Off Topic The Politics Thread

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Should the UK remain a part of the EU or leave?

  • Stay in

    Votes: 56 47.9%

  • Get out

    Votes: 61 52.1%
  • Total voters
    117
  • Poll closed .
sb_73 said:
You are older than I thought…

Why can’t the public financing be more like, say the Spanish royal family? You wouldn’t need to confiscate the royal duchies, just tax them. We’d get them through inheritance tax pretty soon.

Yuval Harari is very good on ‘imagined constructs’ too. As you know they are acts of collective self deception to fake things in common with people that you don’t know. At their best they stop us killing each other. Hey, we’ve got the same king/god/bank let’s cooperate! Often consciously used by the elite to maintain the status quo, and stoke up fear and hatred of those outside of a particular ‘construct’ or those who represent a conflicting one. You’ve noted many that that have disintegrated over the last decades and I have no doubt that the royal family is on that slope as well. I wish I could say the same for nations. Of course those champions of the individual have taken great joy in attacking some of these cohesive constructs, like unions.

Anyway, you have your King Charles III and Queen Camilla and will have them for the foreseeable. Enjoy. According to my brother (I have some doubts sadly) we have an ancestor who was a Leveller member of the New Model Army who preferred the Agreement of the People’s egalitarian republicanism to swearing an oath to Thomas Fairfax as head of the NMA. He was executed as a result (Corkbush Field Mutiny). So you’ll appreciate that for sentimental reasons I seek other ‘constructs’ around which to build communities. Ones which don’t rely on God’s magic oil and displays of equine military discipline, and which perhaps depend a little more on ideas.
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The crux of the issue is that Charles maybe has become used to being referred to as ''Your Royal Highness'' but if I greet him with ''Hi Charlie'' then nothing would actually happen to me as a result (though he may grimace a little). Actually he may not be bothered because Quakers use no Earthly titles and he has met a few of them. Going on with the theme of the New Model Army - Gerrard Winstanley thought it was inconsistent to cut off the head of the serpent whilst leaving the rest of the body intact. So it is - if you remove the monarchy and deny Charlie the right to hand his position (and castles and land) over to Willie (his son) then, by the same token do it with all the remainders of aristocracy in the UK - all the remaining Dukes, Earls etc. and all their land (the ownership of which was descended from theft). Amazing how much land is still owned by the descendents of Norman conquerors in England, and how names of Norman descent are 10 times more likely to be represented at Oxbridge than eg. Smith or Jones.

But if you are going to attack inherited titles in this way, then go all the way and attack all inherited wealth - what Willie inherits from Charlie doesn't influence me as much as one group of billionaires handing it over to the next generation of billionaires. What pisses me off no end is how all this ceremonial stuff is linked in with religion - as if this God actually approves of vaste disparities of wealth. This must qualify as some kind of blasphemy against the old man in the clouds - particularly as Jesus comes over as a bit of a Socialist (presuming that you read the real Bible and not the C of E edited version) and every time there was a description in this book about how Christians should live together it was nothing less than a form of Christian Communism. So how can they claim that this nonsense is ordained by God !

Having said all of that - things like this are good for tourism. Also if we took all of the land back from the descendants of Norman robbers, I'm not sure what we would do with it. I mean are republics like the USA or Germany any more egalitarian than the UK - do they have fewer food banks or homeless ? Also my Dad was in the Life Guards for many years and formed part of the guard for the coronation of Elizabeth in 1953 - so, seeing all those horses brought back lots of childhood memories for me. Being reigned over by someone who inherited that position sucks - but then being ruled over by people who believe they are doing it on merit can be a pain as well, at least Charlie knows it was all down to luck.
 
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Burnside
@BurnsideNotTosh
·
8h

As my trip to Scotland draws to a close, I make the following observations:
Edinburgh has become a scruffy mess.
Everyone has mental health issues.
The harder lockdown has made it worse here than England.
Global warming is not a danger but a necessity.
 
Is the goal here just to burn all the books without even knowing what books you’re burning? Sounds mental to me even by Brexity standards.

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