Sunday, December 8, 2019
Spitting Image: Royal Family lose fortune in recession & move to council flat
Queen Elizabeth's nightmare that her family lose all their money and move into a high-rise council block, where they have to resort to crime to survive. Prince Charles later becomes a cabbie. Also stars Princes Philip, Edward & Andrew, Sarah Ferguson & late Queen Mother.
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3 comments:
The important thing is not the person of the monarch, but the institution of the monarchy. The reason that Canada and Australia still have a monarchies is that the alternatives are clearly worse. Living next to the US, it is very apparent to Canadians that adding the symbolic role of the monarch to the political role of the executive, as they do in the US presidency, stymies open and honest political debate and makes it easier to raise public support for foreign military interventions and other populist endeavours. Having a Cabinet that is not responsible to the electorate is also a grave error. Don’t believe me? Just take a gander at Transparency International’s reports on corruption etc. over the last two decades. Almost all the best governed countries, by those measures, are constitutional monarchies (and have some form of proportional representation), and the republics in the top 15 (there are one or two) tend to be quasi-constitutional monarchies, with parliamentary government and merely symbolic presidents. Parliamentary monarchism is not a panacea, but it is vastly better than republicanism, except of the Swiss stamp -- but even the Swiss model of decentralization has prevented systemic fraud by Swiss banks that rivals that of the City or Wall Street. In a very real sense, the institution of the monarchy (more than the person, although I like the Queen) is barrier against the robber barons (e.g. Johnson's squirearchy, or the money lenders favoured by Blairites and the Cameron-May crowd).
I meant to type "even the Swiss model of decentralization has NOT prevented systemic fraud by Swiss banks that rivals that of the City or Wall Street."
Interesting!
I'm not very malicious, so I'm neither anti the Royalty, or pro. Lots of people seem to like them.
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