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Post by robeiae on Nov 28, 2017 7:59:40 GMT -5
Exactly what you might expect, I suppose. Luckily, Hobbes wasn't right about everything.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 28, 2017 8:03:20 GMT -5
"...as it is currently done in the remaining European countries that have one." The rest of my sentence matters. I don't advocate returning to the days of Henry VIII. But Sweden doesn't seem so bad to me.
Indeed, when I look at our own current royal family, Sweden looks pretty fucking awesome.
I don't advocate us adopting a royal family at this stage, obviously. I'm merely observing that having one with the very limited power most of them have these days doesn't seem to be such a disaster.
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Post by michaelw on Nov 28, 2017 8:04:54 GMT -5
Exactly what you might expect, I suppose. A rousing rendition of God somebody save the queen?
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Post by robeiae on Nov 28, 2017 8:44:13 GMT -5
"...as it is currently done in the remaining European countries that have one." The rest of my sentence matters. I don't advocate returning to the days of Henry VIII. But Sweden doesn't seem so bad to me. Indeed, when I look at our own current royal family, Sweden looks pretty fucking awesome. I don't advocate us adopting a royal family at this stage, obviously. I'm merely observing that having one with the very limited power most of them have these days doesn't seem to be such a disaster. Well again, getting to the current state of affairs is a part of the picture, imo. Events like the US Civil War continue to be cited in reference to failings in the US, yet European monarchies have largely been allowed to write off their own pasts, as it were. The Thirty Years War was a bloody, destructive conflict (far worse than the US Civil War) that laid waste to much of central Europe. And it was fought largely because of petty monarchs, imo (including the King of Sweden, btw).
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Post by Amadan on Nov 28, 2017 8:50:49 GMT -5
I actually think that the British monarchy passes a red line, in that the monarch there has political power. Each bill required "royal assent", and the monarch can stop legislation through a refusal to give the royal consent. It's not done now, but it could be done. If I were British I'd work to change that. Technically, that's true, but I think the royals have understood for a couple of generations now that there is a tacit understanding between them and the actual government - if you actually try to exercise your theoretical powers, you'll lose them. I don't froth at the existence of royalty, but there really is little to no use for them other than as tourist attractions. If they were out there leading by example and being good role models, at least, they could be defended as representing their people or some such sentimental justification, but the British royals in recent years hardly bring to mind King George giving speeches during Britain's darkest hour. I mean, I don't have much more affection for Japan's Imperial family, which has always remained quiet and reclusive and dignified, at least.
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Post by maxinquaye on Nov 28, 2017 9:14:24 GMT -5
It is one of those quirks that everyone has, I suppose. Why does egalitarian Sweden that obsess over everything being "fair" have this system? I think most countries operate on "we're used to this, so therefore this is good". They don't analyse things further than that.
One aspect of being a republican in Sweden is this - seventyfive to eighty percent of the population support the monarchy. Raising the issue delegate you to that status of being a querulant. In effect obsessed with obtaining an outcome that doesn't actually mean anything to anyone else. It will just earn you funny looks, and lost respect in any other area one would like to be heard in.
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Post by Vince524 on Nov 28, 2017 12:38:54 GMT -5
I feel happy for Harry as I would anyone else I didn't know personally who announced they're getting married. It's great, congrats now I want lunch.
However, there's been some interesting reaction on Twitter. Some people have been, let's say, not so nice about the upcoming nuptials, suggesting that she must give good... I don't want to say it, but you can fill in the blank.
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Post by Amadan on Nov 28, 2017 13:03:50 GMT -5
I feel happy for Harry as I would anyone else I didn't know personally who announced they're getting married. It's great, congrats now I want lunch. However, there's been some interesting reaction on Twitter. Some people have been, let's say, not so nice about the upcoming nuptials, suggesting that she must give good... I don't want to say it, but you can fill in the blank. Tea parties?
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Post by markesq on Nov 28, 2017 15:16:17 GMT -5
I'm with Rob and Don. And I've seen it up close and personal, lived it. My house was Fairlclough Hall, one set of cousins were in Weston Lodge, the others in Weston Manor. In 1985 I had dinner with Princess Di, before that I went to the same prep school as her brother (Maidwell Hall). At Xmas my family would walk to the local church where the villagers would leave the Pryor family the front pews (for the only service we went to each year!). When I was 13, after years of going to school with the most awful children imaginable, I refused to go to Eton, where my name had been "down" since birth. One of the reasons I left England 25 years ago was the awful class system that was and is still in place, well beyond just the royal family. My dad hated the system, too, one of the few things we had in common. Methinks, you wonderful peeps have little idea how insidious and cruel the upper classes are, and I'm sure Harry and Will are splendidly spiffing chaps but, more than them sucking off the public teat, the continued existence of the royal family (and all earl-and duke-doms etc) perpetuates a disgraceful inequality and superiority/inferiority. Now then, let me know if you really want to hear what I think about this subject...
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Post by Deleted on Nov 28, 2017 18:09:37 GMT -5
I doubt our upper classes are any better, though they may be more vulgar and vapid.
The Trumps, the Mnuchins, the Kardashians, Paris Hilton...It's just based on money and the garish flaunting of it instead of birth. And education and culture are downright demerits.
I'm not too hepped on where 'Murica is going at the moment.
ETA:
I don't particularly want to be British, though, especially not post-Brexit. Swedish would work.
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Post by robeiae on Nov 28, 2017 20:38:05 GMT -5
The only people who want to be British are the Indians.
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Post by maxinquaye on Nov 29, 2017 4:30:50 GMT -5
I don't particularly want to be British, though, especially not post-Brexit. Swedish would work. Oh, we definitely have a vapid brain-dead upper crust here too. Back when I lived in Stockholm, there was this subset of cretinous argument for eugenics called "Stureplansvåp". In English that would be something incredibly disparaging. I think every society has them; a group of people who think that accidents of birth made them more qualified than everyone else to order the world according to their own needs. It wasn't so much lineage in their case, but inherited money. The old nobility, which can in their own way be as strange, have the good sense not to flash their inherited titles. They know that if they come anywhere and insist that they're Count so and so, or Baron of This and That, people will ridicule them. They've learned that as well. But these other people who inherited money from the bank of Mom and Dad and haven't learned any of the world's lessons yet can be... challenging to be around. But the royals? They belong firmly in that other group of nobility that knows to keeps its head down, and not try anything. If they cut ribbons, and smile for the tourists, they get to keep their cush jobs. Then they can pretend to their small clique that they actually matter.
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Post by markesq on Nov 29, 2017 12:30:42 GMT -5
I recall a term that summed up the awful and ironic snobbishness of the upper classes: nouveau riche. Remember that term?!? It was 100 percent disparaging, and yet it told me that the person who was "nouveau riche" probably earned it themselves. Still, it was thrown like a spear, almost always at the person's back, and once the moniker attached you were automatically banished forever from the realm of the upper classes.
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Post by robeiae on Nov 29, 2017 12:37:14 GMT -5
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Post by Vince524 on Nov 29, 2017 12:46:16 GMT -5
I went through a phase where I wanted to be British. It was the accent. I just thought you sounded so much cooler with a British accent. I think it was around the time I discovered 007, but I can't be sure what age. 8 or 9?
I still think British people sound cooler, but I don't speak in a British accent to imaginary people anymore.
Not that I don't talk to imaginary people, I just use my own voice now.
ETA: And before you say it, yes, I know I'm weird Cass.
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