Liquid Gold
Well-Known Member
May bank holiday moving to June with an additional day for the platinum jubilee!
The royals moving from car crashes to days off to distract us.
The royals moving from car crashes to days off to distract us.
Think it would have happened anyway tbhMay bank holiday moving to June with an additional day for the platinum jubilee!
The royals moving from car crashes to days off to distract us.
Might well get both!May bank holiday moving to June with an additional day for the platinum jubilee!
The royals moving from car crashes to days off to distract us.
May bank holiday moving to June with an additional day for the platinum jubilee!
The royals moving from car crashes to days off to distract us.
Me 99% of the time -
Abolish the monarchy, it's outdated and we should be a republic
Me when we get an extra bank holiday because of the royals -
A colleague suggested we should have a bank holiday to support the nhs , I said that’s nonsense at least half of us would need to workPlatinum jubilee? What's that?
Not sure if people are aware but my wife has been given an extra days holiday this year from our NHS Trust with the suggestion it could be taken on their birthday. I don’t know if this is for the whole NHS but a great gesture.A colleague suggested we should have a bank holiday to support the nhs , I said that’s nonsense at least half of us would need to work
Not sure if people are aware but my wife has been given an extra days holiday this year from our NHS Trust with the suggestion it could be taken on their birthday. I don’t know if this is for the whole NHS but a great gesture.
A colleague suggested we should have a bank holiday to support the nhs , I said that’s nonsense at least half of us would need to work
Yeah but we’ve still got the lowest amount of bank holidays.
We could make the day we get rid of them a holiday, everyone’s a winner.
It prob will be when it eventually happens. Whatever the outcome of something it'll be celebrated as a victory cos history is written by the winners. Like Bonfire night - we'd still have that even if they'd succeeded because it'd have been seen as a great victory against monarchy/Protestantism.
Problem with the human psyche - it assumes everything is a step forward in the march of progress and is the best possible outcome.
Not sure if people are aware but my wife has been given an extra days holiday this year from our NHS Trust with the suggestion it could be taken on their birthday. I don’t know if this is for the whole NHS but a great gesture.
Not a fan of a republic then?
Must be only Oxford University Hospital Trust then.My Cousins who are nurses haven't got an extra day of either
I'm not saying everything is a step back, just that not everything is a step forward. Sometimes you have to do things wrong to get them right. We became a republic shortly in the 1600's but it was shit and we brought back the monarchy. Doesn't mean the republic was a wrong idea, just they had the wrong people in charge of it - the puritans.
As for a republic. I'm all for it eventually. I think the queen has done a remarkable job, amazingly just by keeping her mouth shut. I can't see Charles being able to do so.
Thing with the republic is it's almost certainly going to end up with a President and that's just an extension of what we've got now but more dangerously giving a single individual a lot of power. It wouldn't be independent and you'd get one affiliated to a political party. So why bother with it at all? Look at the US. Presidents are either R or D, so where's the independence and balance check between the legislative and executive, which is what the position is supposed to do? Trump's impeachment trial had nothing to do with evidence, just who he represented. If he'd been a Democrat the R's would've voted to impeach, most D's wouldn't. In fact you could say that about his entire Presidency and indeed most of them for a very long time.
As we also see with Trump and the affiliation, you can get people voting for totally unsuitable candidates just due to party and they can do almost as they please with the argument they have a mandate to do by being voted in. The queen doesn't have one and so can't in reality, even though constitutionally she can. She's almost just a figurehead or mascot, and I'd rather that than an individual who does. You eventually end up with someone like Putin.
Where’s the balance now? The Queen isn’t apolitical.
I get the issues with the President but surely we can draft whatever constitutional arrangement we want? I’m not sure it means we have to keep the current arrangement.
Of course the Queen won't be apolitical, but she knows better than to voice her opinion or try and interfere.
We could put in an arrangement that any President had to be independent of a political party, but we all know that won't happen. If anything it'd be more dangerous cos you'd have a clearly biased incumbent (of either political persuasion) being bankrolled or led by a party but being able to claim their actions as 'independent'. It'd give those parties the chance to push their agenda without being directly linked to it. Or worse, they'd be financed by rich individuals, companies or unions and we'd have an individual with lots of executive power given they were voted in beholden to a small group of wealthy people. That's inevitable.
Given those options I'd take a monarch who, in reality, had little influence on policy.
Maybe we need to look at the vast landholdings and property of the royals and start reclaiming it for a start, but for me a President just creates a whole new load of problems no matter how you try to package it.
Why not just do away with the monarchy and not replace it with anything? Why give any individual that much power, elected or not? Just have a parliament with a PM.
May bank holiday moving to June with an additional day for the platinum jubilee!
The royals moving from car crashes to days off to distract us.
The monarchy definitely has influence on policy. I’d agree I don’t see the need for some supreme leader. Get the House of Lords right for balance to the populists in the Commons and leave it as it is.
The monarchy definitely has influence on policy. I’d agree I don’t see the need for some supreme leader. Get the House of Lords right for balance to the populists in the Commons and leave it as it is.
I'd flip it, the lower house should be more representative of the country as a whole and then the upper house have representatives of each area. That way you can reduce the number in the commons to something sensible then have the lords constituencies larger too but they are able to block legislation if it doesn't fit with a majority of regional concerns.Agree about the Lords. As I've said before that should be the PV elected chamber to go with the constituency based Commons.
Agree about the Lords. As I've said before that should be the PV elected chamber to go with the constituency based Commons.
I'd flip it, the lower house should be more representative of the country as a whole and then the upper house have representatives of each area. That way you can reduce the number in the commons to something sensible then have the lords constituencies larger too but they are able to block legislation if it doesn't fit with a majority of regional concerns.
If the lower house was by constituency and the upper proportional I think you'd still end up with a load of stuff getting waived though.
So this is why, just like FPTP, it’ll never be reformed (reformists can’t agree on what reform should be). But I disagree.
I want something that’s designed to capture expertise and interests from across the country both geographically, socially, and economically. Maybe have representatives for wider areas elected, but I’d also want expertise in law, science, religion, trades, finance, etc in there with some structure to ensure it’s not all along party lines. I wouldn’t want to recreate the worst of the Commons.
I agree about expertise etc, but we try and do that now and fail. you get PCC etc or Mayors and you just get people voting on party lines. If they have to be independent it's unlikely they actually will be and it just means parties will have control but not accountability.
In white papers we get experts to do them, but if the govt disagrees they just ignore them.
To be honest I'd rip the whole thing up, move them out of Westminster and turn that into a museum. Stick them in Milton Keynes or Kettering or something and completely change the makeup of it.Whichever way round it is it's the principle of both being elected but by differing means. I just feel replacing the Lords would be less of a problem (but still a big one) than saying you're changing both or swapping them over it's going to be greeted with a lot more resistance cos people don't like change.
I disagree about the 'new Lords' getting stuff waved through - PR is very rarely going to produce a majority so can block stuff. Worry is you'd be getting stuff blocked just for party lines, as is the fear with hung parliaments.
To be honest I'd rip the whole thing up, move them out of Westminster and turn that into a museum. Stick them in Milton Keynes or Kettering or something and completely change the makeup of it.
Appreciate like 10 people would go for it though
Thats why I wouldn’t make them elected positions. Or rather I’d have them appointed by certain bodies and they can choose to ballot their members or decide another way. That’s where I fall down on the detail though.
I get about them being elected by bodies. Trouble with that is you get people very much just in that bubble and can't see beyond it. So finance people wouldn't be able to see beyond economic impact, environmental wouldn't be able to see beyond that, health and social care, education, arts etc would only see their things etc. Which if they were all given equal footing it might be workable, but they wouldn't be. Economics and business would be given massive preference and so we could go back to a situation whereby all that's being considered is how much money it makes and all the rest being marginalised.
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