the Empire.
She held the power of royal prerogative but couldn't ever exercise it because Parliament retains the right to dismiss and choose a new monarch anytime they like.
The issue of royal prerogative was settled in the Glorious Revolution when Parliament decided it didn't like the King, James II and just selected a new one.
Every year we remind the monarch at the State Opening of Parliament that they can't ever use their royal prerogative.
The monarch might have influence but ultimate power rests with Parliament.
She is adored in some of London and all the Home Counties where her polices led to increased wealth and life outcomes.
In the rest of the country, she is the person who destroyed communities and the fabric of what it was to be British for many.
This is not cognitive dissonance. It's different experiences by different people.
Given this is a thread about HRH Queen Elizabeth II, it's worth noting that she herself and her family were no real fans of how Thatcher conducted herself in relation to some of her policies that were _actively hostile_ to many working class communities.
When the Royal family quietly whisper that they think someone is a snob, well... that's saying something, eh?
Some people who were working class may have done well, but the working class as it was basically ceased to be.
PaulHoule posted that the Queen was a 'moral authority'. I replied setting out a few reasons why that might not be true.
What did Dang do? Tell me off and detach my subthread, while the original comment from PaulHoule still stands.
Clearly, that's telling me that positive but controversial comments are fine, but negative but controversial comments are not.
That is replicated across the entire thread. Praise of the Queen is controversial (my interpretation) but allowed (moderation in practice). Criticism of the Queen is controversial (my interpretation), but disallowed (moderation in practice).
Maybe they know better than you. At the end, they live there. What you claim to know from North Korea and all that other countries from the "axis of evil" comes from TV.
No one else is obligated to care who she is.
My country fought a war so that I wouldn't have to accept that some people are born higher than others, and everything I've learned about the royal family since has been against my will.
And even by the most forgiving measure, took three centuries to become anything you might historically call "European".
Is it really hard to have a bit of empathy for people who are sad that someone they loved/admired/respected has died?
A nursery closing is odd, but again, their choice. Talking about bereavement sounds very healthy to me, whatever the excuse for it.
While, technically, the constitutional crisis would have been caused by him marrying a divorcee and being the head of a state religion that didn't approve of remarriage with living ex-spouses, the circumstances were likely important in motivating a hard stance on the policy: it involved the sort of situation that an apologist might have given as an example of why remarriage should not be allowed. Even current Church of England rules would not allow the marriage.
It is interesting that the story is often simply portrayed as him wanting to marry a American divorcee, likely leading to the sense in many readers unfamiliar with the circumstances that he wanted to marry someone who simply had had prior marriages, quite possibly with ex-husbands who were still in the US.
https://govdata360.worldbank.org/indicators/hd8f5d509?indica...
I fail to see how making Finland more stable would improve anything, or that adding a monarch would achieve this goal.
Royalism sounds like the hunt for a silver bullet that would fix complex problems and institutions in a society. I don't think there is any evidence quasi-religion by itself improves institutions.
Bookmakers price a referendum before 2025 at about 10% probability. I think that's too big a number - I'd say 10% chance by 2030.
Let's suppose it happens in 2025, though. At that point, the UK and EU will still be at loggerheads over the border with NI meaning the SNP's central premise - that Scotland should be able to rejoin the EU - will look more and more like a dangerous and economically calamitous poison pill. Even pro-independence financial analysts will warn of a deep recession with house prices falling off a cliff. That'll make independence about as popular as mouldy bread.
In addition, the EU will be quite feckless and tone deaf to what that SNP promise of independence is centred on, and during any campaign will confirm confidently that yes, Scotland could rejoin the EU, all it'll take is adoption of the Euro (non-negotiable), and a complete adoption of all protocols and laws that the UK - including Scotland - will have mostly dismantled by that point (for better or worse). The timeline will be a decade or more, and the estimated costs will be in the billions, but the EU think it's still value. Meanwhile Scottish voters will wonder if a generation of being out of the UK _and_ the EU is worth the candle.
The idea that against that backdrop the SNP think their argument for independence is stronger, not weaker, is strange.
I think you'll also see a slight shift in polls in coming days and weeks because of the death of the Queen. Operation Unicorn is designed in a small way to allow Scottish unionists to show what the United Kingdom is all about. Sentimentality has been proven time, and time again, to be incredibly powerful in changing people's minds quite irrationally.
Coupled with Charles' political will - as you note, towards radical environmentalism and architectural protectionism that aligns neatly with a decent proportion of the Scottish populace - you might find Sturgeon and the SNP looks more and more marginal as time goes by.
The Queen oversaw a decline in Empire and a rise in the British believing in - and committing to - a people's right to self-determination. And so it will be in Scotland, just as it has been for so many countries that have gained independence from British rule in the last 75 years. But the backdrop right now is firmly that the SNP is about to slide, independence will become less popular to many, and Scotland will either be part of the renaissance we are all hoping for, or is coming down with the rest of us.
This is especially annoying when one sees facist trolls using the misdeeds of the empire to excuse the horrible actions of their dictator of choice.
No justice, no peace indeed.
It can serve as a rough detector which alerts you of posts which might violate the guidelines and also rank them from those that are very likely to violate one (which you can get through quickly, without wasting much cognitive energy) and ones which require more judgement.
First - change EU to Europe and the point is more clear: 'Europe' failed to defend itself.
Second - Though you're right, EU is not a defensive pact, it's inexorably irresponsible for EU to not provide for defence. Defence is an existential concept - one that involves parts of the state.
How can there be 'ever closer union' and 'open borders' if nations can't even provide for their own defence.
This is 100% clear with Germany's 'sellout' to Russia: Germany, the leading 'political' block in the EU, gave Russia massive leverage which has put Estonia, Latvia etc. at huge risk, and effectively handed over Ukraine do the hungry dogs.
In that dsyfunctional dynamic, 'Sovereign Europe' is still dependent on the Anglosphere: USA, UK and even Canada (!) all of whom have provided much more support than France, Italy, Spain etc (!) in defence of Europe.
"People seem to forget what inflation looked like for their national currencies of these countries before getting the Euro and it was not very green. "
"If they wanted less integration they could have not adopted the Euro just like a number of other countries."
Inflation is much more preferrable than the current straight-jacket death of a hard currency. The lack of inflation relative to Germany is killing Europe.
As for 'adopting and not' - there's no way for them to adjust otherwise. The EU is a 'one size fits all' regime and also a 'Hotel California' (i.e. cannot leave) game.
The Euro won't work without political and fiscal integration and that will never, ever happen, so it's probably better to find something a bit looser.
At least royals receive lifetimes of training for how to be a public figure and head of state.
https://twitter.com/NaomiOhReally/status/1568157931538989056
The Queen willingly became head of a Commonwealth that included dependent colonies, and a British state that was actively repressing several independence movements. That the head of the Commonwealth is coupled with it is obvious, not my 'choice'.
https://twitter.com/NaomiOhReally/status/1568157931538989056
Either your typical bottom-up social media fake news, or the usual MO of certain intelligence agencies to sow division in the anglosphere.
Imagine kids in Hyderabad having the stability, economic opportunity, 'decent government', clean air of Ontario ... but in Hyderabad.
I think that's 'easy to imagine' and 'much better'.
I mean, different strokes for different folks etc. but to me it seems fairly straight forward.
I think it is more of an indicator of overall prosperity, which may, in fact cause civilizational decline. I'm reminded of the mouse utopia[0], and my own family.
I remembered, just too late to edit: 'streamlined' is how he's put it. Close family/'heir line' only, such as seen on more recent balconies.
I don't expect it's unusual for a monarch to be something of a philosopher though - they're somewhat inherently well-educated, thoughtful, devoting time to deep thought, etc. Less usual (in modern times anyway) is to hear their thoughts in public as we did while he was Prince of Wales; we'll see to what extent that continues - he has said he's 'not stupid' and that he recognises the role of sovereign is different. If I had to bet though, I imagine he does see a bit more room for public commentary than Elizabeth II made.
Otherwise, we might need a 'Supreme Parliamentary Council' to basically enact those duties, and if any members of Parliament didn't agree on the outcome, they'd take it to the Supreme Court who would rule on it kind of thing. Something that would only happen 'once in a century'.
Where there are Presidents, it's generally straight forward: the Dude with the most votes (of whatever type) is the Dude and that's it. There can be voting shenanigans but generally not outcome shenanigans.
I'm fine the way it is in the UK and Canada, I wouldn't change a thing.
If we want reforms, we can do that at more operational levels, aka 'governance by blockchain' to put it in 2019 Valley terms.
There's a history of monarchist sympathy in Ireland, partly stemming from the history of anglo-irish wealth in Dublin (readers of this journalist's paper) but also the political party that's been in power for the past 11 years would be historically sympathetic (as I guess would some subset of their voters).
That said, none of the above is broadly representative of a majority, and apart from the one example she posts there of a tweet being shared out of context, there's been a very loud and varied anti monarchy sentiment expressed within Irish (not American) media and circles today. Much of the reportage is in fact not misinformation.
It might be worth considering that comments you find offensive due to their apparent disrespect might be justified in their anger in some way you can't directly relate to.
"Empty" praises and supports for one side of the position - a political position in a complex issue, not just "Thanks" like PG writes - are not really empty, they're the tools of populist campaigns.
If she was just another paper pusher and camera model in a world filled with them (like you seem to be saying), her death isn't one of any significance to humanity.
If she was someone who could have used her influence to change things for the better, like Diana would have if she'd been alive - if the Queen was someone who could have done that and didn't, because she didn't want to risk her position, then the anger in this thread is justified and deserved.
What would exactly be the problem here? A lot of the people that the queen supposedly represent live in a one room flat.
Actually, if you read dang's comments you'll see that's not why it was moderated. In fact, there's obviously nothing wrong with celebrating her death as many see her as a tyrant who committed and maintained massive atrocities. The problem here, were the massive amount of low-quality comments just saying stuff like "Good" and "fuck the monarchy" (and nothing else.) See his comment above for more references and explanations.
Not really. Reza Khan was just a colonel in the army before the coup that later established him as Shah of Iran. Osman of the Ottoman Empire and his descendants for a very long time had no aristocracy or nobility to speak of, only temporary (land reverted to the Sultan at death) land owners.
Correct
>I don't see how choosing that was to her credit.
I can see that.
If the monarch tried to actually do something significant with that power I imagine the law would be changed pretty quickly.
This is why working royals generally have various military titles and positions, because the monarch is the head of the armed forces. It's also why the monarch dresses in military regalia for various military events.
> ... She passed the Brexit bill ...
> Of course she passed the Brexit bill
> not sure what the point of this comment was
It was to point out the absurdity of picking out this particular example given her long life and the many, many events and bills you could describe as 'terrible' along the way. If she was going to have broken her convention and tried to assert real power, that would be have a really odd one to pick.
BTW I didn't assert any opinion on Brexit itself, only that the level of hatred of it reached by some people is irrational.
> the Queen was ... a closet Tory
You don't actually know what the Queen's politics were. She lived through several Labour governments and never stopped their bills or expressed opinions on them either, that's just not the sort of monarch she was.
And honestly, I think there is something wrong with celebrating the death of a woman who had no power and whose primary job was being a mascot. If you think she did have any power you clearly misunderstand the political landscape of the countries she was the mascot for.
Or one of the Children that her son raped and who she protected.
And so on and so forth.
One less evil person in the World.
to be fair, the all-or-nothing suggestion isn't practicable on the face of it (otherwise you'd get more troll postings, or more unhappy users), so it was more an opening gambit than a fleshed out suggestion.
however, it's pretty clear that implicit biases strongly and unflatteringly drive[0] what gets flagged and what gets popularized (largely by hn users of course). is it hn's job to address implicit bias? that's certainly debatable, but i'd think you'd want the widest reach possible and potentially turning away upwards of 80-90% of the world's population isn't a long-term winning strategy for yc.
most entertainers (singers, actors, celebrities, etc.) are stale topics of conversation (mostly rehashes of what they did/said), but way too many make the front page anyway (or conversely, far too few of the more interesting ones make it).
[0]: it'd probably be an interesting exercise to analyze what obit posts gets flagged, uncommented/unpromoted, and popularized. i've casually observed (and even tested a bit) that nearly all the black/brown people and most women don't make the front page, many of whom are fascinating historically, otherwise they wouldn't have cleared the higher bar for getting noticed in the face of bias in the first place.
She perhaps didn't need one because other countries didn't insist on it when traveling, not because it is issued in her name.
Also the office of Her Majesty is distinct(and all other titles) from the person the queen herself. Monarchs are quite used to that idea, and that is how they award themselves other titles for example.
Same reason why royal name is assumed on ascension and does not have be birth name or her actual birthday is not when royal birthday is celebrated and myriad other things like that .
I think if you'd written this comment on any other day, it wouldn't have been singled out, and also that there's a colorable argument that you got swept up in a bunch of really awful comments that happened to express the same sentiment.
But also: you could have just put more effort into it. As it stands, the comment you're talking about could be persuasive only to someone who takes your word on things, because it doesn't support any of the arguments it makes.
(I don't care at all about QE2 other than to say that I once made a joke about the death of Princess Diana in a bar in Calgary a few months after the event, and that is a mistake I won't make again, so there might be something to the idea that being casually and curtly dismissive of the Commonwealth's feeling about the queen is a poor arguing strategy.)
>"But also: you could have just put more effort into it. As it stands, the comment you're talking about could be persuasive only to someone who takes your word on things, because it doesn't support any of the arguments it makes."
No one reads long walls of text, not least in threads with >1000 comments. Concision is a great virtue in nearly all communication. I would say two things to the refrain that I didn't 'support' any of my assertions, and that my post 'could be persuasive only to someone who takes your word on things'.
First, they are a form of 'immanent critique'[1]. Anglo-American society recognises some basics moral and political norms. These include the idea of equality and that people shouldn't be privileged because of blood or race, the idea of liberty and that one people should not coercively rule another, and the idea of democracy and that a people ought to choose its own government. I made some simple observations to the effect that the British monarchy egregiously violates all three.
In this sense I don't need to argue for my evaluative premises because they're all bromides within our gestalt. But if you juxtapose them with some basic facts about the monarchy, suddenly it becomes obvious that there's a catastrophic contradiction. I am working from premises most people accept to a surprising - but I think obviously correct - conclusion.
Second, this same burden of 'support' is not being applied to those on the other side of the conversation. The person to whom I was responding said nothing to support their assertion that the Queen was a 'moral authority' other than that the Queen didn't succumb to personal scandal. A standard that lots of very bad people meet.
Not what I claim to know but what I know. The difference between these two is that I don't claim to know what I know while not actually knowing it. The things I know about North Korea may be only part of the truth but there is no doubt about me knowing these things nor a necessity for me to claim knowledge I do not possess.
> all that other countries from the "axis of evil"
Where does that come from? I did not say anything about any axis of evil.
> comes from TV
I do not even remember the last time I watched television but I know it is more that 24 years ago since I had one of those contraptions. Nope, I do not get my information from television and have not done so for a very, very long time. What I know about North Korea comes from a diverse mix of sources on the 'net, from books on the subject, from interviews with North Korean escapees and from the odd travel report from people who went there - yes, some people actually visit the place. Satellite imagery provides proof of the existence of camps where escapees said they were so I tend to believe their descriptions of live in that state more than the denials which are thrown their way.
How much did the inhabitants of the Soviet Union know about the conditions in GULAG? Those who went through the system and survived to return to society were not eager to tell the tale for fear of repercussions. It took the death of Stalin and Khrushchev's subsequent speech “On the Cult of Personality and its Consequences” at the last day of the party congress of 1956 for some of the information - but only some, and only until Brezhnev came into power - to be the subject of discussion among Soviet citizens.
> Maybe they know better than you.
Stalin was a monster but to many people in the Soviet Union he was like a god - just like the Kim dynasty in North Korea has a god-like status to many North Koreans. They don't know any better, yet. Let's hope they will get to know the truth, soon.
First: I laughed audibly at the idea that "nobody reads long walls of text". Long walls of text are practically a cheat code on HN.
Second: most people who write these kinds of "concise" comments are not engaging with dialectical reasoning; they're just dashing off sneering barbs. Clearly, you're getting pattern matched with them. If you had merely added the reference to "Immanent critique" in your original comment, as an explanation for why it was so curt, you'd have escaped that filter!
Obviously, the burden of support isn't applied to people expressing warm thoughts about the queen, because virtually none of them are barbs. They're called "bromides" for a reason!
You can write excitatory arguments, and even give HN heartburn in the process. But you have to do so carefully (or at least sparingly, taking pains not to join a chorus of rhetorical capsaicin), or you're going to get caught out the way you did here. Provocations (in any direction) generally need to earn their keep here, which is usually as simple as some kind of demonstration of good faith in your writing --- it doesn't need to be a wall of text (though if you're angling for Internet points, that'll help).
Let me just cut to the chase and say that I fundamentally disagree with this. One version of what you're saying is that controversial agreement needs a lower standard of proof than controversial disagreement. I see absolutely no reason for that. Western thought is built from Plato on the idea knowledge is arrived at only through dialectical criticism - not the asymmetrical favouring of agreement.
But, maybe that's not what you meant. Perhaps you meant that disagreement is more liable to be a 'barb' - to be 'provocative', as you later say - than disagreement. From a functional view of managing HN to minimise conflict, the less provocations the better. First of all, what is and is not provocative is relative to the person. Deifying the Queen is provocative to me and, evidently, many other people in the thread. My provocation, if you want to call it that, was not the first in the chain. Yet it was singled out. The other thing is that if you take this conclusion to its logical conclusion it will simply end up enforcing and consolidating the opinion of the majority, against any dissenting minority. Again, to go back to basics, Socrates was put to death exactly because he called into question the settled views of Athenian society.
If the Queen wanted to go on TV and denounce the evils of UK society, nothing was stopping her. I'm not from the UK, so I've honestly no clue how she used that power - but to say she was powerless is to say that every artist, author, activist, and lobbyist has wasted their life, because not a single one of them had anything like her influence.
If we're expected to be understanding to the people grieving the loss of a celebrity, surely we should be a thousand times more understanding to all the people who are angry at far greater losses caused by the British Empire.
Pro-status-quo comments are inherently going to be less divisive because they don't challenge people, and seeing this thread full up of folks commenting on how personally meaningful the queen was to them without ever really being involved in their lives is a testament to that.
That said, I think it may also just go to show that's why royalism discussions shouldn't be the bread and butter of this community.
---
Thanks for the response by the way. I disagree with some things here but I also talk with a number of people from wildly different viewpoints. A true testament to y'alls work.
There instances, like HN, where the platform isn't trying to be used for making money or pushing an agenda. Moderation on this tends to be good, but that set of circumstances is rare
That's my point, yes.
In practice it's not much different here since we still have the military draft but so far we can still fire a "President" via impeachment if they go crazy on us. The UK's "subjects" do not have that power, they are truly akin to chattel.
I think it's fair to say that Elizabeth was exceptional for how she handled her position as Queen but the United Kingdom is always just one "King" away from a disastrous ruler and that could get very ugly very fast and potentially for a very long time.
That said, same could happen here and for much the same reasons, which basically comes down to issues of common sense and fealty. If the first is low and the second high the odds of getting caught up in a shit storm are pretty good.
I don't see how that's true at all, and I've never seen any evidence to support it. Simply asserting it does not make it true.
> He was also a nazi sympatizer
Wouldn't that make him abdicating a good thing for England?
Talking about Stalin, he is a very respected figure today in Russia. In fact, polls say that he is more popular than ever, and a majority of Russians think he played a positive role for their country. Although we may think he was a monster, that doesn't mean that people can't worship him. Why can't they? If some random guy starts crying for a queen that couldn't care less about him, in the case of these leaders it makes even more sense.
Westerners are generally able to understand this idea, because they are for instance receptive to criticism of Japanese revisionism and loyalty to the Emperor. Yet there's a mental block when it comes to applying this concept to Western monarchies.
Like how you can question 1788 is the start of Australia is just ridiculous. And the monarch was the monarch of Australia for all that time because it was a British colony and then federation and we still have those heads of state. so it's not completely factual... what I said is factual what the other person said is wrong or limited to the point of view of federation. To argue against what I'm saying is crazy. What's the point of it even it's just like picking fights.
Your facts don't cover the reality of the situation I'm sorry. Australia is not just a name on a piece of paper after federation. Why do engineers think a single fact conveys the whole truth. Then I realize it's abusive to stick to that and not consider all the points of view...ugh. whatever.
Convince yourself what you want man but it's not the truth. But I don't think you've got any skin in the game to even argue this... Haha :)
Note that this scenario may still happen, but she was extremely lucid to realize its salience:
https://time.com/6212004/queen-elizabeth-republicanism-anti-...
I know that the US has a reputation for producing idiots but believe me, they exist in other places too, hence why I didn't specify the States, but you feel free to make it all about you.
She went on TV and denounced stuff all the time. Still doesn't change anything. You're mistaking influence with power. And most lobbyist would have more influence than she actually had.
There’s a huge difference between a family that has gathered obscene wealth through royal privilege and families that pass on their moderate inheritances to children.
Let’s start by enforcing normal inheritance tax on them, rather than letting them sidestep it using family trusts.
- Attacking an entity (CCP/cloudflare) is not against the rules afaik, but attacking a person is not allowed (hate speech?).
- The comment on Putin is less on attacking him as a person, but more on the state and the actions that he took.
- Attack on an entity/concept (monarchy) might be "user-moderated" via flag and downvotes if it's repetitive and bring no new information or insights.
- Occasions do matter. For example, it might not be appropriate to attack a person while the person is suffering from severe illness or recently died.
I've never heard anyone talk about annexing Ireland or making Ireland part of the UK again (aren't those two things synonymous?). I have heard Brits complaining about having to use non-EU lanes at airports, but that has nothing to do with Ireland - it's a completely predictable and negative consequence for Britons of a very divisive and unpopular political decision. I promise you that few people in England care either way what happens to Ireland, or at least no more than we care about, say, Sweden or any other near-neighbour who we're not at war with.
Hell, even Northern Ireland doesn't get much attention here, and that's part of our country. Most young Brits today are completely uneducated about the Troubles (although they've heard of it) and probably can't name a single Northern Irish politician. Brexit was a welcome reminder to the rest of us that Northern Ireland exists; our current dilemma is caused by the necessity of reconciling two utterly incompatible goals - keeping Northern Ireland within the same system as the UK while maintaining an open land border with an EU country. (The irreconcilability of these goals was pointed out by many people before the referendum, so I guess we can't say we weren't warned.)
> the "solid majority" in NI isn't so solid anymore.
Yep, I'm aware of that, and Brexit has definitely eroded that majority. Irish unification (as foretold by Star Trek) within my lifetime seems increasingly likely. Good for them - it's for the people of Northern Ireland to decide for themselves and I truly don't care which way they decide.
I should have said it differently because I gave the impression of being on one side when the truth is that I don't care; and qua moderator, I really don't care.
"QI has determined that the author of the quote is not someone famous or ancient.
It was crafted by a student, Kenneth John Freeman, for his Cambridge dissertation published in 1907. Freeman did not claim that the passage under analysis was a direct quotation of anyone; instead, he was presenting his own summary of the complaints directed against young people in ancient times. The words he used were later slightly altered to yield the modern version. In fact, more than one section of his thesis has been excerpted and then attributed classical luminaries."
No, facts are facts. Stalin was a monster, as were Hitler, Mao and Pol Pot and - in a slightly lower category - Franco, Castro and Chavez and dozens of other tin-pot dictators from all winds and all political directions. Maybe the local populace adored them but that is besides the point given what we know - what you know as well.
> what happens in many other countries that do much more harm to their inhabitants, and/or to those from other countries, than NK
Let's have some examples of those countries and in which way they do much more harm to their inhabitants than North Korea.
Now back to what started this discussion: where does Elisabeth II stand in comparison to all those mentioned crooks? As far as I know she did not personally oversee any atrocities like those of Lenin/Stalin/Hitler/Mao/Pol Pot/etc.? The British Empire does have a bloody history but so does the rest of the world. Those who were conquered by the British conquered others before them and were often conquered after the British left. The British themselves were conquered by the Romans, the Vikings, the Normans, Bretons, Flemish, and French under the Duke of Normandy. The Germans tried but failed, the Soviets would have liked to but never got that far. The Indian subcontinent was conquered by the Mughals who set up a far more bloody rule than the British did. Genghis Khan killed about 11% of the world's population. Et ce te ra, humans are a warlike species. When Elisabeth II came to the throne the British Empire was winding down, decolonisation continued under her rule until all that was left is the British Overseas Territories.
Also, Liz 2 was presumably a reasonably decent person, and can't really be blamed for the actions of the British government.
Please do.
There are literally millions of people who see her as the criminal she truly was.
I said she was a witness to many important things, which is absolutely correct.
Your analogy is, again, rooted in lack of knowledge(aka ignorance) of corporate structures.
The CEO of my startup right now, where she literally owns 51%, still must go to the board for any impactful decision. And any C level exec can call the board.
LLCs are generally autocratic, but that isn't "any corporation".
The Statute of Westminster removed the ability of the British parliament to legislate for the Dominions unless at their request and with their consent. It also turned the Dominions into Commonwealth Realms where the monarch served as head of state separately in each, with their consent, and constrained by laws and rules unique to each.
That is, King George V ceased being the King of the 'United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and of the British Dominions beyond the Seas', and became separately the King of the United Kingdom, King of South Africa, King of Australia, King of New Zealand, etc. The Governor-General became the King's representative, but was constrained by local legislation and was usually someone appointed by each country.
It was still a bit messy in some cases, and Australia and New Zealand weren't sure right up until they adopted new legislation just after WWII whether they were truly independent in foreign policy. But some of the countries, like the Union of South Africa, became fully sovereign the moment the 1931 Statute was passed, and only needed to implement additional legislation in 1934 to clarify and localise it.
South Africa of course became a republic in 1961, but all that did was change the head of state from being the Queen to being a State President. It didn't change anything about the country's legal relationship to the United Kingdom.
So it's wrong to say Charles has no power in Commonwealth realms today, as he has as much power as each country assigns him (and by extension his representative Governor-General) in its own laws and he exercises it separately and distinctly from his powers as King of the UK.
With leftists nutcases... never short of a good laugh!
The whole experience has knocked me off the fence and placed me firmly in the republic camp. It has solidified my resolve to leave the UK and start afresh somewhere else which aligns with my philosophical values. I am of the belief that the UK (or more specifically England, I think Scotland and Northern Ireland might break free of this mess soon, not as sure on Wales) is so fixated on the past that it is going to end up eating itself, especially with the technology that’s coming down the pipeline. The mindset that allows this broken system to continue (group think, fixation on the past) is fundamentally opposed to that which technology represents (individual thought, focus on the future) on a deep, deep level. You’re beginning to see it now with stuff like Rees-Mogg’s ridiculous attempts to bring back imperial measurements. Change is the only constant in life. Trying to resist it can only end in tears as history has shown time and time again. Unfortunately, they seem to be the only parts of history royalists want to overlook.
