The Monarchy

[Scottyboi]

Ok another question for you bunch a cunts!

How much influence do you think the monarchy has in decisions to do with the police or spying on other countries ect?

 

[TangerineSteve17]

off the cuff, random, ill-informed, unresearched, impulsive answer.... nowt.

 

[Len Rum]

I can't think of any, can you?

No In my view there is no justification for monarchy in this day and age.
Usually though it's supporters like to justify it on historical,spiritual,religious grounds etc rather pure hard cash and no Blair/Cowell or whoever as president.

A sovereign country needs a head of state, having a monarch which contributes to the economy by bringing tourism beats a elected head of state any day. Head's of states in this country have virtually no power so there's no point having an elected one. I'd stop reading Socialist Worker if I we're you

I'd stick to the Beano if I were you mate.

 

[Damocles]

Our cultural output is indeed outstanding - especially when placed in the context of the truly uninformed, disinterested nation we’ve become. I think you conflate smarter with having qualifications.

I conflate standard of education with general intelligence over a huge set like populations of countries yes. It a stunningly dim argument that they don't correlate that isn't supported by studies nor logic so we'll skip that one.

Do you genuinely believe we’re turning out more brilliant scientists, engineers, pioneers, biologists, chemists, mathematicians than say, 20/30/50 years ago?

I think the idea of who is more brilliant than who is an impossible question, but as somebody who considers himself well versed in academia in terms of the sciences then I'd say that we're probably turning out more productive scientists now than at any point in the history of the country. I'm basing this just on the huge wealth of research, experimentation and discovery made by British scientists over the past 10 or 20 years.

As for the second best education system in Europe - that is arrant nonsense. Scandanavia alone walks head and shoulders above us. And no, I don’t need PISA test results to show that.

Ah, you're one of those extremely clever people who "just knows" about things unlike those stupid scientists that spend thousands of hours on collating data and attempting some form of analysis on them. We're actually having an issue with this whole dark matter thing if you'd like to save us all some time and just let us know what it is instead of again having to draw another round of funding.

We’re a nation that loves the utter inane drivel served up by tabloids, that’s led, mouths agape, into texting who should come out of the fucking jungle. And it’s the reason we’ll have a monarchy until The Sun decides it’s time for its “readers” to be told otherwise.

We're a species that enjoys entertainment as it keeps the mind busy. We also enjoy many different facets of the tabloid media from its relative brevity to its slight salaciousness, and specifically its humour and of course the information packed therein. Most of these for quite interesting reasons that helped us along our evolutionary or social path and big marketing operations are extremely good at presenting things in a format designed to be psychologically seductive to humans.

As I tried to say previously, do you know what is the immediately obvious trait displayed by all people who lack education and intelligence? Lack of critical analysis skills. In addition to lack of specificity and lack of appreciation for the wider complexities of an issue which resorts to stereotype.

My University Professor was a huge fan of those Pop Idol shows and he's amongst the smartest people who I've ever had the fortune of debating a point with. I've read The Sun plenty of times and my favourite paper to follow on Twitter is the Sunday Sport, and you'll see me regularly retweeting their stories.

Your stereotypes and ill-informed rhetoric has no place here. You should write a blog.

 

[Mr Ed (The Stables)]

How much longer do you think such establishments have in mankind, there must come a point where the public realize no one is born above them.

We use to be a very religious country and that is slowly disappearing too with a lot of churches closing.

Forget the apparent wealth they bring in, and think of a reason why we should have a monarchy in the next 100 years? I can't think of one besides ''tradition''

Would selling all their assets help towards the deficit?

The Queen is the "Defender of the Faith", get rid of her and I doubt no-one else will give a toss.

Serious question if we did bin the Queen and the Royal Family, who fills the void?

Who becomes our Head Of State?

Blackrod will be out of a job thats for sure!!

Selling her assets, who would we sell them to Donald Trump?

I would like to think if we did ever become a Republic all those properties would be owned by the State, afterall loads of tourists come to these Isles because of the Royal family.

This time around in 2015 would I be a Roundhead or a Royalist, I guess I'm a Royalist at heart.

 

[EalingBlue2]

This is always a very big topic of conversation in australia as we have the monarchy but are one step removed from the UK it seems even stranger.

My view is simple, theoretically it is wrong but practically it doesn't seem to do much harm, does some good and is preferable to many of the alternatives. As such when I think of things we should spend time and money on dealing with I would put the monarchy miles behind, education, health, welfare, tax reform, economic reform, regeneration , foreign aid in terms of issues government should put time and money into dealing with.

In short the monarchy is a chattering class problem not a real issue effecting our day to day lives and there are more important things to worry about

 

[Ancient Citizen]

.

We’re a nation that loves the utter inane drivel served up by tabloids, that’s led, mouths agape, into texting who should come out of the fucking jungle. And it’s the reason we’ll have a monarchy until The Sun decides it’s time for its “readers” to be told otherwise.

We're a species that enjoys entertainment as it keeps the mind busy. We also enjoy many different facets of the tabloid media from its relative brevity to its slight salaciousness, and specifically its humour and of course the information packed therein. Most of these for quite interesting reasons that helped us along our evolutionary or social path and big marketing operations are extremely good at presenting things in a format designed to be psychologically seductive to humans.

As I tried to say previously, do you know what is the immediately obvious trait displayed by all people who lack education and intelligence? Lack of critical analysis skills. In addition to lack of specificity and lack of appreciation for the wider complexities of an issue which resorts to stereotype.

My University Professor was a huge fan of those Pop Idol shows and he's amongst the smartest people who I've ever had the fortune of debating a point with. I've read The Sun plenty of times and my favourite paper to follow on Twitter is the Sunday Sport, and you'll see me regularly retweeting their stories.

Your stereotypes and ill-informed rhetoric has no place here. You should write a blog.

It is true that a lot of people get sneered at for their choice of viewing/reading matter, mostly by people who think they are morally and intellectually superior to them, so they know better. It usually stems from some sort of inate inferiority complex that was imbued sometime in their youth, that makes them want to constantly voice their superiority as a salve to this. I had a mate at school who ended up as Head statistician for the Post Office and then a similar position at the World Health Organisation, after a glittering term at Oxford.
He was almost childlike in his habits, however, and his favourite pastimes were getting as pissed and stoned as possible, only ever read comics, never a paper, had no interest in politics and was incredibly naive in relationships.
I will read the Mirror, a paper now at odds with my political views, but a paper I have a fondness for due to it being in our house every day when I was a kid, it was the working man's paper of choice, and still has that undercurrent of fairness and balance in it's editorials. I'll also read the Sun, Mail, Guardian, (only for sport, this is not otherwise for me). Plenty of folk love X factor and Strictly, not me, but all of them are not cretins because of this.

 

[kas_tippler]

No In my view there is no justification for monarchy in this day and age.
Usually though it's supporters like to justify it on historical,spiritual,religious grounds etc rather pure hard cash and no Blair/Cowell or whoever as president.

A sovereign country needs a head of state, having a monarch which contributes to the economy by bringing tourism beats a elected head of state any day. Head's of states in this country have virtually no power so there's no point having an elected one. I'd stop reading Socialist Worker if I we're you

I'd stick to the Beano if I were you mate.

I rest my case.

 

[Scottyboi]

This is always a very big topic of conversation in australia as we have the monarchy but are one step removed from the UK it seems even stranger.

My view is simple, theoretically it is wrong but practically it doesn't seem to do much harm, does some good and is preferable to many of the alternatives. As such when I think of things we should spend time and money on dealing with I would put the monarchy miles behind, education, health, welfare, tax reform, economic reform, regeneration , foreign aid in terms of issues government should put time and money into dealing with.

In short the monarchy is a chattering class problem not a real issue effecting our day to day lives and there are more important things to worry about

How long do you think the Monarchy will last though?

 

[lazza]

I'm no royalist, but I do see the that there is some value in keeping our monarchy....

If we really were to sell their assets "for the good of the people", who do you think would make money out of it? Capitalist and mates of the Tory party, if any other public sell-off is anything to go by. And there are huge amounts of land that is free from development because it belongs to the monarchy, so there is an element of conservation in the Crown's assets.