It's weird, I've never considered myself a "royalist" but this news has affected me quite strongly. I just burst into tears unexpectedly on hearing this news and I don't quite understand why I feel so very sad. I guess I have grown up and lived my whole life (as a Brit) seeing and hearing the Queen, singing "God save the Queen" etc, and this news made me suddenly feel very old, very nostalgic, with the sense that all things pass in time, which makes my heart ache deeply.
I feel the same. I think it’s because it really represents the end of an era. The 20th and early 21st century ushered in unprecedented improvements to quality of life in Britain but it has felt of late that that has peaked and the country is facing a serious decline: Brexit, the increasingly visible effects of climate change, the aftermath of covid, the possible break up of the union, rising costs of living, recession, possibly even war. The death of Elizabeth II coincides with the end of a long period of stability and comfort and is not only a poignant point in history itself but a marker for a transitional point in history for our country.
My understanding is that the late 70s and early 80s in England was a hopeless place. As evidence I submit Alan Moore's introduction to V for Vendetta and Ghost Town by the Specials.
"Naivete can also be detected in my supposition that it would take something as melodramatic as a near-miss nuclear conflict to nudge England toward fascism. Although in fairness to myself and David, there were no better or more accurate predictions of our country’s future available in comic form at that time. The simple fact that much of the historical background of the story proceeds from a predicted Conservative defeat in the 1982 General Election should tell you how reliable we were in our role as Cassandras.
It’s 1988 now. Margaret Thatcher is entering her third term of office and talking confidently of an unbroken Conservative leadership well into the next century. My youngest daughter is seven and the tabloid press are circulating the idea of concentration camps for persons with AIDS. The new riot police wear black visors, as do their horses, and their vans have rotating video cameras mounted on top. The government has expressed a desire to eradicate homosexuality, even as an abstract concept, and one can only speculate as to which minority will be the next legislated against. I’m thinking of taking my family and getting out of this country soon, sometime over the next couple of years. It’s cold and it’s mean-spirited and I don’t like it here anymore."
"My understanding is that the late 70s and early 80s in England was a hopeless place."
That's not quite how it felt as a 52 year old Brit off of mostly England wot lived here at that time, as well as West Germany. I got the full Cold War experience.
I'm not sure about V for Vendetta - that's a film released in 2005 so a retrospective of {something}. "Ghost Town" by the Specials is of its time and an absolute belter and it does evoke emotions.
I can understand that a Canadian that wasn't even born at the time might find it hard to usefully engage with the past of a foreign country.
However we as Canadians and Brits and many others shared a Queen and she has passed away to all our loss.
OK but it is fiction. Not real. I'm sure we are all agreed on that.
If you'd like a tale about the 1970-80s then feel free to ask and I'll tell you what I saw. With luck, my memories aren't too shot.
Living in W Germany in the 1970/80s was rather safer than Ukraine now. A threat of nuclear shenanigans back then is nothing compared to a rocket salvo now.
Ukraine is being attacked right now by Russia and has been for months. Civilians are dying daily in this revolting attack on common civility.
I'm not too sure how important V for whatevs is. It's a story.
> OK but it is fiction. Not real. I'm sure we are all agreed on that.
Yes, it's fiction, but the comment you were replying to mentions Alan Moore's foreword to his work where he mentions the context in which he created the comic -- and that context was the despair and hopelessness he felt in the UK of the 70s and 80s.
Alan Moore is talking about the reality that inspired his fiction (and in fact, mentions how his fiction fell short of what actually happened next).
> I'm not too sure how important V for whatevs is. It's a story.
"V for whatevs"? You are being needlessly dismissive. Alan Moore is a highly influential and political comics book author whose work has a lot to say about the 70s and 80s. Just like punk was also a reflection and a product of its era.
Would you have preferred more prosperity, but soundtracked only by the Bay City Rollers, Pink Floyd, and Cliff Richard? Or the angry DIY spirit of punk to emerge?
The improvement only happened for some people. Thatcher made it better for a group of Tory voters at the expense of Wales, Northern England, Scotland and quite a fair chunk of the Midlands to boot.
She is adored in some of London and all the Home Counties where her polices led to increased wealth and life outcomes.
In the rest of the country, she is the person who destroyed communities and the fabric of what it was to be British for many.
This is not cognitive dissonance. It's different experiences by different people.
Given this is a thread about HRH Queen Elizabeth II, it's worth noting that she herself and her family were no real fans of how Thatcher conducted herself in relation to some of her policies that were _actively hostile_ to many working class communities.
When the Royal family quietly whisper that they think someone is a snob, well... that's saying something, eh?
The 80's weren't crap. The 80's saw a massive increase in wealth for the working class. There was even a whole comedy character about it - https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/loadsamoney
Yes. The Thatcher era marked the end of a lot of stagnation, and while at the time people might have linked her and the era, plenty of subsequent people don't like Thatcher despite the marked increase in quality of life post her era.
That's a very one-sided telling of the story. Both Labour and Conservative governments struggled with the economic mess left behind by the war and the end of the empire.
And the long-term negative effects of Thatcher's legacy (much like Reagan's in the states) are being felt now. The homeless situation is (in large part) a product of Thatcher selling off public housing and turning actual care into "community care".
It seems as if you judge the past too positively. The 70s and 80s were also perceived as pretty dark at the time and anything but stable. The sentiment at the time was quite similar to the way you describe the present. You had stagnation in the 70s similar to what is happening today and a general view that the welfare system was losing its viability. The Cold War also became more serious again in the 80s and the geopolitical threats were comparable to today's.
I love the example of ancient texts that decry how the youth don’t listen to their elders any more and the lords are getting stingier with the taxes every season. It’s a universal feeling.
You mean this quote by Socrates, which was written as Athens was entering a period of (terminal) decline?
“The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.”
Maybe it is not so universal, but an actual predictor of civilizational decline?
Socrates never said that and he never wrote anything (that has survived, anyway).
"QI has determined that the author of the quote is not someone famous or ancient.
It was crafted by a student, Kenneth John Freeman, for his Cambridge dissertation published in 1907. Freeman did not claim that the passage under analysis was a direct quotation of anyone; instead, he was presenting his own summary of the complaints directed against young people in ancient times. The words he used were later slightly altered to yield the modern version. In fact, more than one section of his thesis has been excerpted and then attributed classical luminaries."
> but an actual predictor of civilizational decline?
I think it is more of an indicator of overall prosperity, which may, in fact cause civilizational decline. I'm reminded of the mouse utopia[0], and my own family.
You really hit the nail on the head. Watching footage of her inauguration drives home how the world changed during her reign. She lived through the entire crazy exponential increase in, well, everything.
No. Statistically, the reason the gp was celebrating their post war prosperity was because the proceeds or automation and burning fossil fuels were much more equitably shared in that period than any other in history.
Indeed. That was the start of the big push of thousands of big and small inventions and commercial progressions that has gradually allowed more and more of the whole world to achieve heights no one could've dreamed of even 100 years ago.
None of those things you mentioned are real or big problems visible at an individual level any more than the problems of previous decades. If nobody told you they'd happened, you'd be enjoying the same stability and comfort as before. Perhaps the problem is how the media presents events, not the events themselves.
Without an objective way to measure "badness", all you're doing it reflecting what the TV told you to feel.
I think humans have evolved to need rulers and hierarchy to look up to to some extent. Look at what happened to Americans -- once the UK royalty was gone it was replaced with celebrity. It's just human nature.
The Queen is not a 'ruler' though, she's a figurehead.
Which is fully appropriate where it exists.
I would be 100% against the US having a 'Constitutional Monarch' but I'm 100% in support of the UK Constitutional Monarchy, given that it has come from their long established culture, nearly a 1000-year-old 'contiguous-ish' institution.
FYI in 1258 the Monarch signed documents which required him to 'Confer with Parliament' when changing rates of taxation. That's only 40 years past Magna Carta, and the first reference to 'Parliament'.
I think the British Monarch could in _theory_ have some political power as parliamentary bills go by the monarch for approval. The Queen always approved them of course.
The romantic in me likes to believe the Queen would step in if the British parliament tried passing some truly terrible bill. Basically acting as a last stop gap of human and British sensibility. Though with Queen Elizabeth II gone I'd have less trust in the judgement of a monarch.
Part of me does wonder if US politics would've been much different with a ceremonial figurehead. And that'd be a fun alt-history where a great-great-grandchild of George Washington is the ceremonial head of the US government and has to deal with intrigues of Washington politics while just wanting to live quietly on the ancestral Virginian home.
The power of the Monarch is kind of real actually, particularly because of the way Parliaments are created and dissolved etc..
There is no clear '4 years to election' as they have in the US.
In my home country, Canada, it gets dicey as we wonder sometimes just what the 'Governor General' (Queen's rep in Canada) will do.
I don't think the Queen is going to be interjecting on any 'legislation' unless there is something fundamentally unconstitutional about how it was passed; but there's definitely some question marks about 'how and when government falls and is formed' - and especially, how 'minority governments' are formed. If there's no obvious winner, then minority situations form, and it can get weird.
That's still a thing.
I suggest the US would have been a better country were the American revolution to not have happened. Sounds totally crazy, but true. I think the US would have healthcare, be a bit more socially minded, slavery would have ended a lot sooner, and the US still have all of the 'good parts' (except a cool national anthem).
I don’t think that’s really a thing in the UK. In every election for over a century, when there are disagreements (and there have been many), the parties thrash it out and pick somebody to be prime minister, and that person drives to the palace for the Queen to make it official. It’s entirely ceremonial and I haven’t heard of any instance at all where she was actually involved in the decision.
There has been a lot of speculation over the years about whether Charles might be a more activist monarch, but I’ll be really surprised if he actually tries to exercise any of his theoretical powers. He might be a bit more outspoken in public, and do a lot more lobbying in private, at most.
Yes, there are question marks though that the Queen theoretically fulfills.
Otherwise, we might need a 'Supreme Parliamentary Council' to basically enact those duties, and if any members of Parliament didn't agree on the outcome, they'd take it to the Supreme Court who would rule on it kind of thing. Something that would only happen 'once in a century'.
Where there are Presidents, it's generally straight forward: the Dude with the most votes (of whatever type) is the Dude and that's it. There can be voting shenanigans but generally not outcome shenanigans.
I'm fine the way it is in the UK and Canada, I wouldn't change a thing.
If we want reforms, we can do that at more operational levels, aka 'governance by blockchain' to put it in 2019 Valley terms.
Of course she passed the Brexit bill. The irrational hatred of Brexit you see in some quarters is the exact sort of thing the Queen, in her role as a constitutional icon of long term stability, stood against.
You have to remember how old she was. The Queen's first Prime Minister was Winston Churchill, born in the 1870s. A staunch Empire man to the last, he was one of only two Prime Ministers for whom the Queen attended their funeral. He is famous for successfully defeating Europe when it was united under a dictator determined to reduce Britain to rubble and ship its population to labour camps. She was Queen as the British Empire wound itself up and became the Commonwealth. She saw the nationalization of the British railways and then the re-privatization of them decades later. She saw the birth of the European Coal and Steel Community, she watched as it evolved into the European Economic Community, and then into the European Union. She saw Stalin fall, then she saw the Berlin wall fall, and then the USSR. She observed passively as millions of people from the former Eastern Bloc then moved to the UK a decade later to make a new life. She saw the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. She saw the space race. She was Queen throughout the Troubles, living with the constant threat of being assassinated by the IRA, who at one point dropped a concrete breeze block on her car. She visited over 100 countries. She watched as countries fell to communist revolutions. She watched her country be brought to the brink during the Winter of Discontent, she watched as European nations transitioned from dictatorship to democracy. She watched global COVID lockdowns. She watched the Euro debt crisis and a thousand other crises come and go.
In short, she saw political institutions far larger and more important than British membership of the EU rise and fall over her lifetime, and far more dramatically. She saw the UK join the EEC, she saw it transform into the EU and then she saw the UK leave it again. Of all the things she's seen and done, of all the life and death battles she witnessed or even took part in, EU related events were surely some of the less memorable and important, especially given the relatively imperceptible changes Brexit so far brought about.
If you really want to engage in speculation about the Queen's views on Brexit and the EU, consider this. I already said Churchill was one of only two Prime Ministers the Queen honored by attending their funeral. The other was Margaret Thatcher. Both had complex views on the merits of European integration, with both being positive in their earlier years but coming to regard it as a mistake in their later years.[1][2] Both were strongly committed throughout their lives to the strength and independence of the United Kingdom regardless of what Europe did.
Right, the Queen was (unsurprisingly given her privilege) a closet Tory and couldn't be relied upon to stop dirty Tory shenanigans. I don't think anyone was disagreeing? Not sure what the point of this comment was apart from to assert your opinion on Brexit.
> if the British parliament tried passing some truly terrible bill
> ... She passed the Brexit bill ...
> Of course she passed the Brexit bill
> not sure what the point of this comment was
It was to point out the absurdity of picking out this particular example given her long life and the many, many events and bills you could describe as 'terrible' along the way. If she was going to have broken her convention and tried to assert real power, that would be have a really odd one to pick.
BTW I didn't assert any opinion on Brexit itself, only that the level of hatred of it reached by some people is irrational.
> the Queen was ... a closet Tory
You don't actually know what the Queen's politics were. She lived through several Labour governments and never stopped their bills or expressed opinions on them either, that's just not the sort of monarch she was.
Yeah, not sure about that. If QE1 was any better, it wasn't because of her gender, it was the constraints placed on her because of her gender back in the day. And we are into 'constitutional monarchies' now, not the absolutist version. Also, see: Queen Isabella I.
What makes you think Charles is a man ? Are you judging of his gender on the basis of old stereotypes ? And if he is a man, but decided to identify as a woman, would you then be ok with him being king ?
With leftists nutcases... never short of a good laugh!
Celebrities don't wield any power comparable to that of rulers or monarchs. We allow unbounded accumulation of wealth but that's a facet of our political and economic system.
Most social animals imbue their elders with some level of authority but this is easy to explain as an evolutionary habit to make use of lived experience and thus, hopefully, expertise. It's obvious why you'd ask the person with the most experience or the best ___domain knowledge for their assessment or even to lead you in that ___domain. It also makes sense to appoint a leader during times of war when the battlefield requires split second decisions that don't allow for consensus seeking.
But human nature is cooperative if nothing else. We resort to exclusion, hierarchy and domination/obedience only under duress, which our current system helpfully maintains perpetually.
Yes. Our political and economic system maintaining duress perpetually is why the US has those, not human nature. It's also how we got monarchies, which modern capitalist systems evolved from.
An upvote for you (if I could). I'm American but have lived in the UK for near 20 years. My great-whatever grandfather signed the Declaration of Independence so I'm hardly a royalist... So WTF am I doing living in the UK??? (the NHS etc...)
My general sense is that of respect for the Queen as a symbol. She did it right and wasn't a useless numpty like ... oh... all of the rest of them. Primarily nothing but B list celebrities. William and Kate seem fine enough, Harry and Meghan are .. irrelevant except to the nonces who have no actual lives, and let's not discuss Andrew...
Hopefully Charles will use the "soft power" he supposedly has to corral the professional sociopaths destroying this country (e.g. wind and solar power, given his supposed environmental leanings) but I don't know.... it very well may be all downhill from now. England (and by extension all of the UK) is destined to become a failed state.
Which is why I am looking hard at moving to Scotland (soon to be independent!) or even the EU to get the F out of here ASAP. It really is a transitional point.
Odds heavily against Scottish independence in the next 20 years.
Bookmakers price a referendum before 2025 at about 10% probability. I think that's too big a number - I'd say 10% chance by 2030.
Let's suppose it happens in 2025, though. At that point, the UK and EU will still be at loggerheads over the border with NI meaning the SNP's central premise - that Scotland should be able to rejoin the EU - will look more and more like a dangerous and economically calamitous poison pill. Even pro-independence financial analysts will warn of a deep recession with house prices falling off a cliff. That'll make independence about as popular as mouldy bread.
In addition, the EU will be quite feckless and tone deaf to what that SNP promise of independence is centred on, and during any campaign will confirm confidently that yes, Scotland could rejoin the EU, all it'll take is adoption of the Euro (non-negotiable), and a complete adoption of all protocols and laws that the UK - including Scotland - will have mostly dismantled by that point (for better or worse). The timeline will be a decade or more, and the estimated costs will be in the billions, but the EU think it's still value. Meanwhile Scottish voters will wonder if a generation of being out of the UK _and_ the EU is worth the candle.
The idea that against that backdrop the SNP think their argument for independence is stronger, not weaker, is strange.
I think you'll also see a slight shift in polls in coming days and weeks because of the death of the Queen. Operation Unicorn is designed in a small way to allow Scottish unionists to show what the United Kingdom is all about. Sentimentality has been proven time, and time again, to be incredibly powerful in changing people's minds quite irrationally.
Coupled with Charles' political will - as you note, towards radical environmentalism and architectural protectionism that aligns neatly with a decent proportion of the Scottish populace - you might find Sturgeon and the SNP looks more and more marginal as time goes by.
The Queen oversaw a decline in Empire and a rise in the British believing in - and committing to - a people's right to self-determination. And so it will be in Scotland, just as it has been for so many countries that have gained independence from British rule in the last 75 years. But the backdrop right now is firmly that the SNP is about to slide, independence will become less popular to many, and Scotland will either be part of the renaissance we are all hoping for, or is coming down with the rest of us.
Which is why I am looking hard at moving to Scotland (soon to be independent!)
Has there been any real progress towards another referendum on independence? I know SNP still has the lion’s share of seats in Scottish parliament, but what else? As a Scottish ex-pat of sorts (born UAE, to Scottish parents, but raised and educated in the US), I have nostalgic notions of moving to Scotland. Then I remember its dark much of the year and rains a fair bit. Heck, it even snowed in June the last summer I visited (yes, that was up Glenshee, but still).
No one seriously thinks Scotland will leave soon. The energy is moving to a new settlement of the four nations. That will come in the next ten years. We're fine. Edinburgh got loads of tech energy. Glasgow's a massive city with loads of opportunity. We have a large financial sector that needs geeks. Come. We need you. Lived here thirty years now. No regrets. Weather is improving with climate change (ducks).
Not to mention ability to generate its own energy from various renewable sources and with climate change, more ability to grow food in the lower regions.
Definitely pay attention to how much sun Scotland -- heck, any part of the UK -- gets before moving there if you have even the slightest inkling that you might have seasonal affective disorder. You need to be pretty happy with very little sun.
I'm a fellow UAE born! Hello!! I live in Canada. Was just looking up moving to Scotland after seeing footage of Balmoral castle. Something about the beauty of the highlands captures the imagination. I'm of South Asian decent so I am a bit weary of how welcoming a new place will be.
'Long period of stability' since WW1? WW2? The Cold War?
Maybe you're young, but this 'feeling of stability' really has only happened since 1991.
I remember before that, and it was very scary living with the Soviet Union and all those countries with nukes pointed at us.
Also, the 1960s-1980s wrought huge economic change, as the last phase of major 'Democratic Socialist' changes occurred, desegregation/civil rights in the US along with giant leap in crime, and most of the west moved out of a very chaotic political climate only towards the end of that.
1990-2010 was a bit of a calm period.
Also, 'Brexit' is not a net negative thing (I think it's neutral on the whole). The EEC (i.e. trade) is almost all of the benefit of the EU, some of the post EEC i.e. EU artifacts are actually quite a bad thing (though not all of course). Even Euro itself, is probably only 'neutral' in that it has very harsh externalities that are just not obvious.
Notably, we have seen a massive failure in the EU to not only protect itself, 100% dependent on US military defence, even in 2020 - but one of the 'root problems' was the EU powerhouse, Germany, abdicating it's defence responsibilities, and selling out the entirety of the EU to Russian energy dependence which put the EU in an existentially weak position vis-a-vis Russia. If the US did not exist, Putin would be dominating the EU via it's vast tentacles (like it is in Hungary, but much worse, and all over).
Obviously some nations, like France, Sweden and Finland are quite prepared, but on the whole, it's bad.
Europeans are know this, Macron himself has suggested 'something else' for Ukraine and Georgia.
It will literally take decades for Ukraine get into the EU, which is nary impossible for any normal country as they cannot maintain a consistent strategic orientation for that long, which speaks to the gigantic bureaucratic complexity of the EU.
Instead - UK, Turkey, Ukraine, Finland, Georgia, Switzerland will possibly join the 'expanded' EU (by another name), which will mostly be trade focused. The interesting thing about that however, the other nations, notably Spain, Italy, Greece will definitely start to wonder about 'the grass being greener' in those countries.
QE2's death is definitely a kind of geostrategic demarcation, along with the failure of Russia in Ukraine as it's 'last gasp' as a major power, and COVID. The rise of China as well, but that's in phases.
This is kind of a WW1 moment.
As for the future of the Royals? It's hard to say - some progressives may want to think more 'Republican' but I'm not so sure. We are choking on materialism and people are yearning for authentic things.
'Secular Ideologies' including Socialism and Capitalism have brought us some nice things, but we are fundamentally more hollow. 'De-culturlization' isn't going so well, people are spiritually empty, we lack community. Putting a 'Starbucks on Every Corner' of the world is good for the GDP, but it's woefully lacking otherwise. A trip to the suburubs of Toronto where things are actually technically 'good' from a culturally secular perspective (i.e. peace, jobs, people get along well) ... but you'll find it's a kind of cultural death: absolutely no local culture whatsoever, almost the entire population working for 'local offices' of international firms, nothing to even identify the area as belonging to it's actual nation, culture and values being dictated by the marketing rooms of foreign countries, mostly in the name of selling sneakers and iPhones. That's 'materialism' not true 'prosperity'. It's amazing if you were a poor kid from Hyderabad (i.e. to have material stability), but not so good otherwise.
In that context, everything that has cultural authenticity is basically worth more than anything else. Do you know what's exploding in value? Authentic Faberge eggs. As we also realize the value of cultural institutions. Other things, even neat things like iPhones, are ultimately just commodities.
Soft agree with you about the secular ideologies, I keep wondering if the alternative was actually better. Pre globalization with hard borders, little travel, suspicious of your neighbours, long distance travel reserved for the rich. Is the old situation of social pressure to comply to local social norms better? I am not so hot about the culture of places with abject poverty. As you correctly pointed out it's amazing for a poor kid from Hyderabad or rather millions of other poor kids from similar places. I don't think there can be any kind of positive culture without peace, jobs and people getting along well.
> Notably, we have seen a massive failure in the EU to not only protect itself, 100% dependent on US military defence, even in 2020 - but one of the 'root problems' was the EU powerhouse, Germany, abdicating it's defence responsibilities, and selling out the entirety of the EU to Russian energy dependence which put the EU in an existentially weak position vis-a-vis Russia. If the US did not exist, Putin would be dominating the EU via it's vast tentacles (like it is in Hungary, but much worse, and all over).
There is no 'massive' failure in the EU to protect itself as it has no such objective nor a mandate to protect itself. It's up to individual countries to spend on their armed forces as was up to Britain to spend when it was part of it and the EU didn't stop it, it did so just fine. If the US did not exist that would have been taken into account by the member countries themselves and acted accordingly.
> Instead - UK, Turkey, Ukraine, Finland, Georgia, Switzerland will possibly join the 'expanded' EU (by another name), which will mostly be trade focused. The interesting thing about that however, the other nations, notably Spain, Italy, Greece will definitely start to wonder about 'the grass being greener' in those countries.
Spain, Italy and Greece have all joined the Eurozone (Italy is a founding member btw) for their own good reasons. If they wanted less integration they could have not adopted the Euro just like a number of other countries. People seem to forget what inflation looked like for their national currencies of these countries before getting the Euro and it was not very green.
"There is no 'massive' failure in the EU to protect itself as it has no such objective nor a mandate to protect itself."
First - change EU to Europe and the point is more clear: 'Europe' failed to defend itself.
Second - Though you're right, EU is not a defensive pact, it's inexorably irresponsible for EU to not provide for defence. Defence is an existential concept - one that involves parts of the state.
How can there be 'ever closer union' and 'open borders' if nations can't even provide for their own defence.
This is 100% clear with Germany's 'sellout' to Russia: Germany, the leading 'political' block in the EU, gave Russia massive leverage which has put Estonia, Latvia etc. at huge risk, and effectively handed over Ukraine do the hungry dogs.
In that dsyfunctional dynamic, 'Sovereign Europe' is still dependent on the Anglosphere: USA, UK and even Canada (!) all of whom have provided much more support than France, Italy, Spain etc (!) in defence of Europe.
"People seem to forget what inflation looked like for their national currencies of these countries before getting the Euro and it was not very green. "
"If they wanted less integration they could have not adopted the Euro just like a number of other countries."
Inflation is much more preferrable than the current straight-jacket death of a hard currency. The lack of inflation relative to Germany is killing Europe.
As for 'adopting and not' - there's no way for them to adjust otherwise. The EU is a 'one size fits all' regime and also a 'Hotel California' (i.e. cannot leave) game.
The Euro won't work without political and fiscal integration and that will never, ever happen, so it's probably better to find something a bit looser.
it is quite clear in the Maastrict treaty that the EU was a newly established entity that absorbed the obligations and responsibilities of the former entities
(in the same way the United States absorbed the obligations and responsibilities of Great Britain in the 13 colonies)
(regardless, I got my dates wrong, I was thinking of Nice...)
(Since someone is now about to accuse me of stealth Brexit sideage—no, this is just about the tiny business of moderating an internet forum, and that is all.)
I don't lightly ban a 7-year-old account, but (a) we've warned you many times:
Edit: I've taken another look at this and decided that this was partly an overreaction on my part—sorry for that.
I've unbanned you now. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and mitigate the ways that you've been breaking the rules, that would be helpful so we don't end up in this boat again.
---
That may be, but you still have to follow the rules. You broke them here, have broken them elsewhere, we've warned you many times, and I've just told you how to get unbanned if you want to.
Thank you very much. I will do a full review of my warnings and the rules. I'm a huge fan of this forum, and would hate to lose access to one of the only outlets left where people seem to be willing to think out loud. I think the level of moderation here (you) generally does a good job of striking the proper balance between free thought and destructive chaos, and I can appreciate the difficulty of handling any borderline cases.
I think HN moderation is intolerant of people with more assertive form of expression.
It's pretty sad because people here come from different cultures and different personalities, and some people just naturally express themselves more assertively, cynically or provocatively.
Some people prefer hypocrisy and softened words and respect for others, while others prefer getting a clear point across, and using cynicism and exaggeration are valid tools for that.
Looking at previous posts of this person, he's clearly naturally cynical. Does that merit ban? Should all cynical people walk on the tips of their toes in HN to avoid "flamebait" ?
In the name of protecting those easily offendable, we're becoming intolerant of those who don't understand subtle nuances. Or those that just have to respond. Or those coming from cultures with naturally less tact.
This poster didn't even open up the problematic subject himself but responded to someone else.
This is the real reason for the dynamics that you and throwawaylinux are talking about—not cultural or ideological bias by the mods. That's just the reason people tend to reach for because it's simpler and feels like it must be the reason.
We do what we can to mitigate such effects but there's only so much we can do. In the end, this is one big community system and people are responsible for the effects they have on it. That's one of the more counterintuitive and little-noticed aspects of how things work here.
Here are a couple of older comments explaining more about this, in case anyone wants more.
> I think HN moderation is intolerant of people with more assertive form of expression.
It absolutely isn't when that expression is Correct™. You can blather about Brexit horrible and its voters are deluded or selfish, but you have to tread carefully if you voice the opinion that the EU is not roses or Brexit is the better alternative. You must be very polite and non-confrontational about it.
Same as covid. You could rant and rave about anybody questioning the ever-changing official narrative and denounce them as science deniers and selfish, and that was pretty well tolerated. Asking any questions or expressing any doubt would have to be done extremely carefully again.
Same as any topic. This is better than most places I've found though. At least you can be in the minority, question authority, and have "wrong" opinions about many (not all) things. You are definitely not afforded the same privilege as others though. Which shouldn't be a surprise, you have to learn to read a room, especially a room in somebody else's house.
Brexit being bad does not make the EU good and leaving it a notable decline. If nothing else (ignoring short term economic issues) it reduces the soft power that the UK had notably.
The EU is not without a great many issues, notably the weakness is the central banking mechanisms of the EU/Euro - and the Euro in inseparable from the EU, and tbh, kinda endemic of the issues with the EU. It's an almost country, its missing the accountability of a full country, but still has some sovereign powers. I think the flaws in the EU are fixable, but not without making it look more like a democratic supranational government.
However, for all of the EU's flaws - the UK is hurting now, largely because of Brexit - who knows, in 50 years it may turn out for the best. But I honestly suspect not - only time will tell.
I didn't want to debate the merits of Brexit, I'm not from there or the EU nor have studied the subject closely so it's not my place. I do think it's reasonable that you have those opinions of it and want to put them forward to debate and convince and learn. But I also think people holding opposite opinions, that Brexit didn't reduce soft-power or that a reduction in soft power is not a real problem, or that the EU is not fixable, or that it's not worth staying in the EU hoping it will be fixed, or that UK is not hurting now because of Brexit, or whatever -- are also opinions that a reasonable person might have and put forward in good faith.
I do think the banned comment was the tired, tiresome kind of thing that people who feel passionately seem to find a way to shoehorn into discussions where they are off topic or add nothing substantive. And I think the comment they replied to was as well.
I don't really see much difference, other than the nature of the opinion. Yes the banned poster did address their parent specifically, but... really the parent put out their opinion about a bunch of things, if that is substantive then it should invite questions or disagreements so addressing them on the topic of their opinions is appropriate, surely.
> I do think the banned comment was the tired, tiresome kind of thing that people who feel passionately seem to find a way to shoehorn into discussions where they are off topic or add nothing substantive. And I think the comment they replied to was as well.
No disagreement there, the glib angry stuff people insert into a conversation tend to flatten all reasonable conversation into vitriolic bursts of outrage or anger.
Frankly, that's as it should be. If your opinion diverges markedly from consensus reality, it's your responsibility to be extra polite and diplomatic about it, to prove that you aren't just a nutcase and you've actually thought carefully about it. Society has every right to suppress flat earthers.
Not sure if you've made up "consensus reality" as some ironic Orwellian sarcasm, but it's fantastic. As though articular opinions about the merits of Brexit are reality depending on what large segments of the population you ignore :)
But no I think it's even simpler and it's not about what should be. People are generally fairly close minded and are easily upset by hearing about opinions contrary to their own. That's it. It's just the human condition.
The answer to your question is that HN is just a specific type of web forum a specific set of rules. It's not an anything-goes place and never has been, and it's hardly the "western world".
Who decides whether the guidelines are fair? well, that has to be someone's job and it happens to be my job, so for now it's I who decide.
Since you've broken them badly in all kinds of places recently:
If you're talking about American free speech your speech is protected from government censorship, not private censorship on a private platform. HN admins really do try to avoid putting their fingers on the scale when it comes to legitimate disagreements but that comment was dead'd for being flamebait and lacking substance - it added nothing of value to the discussion and veered far off topic (much like your comment and my reply do, but thankfully we're in a dead branch of a comment thread so this won't pollute most user's views).
HN exists (partially) to surface interesting news and foster discussions of that news - flamebait is never interesting and it doesn't lead to interesting discussions. We of the internet discovered, during the usenet days, that reducing a conversation to a shouting match is boring - so to promote a more healthy dialog HN specifically removes inflammatory comments unless they bring an interesting topic to light (and even then it's just nicer to communicate in a polite manner) - as this is the goal for this private forum it's completely within its right to restrict discussions that go against that goal and restrict users that repeatedly violate that goal. The internet is a large place and there are plenty of other forums that cater to other forms of expression - the first amendment exists primarily to make it illegal for the government to say such places can't exist - it doesn't obligate all places to act in such a manner nor mandate the existence of such places.
in contrast to the american idea of free speech which limits what the government can censor, germany has a concept of the freedom of opinion which among other things limits the right of companies to censor opinions they disagree with. the blocking of trump for example raised some eyebrows. the kind of moderation done on hackernews would be just fine in germany too though.
The problem is, the mods at Twitter may have a disagreement with a user and ban them arbitrarily, like they did with Peterson. Pretty soon, you will not be able to read anything except what appeals to the Twitter mods. Your thinking will be forced and re-defined and you won't be able to say what you think, because of the repercussions.
[...]
In a world where you can only say what you are allowed to say, people will stop thinking and everybody will say similar things. I hardly call that "freedom" and "pursuit of happiness".
i agree with your general sentiment, which is why i pointed out the difference of how germany treats its freedom of opinion. a few years ago a new law was enacted that requires the swift removal of online hate speech and one of the first people blocked because that law was someone making anti-muslim comments. so no, there is no allowed hate speech there.
the difficulty is to figure out what is to be considered hate speech and what isn't. some of that we may have to learn through trial and error.
the new law is controversial because it forces companies to act on mere notification without a court order. which, while considered normal in the US, is not how germans like to do things.
shouting matches prevent an engaged discussion. on the current topic we can either discuss what the death of the queen means to us, or we can yell at each other for having the wrong opinions. but we can't do both. it won't work, and it doesn't provide any useful data because the shouting matches bury the other discussions which would actually be interesting. it's not possible to ignore them if there is no way to signal that those comments are not welcome. that's what downvotes are for.
people who do nothing but shout their arguments without engaging in good natured discussion are therefore equally not welcome. as a community we need the ability to stop those people from derailing our discussions.
the problem with flaimbait is that it is that it motivates people who like to shout. in a perfect community where noone engages in shouting matches, flaimbait would be unable to start any fights. it would therefore be harmless and ignored. but rarely is a community perfect, and so it is helpful to remind people to not do that.
to know why this particular comment was flaimbait it may be necessary to learn more about the topic and what kind of responses it draws out. understanding this is the job of the moderators. and while the moderators aren't perfect either, they are doing a god job so far, and instead of rejecting particular moderation actions it would be better to find different, less controversial ways to approach the topic in question, which in this case surely did happen. the topic brought up by the banned account has been discussed on this site multiple times in a more civilized form.
right here we have an example of an engaged civilized discussion. this is as it should be, however it is off topic, so people would still be in their right to downvote all of the comments in this subthread, including mine. we can and should have this discussion, but not here where the topic is the death of the british queen and not freedom of speech.
I have not violated any guidelines here. My language is civil, and my content relevant to the HN mod's recent ban of a certain account.
This is meta navel-gazing and is generally not considered on-topic or useful here. That's probably the main reason for the downvotes.
To try to answer the question though, since we're already here:
There are two (at least two) definitions of "free speech" in the US. The "strict" one related to the Constitutional principle enshrined in the 1st Amendment which basically means that the government can't make certain speech illegal and then put you in jail or otherwise punish you for what you say. For better or worse, the courts have generally ruled that there are limits to that though, hence the old saw about "yelling fire in a crowded theatre".
Beyond that, some people look at free speech in a colloquial sense as meaning something like "I can say anything I want, anywhere I want, anytime I want, and nobody can interfere in any way with my doing so". This would mean, for example, that a private web-forum like HN banning an account could be seen as a violation of "free speech". This is not even close to a universally accepted definition, but at this point I guess we could say it's close to being "widely adopted" at worst.
I think most Americans though, accept that as an individual no one of us has standing to compel another individual, or private organization, to assist in transmitting, propagating, relaying, or distributing our speech. So HN banning an account may be distasteful to some people, but it's not a violation of the principle of "Free Speech".
"Free Speech" in the west is the concept that the government cannot use its power to silence your opinions or expression.
It has been co-opted fairly recently -by some- to mean that no one can silence you anywhere. This is a new interpretation, and unrelated to the USA constitutional right to free speech.
This has never been the case. If you say something offensive to me in my house, I can rightfully remove you. You can continue to say the thing somewhere else, just not in a private house.
Hacker News -in this instance- is a private house. If they allowed unlimited free speech, they would have to allow personal attacks, spam, off-topic submissions, etc... Part of the value of HN is that the speech IS NOT free.
You and I can come here and trust that the conversations will meet a standard, banning people who flagrantly abuse that standard is also a form of free speech.
edit: after seeing your edit, it looks like this is a disingenuous question intended to start a flamewar. If that isn't your intention, you should be careful about how you phrase things.
I'm not dang, so I can only speculate, but I would argue that the original comment is very close to a personal attack, and the comment was not made in good faith.
Likewise, I would caution you about your own phrasing, particularly << So, there--the enlightened, FREE Western man or woman or "it", please tell me, is your freedom of speech an illusion and only applicable to Moslems? >>
You have had your question answered thoroughly, but you have escalated to examples that have already been explained (in one sentence: private companies can choose what to publish (Hebdo) and what not to publish (HN, Twitter) without government interference), and chosen a phrasing that is generally acknowledged to be insulting to non-gender conforming individuals.
"Free speech" only applies to what the government can do.
Private entities are allowed to do whatever they want with their platform regarding speech. Twitter, HN, etc. are not obligated to give everyone a megaphone.
There's no way you don't know this already. It comes up every week.
The idea is to oppress tedious communication so curious communication can flourish. It's impossible to have both.
I realize there's a critique of gardeners which argues that nobody should ever pull weeds, or even label any plant a weed—but I think most people come here for the flowers, and for that there needs to be a shit-ton of weed-pulling.
the world is a closed system. the illusion of independence is just a lie. Brexit marks the transition of the UK from arguably the most important state in the EU, to a 2nd and then 3rd world country. It is the suicide of a nation due to spite, ignorance, hate, greed, stupidity. Europe needs to be unified. the entire globe needs to be unified. small countries trying to go it alone will be wiped out or impoverished or both.
How do you want to agree on a common set of values with, say, the Taliban and the CCP?
Would you yourself rather live in a giant dormitory with a thousand other people, everyone eating the same breakfast, than in your own house according to your needs and wishes?
I share your feeling. I was struck by a deep sense of sadness as well. Maybe it’s silly, I don’t know, I sort of felt she was the grandma of the nation. It was a nice feeling knowing she’s there and a sad one knowing she no longer is.
One thing is for sure. She did leave a mark. Winston God damn Churchill was her first time minister! When I will be old and have grandchildren, I will tell my grandchildren how I became a British citizen. And when they’ll ask me when, I’ll tell them during the reign of The Queen. And they will know who I mean.
The most useful Twitter comment I saw today described the Queen as "iconic".
And I realised that's exactly what she was. She was iconic in the religious sense - an embodied icon of a nationalist religion.
This suddenly made a lot of things about the current state of the UK much clearer.
There is no practical sense in which she was genuinely "grandma of the nation." That personification goes one way only - from the population to what psychologists would call a parental projection.
Objectively she paid almost no attention to her subjects, except for a tiny number who were socially or financially notable.
She may have been witty and personable socially - as reported by many people - and perhaps the most interesting thing about her as an individual is that she trained as a mechanic during the war, taking delight in a job that women didn't usually do, and continued that interest through her life.
But I find the crypto-religious elements of the UK's (actually mostly just England's) relationship with her very unsettling.
And I genuinely believe she could have done far more for the people of the UK than she did. Especially recently.
Monarchy is a strange thing. When I flew to Bali on a Thai airline in the 90s a fair few pages of the inflight magazine were full of carefully manicured praise for the talents of the reigning monarch.
It seemed bizarre and alien. But over time I realised the UK has a similar relationship with its monarchy.
And where Heads of State are nominally expected to work for the Greater Good, it seems to be assumed that monarchs do the same, mostly by modelling social ease and extreme privilege.
This is all quite odd. I'm sure there are reasons for it - possibly evolutionary - and I suspect they're not obvious.
She's iconic, unbelievably so due to the duration of her reign and all the changes she's overseen. But...Charles III and then William and Louis will become as iconic. Although she's filled the job magnificently, Elizabeth was Elizabeth at the end of the day, but the British King/Queen is immortal.
I suspect she was iconic in a way we will not see again. It's likely that the British monarchy will not survive in its current form to Louis, perhaps not even to William. When QEII ascended, she was one of a scant handful of European monarchs that survived to the middle of the 20th century, and the public perception of the institution has steadily eroded over the years. If anything, QEII's longevity held some of that erosion back, but Charles and William will not.
Why is it likely? I've a feeling William will be as fondly regarded as his grandmother. Charles not so much, but he might not be in his post for very many years. Also don't overlook the fact that the British Empire and Commonwealth have basically fallen apart under QEII's watch, but that's still not likely to mean that the country gets rid of the monarchy. Nobody in the country is of the mind that having President Boris as head of state is a better idea than having King William. Not even the Scots.
The British Empire and Commonwealth may have fallen during her watch, but she wasn't the cause - Empire and its relics were increasingly relics of a different age and not something she or anyone could have averted.
My impression is that William benefited from just not being Charles, and some of the sheen rubbing off from his mother. Both of those things only go so far, and as he moves more and more into public responsibilities, he has more and more chances to bungle up. From the high of the early 2010s, the only way for him to trend was down, and its inevitable. William is, what, 40? Charles wasn't quite reviled when he was 40 too - he grew into that role.
Even if the monarchy isn't abolished outright before Louis or a sibling ascends, it's very possible that the United Kingdom in its current state may not. The unified crowns of England and Scotland may exist in title only, if that.
I think an institution of monarchy fundamentally can’t survive tabloid journalism. Someone like QEII, who preceded it, could have the advantage of adapting to it as it developed. But people like William were targets since childhood. Every youthful indiscretion was covered. They’ve lived their whole life in a fishbowl. You can’t come out of that with the necessary level of mystique and gravitas it takes to be regarded as a divinely enshrined national mascot.
The UK becoming a republic would not automatically mean a divisive popularly elected politician being head of state. They could continue the current parliamentary system while having a neutral figurehead as President (many countries do this: Ireland and India for example).
yeah but what would be the point of doing that? No politician is going to try and bring about a vote to change from a monarch to a ceremonial figurehead. Indeed, given they swear an oath to the monarch, they're probably not even able to bring about that vote. There's no call for it from the electorate, so it wouldn't be a vote-winner and would be a waste of time.
> Indeed, given they swear an oath to the monarch, they're probably not even able to bring about that vote.
The oath itself wouldn't stop the British Parliament passing an Act of Parliament to abolish the Crown and replace it with some other system. In theory, the monarch could refuse to give their assent to the proposed law but given that would cause a constitutional crisis, in reality the chances are the monarch would assent and the system could be changed.
It seems it would take a republican government in power _or_ huge public demand that the monarchy to be abolished for that to happen which seems unlikely any time soon assuming King Charles III and his successors don't err massively.
I couldn't tell you off-hand how many presidents I've lived through, how many prime minsters I've lived through, how many wars I've lived through ..
But I can tell you I've lived through one Queen.
Even just logistically, to replicate this takes a young start that's getting less and less likely. If we assume Charles has 10-20 years left on him, that'll make William 50-60.
Longest running opera in the world. Everything carefully scripted and in a way to appeal to the masses. See how her demise played out as a drama to get the population engaged.
I've noted the similarities between the Thai and British monarchy with unease as well.
I think it's perfectly plausible that one day the UK could be silently couped by elites using the monarchy as cover - much like Thailand was. The legal framework is all there. If the monarchy is on side, the army is on side.
you know her subjects when lived to a ripe old age of 100 gets a letter from the queen right, the PR game is strong in Queen, call her anything but she did her job with her life and you're witnessing her legacy right now
Apparently, when I was little, I got excited one Christmas when the Queen’s speech was on tv, because I thought it was my Grandmother…
I used to take comfort in the idea that all things pass in time, now not so much. Probably because I realised that includes everyone I love, and myself!
I’ve no great love for the monarchy, but this is certainly the end of an era in British public life and likely in UK international relations - I can’t see the commonwealth nations welcoming King Charles as their new head of state.
And it is weird, there are some things you just never expect to change. I’m hardly a spring chicken, but Queen Elizabeth was not only there my entire life, but Queen far enough into the past before I was born to have interacted with historical figures (like Churchill).
I left the UK a year or so back and have been pretty anti-monarchist for as long as I can remember, so am probably not the best person to ask about the public mood on succession!
I think there are probably a lot of people like me who, while anti monarchy in general, were not particularly anti-Elizabeth. However now that she’s passed I would quite like the whole thing to be further de-emphasised, de-legitimised and removed from any remaining levers of power, however ceremonial or theoretical, and any remaining state subsidy, palaces and lands to be taken into public ownership etc etc.
Not necessarily a bad thing, TBH. Think of it like our Senate in the US. The Senate is a longer view, while the House is the shorter populous public-opinion. Not sure of the Parliamentary influences, but someone who was as respected and revered in an status where one COULD get the longest view on staff (so to say) - why not?
>Think of it like our Senate in the US. The Senate is a longer view, while the House is the shorter populous public-opinion.
Huh? Is a six year term rather than a four year term rally that much longer a horizon. Maybe this view made since when the senate seats were an appointed position. but ever since it became an elected position its ceased to have any appreciable difference from a seat in the house.
The existence of the US senate is a disaster, making the country practically ungovernable (it’s extremely difficult to pass any law without both parties agreeing). It’s really not a great comparison.
Well, originally it wasn't designed to just having two parties. There used to be more ... and there should be more. A two party system just doesn't work.
Honestly, I think the US populous really feels the same about this but from the perspective our history. On the other side of the coin, is the UK has been one of longest running allies in the world with a common history born out of the womb of war. The romantic nature of nobility runs from a far, without the struggles of having the institution in that format - though some would argue we do, but in the oligarchy of wealth. I need not go further, as it treads that fine line.
I myself, am in agreement however. If governance of the UK would modernize, the removal of generational status like what a monarch represents would be a step in the right direction. Why one would do that, and loose the history in the process? Not sure if the UK populous is ready for that, since its still a beloved part of the country and outwardly is a hallmark of the country's brand.
I digress. I am probably just speaking ill of the dead to some, but just glad to be in the US for our representation structure of legislation and executive by proxy. Direct Democracy is the red headed step child of mob rule, and I'm content to not have that either.
It is said that the Queen was 100% against the idea of monarchs retiring. I suppose that harks back to the abdication crisis, but also undermines the concept of royalty altogether.
If the Queen had retired, there might have been a little opportunity for a national conversation about what comes next. As it is, it would be seen as disrespectful to question the succession. The Queen is dead; Long live the King.
As for people preferring William to his father - I think if you give an inch to the notion that the public should have some choice over their head of state then the idea of a hereditary monarchy starts to look pretty absurd.
Reminds me of when when the rules of succession where changed so that the first-born child would inherit the title (rather than the first-born son). Any attempt to reconcile the monarchy with the concept of equality seems a kinda humourous to me.
Early on, the Swedish king was elected at the Stones of Mora. The Holy Roman Emperor was nominally elected by prince-electors (who most of the time elected a Habsburg).
And even withing a hereditary framework, there are other alternatives to retirement in addition to outright abdication. An elderly monarch could for all intents and purposes retire and a let the crown prince (and I suppose in current British succession order, crown princess) rule, appointing them as a co-ruler.
The biggest problem with this is that with modern medicine and the world class treatment the head of state receives, you are destined to end up with geriatric heads of state. For example, it would be unlikely to have a 40 year old King or Queen. Maybe that's okay, but there's something nice about the idea of a monarch starting their rule at a relatively young adult age.
They're a popular couple for sure. I expect King Charles will be more 'active', in lieu of a better word, than the Queen was and thus more controversial. He's long been vocal in eco/green/environmental subjects in particular, which might be very interesting.
Thank you for that recommendation, published 2010 and seemingly out of print, but I've ordered a second-hand copy.
I don't expect it's unusual for a monarch to be something of a philosopher though - they're somewhat inherently well-educated, thoughtful, devoting time to deep thought, etc. Less usual (in modern times anyway) is to hear their thoughts in public as we did while he was Prince of Wales; we'll see to what extent that continues - he has said he's 'not stupid' and that he recognises the role of sovereign is different. If I had to bet though, I imagine he does see a bit more room for public commentary than Elizabeth II made.
I was told a few years ago that there's a general expectation that Charles will mostly focus on some long overdue reforms of how the Royal Family operates e.g. with respect to their business and land holdings, whilst leaving 'normal' politics behind. There have been changes he felt were important for years that he couldn't do whilst he wasn't King. And after that he might retire.
Not sure how much truth there was to all that but it was a family member who told me and they follow this stuff a lot more than I do. It sounds plausible at least, and if that's how he does things, and then William becomes King, the monarchy might stick around for a while longer yet.
How they operate? I mean what can they do beyond the sovereign fund, which takes the profit from their land and business holdings and gives them 15%~ (increased only for certain reasons, like Bham palace renovations), with the rest going to the government.
I think it's hilarious how the average person thinks that "the taxpayer" pays for the monarchy whereas realistically it's their family's holdings that pay for it. If they don't like that then strip them of their land, but strip everyone of their land; no inheritance for anyone.
And even then, whilst they have _some_ personal holdings, the majority of the royal estate cannot be sold by them for personal gain, it _must_ be passed down, it's not your typical inheritance.
As well as that, sure they live a cushy royal life, but I wouldn't want it for me. They are bound to royal duties, to act a certain way, do certain things, follow certain protocols - doing otherwise is shirking royal duties and that comes with its own consequences.
At the same time I think QEII was the last "true" royal. She was the last royal who exhibited at least some of what we would expect from the royals of old, King Arthur, etc. The modern royals, CIII onwards is the start of their decline, imo.
She lived for so long and through so much. Maybe she could have done more to help the everyman - but her power was limited, which is what the people chose - the Glorious Revolution.
Their holdings gained at the expense of the population?
There’s a huge difference between a family that has gathered obscene wealth through royal privilege and families that pass on their moderate inheritances to children.
Let’s start by enforcing normal inheritance tax on them, rather than letting them sidestep it using family trusts.
That's true, I can't remember the phrasing but wanting a more 'slimmed down working royal family unit' as it were is another thing he's been vocal on. But I would say it has gone a lot more that way in recent years anyway, through some combination of the Queen agreeing/easing into it and 'helped' by some external factors of course.
So was the queen. The kind they practice is a lot more occult than your common highstreet homeopath, and more akin to the kind espoused by Czech magician Franz Bardon, and other occultists that the likes of us will never have even heard of.
I think most people would prefer William, but if you'd have waited over seventy years to become King of England, how likely do you think it would be that once you'd finally become King you'd pass it over?
Charles is going to milk his kingship for everything it's worth.
> I think most people would prefer William, but if you'd have waited over seventy years to become King of England, how likely do you think it would be that once you'd finally become King you'd pass it over?
I don't know, if I never had a job I am not sure I would want one at 76!
To be honest, most people I know around my age don't really care too much. I'm hoping he'll use his soft power for talking about and trying to push changes to combat climate change though, he at least seems genuine about that.
Charles isn't liked as much due to the Princess Diana situation (which didn't paint the Queen in great light either), but he'll be accepted as King. William doesn't seem to be as much in the spotlight as he used be.
Before anyone dismissed this as a cheap shot or ungenerous, we need to remember that this is likely our only route to a republic given the absurd biases in uk media and establishment.
Well, it would be a lot harder to sack president Boris /s.
I defer to the historian Niall Ferguson who said (I paraphrase) that purpose of monarchy is to protect the people from its government. From a UK perspective, it seems to work.
But let’s take one example: the monarchy and the ludicrous rules and conventions that go with it to govern parliament are just one way working class MPs are intimidated and given the information that they are not really welcome in the corridors of power.
Let’s remember also that the British people have not sacked Boris. Conservative mps worried for their personal survival sacked him and 300,000 old white people from the south east of England have, for the third time in recent years, made Truss our PM. She has no regard for the manifesto that her party was elected on. Everything is by convention in the UK, which means people with privilege can do whatever they like.
> I can’t see the commonwealth nations welcoming King Charles as their new head of state.
Well this is precisely what is about to happen. There may be some hand wringing articles in major newspapers about whether the Royal head of state is still relevant, appropriate, blah blah blah, but there is approximately zero chance that anything will change in reaction to this news.
"In many [Commonwealth countries] constitutions state that the Queen, specifically, is the head of state. In these countries, constitutions will need to be amended to refer to her successor. In countries such as Jamaica, where there is a strong independence movement, and Belize, these constitutional changes will also require a referendum, according to Commonwealth experts. This is expected to bring about a moment of political peril for the new monarch, who, after Barbados became independent in 2021, could face the loss of another prominent part of the Caribbean Commonwealth."
The article is highly dubious. For example, it lists PNG as a state where "Questions are also like to arise ... over whether the new monarch could lawfully appoint a governor general", yet the Constitution clearly states "The provisions of this Constitution referring to the Queen extend to Her Majesty's heirs and successors in the sovereignty of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland."
This is surprising tbh. When they changed the act of succession to remove default male succession, part of that was negotiating changes in succession acts around the Commonwealth. This implies that some or even most of those are unconstitutional? Weird.
Anyways, it would be more surprising if the Commonwealth didn't lose a couple now and if a couple more didn't make plans for when Charles dies, which won't be all that long from now.
I wish Canada was one of those, but all I'm reasonably hoping for is that we drop monarch icons on our cash.
The Commonwealth is not the list of countries that had QEII as their head of state. If you check the summary here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonwealth_of_Nations you can read about it. That article has even been updated in the last 3 hours.
I am aware of that and did not say otherwise. I can see how you might have read that into what I said (as if I had said "across all") but my intention was across the countries in the Commonwealth that do share a monarch with the UK.
Unless you're saying there are countries not in the Commonwealth that have her as the head of state which is news to me, but maybe i am mistaken.
Immediately? Perhaps not, but I think we’ll see a bunch of countries breaking away from having the British monarch as their head of state in the next few years.
I’m pretty sure that (for instance) Australia was just hanging on until we could be sure she was gone, the current government have already planned a referendum on it in a few years if they get a second term.
(I say ‘we’, I am a relatively recent British migrant, and not a citizen yet)
There's a common understanding amongst Aussies (or at least, the Aussies that I know) that we were waiting for Liz to die before getting on with becoming a republic. For 2 reasons:
1. There was a sense of loyalty to Liz personally. She did a good job of Queening and it seemed almost rude to interrupt that.
2. No-one wants Charles as king. He's very weird, and has ideas that he actually wants to do things with.
I fully expect the referendum to be brought forward because of her death, and for it to get a strong "yes".
Yeah, no. Countries don't care about who is on the throne. They nod along to the British monarchy because they value diplomatic relations with Britain. Just like how they put up with Trump's children.
> I can’t see the commonwealth nations welcoming King Charles as their new head of state.
If you meant the Commonwealth of Nations, Charles was confirmed as the successor in CHOGM 2018. If you meant Commonwealth Realms, their close economic and military ties to Britain are not going to change anyways.
I get that this is an emotional loss to Britain. But let's not pretend there's going to be a material difference.
She's also been a moral authority. She avoided the soap opera situations that have dogged the rest of the moral family and frequently she's shown leadership. In WWII she trained as a mechanic so she could do something tangible to support the war effort.
> the soap opera situations that have dogged the rest of the [royal] family
"Soap opera situations" seems like a gentle way to put it. Several of her family members have been accused of serious crimes, and associated with some very nasty people. For years they were shielded by their association with her.
Exactly. Her silence/defence of Andrew is shameful. No moral compass there. Her distinguishing feature has been to give no public interviews and to entrench antidemocratic privilege as best we can.
Dangs top post irritated me because it felt like this has to be the time to remember the whole life - not just the fantasy we are typically sold.
I think it would be safe to say she put on a stoic face to the world while fronting for what is possibly the most out of touch, dysfunctional, and entitled family in the world.
I really don't want to go on criticizing the queen at length here because I think it's a bit insensitive, so I'll be brief, but I don't think that "avoiding soap opera situations" is really the same as "being a moral authority". Not that I think she was horribly bad either, but my standards for "moral authority" are quite a bit higher. Royal families tend to be neutral to a fault.
An immoral authority. She paid no taxes, lived a lifestyle of luxury paid for by her so called subjects, has offshore accounts, no public accountability, etc. Very easy, paid for life. Nothing moral about it.
It's definitely affected me a bit today. She has a visual and historical presence in so many Canadian institutions, from her portraits hanging in my elementary school growing up, to our currency, the courts, and government itself. It's a bit hard to think of her as a real person sometimes, yet seeing Prime Minister Trudeau speak about her with glistening eyes tells me that she did more than purely her constitutional duty, but genuinely touched many, especially world leaders, with loving humility.
IMO this is a normal way to feel about it. I'm american and while I'm not shedding tears, I do feel the significance. I'd have immense respect for her even if it were only for fulfilling one large role, honorably and consistently, for an entire human lifespan. How many politicians have? And I think she had a hard, hard job. Imagine having to live up to the expectations of a great Queen of England for that long without a meltdown or scandal.
It's quite a different context, however I felt sort of similar about John McCain, mostly for what he endured as a POW, and what he nevertheless went on to accomplish in politics.
The words 'God save the King' in the national anthem are going to feel very alien for a while I think, I feel a genuine sense of loss with the Queen's death. I think it comes from a place of national identity in general rather than royalism specifically, royalist or republican it can't be denied that Queen Elizabeth played a significant role in how the UK sees itself and to an extent how the rest of the world sees us and now she's suddenly not there.
In most of our lifetimes we will also utter “The King and Queen of England” since Charles is already 76. British seem to treasure this tradition, where as we Americans definitely got rid of a Jefferson stature somewhere recently.
struck me as unfamiliar.
Nope, it’s been quite familiar to even someone several hundred years ago.
> Nope, it’s been quite familiar to even someone several hundred years ago.
I'm not sure what point you're making here. I'm not claiming England has never had a King before, I'm pointing out that I'm used to seeing "Her Majesty the Queen" rather than "His Majesty the King" all over.
I daydreams of becoming an indie game developer and publishing under the name Her Majesty's Pencil Service
That name was inspired by the very real HMSO: Her Majesty's Stationary Office(!): a name that struck me as absurdly pretentious for something really mundane.
> * But 2,000 years ago the Europeans were were not "civilised" in the sense that we think of.*
That really depends on what's your definition of "Europeans" and "civilized". The Catholic church exists for around 2 thousand years,is still alive and well, has its capital in Italy, and has defined western society for centuries.
> America is a baby compared to them, the history and memory are very different.
Yes, my house is older than the United States. We found pieces of journals talking about the General Bonaparte. It's pretty common to find stuff from several centuries ago in old buildings.
Queen Elizabeth's mother was also "Queen Elizabeth" as wife of the king, until her daughter took the throne and she became the "Queen Mother" to distinguish which Queen Elizabeth.
(This is not the same as her mother being Queen Elizabeth I, which was the tudor queen from the 1500s, wife-of-king queens don't take up a number).
It's a weird bit of asymmetry to the husband-of-queen title being decided on an adhoc basis, having been a prince of denmark, prince-consort of the united kingdom and prince of the united kingdom respectively.
It's a weird bit of asymmetry to the husband-of-queen title being decided on an adhoc basis...
The asymmetry derives from an asymmetry in the titles themselves: the title "King" outranks the title "Queen", rather than those titles being of equal rank. You can't have someone other than the monarch outranking the monarch, so the husband of the reigning Queen can't be a King.
I know it's getting into technicalities, but "consort" modifies "queen", like "pro" modifies "airpods". The opposite is a queen regnant. Both are queens.
So while you're right that she is styled Her Majesty the Queen Consort, she is the same kind of queen that Queen Charlotte was. I think you're right that people are avoiding the phrase "Queen Camilla" at the moment but I think it will come into use.
prepare to shift your paradigm then. It's anachronistic because there hasn't been a King for such a long time due to QEII's epic reign so it's not part of our vocabulary, but nevertheless, Britain is getting Kings in the 21st Century, because Charles will likely be followed by William and then Louis. Might be the 22nd century before we get a Queen again!
Not just QEII - Elizabeth was the longest reigning British monarch, but that record was previously held by Victoria. So the last 185 years were book-ended by two epic Queens, with a few short Kings between them.
I mean obviously Queen feels more normalized because there's only been a King for 0.002% of my life. But I do think Kings being the minority for the last two centuries adds its own impact too.
Now would be a great time to change the national anthem to something without God or royalty in it.
There is no place in modern society for a family who got all their wealth from wars and stealing it. Only to parade it around infront of millions of people in poverty.
Lets get rid of them. Start by turning the palaces into social housing.
I'm am American, but with a substantial Commonwealth connection. I am vigorously, vocally, unapologetically antiroyal. (I'm going to take this to an absurd extreme to make point, not to be incendiary.) I despise the whole cosplay, exploitative embrace of what is effectively an echo of dictatorship.
But...
Elizabeth was a remarkable person, filled with evident curiosity and willingness to connect with people despite being a reserved personality. She was a bit mischievous. She wasn't defined by her job, she defined it.
And beyond that, there are just so many constants that are about to change. I keep thinking how lucky we are that we have cashless transactions, because the abrupt switch from the ubiquity of Elizabeth's face would have been much more noticeable 15 years ago (which sounds like a non sequitur, but ... her face is everywhere on money).
It’s a cult and she is a cult leader. But the the thing is, you cannot entirely remove the need humans have for cults, religions, nationalism and their corresponding figureheads. You cannot entirely remove the need for unity via shared rituals and traditions, how ever inane.
So we have two options, pick good cults and cult leaders or live with bad ones. The Royal Family at the moment asks nothing from the devout. Literally, you don’t have to pray, believe ideologies, support politics, almost nothing. Just show up for the weddings, respect the titles and play along with the ceremony.
Even many non-Brits shared that respect and admiration.
In 70 years, the number of gaffes/crises linked to her person (rather than other members of her family) are few, perhaps the only dents were the Diana incident and the secret influencing of the law by the crown ("royal consent" and "royal assent" - e.g. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/feb/08/royals-vette...).
>It's weird, I've never considered myself a "royalist" but this news has affected me quite strongly. I just burst into tears unexpectedly on hearing this news and I don't quite understand why I feel so very sad. I guess I have grown up and lived my whole life (as a Brit) seeing and hearing the Queen, singing "God save the Queen" etc, and this news made me suddenly feel very old, very nostalgic, with the sense that all things pass in time, which makes my heart ache deeply.
I'm not even British and find myself feeling likewise. The Queen has been a fixture for a long time (before my birth and even before my parent's birth as well). It is also probably because of Queen Elisabeth's story was somewhat moving. It will take some time to get used to King Charles III...
I think it’s quite understandable to have an emotional response. People who become fixtures in our lives die and it instantly fires the signals of our own mortality we spend our lives suppressing.
I'm surprised to say I feel the same. I'm Scottish and never really had much affection for the royal family, but I also feel quite sad and that it's the end of an era.
She was the last of the best, we'll see what comes next.
In some way, she was like one of those nice Grannies from your neighborhood. Had no big negatives, also not much positive for the average observer. Just a nice old lady, doing stuff with her family and being around for such a long time that she was some casual part of your world awareness.
there is something that harkens to our mortality when we witness something come to an end. I remember having some reactions to businesses failing and closing shop that I encountered as a youth. They always seemed and appeared so permanent. A place we'd always go to or pass by. Then the years go by and after encountering enough mainstays that had their heyday go under you realize that sentiment of durability and a perpetual landmark were never warranted in the first place and its kind of jarring and unsettling to realize how much flux there is in life.
Perhaps it's because the world is in such turmoil these days and we just lost one of the most (if not the most) stalwart figures on the world stage. I'm not British but that's how it hits me.
I'm very much the same, and have an enormous amount of respect for her. There's a part of me that wonders whether this feeling of continuity - from the start of her reign which was only a few years after the independence of India until now - has kept the country in a kind of a weird stasis though. It'll be interesting to see whether the UK's view of itself shifts significantly over the next few years.
I was very quietly watching BBC News whilst in a meeting. The news was announced just a couple minutes in, I didn't expect to particularly care, but, apparently I do...
Beautifully said. I’m an American and I feel this one too for some reason. It feels nice to stop and reflect on this a bit today — life, and all of it.
I am an atheist and as a french who lived in the Paris surroundings for years I got some tears when I saw Notre-Dame de Paris burning. I guess it is more nostalgia and the loss of what feels like a constant in our life. The more they stay the harder it is to see them go.
Having said that while I am not the kind to wish for heads to roll I think it is a good time to realise you might not wish to allow someone else take her place and be an expensive parasite now =)
>" Twitter is an echo chamber of edginess and not indicative of the average person in the real world."
For now, at least. I think we are all underestimating just how much Twitter impacts public perception. Not just on topics, but how people feel, act, and interact with others. Twitter seems to have a cancerous negativity it inflicts on its users.
The hashtag #IrishTwitter that artificially gets pumped up by Twitter's recommendation algorithm does not equal Irish Twitter, and it certainly does not equal Ireland.
Speaking as an Irish person who hates inherited titles, those people are effing assholes. What part of don't speak I'll of the dead did they miss out on?
That's more a matter of what circles you're in. Most people I've encountered have been much more moderate, separating the human being, who deserves to be mourned, from the institution.
There is just that thing with those prison camps littering North Korea, the recurring famines, the fact that the Kim dynasty claims god-like status and more... so no, this is not a good comparison even though we of course do not really know how much of all this is known to the North-Korean populace.
All of which is negligible when compared to the atrocities imposed throughout the world by British Colonialism under the sponsorship of the British Monarchy.
Again this is disanalogous. Kim actually perpetrates these hideous crimes to this day. The Queen inherited what you're describing and oversaw decolonisation, today largely serving as a figurehead. It'd be like blaming Hirohito's children for the crimes of Hirohito. Children don't inherit their parent's debt.
What you could blame her for is not doing more to dismantle the monarchy's non-figurehead powers from the inside. But what you're trying to do is something else entirely and rather gross.
I agree only on the point that she doesn't inherit the wrong deeds, nothing on her personally.
But the place she sits, is from the blood of millions who were enslaved, robbed and were dealt with a rather inhuman treatment to say the least. In the process empire also justified what they did was in the past and cautiously moved away from that without an inch of guilt. It is sad to see people in India/Pakistan/SriLanka mourn for her death, a pity case of Stockholm syndrome.
If as you say, she has done good in her life, she should have relinquished the power, disowned the wealth which was directly a result of the horrific colonialism and imperialism. Or at least have some decency and apologise, give back the stolen wealth as a good gesture. Now I wonder, if she would have given up imperialism out of her own volition if she was in power during that period. I am inclining towards No.. it was convenient she didn't have to oversee those horrors.
It has been more than 70 years and even now, they hold their crown so precious adorned with the Diamonds taken away forcefully from our lands. What an absolute shame!
There are unheard horrors from the colonial countries, which will ache even the stone hearted. Bringing all this in perspective, we don't think she's Kim, but we have the same respect or the lack of it for anyone in their legacy.
> she should have relinquished the power, disowned the wealth which was directly a result of the horrific colonialism and imperialism. Or at least have some decency and apologise, give back the stolen wealth as a good gesture.
Totally fair criticism. But that's not what I've been seeing from any of the criticism until your post.
What I've been seeing has been collective filial guilt assignment. The same psychological process underlying racism and other forms of collective guilt assignment. Hatred directed to the Queen little to do with what she did or didn't do, but because of what British Imperialism did in past before she got the job. The post above ours exemplifies this.
I can see that, it is not what I wish. I don't advocate or recommend any of that to my fellow men. Late Queen and the current British monarchy aren't worthy and I believe they need little of our time spent in empathy.
The hatred though is coming from unresolved hurt, which the modern British era is trying hard to forget and won't be easy until they take some sensible directions towards reparations and an honest apology at least from whomever even got to witness, including the late Queen. She had a chance to resolve or ease it in our memories. We'll remember her as someone who lived their life in power, saw the horrors their parents designed upon others and didn't even have courtesy to apologise.
So much for the British decency..
Edit: Sorry for the rant. My Grandpa and his kin suffered a lot and was in freedom struggle, it is that lasting impact. I've put it here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32775488
If you're a brit, please know that I am not against you or anybody for that matter. Just the monarchy's horrific past.
> Late Queen and the current British monarchy aren't worthy and I believe they need little of our time spent in empathy. > She had a chance to resolve or ease it in our memories. > Just the monarchy's horrific past. > won't be easy until they take some sensible directions towards reparations and an honest apology
All totally reasonable things to say.
> The hatred though is coming from unresolved hurt
Yeah, that's the explanation, but we shouldn't confuse that with justification.
What puts me off about the reaction I'm seeing is more abstract than the details of this particular case. It's the same feeling I have when I see casual anti-White racism, justified as legitimate only because of the existence and history of white supremacy. It's filial guilt and collective guilt put on one individual who didn't perpetrate the crimes that are the actual source of the anger. And it's the cultural normalization and even promotion of such perverse group-based moral systems that I am speaking out against.
I totally agree on your point, it is an explanation and not a justification.
And I am against putting the blame on someone to feed our emotions, the hatred isn't going to serve any. This is unhealthy and what I am seeing at anti-white racism is absolutely narrow minded full of obtuse morals. I will support you and several others against such foolishness.
On a side note, this particular case is just one among many, many such happenings for over two centuries of british rule. The worst of the Black Racism and its horror history has mostly ended, and same is the case of colonial countries. But the scars run deep in both the camps, any person who has the decency and courage to come up say sorry and treat as equals would be welcomed with open arms.
It should have happened in the 70s, the 80s or 90s, 2000 or 2010s. I don't think they have any plans for it, and honestly won't care about what others say like we should about them.
> we of course do not really know how much of all this is known to the North-Korean populace
Maybe they know better than you. At the end, they live there. What you claim to know from North Korea and all that other countries from the "axis of evil" comes from TV.
Not what I claim to know but what I know. The difference between these two is that I don't claim to know what I know while not actually knowing it. The things I know about North Korea may be only part of the truth but there is no doubt about me knowing these things nor a necessity for me to claim knowledge I do not possess.
> all that other countries from the "axis of evil"
Where does that come from? I did not say anything about any axis of evil.
> comes from TV
I do not even remember the last time I watched television but I know it is more that 24 years ago since I had one of those contraptions. Nope, I do not get my information from television and have not done so for a very, very long time. What I know about North Korea comes from a diverse mix of sources on the 'net, from books on the subject, from interviews with North Korean escapees and from the odd travel report from people who went there - yes, some people actually visit the place. Satellite imagery provides proof of the existence of camps where escapees said they were so I tend to believe their descriptions of live in that state more than the denials which are thrown their way.
How much did the inhabitants of the Soviet Union know about the conditions in GULAG? Those who went through the system and survived to return to society were not eager to tell the tale for fear of repercussions. It took the death of Stalin and Khrushchev's subsequent speech “On the Cult of Personality and its Consequences” at the last day of the party congress of 1956 for some of the information - but only some, and only until Brezhnev came into power - to be the subject of discussion among Soviet citizens.
> Maybe they know better than you.
Stalin was a monster but to many people in the Soviet Union he was like a god - just like the Kim dynasty in North Korea has a god-like status to many North Koreans. They don't know any better, yet. Let's hope they will get to know the truth, soon.
The axis of evil is just the set of countries somebody wanted you to put the focus on. That's why you are so interested in North Korea while at the same time I bet -but I may be wrong- that you have no clue, nor interest, about what happens in many other countries that do much more harm to their inhabitants, and/or to those from other countries, than NK.
Talking about Stalin, he is a very respected figure today in Russia. In fact, polls say that he is more popular than ever, and a majority of Russians think he played a positive role for their country. Although we may think he was a monster, that doesn't mean that people can't worship him. Why can't they? If some random guy starts crying for a queen that couldn't care less about him, in the case of these leaders it makes even more sense.
Why can't people worship Hitler? Even those who refuse to say negative things about the last president of the USA are labelled fascist by the current president... but worshipping Stalin and the Kims is beyond reproach?
No, facts are facts. Stalin was a monster, as were Hitler, Mao and Pol Pot and - in a slightly lower category - Franco, Castro and Chavez and dozens of other tin-pot dictators from all winds and all political directions. Maybe the local populace adored them but that is besides the point given what we know - what you know as well.
> what happens in many other countries that do much more harm to their inhabitants, and/or to those from other countries, than NK
Let's have some examples of those countries and in which way they do much more harm to their inhabitants than North Korea.
Now back to what started this discussion: where does Elisabeth II stand in comparison to all those mentioned crooks? As far as I know she did not personally oversee any atrocities like those of Lenin/Stalin/Hitler/Mao/Pol Pot/etc.? The British Empire does have a bloody history but so does the rest of the world. Those who were conquered by the British conquered others before them and were often conquered after the British left. The British themselves were conquered by the Romans, the Vikings, the Normans, Bretons, Flemish, and French under the Duke of Normandy. The Germans tried but failed, the Soviets would have liked to but never got that far. The Indian subcontinent was conquered by the Mughals who set up a far more bloody rule than the British did. Genghis Khan killed about 11% of the world's population. Et ce te ra, humans are a warlike species. When Elisabeth II came to the throne the British Empire was winding down, decolonisation continued under her rule until all that was left is the British Overseas Territories.
I can't think of much else that has been the case as long as Queen Elizabeth II being the monarch. There are more than a few pensioners out there who weren't even born when she ascended the throne; I daresay that very few people under 75 years of age remember a time when she wasn't queen before today.
As a Canadian, the idea that she's gone is... strange? Every single time I've ever held a coin (in Canada), she's been on it. Every dime, every cent, every ten dollar bill. I have a difficult time with visual memory, but I know what those images look like because I've seen them a hundred thousand times.
Now it's going to be someone else? It makes sense, but it doesn't feel right.
I find this super interesting, and I have a hunch it has to do with how much the Queen/monarchy has been revealed as human to us through media, movies, entire Netflix shows, etc.
I mean, the Queen could just as well have been a made up figure to you or me, given the vanishing possibility she would affect any of our lives directly. Yet after watching those stories about her life, the monarchy, it manipulates your neurons to actually have a person to mourn. Funny, isn't it? And the length of her life certainly gave enough material to feel some story.
I imagine that before QE2, much state/people mourning of the sovereign was just symbolic, and though perhaps somewhat heartfelt (I daresay, but more for loss of the symbol), not deep. For all their quirks and personality problems revealed to us on TV, it actually caused them to mean more to us.
The phrase 'free world' is ironically apt. It was developed in the Cold War to refer to the US-led anti-communist bloc, precisely because 'free' is equivocal enough to cover despots ruling over capitalist economies. Of course, a Queen by definition is not an emblem of free government.
"God save the Queen" is a beautiful song and anthem. I know it wouldn't be kosher, given that it uses the same underlying music, but "My country 'tis of thee" would be ten times better the US anthem than the "Star-Spangled Banner". It'd be a stretch, but we could just say its metaphoric. :-) Musically, I think even "Dixie" is much better than SSB. My condolences the the country of GB and the world for this loss.
You most likely not one of those who were at the end of her might. You were not the one who suffered when she went on a tour to curtail the independence movements in the colonies, making her one of the biggest PR person for death and destruction.
Or one of the Children that her son raped and who she protected.
Well now you mention it I do feel rather odd myself today, to the extent that I visited the cafe downstairs of my place of work and bought a lolly cake, which is simply the last thing I expected to happen today. Or perhaps the second-to-last thing… well, you get the picture.
The Queen was mostly a symbol, right? It makes sense that you feel sad - it is not just the person who has passed, but also, in part, some essence of that which she symbolized.
Dude, I'm American and even more anti-monarchy. Hell, I'm anti-president, anti-congress, everything.
But I feel the exactly same as you do, and it's not even my damn country to boot.
But, we all know why, or at least it seems to me...a lifetime of dedicated service, consistent and steady service to UK and the world both. Calm, cool. Loyal to country, husband, the whole shooting match.
There's a LOT to admire about the woman that has nothing to do with monarchy. But, almost everyone likes tradition. The 60 second minute and 60 minute hour have been around since Sumerian epoch 5,000 years ago. Tradition. We still use the name of the months from Rome 2,000 years ago. When a head of government has been around for 70 years, the person is not a monarch, that person an institution.
So I had a lump in my throat, and felt some tears well up. Especially as I read that there was a double-rainbow as it was announced. I am not superstitious in the least, and still not about that, but still...
It looks like your account has been using HN primarily for political/ideological/nationalistic battle. We ban accounts that do that, because it's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. I'm not going to ban you right now because you posted a few better comments when you first created the account, but if you keep up this pattern, we're going to have to. Same for posting flamewar comments generally, so please don't do that either.
Incidentally, we don't need you to change any of your views, nor do we need you to conform to the majority here (which, although highly international, is certainly mostly Western). But we need you to follow the site guidelines, which means using the site for intellectual curiosity and thoughtful conversation, avoiding name-calling and personal attacks, avoiding flamebait, and not using an account for a mostly-political agenda. There are other places on the internet to fight those wars. We're trying for a different sort of forum here.
The fact that you did not remove the flags from my comment and instead preaching to me about some guidelines shows that you are a pretty pathetic and incompetent moderator.
I think it's a very understandably human urge to hold up someone for emulation. The only odd thing about a noble class in that sense is that we decide the job of "role model and leader" should be hereditary.
But I think it's a very understandably human reaction to feel sorrow when someone who millions of people have invested so much energy into making the best person that can be is still mortal.
> The only odd thing about a noble class in that sense is that we decide the job of "role model and leader" should be hereditary.
I don't think it's odd at all, in fact it's pretty normal when you look at a long stretch of history. I'd wager that heredity based monarchy is probably the most common form of regime.
Interesting! So I'd never really thought about this dimension before, but yes: at least among monarchies, hereditary monarchy is the most common form.
Whether it's the most common form of government is unclear. In modern times, democracy is most common. I think what was most common historically might be a complicated question and changes in terms of how it's asked (in terms of distinct governments, total territory controlled, or total population loyal to?).
Today yes. But until the 19th century, heredity based monarchy was the most common form of government historically.
Monarchy is still the most common form of organization as well. For instance, every corporation is a monarchy with a board that acts as the king/queens court and executives that represent the remaining nobility. Same with Military arrangements. It's probably a reason that these forms of organization tend to dominate others, like collectives, etc. Strong leadership from the top will always be optimal. Of course, weak leadership from the top is fatal.
I'll add:
Consider there are 3 forms of organization:
Rule by 1, Rule by some, and Rule by many. These can be broken into 6 implementations, 2 for each form. Monarch/Tyrant, Aristocracy/Oligarchy, Democracy/Populism. There's interesting relationships between these 6 and what some historians believe are natural transitions from 1 to another: Monarch->Aristocracy->Democracy->Oligarchy->Populist->Tyrant
I like to expand the though "strong leadership from the top will always be optimal" with what it's optimizing for. It has benefits for speed and specificity; as long as the chains of communication are open and clear, what the group should be doing is easy to understand. That's much muddier in a distributed leadership system.
And, of course, that centralization carries good and ill. At different points in time, it can be detrimental to centralize authority so. But even countries like the United States, which generally pride themselves on decentralized democratic rule, have various emergency powers abilities for wartime consolidation of authority behind the Executive (and President specifically).
Apart from that note, I agree with everything here.
No... Not at all. Not that many large cap corporations(large capital organizations, not Mom and Pop Inc) have one exclusive owner. None of the publicly traded corporations are monarchies at all.
Sure they are, CEOs are the King/Queens. They have full control on decisions and do as they please more or less. If they don't perform then they are replaced with a new monarch. Monarchs can be challenged and deposed and often were. A monarch that was not doing a good job was often in defense of themselves from rivals.
A monarch is the leader of a state. If we remove the "of a state" part from the definition, we just have a fancy sounding synonym for "leader." So in some sense a CEO could be called a monarch if we did that, but so could... whatever, a sports team's coach.
Yeah sort of my point in that it’s a common form of organization. Point being we feel like democracy is the best but nearly every other organization is closer to monarchy. Monarchy’s are extremely effective organizational structures when the monarch is extremely competent.
And an extremely ineffective organizational structure when the leader is incompetent. This is fine in the lower-stakes scenario of a company. For nations, it isn't surprising that the most successful ones have switched to democracy. Peaceful handover of control, representation of diverse interests, and all that.
Replace the word CEO with President, Prime Minister, Branch Manager, Head of Labor Union - and it'll make as much sense.
As a person making this claim, you are failing miserably to make a case that CEO is a monarch. (Mostly because you don't know what it means to be CEO or a monarch)
> Replace the word CEO with President, Prime Minister, Branch Manager, Head of Labor Union - and it'll make as much sense.
They all have massive limits on their powers as compared to a CEO. They work with parliaments, etc. They can be vetoed easily.
I'll grant it isn't a perfect analogy. A CEO doesn't have unlimited power granted by god and has to answer to a board and therefore shareholders. But in essence, the idea of having a singular ultimate decision maker/leader rather than having a small group vote on decisions or have the entire company vote makes it a de-facto monarchy.
It's a very bad analogy, because CEO's operate within a charter. CEOs isn't even the top position at all companies, typically it's the chairman of the board... that can literally tell the CEO to can it. In fact almost all CEOs can be vetoed by the board of directors and even at certain times - individual shareholders.
Your analogy is, again, rooted in lack of knowledge(aka ignorance) of corporate structures.
The CEO of my startup right now, where she literally owns 51%, still must go to the board for any impactful decision. And any C level exec can call the board.
LLCs are generally autocratic, but that isn't "any corporation".
Plenty of publicly traded companies have a single shareholder with 51 or more % of the votes, for various reasons. (this doesn't necessarily means owns 51% of the shares, just that they control 51% of the votes - e.g. special stock classes with more votes per share, or via holding proxies, etc)
I gotta admit that it is a bit weird to see british royalty being so heavily privileged that they even get special moderation treatment here on HN to protect them (?) from any negativity, or rather stop negativity about them.
I'm not keen on the idea of using this submission to flame the Queen, I obviously agree with the general rule of avoiding flamebait, what I mean is that other HN submissions on the deaths of people certainly didn't get this special treatment. It is also not at all enforced in both directions when looking at the obviously and comically over the top positive comments of low quality which contain no real substance.
Edit: I used the wording "stop negativity" which might be misleading, since (as far as I am aware) no comments are being deleted. What I'm talking about is moderation giving out a lot of warnings and keeping a closer watch on "flamebait" violations than I've ever seen before on any submission.
It wasn't really special moderation treatment, though I understand why it looks like that way now.
It was because, when the thread was getting going, it flooded with crap comments (e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32769222, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32769043). I decided to come down hard on those to try to ward off a shitshow. It would have been the same in any thread that was filling up that way, but which we weren't going to downweight off the front page. And we weren't going to do that because (a) the story was on-topic, and (b) it's such a big story that we couldn't get rid of it if we wanted to—people would just repost it until one got past us.
I posted https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32769925 at the top of the thread as a bulwark against the crap comments. That's also standard moderation. At some point, though, the thread started to fill with plenty of more substantive comments and then it looked to people like I was taking a side on the royalist question. Nothing was further from my mind.
It took me a long time to figure this out, probably because after 4 hours of doing nothing but refreshing this page and posting moderation scoldings, my brain was fried. Eventually I got it and the fix was simply to unpin https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32769925 from the top and demote it as offtopic. That seems to have calmed things down (except maybe for https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=theirishrover).
It's worth noting that the delivery often causes more problems than the content. Counter-opinions appear to last a lot longer if they frame it in a civilised discussion.
They were crap comments because they were low-information, high-indignation name-calling. Comments like that are noise—and destructive noise at that—regardless of the position they favor. They could be arguing that 2+2=4 and be just as terrible.
Because they were crap comments. They'd have been crap comments if they were pro-monarchy, too. One of them was a one-liner "fuck the monarchy I don't care" comment, and the other, not much longer, ended in "cringe asf lmao".
> One of them was a one-liner "fuck the monarchy I don't care" comment,
I did not referred to that comment.
> and the other, not much longer, ended in "cringe asf lmao".
The comment you're trying to misrepresent was "Great time to abolish the monarchy. Monarchies are fucking stupid.", and afterwards, once the downvotes started to flow, was edited with "Edit: yall actually support monarchies? cringe asf lmao"
Nobody feels that. It's plain why the comment was singled out, and it has nothing to do with its point of view, other than the contempt that it had for the community it was posted on.
I’ll happily read an HN debate on the monarchy all day long.
But I don’t see Dang censoring a robust, thoughtful discussion of abolishing the monarchy here. He shut down a cheap, childish comment that was followed by an even cheaper, vulgar dismissal of people who don’t already agree with the original “comment”.
I'm not against republicanism. Your example, 'Great time to abolish the monarchy. Monarchies are fucking stupid', is not an interesting or well though-out comment. If that's all the effort this commenter felt like giving to this forum, then it should be down-voted.
A lot of us here are coders and we appreciate concise code. Why not, then, concise arguments? Bias wrapped in fake nuance is obvious and time-wasting. "Fucking stupid" is an apt description of monarchism in this day and age.
I feel that you might have a dataset of sufficient size to fine tune a language model to help you with the task.
It can serve as a rough detector which alerts you of posts which might violate the guidelines and also rank them from those that are very likely to violate one (which you can get through quickly, without wasting much cognitive energy) and ones which require more judgement.
If there were a way to block comments by recently-created/low-karma accounts in these situations, perhaps that would be better than burying the entire topic.
> (a) the story was on-topic, and (b) it's such a big story that we couldn't get rid of it if we wanted to—people would just repost it until one got past us.
but somehow the dozens of kobe bryant posts didn't get past you, even though it was just as big of a death and just as on-topic (anything piquing curiosity, right?). i'd suggest being even-handed about these kinds of posts, rather than allowing some to be flagged off the front page because [black, athlete, relentless winner, investor, entrepreneur, oscar awardee, loving father, ... ], would help temper the backlash.
none or all such posts should be allowed, but not the picking and choosing that happens currently, which is highly disrespectful in the same way you're criticizing others here.
I'm sorry—and yes, it may have been the wrong call. I don't know how to make all right calls. If a good HN user is still upset about something years later, that probably means we messed up somehow.
People often propose mechanistic rules like "allow all such posts" or "allow no such posts". The simplicity of that has an obvious appeal in the abstract, but I don't think it's viable on HN. This place doesn't function mechanistically. Human interpretation is constantly required: messy, unsatisfying, flawed human interpretation.
apology accepted! and sorry if it came off a bit harsh.
to be fair, the all-or-nothing suggestion isn't practicable on the face of it (otherwise you'd get more troll postings, or more unhappy users), so it was more an opening gambit than a fleshed out suggestion.
however, it's pretty clear that implicit biases strongly and unflatteringly drive[0] what gets flagged and what gets popularized (largely by hn users of course). is it hn's job to address implicit bias? that's certainly debatable, but i'd think you'd want the widest reach possible and potentially turning away upwards of 80-90% of the world's population isn't a long-term winning strategy for yc.
most entertainers (singers, actors, celebrities, etc.) are stale topics of conversation (mostly rehashes of what they did/said), but way too many make the front page anyway (or conversely, far too few of the more interesting ones make it).
[0]: it'd probably be an interesting exercise to analyze what obit posts gets flagged, uncommented/unpromoted, and popularized. i've casually observed (and even tested a bit) that nearly all the black/brown people and most women don't make the front page, many of whom are fascinating historically, otherwise they wouldn't have cleared the higher bar for getting noticed in the face of bias in the first place.
For us who don't feel for the monarchy or think it has minimal impact or significance on our lives, the next couple of weeks (or months) is going to be grueling as we have to stay quiet, bite our tongues and bare the over-the-top ness of this situation to not offend others. I was disappointed in this moderation warning.
The ex-prime minister of the UK who led us through a pandemic where hundreds of thousands died has just said it's the UK darkest day. And, I have received an email to say my kids nursery will be closed due to the situation, and they will be talking about bereavement for the kids. He is 2.
Really? Nearly everyone I know is somewhat against the monarchy and think it should be abolished, but my parents are very pro-monarchy. The only thing my dad said was, "Did you hear the news? Very sad", and I said, "Yeah, very sad" and that was it.
Is it really hard to have a bit of empathy for people who are sad that someone they loved/admired/respected has died?
A nursery closing is odd, but again, their choice. Talking about bereavement sounds very healthy to me, whatever the excuse for it.
I don't live in the UK, but it looks like it's a proper big deal for a large part of your society... I guess that's what society is about. Sometimes you have to give way.
> I guess that's what society is about. Sometimes you have to give way.
Would you be saying the same thing if we were talking about racist, or homophobic individuals? Let's not pretend that the monarchy doesn't have victims.
I agree that it will be a trying few weeks. Although I think these kind of situation can give voice to existing pain in peoples lives. And the losses of covid may be expressed as grief for the Queen. It is easier for some people to feel those kind of emotions when the object is less personal and less complicated. The emotions flow precisely because she had minimal impact or significance on our lives. If it really was personal people would want to keep their emotions more private. But the collective nature of the loss lifts the veil and the sadness becomes public. And of course the media and VIPs will milk it for all its worth.
Society is give and take; roads and services are closed, tax money spent, and favorite TV shows cancelled for things like sports events, concerts, and state visits that one may personally oppose
I hope you manage to find some meaning in what will happen in the next few weeks. For many, this is a great loss, perhaps can there be learning in being curious and compassionate regarding other people's experience of loss and grief, and their hopes and fears for the future
I'm not saying it's entirely reasonable to lay all of that hate on the Queen's feet. But just as she was a symbol of hope and progress to some, she's a symbol of a deeply evil, globe-spanning empire to others. I don't think you can give her credit for the good without accepting at least some credit for all the harm that happened under her watch as well.
If we're expected to be understanding to the people grieving the loss of a celebrity, surely we should be a thousand times more understanding to all the people who are angry at far greater losses caused by the British Empire.
I would suggest that many more people are saddened by the Queen’s death than consider it a meaningless inconvenience, as you appear to. Perhaps you could be sensitive to the feelings of your fellow citizens, even if they do disrupt your day somewhat.
My point is not the meaningless, or the inconvenience. But the over the top reaction.
Many people are saddened with a small s. Many people don't care much at all. Many people appose to it (and are saddened.)
You may suggest more. But you or I can't know for sure.
That's my point. Millions in the UK lost someone during the pandemic. I'm sure these were darker days. It's the perspective and balance that I feel is off.
You were disappointed that there was a moderation warning when some people are celebrating her death? Her job was to take pictures and open hospitals. And random people who dislike the idea of royality or dislike the UK are posting some rancid patter.
Sure all, it's all over the top, sure many people don't care. The warning wasn't there for people who didn't care. It was there because there are literally people going around acting like this woman was a war criminal when she held no real power, if she ever tried to use any power she technically had it would have caused chaos and resulted in that power being removed and the royal family being removed. Some people acting like Indians would be dancing on her grave even though they've been indpendent for all of her reign and every Indian I've met has been interested in the Queen and royal family like all other people are. Or the Irish are happy she is dead, maybe in the 80s or 90s at the peak of the troubles but most people won't care just like most people in the UK don't care.
And let's be serious, you won't have to bite your tongue that much since most other people will be complaining about it all in a few days.
> You were disappointed that there was a moderation warning when some people are celebrating her death?
Actually, if you read dang's comments you'll see that's not why it was moderated. In fact, there's obviously nothing wrong with celebrating her death as many see her as a tyrant who committed and maintained massive atrocities. The problem here, were the massive amount of low-quality comments just saying stuff like "Good" and "fuck the monarchy" (and nothing else.) See his comment above for more references and explanations.
Actually, you seem to misunderstand the difference from being critical of someone and being rancid and celebrating their death.
And honestly, I think there is something wrong with celebrating the death of a woman who had no power and whose primary job was being a mascot. If you think she did have any power you clearly misunderstand the political landscape of the countries she was the mascot for.
Fundamentally speaking, while she held no formal power, she was wealthy, popular, charismatic, and quite possibly the single most politically-connected individual in the country. Half of what she's being praised for in this very thread is examples of her using her informal power to strengthen diplomatic relationships and so forth.
If the Queen wanted to go on TV and denounce the evils of UK society, nothing was stopping her. I'm not from the UK, so I've honestly no clue how she used that power - but to say she was powerless is to say that every artist, author, activist, and lobbyist has wasted their life, because not a single one of them had anything like her influence.
> If the Queen wanted to go on TV and denounce the evils of UK society, nothing was stopping her. I'm not from the UK, so I've honestly no clue how she used that power - but to say she was powerless is to say that every artist, author, activist, and lobbyist has wasted their life, because not a single one of them had anything like her influence.
She went on TV and denounced stuff all the time. Still doesn't change anything. You're mistaking influence with power. And most lobbyist would have more influence than she actually had.
I love hating on moderation and I'm always ready to be critical of it, and of dang, if it's warranted. But I will say "monarchy is bad" comments are boring and don't lead to interesting discussion. There's a million other places to express that if you want.
Sort of tongue in cheek, but the visible effects of moderation are awful in 90% of circumstances across the internet. Granted we don't see the benefit of the non-visible parts, but on reddit especially there are endless stories of communities being ruined by moderation, and moderation being used to force community behavior that suit the moderator's agendas.
There instances, like HN, where the platform isn't trying to be used for making money or pushing an agenda. Moderation on this tends to be good, but that set of circumstances is rare
Through complete coincidence of timing, her reign saw her become head of state for the entire post-war United Kingdom. Life was different back then, in a way that is more complex than being defined by the things we didn’t have. Entire continents were owned by London, fields were hand harvested by men in tweed with scythes, it was illegal to compete with the government telephone monopoly and/or be gay, and goods were hoisted off ships in cargo nets.
It’s hard enough to look back at the 1980s and see what a shockingly different country the UK was, let alone to the 60s and 50s. Elizabeth was present for the post war reconstruction of Europe, the emancipation of the working classes, and ironically the end of most people’s deference to anything except money or celebrity.
On top of all this she also represented a beloved family
member to which many of us can relate, especially those of us who have lost that grandma, mother, or sister.
Her death is both a single flower dying, and the last flower of its species dying.
>On top of all this she also represented a beloved family member to which many of us can relate, especially those of us who have lost that grandma, mother, or sister.
She represents a bygone institution that will one day cease to exist, quite possibly the last monarch to die with the title in Australia and hopefully elsewhere.
>Her death is both a single flower dying, and the last flower of its species dying.
This is exactly what my previous comment was getting at. This is HN not poetry corner.
This is the point I was trying to make at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32769925 by quoting pg's 15-year-old bit about how empty positive comments aren't so bad (https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html). It's true that they don't contain any more information than empty negative comments, but they don't degrade the threads the way empty negative comments do.
Unfortunately people took that as some sort of pro-monarchist stance!
Who decides what's "empty positive" vs "empty negative"? What you frame as pro-monarchist vs anti- can be as easily framed as anti-egalitarian vs pro-egalitarian. So anti-egalitarian empty comments were allowed, while pro-egalitarian ones were held to a higher standard.
"Empty" praises and supports for one side of the position - a political position in a complex issue, not just "Thanks" like PG writes - are not really empty, they're the tools of populist campaigns.
I will accept boring positivity over boring negativity any day, and as dang responded, that is basically his approach here too. I think boring comments in general should be dissuaded but frankly this post on HN was never going to generate much interesting convo anyway
It seems like you misunderstood or are misrepresenting what I wrote.
While we have these kinds of submissions pretty regularly on HN, this is the first time in multiple years I've seen a reminder about this under almost every single negative comment and every comment containing critique. The reminder about the rule was even expanded to the whole concept of royalty.
My point is not that speaking ill of the dead should be encouraged, my point is the selective enforcement of that sentiment with only a special, priviliged group benefitting from it.
Edit after consideration: Whether criticizing the dead or not criticizing the dead should follow a general rule, I can't and won't comment on.
There is genuinely a lot for love for the Royals from a lot of people in the UK so there is a ton of media coverage of them, especially in some of the low end newspapers such as the Daily Express.
Further afield, the Royal family is aggressively marketed by those who stand to benefit from increased tourism.
But it is to be expected. There are the good guys in the Western sphere of influence and the bad guys. And this is a Western site. It cannot be expected to do much but reflect what is this site's audience. The Elephant and The Rider, after all.
Besides, she's just a figurehead, and makes no real decisions. So it's a bit strange to lay the blame at her feet for the Mao-style starving of her subjects (as they would have been considered by her at the time) or the many wars.
> So it's a bit strange to lay the blame at her feet for the Mao-style starving of her subjects (as they would have been considered by her at the time) or the many wars.
Not really. She's been the living figurehead and embodiment of "Britain" for nearly a century, and for colonized peoples that by definition includes the generational trauma and suffering from the British empire. You don't get to be Queen and wear a crown with the Kohinoor on it and just separate yourself from that history.
You say "special moderation treatment", as if it is something sinister. Have you considered that it may just be the fact that she was so broadly loved, that this happens naturally?
> From commoners to heads of state, the queen has been known to smooth over embarrassing situations with a gentle quip or two. According to Blaikie, at a Buckingham Palace Garden Party, a woman was chatting with the queen when her cell phone embarrassingly started ringing. “You’d better answer that,” the queen told her. “It might be someone important.”
> Then there was the notorious incident that occurred during Charles and Madame de Gaulle’s state visit to Buckingham Palace. “Somebody asked Madame de Gaulle what she was most looking forward to in her retirement, which was imminent,” Blaikie writes. “Not speaking English much at all, she replied, ‘A penis.’ Consternation reigned for some time but it was the queen herself who came to the rescue. ‘Ah, happiness,’ she said.”
Well, I'm actually a French speaker and what makes me say that is the "a" in happiness that is IMO never going to be pronounced by a French speaker the same way as the "a" in "a penis".
The "e" might get pronounced as the "I" in penis by a good enough English speaker, but probably not by a bad English speaker.
I also believe that stress would be totally different, put only on the "a" by a French speaker.
Even some English speakers omit the H, 'appiness. Give it a little inflection and you've got yourself a penis. I did watch a French burlesque show that had a comedy bit based in on this very mispronunciation, but that may well have been contrived.
or embrace the sillyness of having a monarch in the modern era and appoint a random tree kangaroo the monarch and all of their descendant be the new royal family. Wheel it out a couple time a year for ceremonies before taking them back to their estate some nature preserve
> Serious question: name someone who might realistically be President who would not make you sad.
Michael Kirby, Marie Bashir–both too old now, but either could have been a fine President if we had become a republic sooner. Or, similarly, Ted Egan, former Administrator of the Northern Territory.
Frank Brennan–the whole his being a Catholic priest thing is somewhat of an obstacle, admittedly (although possibly not a completely insurmountable one.)
The President is a largely symbolic apolitical role – yet also popularly elected. To ensure only high quality candidates run, the hurdle to nominate is rather high – nomination by at least 20 members of the Irish Parliament (the Oireachtas), or by at least four county/city councils (Ireland only has 31). My impression is that people are generally happy with the outcome of the process.
In Australia, we could similarly require nomination by at least 20 MPs (the Parliament of Australia is only slightly larger than the Oireachtas, 227 vs 220). The four councils requirement is a bit harder to translate – but rough equivalents would be nomination by 1 state/territory government, or by 70 local councils.
What? Most Australians do not support the monarchy, a lot of Australians want a republic.
For all of those Australians, having the democratically elected PM become president is clearly superior than having an unelected monarch be the head of state.
We might find out soon I suppose, no shortage of calls for a referendum. I imagine the dilly dallying has just been because the Queen was quite favorable, and didn't meddle. A don't fix what isn't broken situation.
When one doesn’t need to be worried about being elected, one can make decisions based on principle, and the longer-term view, rather than pandering to popular opinion.
We always complain that politicians work on a two-year cycle. If your position is permanent (pending death), you escape this cycle.
See also: the House of Lords.
It’s weird to think about, and I’m a working-class Labour voter from Sunderland whose grandad was a welder on the ships, but there’s something to be said for it.
There's also the argument that if your job as ruler is known from a young age you can be groomed into the role in a way a career politician never will be.
A system for choosing a head of state that requires an extensive training period and that meant they couldn't simply be turfed out on the whims of a gaggle of swinging voters has something to be said for it.
But what sort of long term decisions would you have them make?
Probably infrastructure, as that takes a long time to complete, and can be made a little more effective rather than "if I can find a way to tunnel from the country to the beach, I'll get more votes" (/s)
We do not have enough gusto here to lead ourselves.
Asus being a republic is doing to be 50 years of dumb, outdated ideas and strife. None of our pollies are going to be innovative (Kevin, Turnbull, and Gillard were the last attempts)
With Murdoch having such a strong grip on the public conversation, he's going to profit the most from shitty controversies over absolutely nothing.
There's already a "change" vacuum (think power vacuum) in Australia which really opens the door for totalitarianism in the future. And Australian nanny-state-ism hasn't been a good precedent so far.
Approximately zero of the indigenous population present prior to settlement by Europeans would have identified as being Australian, or of being born in Australia, or anything like that.
Definitively, yes, Australia "began" with European settlement of the continent.
Except I do live here, and it's patently ridiculous to say The Commonwealth of Australia is anything but an invention of European settlers. Of which Queen Elizabeth II was the Head of State for 57% of its existence. Which is the context of this comment thread.
Can't the term "Australia" just refer to the place on the globe? Like if someone was telling me what Antarctica looked like 50,000 years ago, I wouldn't tell them that Antarctica didn't exist back then. I'd know what they meant.
"Australia's history" was a poor choice of phrase exactly because of that ambiguity. In fact it was explicitly referring to the period since 1901, which very few people would consider to be the start of "Australia's history".
Yes, the commonwealth. Federation was not the start of Australia. It was colonisation. We began 1788, mate. That's it.
You can't just erase all those years of history or say they weren't part of our history, because they're "unpalatable". Ugh. Did you forget your history that you learned in school? :)
The GP's statement was completely factual: the title of "Queen of Australia" only came into existence in 1901 when the states of what is now Australia federated. Before that, the Queen was head of state individually over six separate colonies.
Factual? From what point of view? The narrow one that Australia only existed after federation? That's f*** ridiculous I'm sorry. It was called Australia way before that. And the Queen was still the queen of those f*** colonies come on. It's not factual, Australia's history extends from more than 200 years. Why do engineers have to be so narrow about definitions: they think they're right but they're wrong they're just not seeing the other points of view. They just paint themselves into a corner on a narrow definition and then double down... it's f*** pathetic. But they use this to be abusive and quarrelsome and start fights, on the false pretense that they're right and they're the only right. it's b****. rather than just going, "yeah there's another point of view."
Like how you can question 1788 is the start of Australia is just ridiculous. And the monarch was the monarch of Australia for all that time because it was a British colony and then federation and we still have those heads of state. so it's not completely factual... what I said is factual what the other person said is wrong or limited to the point of view of federation. To argue against what I'm saying is crazy. What's the point of it even it's just like picking fights.
Your facts don't cover the reality of the situation I'm sorry. Australia is not just a name on a piece of paper after federation. Why do engineers think a single fact conveys the whole truth. Then I realize it's abusive to stick to that and not consider all the points of view...ugh. whatever.
Convince yourself what you want man but it's not the truth. But I don't think you've got any skin in the game to even argue this... Haha :)
> The Tjapwurung, an Aboriginal people in what is now southern Australia, shared the story of this bird hunt from generation to generation across an unbelievably large slice of time—many more millennia than one might think possible. The birds (most likely the species with the scientific name Genyornis newtoni) memorialized in this tale are now long extinct. Yet the story of the Tjapwurung’s “tradition respecting the existence” of these birds conveys how people pursued the giant animals. At the time of this particular hunt, between 5,000 and 10,000 years ago, volcanoes in the area were erupting, wrote amateur ethnographer James Dawson in his 1881 book Australian Aborigines, and so scientists have been able to corroborate this oral history by dating volcanic rocks.
...
> What are the limits of such ancient memories? For what length of time can knowledge be transferred within oral societies before its essence becomes irretrievably lost? Under optimal conditions, as suggested by science-determined ages for events recalled in ancient stories, orally shared knowledge can demonstrably endure more than 7,000 years, quite possibly 10,000, but probably not much longer.
Under her reign it was Her Majesty’s government and she took an active role in it that wasn’t publicly visible. Laws did not take effect without her assent, and the government formed with her permission which was asked for.
Under Charles III’s reign, it will be His Majesty’s government; how actively he takes an interest in its affairs will be on him, but at a minimum laws will not take effect without his assent and his permission will be asked for to form future governments.
That’s the system of the United Kingdom. It never stopped being a Kingdom, people just chose to view the late Queen as ceremonial because it was a convenient way to square the Throne with democratic ideals, but it really isn’t all that ceremonial. The reason the customs held fast is because Queen Elizabeth II worked to make the system work. A different sort of Queen may have sparked a constitutional crisis or two by now and there’s no guarantee she would have necessarily lost to the Commons.
Small correction: not “you guys” because I’m not British, just an observant American that took a serious interest in the functioning of foreign governments as a lens through which to evaluate our own.
The functions and powers of our Presidency are a much closer derivative of the British monarchy than we tell ourselves in our classrooms. The President signing bills into law is a copy of the requisite assent of the monarchy. Political appointments were a copy of how the King vested power, and as you guessed it, the King is the Head of the British Armed Forces.
Also I think even British folks are undersold on how powerful the late Queen really was. She may not have vetoed any legislation, but her Prime Ministers sought and received her advice regularly, consulting with her and unburdening themselves to her the problems they were faced with or tasked with resolving. Put another way, she was an active participant in how laws were formed and the business of Her Majesty’s governments proceeded even if she did not participate in the drafting of the texts or have any policy objectives per se. That isn’t ceremonial at all, although many of her duties as Queen and Defender of the Faith were ceremonial.
In America we celebrate the separation of powers, telling ourselves a few myths along the way about the co-equality of branches (essentially Nixon era propaganda from when he was facing down the gun barrel of impeachment, but Congress adopted the myth despite being head and shoulders the most powerful branch of Government under the Constitution). The King-in-Parliament—or under the late Queen, the Queen-in-Parliament—is absolute power in the United Kingdom and no one may question their directives because this is King, Lords and Commons speaking as one. Their power as one body is what we separated into the President, Senate, Representatives and Supreme Court. We then limited it further by conceiving of powers as enumerated, although clearly this was insufficient as a power limiter.
Yes but the last time a monarch vetoed a law was in 1707, and that was only because parliament asked Queen Anne to veto the law.
In reality, if King Charles started vetoing then after a short constitutional crisis, parliament would basically just change the rules of the game to say that the monarch no longer has the power to veto laws.
Wouldn’t the loophole still be if one house of the parliament co-opts King, essentially simulating American democracy where you have a Republican King and Republican Party in power allowing the Republicans to veto laws and stop monarchy reform in parliament?
The British Armed Forces are also know as "Her Majesty's Armed Forces" (now His Majesty's). The official head of the armed forces is the monarch and that's who they swear their allegiance to. However, there is a long standing constitutional convention that the executive authority is given to the Prime Minister by "royal perogative". So technically the monarch, but in reality it's the Prime Minister.
If the monarch tried to actually do something significant with that power I imagine the law would be changed pretty quickly.
This is why working royals generally have various military titles and positions, because the monarch is the head of the armed forces. It's also why the monarch dresses in military regalia for various military events.
Why? Constitutionally the Prime Minister is just the "first" minister to the monarch. These days, of course, the monarch defers all governance to the Prime Minister, but the origin of the role is as an advisor of sorts to the monarch. It shouldn't sound any worse than saying Merrick Garland is Joe Biden's Attorney General.
Along those lines, Britain joined the EU a year after Smalltalk-72 and K&R C were introduced. Smalltalk inspired Objective-C, which is still used today in Macs.
The British Constitution can be seen as a large piece of legacy code which has never been tossed and rewritten from scratch, just incrementally patched and refactored over a really long period of time.
Downside: lots of bizarre complexities, bits of dead code, stuff that works as long as nobody touches it etc. Upsides: it's really stable.
Yea, it seems like yesterday it got announced. I was working in Berlin with an English guy, he took it super hard. We went out for drinks after work and at the end of the night he was telling one of the Germans they were lucky - because they were still in the EU.
I feel slightly bad for Liz Truss, since I imagine that one of the things she will be remembered is that the Queen died less than 48 hours into her government.
Truss wouldn’t care about that. If anything she’ll spin this to her advantage. It’s pretty common for governments to release embarrassing documents or unpopular changes during busy news weeks, or at the weekend, knowing that peoples attention is elsewhere.
Oh I'm sure she at least appreciates the opportunity to bury some unappealing news. News broke e.g. of her decision to rescind all restrictions on fracking (and – just a funny coincidence – of the fact that her campaign's biggest donation came from the wife of a BP exec), at about the same time as news of the Queen's deteriorating health.
It's interesting you bring this up as in my view Truss is the antithesis of Queen Elizabeth II. Truss is somebody that would say anything that people wanted to hear to be popular and amass political power whereas Queen Elizabeth refrained from staying anything people didn't want to hear to be dutifully detached from the fickleness of politics.
Alternatively, a new King took power less than 48hrs into her government. The ascendancy of a new monarch is at least as memorable as the passing of, in this instance his, predecessor.
I remember clearly the time when Princess Diana died (1997). For me, it was THE moment when I understood the impact of the Internet. I was randomly browsing the web during the night in Mexico, and suddenly I started to see websites (I think Yahoo and MSN at that time) showing the news. I went to sleep without giving it too much attention.
Next day, all the news in my country were mentioning the death as breaking news. My mind was blown over how I knew about this very important event the night before Mexico TV broke the news.
I had a similar experience. I saw news of her death online and assumed it was some sort of hoax. When I woke up the next morning and saw it on the (TV) news I had this weird “Holy shit! The internet was right!?” moment. It was very surreal. Up until that point I hadn’t even considered that the internet could be used for much beyond screwing around and chat rooms let alone that it could be a platform for breaking news!
> My mind was blown over how I knew about this very important event the night before Mexico TV broke the news.
I've had the opposite experience. It's clear that real-time news is detrimental, and it's better for reporting to wait a bit for facts to come in and analysis to be done.
Early reporting is vague, light on facts, disjointed, facts are hedged, etc. It's really quite worthless.
This is probably the only death of a public figure that has really hit me hard. The Queen was a constant all of my life, all of my parents' lives and, indeed, a good deal of my grandparents' lives. The comfort she could bring to many is not to be underestimated in my view. When Covid-19 was kicking off in the UK, and our lives were changing in ways we couldn't predict, I remember being immensely comforted by her speech.
Her speech early in the Covid-19 era was one for the ages[1]: Short, personal, reflective of history yet with a clear call-to-action for her country. I'm not British and also found it exceptional.
"It reminds me of the very first broadcast I made, in 1940, helped by my sister. We, as children, spoke from here at Windsor to children who had been evacuated from their homes and sent away for their own safety."
Indeed, it felt like a safe, reassuring voice in a sea of panic. A voice that had been heard for decades and for me at least, represented that “keep calm and carry on” mentality. RIP
Thank you for giving this perspective. I admit my aversion towards monarchy has inclined me to ignore news of the royal family. I also perceive a correlation between tabloid coverage and triviality. I admit neither of these are good reasons to discount the Queen's impact on people, much of which was in spite of a general preference for democratic rule.
Imagine being groomed to do this job from birth, with no real way to opt out[1]. You wanted to breed horses, become a blacksmith or start a business? Get that nonsense out of your head, you're a princess!
Then, when you're 25, your daddy dies aged only 56 and after a rather brief period of mourning you get pushed into taking his job in a pompous ceremony. Now you're going to be doing this until you die. No retirement! I bet there were times where Lilibet just wanted to go to her room and cry.
I wouldn't have wanted her job for all the wealth and power that came with it.
[1] Well, you could make a big scandal about marrying an American divorcee, but that didn't go down too well for the last guy.
Monarchs all over Europe bowed out of this bullshit after WW2, so it can definitely be done. The UK monarchs rebranded themselves as "the royal family", at considerable effort and expense, so that they could carry on "enjoying" their lifestyle. Whatever enjoyment might mean in this context, in terms of the personal enjoument of one woman, who knows, and I'm not sure why I'd care either.
> Now you're going to be doing this until you die. No retirement!
If she had wanted to, at some point, abdicate in favour of Charles, that could have been arranged. It would have required a special Act of the UK Parliament (following the prior example of His Majesty's Declaration of Abdication Act 1936) [0] – and probably also supporting legislation in the other Commonwealth Realms (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, etc) – but no doubt the governments of the Commonwealth Realms would have obliged. It was her own decision that she did not want that. I would not be surprised if, in another 10 or 15 years, King Charles III makes a different decision, but we shall see. In recent years, monarchs abdicating due to advanced age has become rather common – the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Luxembourg, Japan, among others.
The only recent abdication in UK history (and maybe the only voluntary one ever?) put her father and herself in line to the throne, dragged the monarchy and the rest of the UK's system of government through a major public scandal, and caused serious damage to the royal family. Because of all that, I doubt she would have considered abdicating herself.
That was all about the reason for that particular abdication though, not the act of abdication itself. I can't see why it would have caused any scandal or damage for the monarch to abdicate due to ill health or old age, and other European monarchs have abdicated for similar reasons without scandal.
(Spain is somewhat of an exception, but Juan Carlos' abdication was linked to corruption allegations over shady business dealings in Saudi Arabia; I very much doubt Elizabeth had any such skeletons lurking in her closets.)
> I very much doubt Elizabeth had any such skeletons lurking in her closets.
Her son and heir has literally been accepting suitcases full of cash from middle east despots (nominally for his charity), and her other son was up to his neck in Epstein's dealings. I wouldn't be so sure.
The idea is that another abdication, even if it wasn't driven by an underlying scandal, would have sowed a perception of instability in people's minds, associated the concept of "Royal Family" with chaos or drama, and might have led to the fall of British Monarchy. I genuinely think she didn't feel like that was even an option.
The Dutch monarchy has seen two abdications in recent decades (Juliana in 1980 and Beatrix in 2013), and I'm not aware it has caused any damage to the institution. I think they've even come to expect it – King Willem-Alexander is 55 now, both his mother and grandmother abdicated in their 70s, it seems likely in another 15–20 years he will follow their example, and pass the throne to Catharina-Amalia (who is only 18 now, but will be in her 30s by then).
So, if the Dutch monarchy can survive it, why not the British? I think you are probably right about her own attitudes to the topic, likely irreversibly marked by the events of 1936. But I'd be surprised if the same is true of her son or grandson.
Completely different. The risk with the British Royalty is that the Queen is Queen of many Kingdoms. While England may still be pro-monarchy, some of these kingdoms and territories are more split down the middle. You only need one to switch, and proclaim itself a Republic, and that would severely increase the risk of more proclamations, in a domino effect. Domestically you'd have comparisons to the fall of the British Empire, and opinion may shift more against royalty domestically as a result.
Note that this scenario may still happen, but she was extremely lucid to realize its salience:
> dragged the monarchy and the rest of the UK's system of government through a major public scandal, and caused serious damage to the royal family.
The damage in both cases were mainly to their pride. If that was all she risked, I'm not impressed. Her uncle Edward was a literal Nazi, and yet even he was willing to give up power to marry the woman he loved.
But it could of course be that she risked more than that. What keeps elderly rulers clinging to power is often the knowledge that they and their close ones has done some very bad things, and that the descent may not be so graceful if they let go willingly.
You could absolutely abdicate. You could, if you really believed in democracy, peacefully dissolve the monarchy. I understand that that would have meant losing many members of her family, and I understand on a personal level why she would not choose to do that.
She did go beyond simply maintaining the monarchy - she worked to influence legislation to, among other things, hide her personal wealth, give her and her family an exemption from seatbelt laws, and make it easier to lease land for development. Pretty minor issues all things considered, probably much more mild than the average MP, but it does not sit right with me given that she was unelected and in office for life.
Abdication and eradication of the monarchy is the only thing compatible with human rights and equality she could've done. If she wanted to get a job that's all there was to do.
It is part of the human condition to feel positive emotions for a well-known person even if their role throughout history is based on an antiquated belief such as the divine right of kings.
- She ruled for 30% of the time since the American Revolution
- She oversaw the largest reduction of landholdings of any empire in the history of the world. Notable because it was also one of the most peaceful transitions in history -- Australia, Canada, South Africa, Israel, Egypt, etc.
- She oversaw the loss of Sterling the world reserve currency and the rise of another (the USD, EU).
> She oversaw the largest reduction of landholdings of any empire in the history of the world. Notable because it was also one of the most peaceful transitions in history -- Australia, Canada, South Africa, Israel, Egypt, etc.
The peaceful diminishing of an empire should be remembered as one of the most remarkable achievements during her reign, a striking contrast to world leaders past and present who seek the reverse.
I'm curious if they'll be splitting the monarchy between the children or keeping it consistent. Government could actually change quite a bit at this point across much of the west.
I'm not sure what GP is speculating about either but as for succession, AFAIK sovereign countries in the commonwealth have their own rules. The head of state of Canada was not the Queen of England, it was the Queen of Canada, and theoretically nothing would stop the heir to those positions being different. In fact this was momentarily a topic of conversation in Canadian news outlets as the UK was talking about changing the rules of succession to be gender neutral and whether that would make for different heirs if the rest of commonwealth didn't change their rules in step. In practice that was moot since Prince William's firstborn was male.
They are separate, but the different countries have agreed to keep them coordinated. You're right that there was a conversation about the change to absolute primogeniture, with the different realms having to agree to pass the necessary legislation. If one realm had not agreed I suspect the change wouldn't have happened, rather than the succession being split.
That said, there is precedent. Victoria didn't inherit Hanover, which had been in personal union with the UK, because it had different succession laws (which excluded women). So it's just a matter of political will really.
Ironically that is one of the first times I've seen lose/loose stand true for either interpretation.
She didn't lose her royal power when handing over those landholdings, nor did she loose it (militarily) to prevent those reductions in the first place.
In essence Westminster Parliament lost its power, but the Royal Family remained unaffected in many cases.
There was little for the Royal Family to adjust to.
They were the sovereigns of those nations, if independent from the UK. They still "appoint" the PMs of those countries and have a fair amount of political influence via governors.
- At least in the US, Canadian diplomatic residences are owned by her. Where I live, the owner of the consulate general's home is listed in public records as "Her Majesty the Queen Right Canada".
Here's another example from a few years ago:
> Charlie Zelle confirmed Wednesday he has purchased a five-bedroom, five-bathroom Minneapolis lakeshore home that has been the official residence of the Canadian consulate general.
> Records show Charles and Julie Zelle paid $1.65 million US for the property, with the seller listed as "Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth."
This lady represents British military violence to millions of black and brown people around the world. I don't understand why people, especially the British, aren't ashamed of this person.
What a dark and sad way to respond - so crimes perpetrated against people only matter if the victim is blameless?
People who think like you will support new genocides in the future. I hope, for humanity's sake, that you are out-numbered by those of good conscience.
It is not about how they behaved at that point in time of history. It is what do they about it since then about it.
Tens of thousands of artifacts never returned to the countries from which it was taken including Crown jewels like Kohi-noor, or how Meghan was treated, views on reparations, or preserving the legacy of empire[1] and still holding on to being head of state of so many countries and all the privileges they have fought to keep their way of life - A president does not withhold signing a law to negotiate special exemptions for his family (see Royal Consent abuses)
I don't think the UK is the only country that has items from conquered nations. It just has the most.
And given that the UK ended the slave trade, to whom should reparations be paid?
Megan was treated very well indeed, until she decided to turn on the British people and the Royal Family.
The Royal Family aren't forcing countries to keep them as the head of state. In fact she's been removed from a few I believe. Of course, a lot of the countries that are doing this are chasing Chinese money, and just swapping one "coloniser" for another.
As a Brit I'm not a huge fan of the royal family on principle, but Queen Elizabeth has been such an excellent head of state for us you really can't fault her.
People like to make out her life was easy and that it's not fair that she inherited such a privileged position, but I think the exact opposite. Her life seemed like living hell to me. Every day for the last 70 years she's had to serve this largely ungrateful country, and she did so without complaint. Even in her 90s she took her duties extremely seriously, and I respect the hell out of her for that.
It was only a couple of days ago she invited our new PM to Balmoral Castle to form a government. She was clearly looking weak and it's been no secret that she's been struggling to fulfil her duties as Queen for a while, but even just two days before her death at the age of 96 she put on the performance that was expected of her. And she did this practically every day of her life.
RIP. I doubt anyone will ever live up to her legacy. Despite all the problems I have with the royal family, I couldn't feel more pride that she was our Queen.
As a Canadian (and we tend to be staunchy more anti-monarch over here) I agree whole heartedly. Her reign was pretty much entirely inoffensive, she tried to use her powers to promote good things while staying out of the running of any of the commonwealth governments.
I think being a monarch as prominent as Queen Elizabeth is a hard job mostly because there is very little you can do right and a whole lot you could do wrong. She avoided doing much wrong for her reign and I think she was an ideal monarch for the modern democratic age.
Support for the monarchy among all Canadians[0] isn't very different than support for the monarchy among the youngest Brits[1].
Which makes sense, to me. The Canadian experience of the world wars and subsequent decades was decidedly different than the British experience, and the role that Elizabeth played, though meaningful, wasn't as important to our cultural identity. But now that those wars are generations past, and both nations have enjoyed relative peace and comfort for some decades, the sentiments toward the monarchy are beginning to align.
I couldn't disagree with you more. I live in BC (and ONT), and all of us that migrated from the UK are much more pro-monarchy than most brits back in the homeland.
I assume he means natural-born Canadians rather than naturalized Canadians.
That said, I think his statement is not quite accurate. Very few people are aware of (or think about) the monarchy at all, and of the ones that are, very few of them actually care one way or the other about it. Of those, I'm sure most agree that the monarchy is pointless, but unlike in the UK we don't spend a whole lot of money on it so in reality no one really cares much except on principle.
> ...I'm not a huge fan of the royal family on principle, but Queen Elizabeth has been such an excellent head of state for us...
This is a vastly underappreciated aspect of government, and of human social institutions in general. The principles-on-paper version of something can be mediocre, or just plain horrid. But if the actual people running things are sufficiently capable and caring, the on-paper failings doesn't much matter.
Flip-side, even a perfect-on-paper system, implemented with incompetent & uncaring people in charge, will be crap at best.
I would frame the above comment as this question: If the form of government is chosen first and the people that fill the roles are chosen later, which government(s) are statistically more likely to serve their people and to what degree?
> People like to make out her life was easy and that it's not fair that she inherited such a privileged position, but I think the exact opposite. Her life seemed like living hell to me. Every day for the last 70 years she's had to serve this largely ungrateful country, and she did so without complaint. Even in her 90s she took her duties extremely seriously, and I respect the hell out of her for that.
She wasn't doing it from the kindness of her heart. This was her job, she was obscenely rich off of taxpayer money and she could retire any second she wanted to. You make it sound like she was sentenced to sign paperwork for her entire life, when the reality is she consciously chose to do so every day and in exchange she and her family was granted an immense wealth. It's not even remotely something that would warrant complaint. I'm not saying this to be snarky, just pointing out that although maybe parts of her job was boring, stressful, and unfulfilling, this is what she signed up for. And her "compensation" was unimaginable amount of money and power in the form of interpersonal relations.
The Crown Estate is not the private property of the Windsor family though. It is more akin to the wealth of a parallel state. One could speculate that in the event of the abolition of the monarchy the Crown Estate would be taken over by the government (at the very least not become Windsor family private property), in effect making it the taxpayers' property.
I think it's totally fair to feel that they have a life of immense luxury and privilege off of wealth that belongs to the people, while so many people in this country are wondering if they'll have heating this winter.
Again this is something I assume that must have been very frustrating too. She couldn’t just say “that’s not right” and intervene because that’s not within her remit in a democratic system.
I can’t begin to imagine how many times she must have had to bite her tongue over the last 73 years.
No, they actively lobbied over the years of her reign to preserve their economic benefits. They enjoyed this luxury and made attempts at preserving and expending it. Elizabeth was not a passive victim of her birth circumstances.
>Elizabeth was not a passive victim of her birth circumstances.
It's so strange that this even needs to be said out loud. It's not edgy to say that someone born into her position has benefitted from it. For a place that claims to be a meritocracy, the UK has some strangely dissonant beliefs.
The Crown Estate is owned by the government, so it could be used to reduce taxes or increase spending if it weren't used to support the Royal Family. So indirectly, the money comes out of taxpayers' pockets.
My understand is that the Crown Estate is owned by the Crown, personified by the Monarch. Also, it's NOT used to fund the Monarch directly, instead all profits from the Estate go to the Treasury, which in turn pays a percentage of that back to the Monarch, for the purpose of running the Monarchy.
I'm not sure if it is in any way clearly defined what should happen to the Estate should Britain choose to become a Republic, but I suppose the actual result would be that it would be taken over completely by the government.
But _formally_ it is still considered property of the Monarch.
It's the property of the Crown, which is legally a corporation sole with the monarch as the sole 'member' of the corporation. It means, for example, that Charles gets Buckingham Palace and the crown jewels automatically by operation of law on becoming king, rather than via Elizabeth's will. A similar arrangement applies to Anglican vicars who have the freehold of their church - it's owned by 'The Vicar of Bray' rather than by Rev Smith.
It's generally understood by constitutional scholars that the Crown is essentially governmental rather than private and the Crown Estate would go with the government rather than the royal family if the assets were split up on the creation of a republic.
The Queen also had extensive private wealth, including Balmoral Castle which (unlike the royal places) was hers personally rather than as monarch. IIRC it was bought privately by either Victoria or Albert rather than via the Crown Estate. This mattered after the abdication of Edward VIII, where the property of the Crown passed to George VI as the new king, but the private possessions of Edward stayed with him. I think Balmoral and Sandringham had to be bought off him so they would stay as royal residences. Presumably most of that private wealth will be bequeathed to Charles, though we won't find out: the Queen's will is, uniquely, private by statute.
She didn't really "sign up" for it though. She was born into it in 1926. It's not like 2022 where she could've said "yeah, not for me, I'm moving to Santa Barbara". I don't see how she had any choice but to do what she did, and by all accounts she did it well.
What do you mean? Edward VIII abdicated in order to marry Wallis Simpson. Not to mention countless other people born into royal families not only in European kingdoms, but also kingdoms throughout the world. Yes they were (in varying degrees) pressured to respect the line of succession but if Elizabeth II wanted to retire 10 years ago she would be able to.
And he wasn't treated very well by his family as a result either. So you're kinda choosing between your family and leaving. Not saying you should always pick family, but for a young 20 something year old girl, that can be quite the ultimatum.
Most people end up doing something or other their family disapproves of - it's not some unusual hardship of adult life that outright prevents you from doing things. In his case, being both a doofus and a bit of a Nazi cut off the possibility of future family reconciliation. I suppose there's a line even in royal families.
You think she enjoyed the trappings of wealth? I never had that impression. And no, she didn't "sign up for it", she became Queen as a result of birth. Yes, she could have abdicated but the fact that she chose duty is to her credit. She was not faultless, but it's difficult to imagine another monarch doing a better job. I say all this as an anti-monarchist. I don't want one, but if we have to have one, she was the best.
If you can quit a job but you choose not to do so, in what sense did you not "sign up for it"? Her own uncle Edward VIII abdicated so he can marry Wallis Simpson without controversy. This has nothing to with anti-monarchism, I'm just pointing out that she was the queen only through her own free will.
>If you can quit a job but you choose not to do so, in what sense did you not "sign up for it"?
>she became Queen as a result of birth.
It is true that failing to live up to her responsibility was a path she could have chosen. She did not, and that is greatly to her credit. Choosing not to abandon your responsibility is a far cry from "signing up for it."
Her responsibility to be a rich and powerful figurehead for a colonial empire? I don't see how choosing that was to her credit. Isn't it better to value something more than your own family's power and prestige?
There's a massive difference between signing up for your dream job and being handed a responsibility with the right to abdicate it if you don't mind causing a constitutional crisis and still being stuck with the media obsessing over you.
Technically, I can take drastic action to negate things I received as an accident of birth if I don't mind getting flak for doing it, but it makes no sense at all to claim that on that basis my parents, physical appearance or manhood were all stuff I signed up for of my own free will.
If tomorrow some guy from a small remote and completely obscure island came to you and told you're the last in the royal bloodline and need to reign the SNBXIHWJ people, leave your life and everything you own to come to their survival island and sit on the throne, you'd probably give them the middle finger.
In our current world wealth and royalty is preserved by free will and is nothing comparable to your manhood (which you can also give up if you want to, people do)
> If tomorrow some guy from a small remote and completely obscure island came to you and told you're the last in the royal bloodline and need to reign the SNBXIHWJ people, leave your life and everything you own to come to their survival island and sit on the throne, you'd probably give them the middle finger.
Sure, I wouldn't necessarily be up for a lifestyle change involving playing Survivor with consonant-loving maniacs I wasn't actually related to and have never heard of before! However the Queen's situation is the exact opposite: she had a life built around being heir to the throne and whilst it was technically possible to give the middle finger to everyone in her life instead of fulfilling the role she'd been assigned at birth, that's a bit different from implying monarchy was the job she wanted or even a net positive.
Odd that a subthread which started with someone praising the late Queen for choosing not to run away from obligations requires so many followups pointing out that she could have run away from them...
> your manhood (which you can also give up if you want to, people do)
Well yeah, that was the point. You can change almost anything you're born with; the ability to give something up [at significant cost, and without necessarily getting a better alternative] clearly isn't remotely sufficient to describe it as something you "signed up for".
> Odd that a subthread which started with someone praising the late Queen for choosing not to run away from obligations requires so many followups pointing out that she could have run away from them...
This goes in pair. You praise someone for the choices they make, it doesn’t make sense if it wasn’t a choice at all in the first place.
I think she was a brilliant and intelligent person, she proved it in so many occasions, and she didn’t become Queen or stayed for so long just because of social pressure and “daddy told me to”. So yes, I’m assuming it was a net positive for her, and that she dedicated her life to something she wanted to do.
Sure there are many shitty parts coming with the throne and the toxicity surrounding the whole royalty system, but I give be the benefit of the doubt on having done the right choices in her life.
The easiest choice of all would have been to take up the role of monarch but decline to keep her opinions to herself or do stuff she couldn't be bothered with. The talk of her "signing up for it" upthread was all aimed at dismissing the notion that performing the role well was praiseworthy, as if they were responsibilities she'd actively looked for rather than merely been given.
He was pressured not to marry Wallis Simpson. If he married her it would have been a constitutional crisis, so in order to prevent that controversy, he abdicated and married Wallis Simpson. He could have chosen to be the king and not marry her; or he could have married her anyway and embrace the huge controversy. This is why I said "he abdicated in order to marry Wallis Simpson without controversy".
No, he was pressured not to marry an American divorcee (with two living ex-husbands). That led to his abdication - doing otherwise would have led to a constitutional crisis. He was rumored to be a Nazi sympathizer, but that wasn’t the direct cause of his abdication.
I feel like the timing is important in that story, and often underemphasized. Edward was pressured not to marry a married (and arguably not separated) American woman he was in some form of relationship with, who was willing to divorce her current husband in order to marry him. Simpson didn't file for divorce until after George died, and the cause of divorce is widely understood as having been orchestrated to allow her to marry Edward. The divorce was not finalized until well after the abdication.
While, technically, the constitutional crisis would have been caused by him marrying a divorcee and being the head of a state religion that didn't approve of remarriage with living ex-spouses, the circumstances were likely important in motivating a hard stance on the policy: it involved the sort of situation that an apologist might have given as an example of why remarriage should not be allowed. Even current Church of England rules would not allow the marriage.
It is interesting that the story is often simply portrayed as him wanting to marry a American divorcee, likely leading to the sense in many readers unfamiliar with the circumstances that he wanted to marry someone who simply had had prior marriages, quite possibly with ex-husbands who were still in the US.
Not directly, but for that reason it was a massive relief for the govt when he did abdicate and they could "exile" him and his wife and their Nazi sympathies somewhere far away.
Basically he never wanted to be King, and seemed totally unsuitable for it anyway.
Edward VIII abdicated at the end of 1936, almost three years before the start of the second world war. At that time being a Nazi sympathizer was still perfectly respectable in much of British high society. I think possibly you are getting the timeline slightly mixed up.
You're right I had the timeline between abdication and "exile" condensed in my head. But by govt relief I wasn't referring to High Society but the functional bureaucracy of govt and intelligence services etc.
I recall (possibly faulty memory) from a documentary I watched once, that the bureaucracy stopped providing him with certain daily government briefing documents out of fears for national security.
I admire the queen if only for the masterful job she's done at convincing the masses that she is a victim of circumstance rather than the quintessential purveyor of privilege
to be fair those are entirely theoretical powers, the second any of that become a legitimate issue parliament can remove them. Just ask King Charles I about how well sovereign immunity saves the monarch from criminal prosecution.
Completely theoretical. Actually no member of the British royal family has ever been in a situation where the common man would rote in jail for life and got away scot-free. It was all my imagination these past few years.
This. Her personal wealth would already have been astronomical even without the Crown Estate.
She could have retired 40 years ago and never worked another day in her life if she’d wanted to. Charles would still have been King and her family would have been no worse off.
The Royal Family in the UK is unusual in that it generates more money in tourism for the UK than they take in. Probably due to so many people being interested in the British royal family.
For one thing, the Queen was rich for a list of complex reasons that largely have to do with hereditary properties and assets stretching back centuries. It's not as cut and dried as "taxpayer expense". Yes, the monarchy as an institution benefits from certain public resources, just as do all institutions in all major countries, but it doesn't do so to any obscene degree compared to a vast range of other public projects and organizations that waste enormously while being much better funded. Any major head of state also benefits enormously from taxpayer money in all sorts of ways and lives daily in the lap of luxury with enormous resources spent on his or her security, personal living "needs" and any trips they make. Despite this, I see little complaint about that much larger source of taxpayer money being spent.
There seems to be a reflexive, emotional and partly irrational hatred of the UK monarchy spending heavily and having assets and money, along with certain public benefits (which by the way are carefully circumscribed) by people who barely bat an eye at the fact that the absolute largest sources of resource and tax spending on a vast range of immensely expensive but often wasteful and even pointless things are perfectly modern government institutions that have nothing to do with monarchs. It's an absurd sort of blindness.
What the UK government spent on the idiocy of the Iraq War alone far exceeds all public funds given to the Monarchy in decades, but hey, let's complain about Elizabeth and the castles that have been in her family for centuries.
I'm pretty sure she didn't do it for the money but from some sense of moral duty. Don't forget, she took reign right after one of the worst wars in history.
Was it moral duty or was it wanting to have her name at the top of the list of longest reigning monarchs? It’s interesting that she died not too long after hitting that mark, almost as if she was just holding on to get there and then let herself die.
7 years after hitting that mark. I think the death of her husband last year has more to do with it than “yay, I got to the top of the list so now I can die”.
This is simply semantics. She was clearly given tons of property, real estate, airplanes, vehicles and means to access goods&services only because she was the queen; including the very estate she passed away in: Balmoral Castle.
She was rich because she was part of the royal family; it's not the case that she was part of the royal family and then independent of that had private wealth. There was never a possibility of her being poor as long as she was the queen.
Balmoral Castle is owned by the family, not the Crown unlike other residences like Buckingham Palace. She was head of state. It's not uncommon for heads of state to have houses, cars, planes etc. for their use as part of the job provided by the government. Even for ceremonial ones. Should she have entertained other world leaders in a one room flat?
It was literally her job as head of state. That's part of what heads of state do. Now, being antimonarchist is a fine thing - I'm one - but not having an understanding of the duties of a head of state, elected or not, is a whole other thing.
I respect /u/dang's request not to go in monarchy bashing, but as a result I see lots of "praise her reign" on top.
> she consciously chose to do so every day and in exchange she and her family was granted an immense wealth
This! Saying that wealth and status is a burden for XYZ always elicits a "but they can give it all up in a singe day if they want to" response from me.
It's my fault for not being clearer, but it was so obvious to me that my point had nothing to do with monarchy, and only with lame internet flamewars, that I never thought of being taken it this way.
I couldn't care less which side you guys are on re monarchs! If you want to make thoughtful critique, go for it. Just remember that the bar for that is rather high when it comes to a topic so filled with bombast as this one.
The idea that we'd be trying to preserve the royalist status quo and the elegance of railway travel is just so silly that I can't believe I have to say that. Clearly it was my mistake, though—that was no splash-free dive.
Can they though? I mean, yes, they can give away the wealth and status, but the burden, mainly being constantly the focus of the public eye, would that really go away?
Don't get me wrong, I am not a fan of dictatorships or monarchies. But if you compare how she handled it, compared how to others did in similar situations, she handled it well.
Yeah it seems pretty one sided to me. If you are going to put in a request to not "bash" the monarchy, then you should have a similar request not to "praise" it.
If someone says bashing the powerful is malignant but praising the powerful is benign, you have a pretty good idea of how they sit in relation to the (horribly insecure) powerful.
Ok I'm sorry if this is considered "monarch bashing", I don't see how that's the case. I just pointed out that she did this voluntarily (as evidenced by countless other people who were born into royal families and chose to skip the line of succession).
I did not mean to say you were bashing. (Believe me I love bashing monarchy, also when others do it).
I found your point valid. Where other al say she was had no choice and did well under circumstances. I rather saw her end the monarchy all together, or at least step out of it herself.
I think the point here is that her wealth being mostly private (or enough of it being private not being a specialist in those matters), the way she carried her duty was even more remarkable.
You could easily imagine somebody inheriting similar wealth and not behaving nearly as well as she did for her country.
I do not think it is about being pro or against monarchy here.
Legally their may be a distinction but the monarch's wealth was ultimately taken from the people and maintained via favourable tax laws - there's no inheritance tax on a monarchs estate, she didn't pay income tax etc.
If you think that Queen Victoria, head of the largest empire the world has ever seen and who purchased Balmoral, got rich by skimping on taxes, then I’d recommend taking some time to read a book or two.
I don't think their comment was arguing that at all, and in fact it seems like an indefensibly uncharitable interpretation.
> ultimately taken from the people and maintained via favourable tax laws
Taken from the people and maintained via favorable tax laws. UK inheritance tax is 40% (over the threshold, which is so low as to be meaningless next to the royal estate). With 5 royal deaths since Victoria, Charles III would have less than 8% of what he actually does if that 40% were taken each time (which is obviously vastly oversimplifying to make a point).
I do not approve of concepts like a ruling family, and favor mobility- but I have slowly come to appreciate the value of being groomed for a responsibility your entire life. I am not sure such dedicated & devout public servants come about naturally.
In the context of the modern British crown, the "ruling" is far more ceremonial than substantive. Similar for most other surviving European royal families.
The idea that the UK monarchy is largely ceremonial and just a boon for tourism is an incredibly prevalent idea but apparently just good PR. We've learned the monarchy has extensively interfered with the UK's parliament legislative process and done so covertly:
Technically the monarch has the power to veto laws that they disagree with instead of signing them in the UK, but in practice that hasn't happened since the 18th century.
I think with that wording it's easy to slip into thinking that a person's lineage has anything to do with their suitability to be educated for a specific role or how well they may perform in that role.
Nothing arises "naturally"; It's the education and access to vast support resources that creates exceptional people, and if you want more of those, you should want to ensure that the greatest number of people have access to enough resources that anyone can have a chance to make the most of their inborn advantages (whatever they may be) regardless of the circumstances of their birth.
I don't know why random selection is considered the gold standard for jury, yet most peoples look at you like you're some kind of deranged fool if you seriously propose "randomocracy" as a form of governance.
Sortition would be a better approach - elect a list of people who are all "good enough" and then choose randomly from them.
Constitutional monarchs do have their uses; it's good that someone can fire the head of government, especially if the people can invest in the head of state instead.
The US should have one picked from the top 10 Spotify chart. Even if half of them are Canadian.
Well said. I'm an American and have little attachment to royalty, but have the deepest respect for Queen Elizabeth's dedication to duty. How someone could endure performing day in and day out for so long is truly admirable.
Agree with what you say. But your job, however hard it might be, is more palatable when you have people at your call and when you’re insanely rich. Contrast this with the lady at CVS near my home - she is at least in her 70s, looks frail and tired all the time. It is sad that she has to work at her age.
Money doesn’t solve all problems. It sure makes them less horrible though.
All that said, the queen was an impressive human. 70 years is a long time. I’d be bored in 3 years and quit
Btw, whilst Hong Kong has fallen and hence I do not expect much there the Hong Kong people like her very much. Called her the “Bossy Granny” and even with a sony on 1997 naming her as the righteous friend that help Hong Kong to trade well by being on the coin, always young and bring prosperity.
seems, if she was really good at her job and service... they'd be more grateful and less ungrateful. I mean, a truly great king or queen would live in a normal cottage home, without servants other than maybe a bodyguard or two.
It's a life of 'Duty' not a life of 'Arbitrary Wealth'.
It's not exactly poverty, but the 'classist' arguments, to the extent they are rooted in 'wealth distribution' are ridiculous and naive with respect to Constitutional Monarchies.
The 'Head of State' gets a nice home, oh well, it's a drop in the bucket.
That's fundamentally different than some fat oligarch.
BTW Charles will be a fine King. He's nerdy and awkward and everyone loved the beloved Dianna because she was pretty and breezy, which is fine, but I don't believe that 'Instagrammable' qualities are those that fill the role.
She was remarkable in so many ways and I in no way envy the life she had to live. The sense of duty she had, the poise and character she had - it's just so much it's hard to believe she did it all as well as she did with nary a crack when there was certainly unlimited opportunities for them.
If there is a Kingdom of God, I'm guessing God himself may be asking her for a tip or 2 right about now.
Can't the Brits abolish royalty, how they abolished slavery?
We could. We won't, not yet.
I say this as a Brit in favour of an elected head of state. It's probably best we get out of the Brexit quagmire first, before we set off another political crisis that splits the country in two.
I used to be a staunch republican but I’m not so sure where I stand now. Look at what happened in America with Trump. The US came somewhat close to having a total takeover of the government by one party/individual e.g. a dictatorship.
In the UK, our Armed Forces actually pledge alliance to the monarch, not the government. And the monarch is meant to stay out of all politics. In theory, if a prime minister/government decided to go rogue and try to become a dictatorship, the monarch is a last line of defence that can stand in the way and restore order.
Of course one could argue that the monarch is in fact the dictator you’re trying to stop, or that there’s nothing to stop a monarch of bad moral character from becoming a dictator. Both systems have their strengths and weaknesses. But I no longer look as poorly at Constitutional Democracies as I once did or Republics as richly.
With a Republic you’re basically playing the “wisdom of numbers” card, and hoping that through the various votes, from party elections through to national elections, a person of decent enough moral character is elected into the highest position of power. With the British system, you’re putting faith that the strict rules, customs and ceremonies that dictate the education and behaviour of the Royal Family translate into monarchs that have the moral character to deal with the position. With Liz that worked out extraordinarily well. If it had been someone like Prince Andrew, probably not so much.
When seen through this lens, the pomp and ceremonies stop looking archaic and quaint and start to make a bit more sense. It’s why there’s such a massive divide between the Meghan/Harry camp and the Royal Family. Meghan and Harry see the strict protocols as constricting the individual and they’re completely right. However, that’s the whole point, the member of the royal family is meant to be constrained and molded into the function they’re meant to perform in service of the people as the individual instinct runs the greatest risk of turning the monarch into a dictator.
I would say this is the defining factor between US and UK culture and why there has always been a bit of confusion and misunderstanding of each other, going right back to the war of independence; America values that individual dream more than anything else whereas the Brits distrust it because of its potential dark side to tyranny. Brits gloss over the mental health issues (stiff upper lip) that accompany giving up your individual dreams in favour of slotting neatly into your allocated function in the class system and the Americans gloss over that chasing dreams can sometimes end up being purely self serving.
Based on current trends, the UK (and the world) is trending more towards the US way of things, driven primarily by technology and the internet. 30 years ago, if you wanted to watch anything on TV tonight your only option would have been coverage of the Queen’s death, which is mandated to run on all channels. This would have formed a pretty formidable “group mourning mentality” or “collective consciousness”. Today that is diluted somewhat by the fact that you can stream whatever you want whenever you want; the group no longer holds as much power over the individual.
It’s this ideological and psychological component that I actually think is an argument in favour of Republics or at least reforming the monarchy to enforce retirement at a certain age. Is it really fair to expect someone to dedicate their entire life in service of the people? Elizabeth did it from 25 to 96. She was literally performing duties 48 hours before her death. It’s an almost superhuman level of public service, like Frodo carrying the ring, and we shouldn’t really be asking anyone to do it for their entire lives. Even Sam had to carry it the final distance through Mordor. The woman deserved a rest. But then she loved doing it which is what made her such a great queen.
So, adding an update. It’s now 10 days later and the Queen’s funeral is on television as I type this. Whilst I still think she did a good job, it was just that: a job. The last ten days have been filled with incessant and insufferable media brainwashing, ceremonies which look like cosplays, protestors being arrested on flimsy charges, a stupid queue which could have been eliminated by technology and just general nonsense. It all feels very North Korean.
The whole experience has knocked me off the fence and placed me firmly in the republic camp. It has solidified my resolve to leave the UK and start afresh somewhere else which aligns with my philosophical values. I am of the belief that the UK (or more specifically England, I think Scotland and Northern Ireland might break free of this mess soon, not as sure on Wales) is so fixated on the past that it is going to end up eating itself, especially with the technology that’s coming down the pipeline. The mindset that allows this broken system to continue (group think, fixation on the past) is fundamentally opposed to that which technology represents (individual thought, focus on the future) on a deep, deep level. You’re beginning to see it now with stuff like Rees-Mogg’s ridiculous attempts to bring back imperial measurements. Change is the only constant in life. Trying to resist it can only end in tears as history has shown time and time again. Unfortunately, they seem to be the only parts of history royalists want to overlook.
She could have abolished the monarchy and quit at any time. Monarchies are inherently undemocratic and she was the head of that undemocratic class system for decades while people suffered under the British empire.
I don’t doubt your sincerity, but these feelings in you and others were intentionally cultivated by decades of propaganda. There is no such thing as a rightful king or queen, and certainly no such thing as someone who rules by divine right.
That is the opposite of the truth. The common law position is usually: "If it's not forbidden it's permitted". You're confusing common law with civil law used in most of Europe
In what way? From mini skirts to punk rock to gay liberation to extinction rebellion to pro- and anti-brexit protests, we seem to be comfortable with challenge. Citation required.
> The dominant paradigm is "if it is not permitted it is forbidden".
Oh gosh. It’s the exact opposite. The a principle of Common Law is ‘everything which is not forbidden is allowed’ (the US for example has done reasonably well on that principle).
The queen (or king) can abdicate but would not have the power to abolish the British monarchy. That's a constitutional change and would presumably take a Parliamentary act.
If she wanted to abolish the monarchy, she could have spurred that change pretty easily I think.
A hell of a way to end the Monarchy would have been to use the royal prerogative to install an anti-brexit Prime Minister a couple years ago (against convention, but that's the point). Presumably that'd be enough to get them to abolish the Monarchy. And it would have been an fitting end to the Monarchy, a legacy of the previous era, to have the Queen, who held it for the current era, expend it's last bit of power to stay in the EU, which might be one of the top players in the next era.
Well that's how it'd be written if it was a movie at least.
I think it’s incredibly naive to suggest that she could have abolished the monarchy just like that.
What about the legal system in the UK/Canada/Australia that have it in constitution that she as a veto to the passing of new laws as a balance.
Could the system be made not to require the monarchy anymore? Sure, it’s purely ceremonial and has been for her entire reign, but to say that the monarch can make that decision at whim on behalf of 15 countries is just not true.
On the contrary, whilst he managed to abolish a monarch, he failed to abolish the institution of the monarchy so spectacularly that people kept offering the crown to him until he died, at which point the original line of succession was restored without any effective objections...
One of the interesting quirks of losing the empire is that there are a lot of precedents for 'Westminster model' countries becoming republics. The straightforward way is to give the reserve powers of the monarch to a mostly-ceremonial President on the Irish or Israeli model, and vest the rest formally in the government (which coincidentally also makes them subject to more parliamentary oversight). In the case of Canada/Australia etc. the Governors-General are already performing such a ceremonial presidency in reality. All that's needed is a process for electing new ones; fairly straightforward.
You're right that it would require international cooperation, though: the British parliament doesn't legislate for the other Commonwealth Realms any more.
I had never considered before what the right course of action for the Queen (and now Charles) would have been, but this is it.
That said, I do think it’s an unrealistic ask of someone who’s entire life and all those around her are dedicated to reinforcing her (absurd) status.
Those I really fault are the BBC who report her term heading this fundamentally antidemocratic institution so uncritically. Monarchy in the UK has majority support, but it is much more evenly split that you would imagine from our media.
Radio 4’s correspondent was on just now fondly telling tales of how the Queen had intervened by “raising an eyebrow” to save a favoured army regiment. If true this should be a national scandal in a constitutional monarchy. That it is reported with so little awareness of the media’s role in entrenching privilege is unforgivable.
It's the head of a faith. It isn't going anywhere, even if every government, military and economic reason for it to exist, vanished.
Ruling by divine right is common and hasn't gone anywhere. Divine rulership hasn't had a real problem to fight in a long time, so we leave the governing up to parliament. Not an absolute parliament, mind you.
I would say that expecting a queen or king to remove his own power and influence by abolishing the monarchy is not very reasonable. If then it's the job of the people.
> She intervened to regrant titles to her paedophile son.
Just curious as to when Prince Andrew's titles were forfeit. I vaguely recall he resigned from public roles, but I don't remember anything about his titles being taken away. Anyway, if true, that is shameful. Any decent, self-respecting parent under similar circumstances would have at the very least abandoned the child to a convent, if not an orphanage.
Please don't post flamewar comments to HN. We ban accounts that do that—I've banned a thwack of them in this thread already, and we've had to ask you about this more than once before. Fortunately I didn't see other cases of that in your recent history. Please stick to posting within the site guidelines and things will be fine.
Not for nothing, but isn’t the post they were responding to equally flame bait? If you’re of the opinion that she had serious faults, claiming without evidence that she was unfaultable is just provoking a fight
claiming she had serious faults is fine. Blaming her and the monarchy for the execrable state of the modern United Kingdom is not. She was the monarch, but Parliament had primacy de jure during her reign. The sad state of affairs in our country is despite her, not because of her.
She had flaws, but far fewer than the various ships of fools inflicted on us by our electoral system over the past decades
Yea but the original comment wasn’t nuanced like that. It was just a declaration of opinion which seems like flamebait to me. I was more bringing it up because only blocking one side of a flamebait war ends up looking like tacit approval of the other side, which then incenses people into even further flamewars
I can turn that on its head: I am no fan of the Windsors, or "Saxe-Coburg and Gotha" as it used to be.
But I think an hereditary head of state is a Good Idea. Democracy is very important. One of the greatest dangers to democracy is majoritarianism. If every stage of the state is chosen by "50% + 1" then it will become a tyranny. (I am not a history scholar, but I believe the USA has plenty of examples of the pitfalls of voting "50% + 1" for every part of the state)
The role of a monarch in a statutory monarchy (one where the law applies to the monarch) is to protect the interests of the minorities.
It is sad that this has partly devolved in England to protecting the rights of aristocratic land holders. That is the risk. But the tyranny of the majority is a terrifying thing.
Ask a black person, a Jew, a queer person...
For all the many faults of her family, and however much I disliked and dislike her and hers, she was Queen for all her subjects, not slicing and dicing to get an electoral advantage, but everybody.
There is like zero evidence that a hereditary ruling class is especially suited for and/or actually has done protecting the minority from majoritarian tyranny. I have no idea how one can hold this position in earnest.
Agreed, I'd even argue that the opposite statement is true. The divide between the top and bottom is wider than ever in the UK.
People grow up in insular little bubbles. Everyone thinks they are the bottom rung on the social ladder. They think "if I'm doing fine then everyone else must be doing much better!" and hand wave away uncomfortable truths. That kind of classism is at the core of British society.
Ironically, I don't think it is always malice, but naivety and rigidity. The monarchy and the nationalist sentiments they have spent decades cultivating have become part of peoples' identity, and it's hard to reason people into changing their identity.
There one type of tyranny the role of a hereditary constitutional monarch with purely symbolic powers protects against is the tyranny of a [hereditary] monarch with significant or unlimited power...
(As well as the constitutional role of the monarch being designed to protect the British public from monarchs, the continued existence of crown-wearing, palace-dwelling hereditary heads of state probably has a little bit of actual positive influence overseas by reminding some hereditary rulers with actual power that keeping fancy titles and wealth is entirely compatible with allow people to elect representatives to do mundane stuff like passing legislation and running the country)
There's certainly no basis for assuming that protecting minorities has ever been part of the role of the British monarchy though. On the contrary, last time we had a monarch with a deep personal interest in protecting a particular minority (James II, Catholics) we got rid of him.
I'm not sure that you're correct. In those examples you state, eventually the majority was on side. It seems that the majority is more often "live and let live" than a minority who seek power to suppress.
There's also the issue of plurality: 50% + 1 might vote one way but they represent a plurality of views. Perhaps if we voted on every policy then it would be worse? Seems hard to justify.
I am sad for her passing. Was tuned into the news all afternoon waiting for the announcement even thought the writing was clearly on the wall and the announcement still made me tear up.
But for all the talk of duty, morals, and leadership I saw none of that in the Queen. I saw a figurehead. Shaking hands and listening but what did she contribute? Definitely not morals or direction.
People talk of her speech in 2020 during Covid in which she spoke about WW2 and how we need to stand together. And for me that just makes me feel that she could have made a huge difference in the global struggles that we are going to face coping with climate change. She could have made a real difference last year or 10 years ago. Or 40 years ago.
Her son has been more vocal about caring for the environment. Is it too much to hope that he will spend some of his influence swaying the new UK PM away from her reactionary pro-fossil fuel agenda. As the climate crisis starts to feel more and more like a existential threat is it foolish to hope for an ally.
> I saw a figurehead. Shaking hands and listening but what did she contribute? Definitely not morals or direction.
But that's her role -- as figurehead. The job is to be a symbol, not a leader. Leading is left to the democratically elected politicians, and for good reason. And it's not the new king's job to sway the PM. It's literally the opposite of his job.
And if you don't think she contributed morals? Her behavior was impeccable. She contributed morals leading by example.
Is the monarch just a figurehead, or a failsafe? I know nothing about UK politics, but sometimes I wonder if sovereign influence would re-emerge if democracy or society were to fail.
I honestly wonder how much actual options she had in her position. The office of king/queen in the UK is both a cornerstone of the country and severely restricted by centuries of history. It might be that her taking any specific kind of political position might have been seen as damage to the democratic system of the uk.
Queen Elizabeth shepherded Britain through one of the longest periods of peace, and stability in our history. I hope King Charles will continue that tradition.
I always remember this letter she wrote in a old copy of Burke's Peerage, on why she was banning the use of foreign titles.
"As chaste women ought not to cast their eyes on any other than their own husbands, so neither ought subjects to cast their eyes upon any other prince than him whom God hath set over them. I would not have my sheep branded with another man's mark; I would not have them follow the whistle of a strange shepherd."
-Queen Elizabeth II 1926 - 2022
God save the Queen. And protect us all from strange shepherds.
My country fought a war so that I wouldn't have to accept that some people are born higher than others, and everything I've learned about the royal family since has been against my will.
States that recognize the British monarch as head of state: 67 mil (UK) + 38 mil (Canada) + 26 mil (Australia) + 5 mil (New Zealand) + others less than mil people = 136+ mil
So pretty close, but this appears to be a correct statement.
The Pope is the monarch of a tiny city state, not of all Catholics. The idea that the Pope has any temporal authority whatsoever is the stuff of anti-Catholic fever dreams.
I'd be surprised if there wasn't. Does QE get credit for former colonies like Canada though? If so that might help.
If you start counting what we'd usually call dictators, there definitely are bigger ones. The monarch/dictator line gets a little blurry and subjective/political I believe.
Elizabeth was the Queen of England, the Queen of Canada, the Queen of Australia, etc., etc., it's the definition of being a Commonwealth Realm. So, at the time of her death, she had about 150 million subjects.
Given that all the countries with more population than that have a constitution and not a sovereign, it's safe to say yesterday she was the most prolific monarch alive.
Arguably the largest change in humanity in a ~100 year span? Especially if we go back to 1922. Mass communication, mass travel, etc. were all non existent.
Like the first radio stations had just started broadcasting when she was born, now we're all discussing her passing on a communications network that connects the entire globe. Possibly some of us while on flights from one side of the world to the other.
> Arguably the largest change in humanity in a ~100 year span?
I don't think so. My grandmother was born in 1900 and died in 2003. Cars, airplanes, electricity, radio, TV, computers, space ships, etc..., all were invented or became commonplace in her lifetime. Queen Elizabeth was born between the birth years of my parents, who didn't remember the "horse and buggy days".
Agree with you. The world today is not much different from the world my grandmother left behind, born ~1900 died ~2000.
Arguably it's not particularly different now than, say, 1995 - 2000, which is the half decade of web search indexes (AltaVisa = 1995) and banner ads (1998 = DoubleClick IPO).
Travel, media, appliances, transportation, Internet, perhaps even music and fashion, haven't as fundamentally changed since then.
I would say that massive adoption of smart phones and social media have been pretty big.
It may not be as big of a leap as no computers -> personal computers or no internet -> internet but I wouldn't say that the world is "not much different" than 2000.
Social media in particular has the potential to be extremely disrupting to society. There are things which seem possible that would have been unthinkable in 2000 like the fall of American democracy. And that sort of societal shift requires more than just the internet. It requires a hyper-online society which is enabled by smartphones and social media.
What surprises me is how little technological progress appears to have occurred in the last decade (ie. 2010-2020). I think you'd be hard pressed to name a decade in the past 50 or even 100 years where the technology available to the masses has advanced so little. Note that I'm excluding things that are still mostly at the research stage, like deep learning, advanced language models, etc., since I don't think those have had much effect on people's lives yet.
First Google hit for technology invented in the 1970s:
The Floppy Disk. ...
Portable Cassette Player. ...
The All-In-One Personal Computer. ...
The Cell Phone. ...
The VCR. ...
The First “Real” Video Game. ...
Digital Wristwatches.
As for social media, "Eternal September" was in 1993. In fact, I noted my grandmother's perception that people putting their thoughts out there was disruptive. In her mind that, like radio or TV that she saw get invented, this was obviously going to suddenly be everyone. So you're saying she was right. But she'd already seen it in the last millennium.
As for "fall of American Democracy", actually, the 1960s and early 1970s didn't feel a whole lot different from the recent summer of discontent, and remember that the LA Riots were 1992. And for someone around since 1900, 'fall of American democracy' was, at several points, not "unthinkable".
In any case, "social media" hundreds of years ago was called "pamphleteering" and, for example, contributed to French Revolution:
I think a lot of this depends on where you are standing. In the West, 1900-1990 was a huge difference in life and how it was lived, and less so between 1990 and today.
In many other places of the world 1900-1990 had much less change in day to day life, whereas 1990-today has been a huge change.
The massive changes have just finally been getting spread around to everyone (still unevenly of course)
Dont underestimate recent changes. Your grandma never saw a smartphone, modern electric car, online food ordering, Netflix nor went on a Tinder hoookup. :)
My Russian great-great-grandmother was born in 1898 and died in 1998. She witnessed tsarist Russia, communist Russia and democratic Russia. That was quite an experience. I always was kind of jealous because she could compare the regimes first-hand.
That's quite a way to put it. Someone living through 1908 - 2008 would've also witnessed the start of Putin's autocratic Russia as he manoeuvred to keep power despite ending his second term.
My great grandmother was born in the Habsburg Empire, her daughter in Nazi Germany, her son in communist Poland, she died in modern polish republic. And she never moved an inch, that's how many different rules and governments had southern poland in her lifetime.
She remember the poland of poles in rural areas and germans and jews in the cities, which is how the entirety of eastern Europe looked like up to the urals. So many different languages spoken by populations for centuries.
She never saw a car or listened to a radio as a child and definitely did not have electricity at home till ww2 ended. When she died there were videochats.
I would argue for 1870-1970. Flush toilets, motors and light bulbs, communication networks ( phones in houses, radio ) did not exist before 1870, but were rapidly being deployed in the decade or two before the Queen's birth in 1922..
A book by Robert J. Gordon from 2015, "The Rise and Fall of American Growth," goes through this in great and fascinating detail. The life of an everyday American in 1870, starting off with the chamber pot and ending with an early bedtime by candlelight, was hard to even imagine by 1940. As he lays it out , life in that year would be familiar to us: toilets and plumbing, mass media via radio & hardcopy webpage (i.e. newspapers), worldwide communication from home (telephone), refrigeration, etc.
I'd say the time from 1830's to about 1930's was the era of greatest change.
The introduction of trains in the early 1800s literally changed the DNA of England. As people started to regularly traveled 100's of miles away from their villages.
The transatlantic cable was carrying millions of messages by the late 1880s.
American history tends to be written in a bubble. Some people in the U.S.A. were using chamber pots in the 1870s, by the 1870s London had a sewer system.
Too often the U.S.A. plays up a fantasy pioneer past. While in the U.S.A. people tend of talk of the 1860s as a time of pioneers and wagons, in large Western European cities Maxwell's Equations were being discussed in mathematics departments.
My grandmother (1900 - 2000, ish), considered "email" (instant letters) and individual people's ability to "publish" on the web for the world to create and consume what any individual thought, as radical and important.
She considered company websites as fancy brochures, but thought individual access to almost free global publishing was astonishing.
I tend to agree with you, if only for that fact that in the span of a single lifetime an individual, as a child, could have stood and watched man fly for the first time, and then as an adult see man land on the Moon.
That last mile problem, getting news from telegraphs to people's homes, was solved by newspapers. e.g. The Daily Telegraph[1] is specifically named for that purpose.
They were printing reports from all over the world.
As an example the modern sporting event the Tour de France was started by a newspaper in 1903 and was reported on daily. That wouldn't really have been viable financially without mass communication. In fact the race exists solely to generate those reports.
There's a very good book called The Victorian Internet that covers early mass communication if you're interested[2].
> A mix of June and 19th, Juneteenth has become a day to commemorate the end of slavery in America. Despite the fact that President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation was issued more than two years earlier on January 1, 1863, a lack of Union troops in the rebel state of Texas made the order difficult to enforce.
> Some historians blame the lapse in time on poor communication in that era, while others believe Texan slave-owners purposely withheld the information.
On the margin, we're comparing 2022 to 1922, 2021-2022 to 1921-1922, &c. There's little question that this span overlaps substantially, probably 80+%, with the 100-year spam of greatest change in humanity, but I think there's a strong argument that, pretty say, 1914-2014 > 1922-2022 (which amounts to that the changes of 1914-1922 were more substantial than those of 2014-2022). Where exactly the optimum is, of course, hard to say, though I do think the 2000s have been on the whole exciting enough that that the next serious cutoffs would be around 1905 or 1903, and not likely in between.
> Arguably the largest change in humanity in a ~100 year span?
1870-1970 (or about that range) probably would be bigger change. That would cover time from before commercial light bulbs to commercial computers[1] and man on the moon. Societally it would include WW1 and the series of Russian revolutions leading to wave of other revolutions in Europe[2], and major advances in Womens' suffrage[3] among other things.
[3] "The Representation of the People Act 1918 saw British women over 30 gain the vote. Dutch women won the vote in 1919, and American women on August 26, 1920, with the passage of the 19th Amendment" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women%27s_suffrage
I would argue that the biggest change came to her parents' generation more or less.
They were born without electricity, and everything it brought, and without cars or planes, and they lived to have pretty much all modern comfort and watch a man on the Moon on TV.
It's always vague statements like that, or something to the effect of "she witnessed some pretty important events", or "she lived for very long". What did she do exactly, of note, in these 75 years? I still don't know.
The UK monarch doesn't rule over most Commonwealth countries. The monarch only rules over the 15 Commonwealth Realms. For example, India and Pakistan are now republics and the monarch doesn't have a role in their governments. Canada, by contrast, is a monarchy and Commonwealth Realm.
The Commonwealth of Nations an association of countries, but the Commonwealth of Nations does not control the government of any member country (even ceremonially). India and Pakistan are members of the Commonwealth of Nations, but are not Commonwealth Realms.
As a Brit who's never really "followed" the Royals - I gotta say this makes me sad. The Queen stood for so much, in such a dignified way. May she rest in peace
As a former Hong Konger from before the handover but has long ago become American, the news also made me sad. I've always maintained a degree of affection for her throughout the years. I think the dignity you mentioned really helped in that.
Was she? Did she? I couldn't place a single example she set for the country, or moral she espoused other than aloofness and politeness. I'm not sure I would count either of those as a moral.
Her behind doors effects on laws and how they would effect her interests may have set an example[0], but not a positive one.
> In a statement, Buckingham Palace said: "The Queen died peacefully at Balmoral this afternoon. The King and the Queen Consort will remain at Balmoral this evening and will return to London tomorrow."
Hearing "The King" in this context will take a long time getting used to.
Yes. Interestingly, though, she was only the 3rd Queen in British history (Edit: Oops, ok, 6th actually. Edit 2: ok the point is that there have been many more kings than queens!). But since her reign was so long there are few people alive who can remember a king on the throne.
By the way, in the otherwise completely unremarkable hobby-writer webnovel "Monroe" (https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/35398/monroe) the queen was a - very popular - side character. After the introduction of "magic" in our universe she got her youth back and started killing monsters using armor and huge sword used by her ancestors hundreds of years earlier, in a sword and magic and levels fantasy universe. The author kept writing chapters about this initially not very important side character after it turned out a lot of readers found the Queen returning to youth and becoming a sword fighting and magic throwing monster killer at least as if not more appealing than following the story's actual main character.
In the Netherlands we changed from queen to king in 2013, and you get used to it quicker than you'd think. There had been queens (rather than kings) since 1890!
I really feel that Charles should at least consider passing on the Crown to his son William. William and Kate are immensely popular. It would be a good thing for Great Britain, British people as well as for the Royal Family. Charles and Camilla are the opposite in terms of respect and popularity to William and Kate, as far as I understand. If Charles does that, he would write himself into the annals of British history. I am not from GB, so I may be misreading the situation.
Democracies are equally as likely, if not more, to put horrendously unqualified and highly dislikable people into power. And I'm not just talking about the most recent president emeritus. Political debates in the US rarely have anything to do with reason, and popularity is both fickle and a poor measure of what is best for the nation.
At least royals receive lifetimes of training for how to be a public figure and head of state.
Many monarchies have been elective[1], and in some, the monarch is often picked from the same family. Even that is a better system than "first-born child".
William has a very young family, pushing him into becoming the monarch would be incredibly detrimental to their lives as a family. The queen was very against abdication in any form
Very true. But I think what is also true, is that he is there to serve his country. And if his country needs him, he could make that decision. I have a feeling that Kate will support that.
I find this an interesting idea. Normally the response is “the whole point of a hereditary monarchy is that you don’t get to choose” and obviously Charles has been champing at the bit for years.
However, there is also the historical idea of the monarch needing to be a good one and keep up their end of the bargain. Interesting times ahead!
Edward 8 had to abdicate to marry outside of the church of England, and Charles is already married outside of the church of England. His abdication wouldn't be weird.
When the new monarch is too young the next suitable person in the line of succession is appointed Regent. But William's kids are too young, Harry doesn't want it, his kids are also too young, and Andrew is a pervert.
So it would go all the way to Beatrice at number nine on the list. Most people don't even know who she is, so I think they'd probably call it quits.
I am a republican i.e. very anti-monarchist but it is a historic moment and I feel sad for some reason. The end of an era. A constant throughout the postwar period in this country. Someone my gran loved too and looked up to, so I feel pretty sad as a Brit.
From one of the commonwealth countries, I don't feel sad and I am not sure how to feel about such news from anyone from the British royal family from that time, they surely must have had an effect on how the world turned out or maybe they didn't (I don't know much about British history and its inner workings). This family was responsible for a lot of pain and suffering world wide, or maybe these members of this family were responsible to put an end to the pain and suffering around the world as the world moved on. In any case, my condolences to the ones greiving.
It's a pity she died. I'm a republican as well. Not British but I'll probably have a hard time getting used to Charles being king after he took Bin Laden's cash.
Whilst I sympathise with people's personal feelings relating to this death it makes me really sad that one privileged and utterly protected and cocooned life has this impact whilst daily we walk by malnourished people on the streets without a second thought.
And that is in the first world countries, god help those in the 3rd world countries.
In Farsi we have a saying, “All the troubles are for the lame.” Bad things are correlated. It’s not fair, but true. People with the most merit are statistically the ones with the most undeserved privilege. Consider the extreme case; unborn people are the most unlucky, and yet nobody even thinks about them much.
Interesting take. Do you believe humans have always had a tendency for apathy to the less fortunate or is it a modern trend to be more apathetic as one gets more self-sufficient in a society that encourages individualism?
Never really thought too deeply about it but I would guess there is a correlation with increasing mobility (commuting, etc) meaning more exposure to this sort of thing and less likelihood to feel responsibility or necessity to act.
World has lost a person of great decency and stability in a time of increasing nationalism and unhinged politicians. Regardless views on monarchy and “the firm’s “ happenings the Queen was a standout beacon of loyalty and commitment that we all could learn from and whom commanded utmost respect from everyone.
I was born in UK but grew up in NZ and now I live in HK and wherever I have been over the decades the Queen is known, recognised and respected. She totally lived her role and the world is a better place for it.
> World has lost a person of great decency and stability in a time of increasing nationalism
Yaa it was real decent of her to pin medals on the parachute regiment who shot down unarmed men in Derry protesting about the internment of political prisoners in concentration camps without trial. But they were "increasing nationalism" (against the nationalism of the foreign English occupiers) so it's ok.
Yea we plebs like to think we’d do better than heads of state when they do terrible things because the pressure of political situations and survival are sooo beneath us.
Spoiler: "Queen Elizabeth II doesn’t even have a driver’s license. As Queen, she doesn’t need one." but "as an Army driver during a war, she knew how to roll along Scotland’s winding roads."
Same as passports; they're issued in her name, thus she doesn't need one.
It's also true that she cannot be prosecuted for any crime except that of treason against the British people, but that's contestable. Since crimes are prosecuted in her name.
"Her Britannic Majesty's Secretary of State requests and requires in the name of Her Majesty all those whom it may concern to allow the bearer to pass freely without let or hindrance and to afford the bearer such assistance and protection as may be necessary."
A passport is document used by other countries, so that really depends on other countries humoring U.K.
She perhaps didn't need one because other countries didn't insist on it when traveling, not because it is issued in her name.
Also the office of Her Majesty is distinct(and all other titles) from the person the queen herself. Monarchs are quite used to that idea, and that is how they award themselves other titles for example.
Same reason why royal name is assumed on ascension and does not have be birth name or her actual birthday is not when royal birthday is celebrated and myriad other things like that .
But theory is not practice. In practice, if King Charles shivved someone in Trafalgar Square tomorrow, crowing about how he can't be prosecuted, what would happen would probably be something like:
- parliament would try to pass a law saying that we were a republic now (or that harry becomes king or whatever)
- charles would refuse royal assent
- parliament would amend the bill to remove the requirement for royal assent for primary legislation and then claim they'd pass it using itself
- people would point out that this is clearly invalid and self-referential
- it would go to the UK supreme court, who would twist themselves into knots to conclude that it's actually fine, because they know as well as anyone else that that's the only conclusion that wouldn't result in riots and the collapse of the state as a liberal democracy
- all the institutions who matter would agree that we're a republic now
You are taking an extreme example. How about if he sexually assaulted an underage girl a la prince Andrew and denied it happened? The same thing that happened to Prince Andrew would happen, ie nothing. The royalty is above the law unless they do something unbelievably stupidly obviously bad and admit it. And it that case they would just claim that one particular royal is crazy and give the power to the next in line.
The king/queen's passport situation is also weird. British passports ask for passage "in the name of Her Majesty", but she theoretically doesn't need one since she can ask herself.
Not to disagree, just to say the phrasing IIRC is that HM 'requests and requires' (that the bearer of the passport be allowed to pass 'without let or hindrance', and so on).
Not all criticism. I posted https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32769925 because the thread was filling quickly with bottom-of-the-barrel stuff at the time. Edit: I mean comments like these (chosen at random):
Once that sort of comments were no longer so prominent, people thought I was asking them to say nice things about the monarchy. It took me a while to realize what was causing the misunderstanding, and once I did I demoted my post. It was basically a victim of its own success.
This is an interesting world event, but I'm confused that it is considered on-topic here on HN. I had thought that non-technical news did not belong on HN.
Can somebody please clarify the guidelines as to what is considered topical?
On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
Off-Topic: [...] If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
I'm aware commenting on moderation/appropriateness of submission is also outside of guidelines, but I think given the gravity of this event and the clear slant evident in top comments resultant from the difficulty of moderation "crap comments" it does seem worth mentioning that this doesn't feel like it belongs here in the HN community.
Statement of my own biases: from a country that suffered the horrific hand of British colonial forces, both preceding and under Elizabeth's rule and finding the comments here repulsive. Positivity can be just as "crap" as ad hominem when expressed with such ignorance.
She was indeed an interesting character, witty, frail yet fierce, out of this time and truly royal.
It’s definitely the end of an era, that makes me a little bit nostalgic.
I have been thinking about this for the past two hours, rewatching the speech she gave at 21. She was hesitant, unsure, obviously unprepared for the death of her father, yet she became a queen at the blink of an eye.
One of my favorite speech, very human, a young lady suddenly realize the weight of her destiny, pledge to put her life, her only life, aside for the rest of her life. She spent the next 70 years being the Queen, no matter what, never complained, never showed any sign of weaknesses, relentlessly performing diplomatic duties.
Being right for 70 years is difficult. I think she genuinely tried.
No they do not and for that very reason we should abolish the monarchy. It is nothing but disappointment and indifference from here on. Go out on a high note I say. It doesn't have to be in the French style, but it also doesn't not have to be in the French style.
William and Kate seem to be following in the Queen's footsteps though - they keep their head down and act dignified. He's the one who's next in line, so the antics of Harry+Megan don't count for much. After all the Royal Family has always had some characters who are more dramatic than others, but people judge it mostly by who sits on the throne.
I do not find anything dignified about William and Kate either being bestowed a title due to the happenstance of the sequence and gender of one’s birth.
Harry and Megan are capitalizing on their circumstances, as are William and Kate.
From the NY Times: "Her personal behavior, unlike that of most of her family, was beyond reproach, never tainted by even the remotest hint of scandal. Elizabeth offered her subjects a mirror of the high moral standards that many might aspire to but most generally fail to attain."
I'm not saying she was a bad person, just that this praise is obviously ridiculously over-wrought. You simply can't reign as Queen of England for 70 years "without even the remotest hint of scandal"
Just last year there was the Guardian investigation that suggested she was trying to hide the true extent of her wealth: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/feb/07/revealed-que... (I've seen other sources disputing it, but one can't argue that this is at least a hint of scandal)
At the same time though, her face is printed on the money. There's wealth and then there's levels far beyond and transcending wealth...The Guardian just loves to stir division, panic, resentment, and chaos – it's all the modern Marxist can do.
I was born in the UK, in 1963. Because of my step-father's love of first-wave UK punk, the first thing I did on hearing this news was to play the Sex Pistol's "God Save the Queen".
It is remarkable how much the Queen's standing has improved during the time since that song (1977). My (UK) family are (as far as I know) staunch republicans, but the last couple of decades have seen all of us soften our disgust with the monarchy as Elizabeth represented it. We might still want the whole concept destroyed, but there is nothing close to the vehemence of Johnny Rotten (Lydon)'s lyrics from that song.
Nevertheless, that is how a bunch of people felt in 1977, and as our memories become even more gilded and rose goggled now that she has died, it may be worth remembering those feelings too:
God save the queen /
The fascist regime /
They made you a moron /
A potential H bomb /
God save the queen /
She's not a human being /
and There's no future /
And England's dreaming
These days, I think even us staunch republicans/anti-monarchists would begrudgingly admit that "She could have been worse" and that she actually was a human being.
Maybe Charles will have the guts to end it all, but it doesn't seem likely.
I was wondering if he would appear here, and yes, that makes sense. England was his great theme and the anger in those songs had a lot to do with injured love ("I thought it was the UK").
Be very careful what you wish for. As a French, living under the rule of an elected monarch who changes often, but doesn't answer to anyone during their reign, there is something extraordinary to see the British PM bow to the Queen, and do that (I think?) every week.
I've been thinking about this for a while. Watching a swing towards autocracy around the world, it strikes me that republics seem somehow more vulnerable. The existence of a monarch, even as a functionally ceremonial role, creates a sort of conceptual top spot--and fills it. You _can't_ rise to the level of the head of state in a monarchy, that position is taken and can only be gained by inheritance.
At the same time, if the monarch (in a system like that of Britain) actually started using and abusing their theoretical powers, they'd quickly have the whole of the country turn against them. And they have a lot to lose if that happens!
In a presidential system, the President is both the theoretical and actual head of state. They're already in the top spot, and the only thing preventing them from staying there is convention or laws which are subject to change, and enforcement of which is largely under the President's control.
A more ceremonial President might work as well, but the thing is, an elected head of state has less to lose by abusing his powers, and far more to lose by properly following convention and thus stepping down.
And then the monarch secretly interferes with legislation, while being exempt from FOIA. And gets involved in coups, and has an army which swears loyalty to them, and not the democracy.
But don't worry, as long as people live in a fantasy world where they believe they are just ceremonial figureheads and a benign presence, their position at the top will never be challenged. And at any moment when it does, peoples emotions/grief will be exploited to maintain the institutions by using north korea style propaganda campaigns and security operations:
Are Republican systems immune from the head of state messing with legislation, or abusing executive privilege to keep things secret, inappropriately? The President of the US pushing for legislation--openly or otherwise, and including legislation that directly affects him--has been a feature of the American system basically from the start. And there are many examples of information being kept secret in the name of national security or whatever.
Between the two...could you really picture Queen Elizabeth attempting to seize total control of the state--much less accomplishing it? Or the monarchs of Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands, or Japan?
I can picture a President attempting to seize power in a Republican system. In fact I can point to several specific examples from the past few decades, successful or otherwise.
I'm definitely not saying constitutional monarchy is the perfect system, at all. I'm just saying that after spending most of my life with the assumption that monarchies were just a quaint anachronism left over from days gone by, a sort of political appendix...I've started to notice that they seem to have interesting properties and robustness that other systems might lack. It's possible that the monarchy serves a useful purpose after all (actually...much like the appendix).
I'm curious about this; I don't live in a republic.
The PM bows to the Queen, but that doesn't mean they have to listen to the people more than they do in France, no?
Doesn't the French Prime Minister answer to the President? How is that worse than having a monarch? Are they often from the same party, thus rendering this answering to the president less powerful? (I know the current PM and President are, not sure if that's the common case.)
My impression is that just by being less involved in politics, and generally (not 100%) staying away of corruption and other sorts of scandals (unlike others, looking at you Juan Carlos I) for a few decades, the figure of the Queen can be less jarring or seems more trustworthy than a President usually would.
To be honest, I live in a monarchy, and if I could choose we'd transition to a republic... but I've never felt like it would make a huge difference in the quality of our government or our electoral politics, so I just don't really care.
> Doesn't the French Prime Minister answer to the President?
In theory, no, French PM answers only to Parliament. Only Parliament can dismiss them, not the President.
In practice, and in normal times, this isn't true at all. When the President tells the PM that their time is up, they immediately resign. (One tried to resist in the 70s and was immediately voted out by Parliament.) This makes the French PM effectively powerless. They simply implement the will of the President. The equivalent to the British PM is the French President, not the French PM.
Now there are non normal times where Parliament and the President are on opposite sides. When that happens (1986-1988; 1993-1995; 1997-2002), the PM is effectively in charge of most things, but even in those cases the President still has more powers than an typical constitutional monarch.
But my point wasn't about power but about humility. I think it's good and desirable that the ruler has to bow to someone else, and that that person, in turn, has no power whatsoever.
The French President just gets a nice office and a limo for a few years, he doesn't inherit hundreds of years of imperial money and retain strange godlike reverence for life.
It’s really important not to make the false dichotomy of English Monarch vs French Republic. Not saying that’s happening here, but in these debates generally speaking it’s important to realise that France is exceptional and not representative when considering alternatives to England’s monarchy. A US or French style president is not the only or even the obvious alternative to an unelected head of state.
I am not well versed about republic vs. monarchy apart from my limited experience, which might be more than many people, but not as valuable as someone that have studied that and can pitch in.
Coming from BR, have lived in AU, NZ, and UK, and traveled a lot, I would take monarchy over a republic any day, extrapolating on that, and just looking at the current state of affairs of republic countries vs the ones coming from monarchy, which ones look in a better state, and makes you want to move to, live in and raise your family?
And mad props to UK for keeping --relatively to others-- really well so far.
The UK is in a shocking state of decline, so not sure what metrics you are using there?
Widespread unemployment, hunger, life expectancies in decline, 1,000 people are dying a month from the botched "response" to covid. Hundreds of thousands in early graves due to same covid response, and before that already over a hundred thousand in early graves as a result of austerity. The political system seems to have completely collapsed and be unable to respond to crises or meet even the most basic survival needs of its population.
I wouldn't lay this on the feet of the monarchy, cos the elected officials seem to be the main cause of it.
But which republics are you looking at? Because I live in one, and I can't imagine moving back to the UK any time soon. Again, I don't think that's because it's a republic, it just happens to have a basically functioning political an economic system that hasn't (yet) failed.
> The UK is in a shocking state of decline, so not sure what metrics you are using there?
Metric is where "I" would raise my family, and based on all other western options, monarchies would come first; Brasilians idolises US, I can tell you because I was one of them, but them once you grow up and have a little more exposure to the world and different cultures, the current state it encounters itself it would be one of the last places I would live, because of its recurrent issues, mainly gun control, healthcare, I would also included woman's health birth choices under healthcare, those being the top ones, are a sad joke.
Of course everything depends on which stage one is at life, at the moment this is what I think with a young family, maybe if I was single just leaving Brasil, I would have fell in love with it, but that is not my experience. *
At the moment I am fortunate enough to work from NZ with an US salary, and maybe when I am older I might retire on a Spanish villa, who knows, but US is not what it used to be.
> ...1,000 people are dying a month from the botched "response" to covid...
> I wouldn't lay this on the feet of the monarchy, cos the elected officials seem to be the main cause of it.
Me neither, but it is hard not to conclude that the further away a country have been "independent" the worse it is.
* I have been on some business trips to US.
PS: Other countries I would consider would be AU, NZ, UK, CA and Nordics, also I could not care less who is running what, as long as my family is safe and I have peace of mind.
I think you’re overstating the decline. But yes too much democracy in Brexit and a badly designed democracy with the first past the post system. Widespread apathy to politics doesn’t help either.
Among peer countries it is uniquely non-resilient and unable to respond to the challenges it faces. Even with the covid disaster, it was very lucky that it has a fantastic institution like the NHS, which politicians have, so far, been unable to completely cripple or dominate. And also lucky to still have a serious pharma industry, literally the very industry that is needed to respond to a pandemic crisis. So you'd think given that fact, plus it's huge wealth, it would have had to have had one of the best COVID responses in the world?
The paradox of the UK is that it has a lot of wealth, many institutions and industries which still function and have not yet collapsed. But the political system itself has completely collapsed, and the economy is faltering badly.
The US is in a similar situation. But, of course, still leading the world in many regards.
Fun fact but english monarchy is an asset rather than a cost for britain, there's massive business and tourism around it. Seeing castles where real nobles live is different to empty castle-museums.
Also the royal family pays taxes and lease lots of stuff to the government at no cost.
Their entire industry would be nationalized if they were abolished and it would bring in even more revenue.
Not to mention, legoland UK brings in a lot of tourists, but we don't have an unelected lego man as the head of state, secretly vetoing laws or orchestrating coups.
The preservation of traditional institutions (like monarchy) does not have a direct influence on HDI. Both high HDI scores and the fact that traditional institutions (no matter how expensive) are preserved has to do with long sustained periods of political stability, physical security and as a result, economic prosperity.
I think monarchy is irrelevant for HDI and the correlation is more about long term political stability rather than better politics. My country (Finland) could have been a monarchy but ended up not being so. I can’t imagine what could be better with a monarch.
If we agree to measure political stability as world bank does, the only countries more politically stable in the world than Finland in 2015 were Switzerland and New Zealand.
I fail to see how making Finland more stable would improve anything, or that adding a monarch would achieve this goal.
Royalism sounds like the hunt for a silver bullet that would fix complex problems and institutions in a society. I don't think there is any evidence quasi-religion by itself improves institutions.
None of them are constitutional monarchies in quite the same way the UK is? The UK has a uniquely intact monarchic system.. But then, the UK is an outlier in many things when compared with similarly wealthy countries.
Not so black and white, but I still thing the Sex Pistols GSTQ is a great song (also Anti-Nowhere Leagues 's "So F*king What!", much more FTW). Never a fan of the Diana bandwagon either.
Yet, likewise to me the Queen always earned the respect shown her. Colouring the establishment by the actions of some is just too black and white thinking for me.
Great song (albeit sort-of not written by them, fits the band perfectly though). Lucky enough to see NMA live a couple of times pre-lockdown, no option but to settle for the live stream for the 40th anniversary.
I put on the song as soon as I heard the news and it took Spotify something like 15 seconds to load it. There's a very stressed server out there right now.
This is interesting especially with the whole thing surrounding Prince Andrew. You might expect a huge backlash against the royal family as an institution, and there has been some of that, but mostly: it's been relatively mild (against the royal family that is, not prince Andrew).
In the 90s (the only era I can remember) things were quite different too: there was the whole hubub about Camilla who was (IMO unfairly) extensively vilified in the media, had private telephone conversations with Charles were leaked. I'm not sure that would happen today; or if it did, it would get considerably less attention. Then there was the whole bruhaha about Andrew and Fergie, and let's not even start about Diana.
Maybe today Kim Kardashian or whatnot have taken the place for the "gossip inclined". Or maybe I just don't pay as much attention to these things as I did back in the day. But it seems like reporting is completely different.
As for punk: that's basically intended to offend innit? I'm not sure if you can really tell the general mood of the country from punk.
Not to dive into politics particularly; but there are advantages and disadvantages to every form of government. What are the particular disadvantages your family dislikes? Is it the principal of it or something in particular?
One clear advantage of monarchs that I can see, are that they have an incentive to grow and expand their tax base. That typically means long-term planning (but doesn't ensure it, which is a disadvantage the UK parliamentary system seems to mitigate).
Here's an analogy: in a democracy, first-past-the-post voting is, in a vacuum, about the worst voting system that exists. But the reason that it was adopted in so many places is because it has one advantage: its sheer, utter, bone-headed simplicity. In a context where most constituents are illiterate and unfamiliar with the notion of democratic government, it behooves you to pick the simplest solution that can possibly work, even if it leads to worse results than more complex systems.
Hereditary absolute monarchy is the same thing, but for selecting heads of state. Who's in charge? The guy with the biggest army. What powers does he have? All of them. Who succeeds him when he dies? His firstborn. It's dead simple to implement, which made it an attractive solution in times before any semblance of mass communication. But in practice it means the quality of your head of state is totally detached from their actual talent at serving as head of state: the first guy in line was just good at leading an army, and the rest of his descendants are just randos who won the birth lottery. It's not a good solution unless you're willing to make loads of sacrifices in order to have the simplest system possible.
(And yes, of course, the UK is not currently an absolute monarchy, but you appeared to be asking in a general sense.)
Succession struggles were like their own whole genre of political strife until the modern era. Multiple parties can have claims of varying legitimacy -- first born might gain some advantage in being near to the previous leader, inheriting the royal rolodex and hopefully some powerful/motivated allies who want to keep the status quo, but it isn't a sure thing.
Sure, now that the top position is entirely symbolic in the vast majority of monarchies, nobody fights over it. But the if the UK Monarch was in any sense "in charge" of anything, we'd surely see the US propping up Harry and Meghan as the true legitimate heirs and we might even let them borrow a couple carriers to "persuade" Parliament of the fact. Or whatever.
Also, it's slightly bizarre that you think parliament has been "pro-economic-growth", but that hasn't been the case since the collapse of the post war consensus in 1979, when it simply became pro profit-growth.
I think there is something to be said for, lack of a better word, the continuity of history. 70 years with the same monarch. A system of monarchy, for over a 1000 years.
Not to mention wall-to-wall propaganda in any coverage that mentions them across the complete political spectrum of media.
Arsenic-laced baby-food would be tolerated, if not vaguely enjoyed, if it received that kind of positive coverage.
Mainstream UK press are regularly making North-Korea style calls for people who personally dislike the royals to be excluded from the media, eve when they are making even-handed reportage about them, just on the off-chance that their subconscious biases might seep through in to their work (or something? lol): https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10267447/Amol-Rajan...
The article does a good job conflating the parliamentary process of Queen’s consent and lobbying of the government by the Royal family. You may think both are bad/outdated, I do, but there’s a lot of journalistic spin going on here.
Right at the bottom of the article there is a quote:
“Consent is always granted by the monarch where requested by government. Any assertion that the sovereign has blocked legislation is simply incorrect.”
The journalist never provides any evidence to the contrary.
But the quote does not address the question of whether the government felt that the sovereign were threatening to block legislation, if it were not modified in accordance with the Royal Family's wishes (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pyqnu6ywhR4).
They are in an odd spot of having extreme de jure power (Charles could disband parliament tomorrow) while having a completely unknown de facto power (would they listen? It didn't work out too well for another Charles).
King Baudouin of Belgium tried to exercise his power in the 90s by refusing to sign the abortion law, citing his catholic faith.
The law got signed in to effect anyway. The "trick" was that parliament can sign laws in to effect if the king is incapacitated. They declared him incapacitated, signed the law, and declared him "capable" again the next day. Whether that was truly legal and in accordance to the letter of the law was a matter of some debate (in my reading of the text, it's not), but I expect things will go in a similar fashion for the British monarchy if Charles really tries to use his "hard power" (rather than "soft power"/influence) in any way.
Keep in mind that king Baudouin requested himself for a solution where he would not have to sign the law without I obstructing the democratic process. So it is not fully true that they went against the will of the king.
It seems as if in Elizabeth's life (if "The Crown" has any bearing on real life events) she was able to wield some amount of de facto power either due to her reputation/prestige personally or from her role as monarch.
> Charles could disband parliament tomorrow
Elizabeth had some amount of real world power perhaps via the potential threat of this.
The queen says "tut tut" to the prime minister when the prime minister does something bad. That is not a role that you can underestimate. The queen reminds the prime minister that there is someone above them, and someone that they answer to. In comparison, a lot of US presidents seem like they need a few "tut tuts."
They answer to the people eventually, but while in office they wield powers unknown in our (British) system since the time of George III. And I mean that quite literally. The US president is essentially an elected British King circa 1789. They literally copied the constitutional role of the king point by point with a few minor alterations. The power to convene and dissolve parlia...er...congress, executive decrees are royal decrees, the veto on legislation, command of the armed forces, the power to pardon convicts, proroguation. Not exactly cutting edge constitutional innovation I'm afraid. We've moved on, but in some ways the US still stuck in the 18th Century.
>It does not convene and dissolve by presidential request.
And yet Article 2 Section 3 exists. Constitutional convention copy machine go Brrr. However I did exaggerate slightly for satirical effect. Maybe I should have just said "some alterations".
Yeah it's different, and worse IMHO. "The people" is an abstraction, like "God" or "Nature". The Queen is a real person that you have to go meet in her house, and bow to.
It’s completely different, that’s without a doubt. Whether or not a US President “answer[s] to the poeple” is debatable. W Bush taking the country to Iraq again, against a significant majority of the people comes to mind.
Like all American politicians the POTUS does ultimately answer to the people, but only in an indirect fashion. Directly, the POTUS answers to the States because the States are the ones who elect him.
Given that Dang has decided that exploring the negative aspects of monarchy are "ranting" and "malignant", it is hard to imagine how you could get an comprehensive assessment of the institution on HN. A curious person can probably find that sort of information elsewhere.
No, I said that about shallow-indignant internet comments, aka flamebait, which are what we don't want here. Thoughtful critique is a different matter—though the bar for "thoughtful" on this topic has to be pretty high, because it's so full of bombast and an internet forum is the worst genre for that.
I don't care about monarchism or anti-monarchism, nor would I ever take a position about anything like that in a moderation comment. The moderation comments are always about the same thing—avoiding tedious repetition (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32771818). The irony is how tediously repetitive they are!
Even as a (still) EU citizen, I'm saddened by the news.
One has to remember she took upon her shoulders a lot (essentialy from WWII to everything we've all gone through in recent memory, plus a lot of responsibility we can only guess at), and yet, by all accounts[1], was an amazing human being.
I've always been an anti-monarchist/posh class in terms of the sense of entitlement and inherited perks while "in government", but I also feel as a leader QE2 was an unusually astute 'Monarch' (in quotes as she was a very different monarch, both in actual power and in tone from say a Sultan Bolkiah, the KSD, or Sultan bin Tarik) and that there is now a bit of an informal power vacuum in the UK, which will have network effects beyond their borders.
It's mind-boggling to me to think about how long 70 years of reign actually is. How many world leaders she has seen come and go. How much the world changed since then.
I was indeed counting from the declaration of independence and was trying to round to the nearest natural fractions, but you are technically correct, which is the best kind of correct.
Nope, you were closer to correct. The Constitution isn’t the founding of America: the Union formed first under the Articles of Confederation but our first act as a Union separate from the UK was the Declaration of Independence.
Thanks for the correction, I retract my objection. We could also start counting from when the Articles of Confederation came into effect (1781), which lies approximately between 1/3 and 1/4 ;)
Maybe, but I think effectively it really was the Declaration of Independence. It would take some time for independence to be effectually achieved, but consider a counter-timeline where we lost the war: the Declaration would be a minor footnote at best in British history (which it pretty much is) and also not the start of the history of the Union. It’s because we won that the United States of America is a meaningful idea to anyone.
The Articles of Confederation wouldn’t even be a footnote, just a dusty document in someone’s library, maybe, and the Constitution would never have been written.
FYI: When people are this age, they can die suddenly without much warning. I saw a headline a few hours ago about her family coming to visit, and I thought we'd have a few days.
Both of my grandmothers died at 91 without much warning. Cherish your time with your elders, and don't procrastinate a visit.
I mean, the family rushed there because they knew "this could be it", and the statement issued by the palace this morning "Following further evaluation this morning, the Queen's doctors are concerned for Her Majesty's health and have recommended she remain under medical supervision. The Queen remains comfortable at Balmoral." was probably meant to also be taken as a big warning, despite it sounding understated.
Do we understand what makes it sudden yet? The point has been made many times about Biden, Bernie and Trumps age, but I guess that suddenness doesn’t quite kick in until 85+?
Some tests (I think blood) can detect that a body is about to die. As far as why, the human body just can't go on forever.
With my grandfather, who was 101, someone did a blood test and told us he was going to die very soon. A few hours later, when I visited, he was pushing his wheelchair around and pestering the social worker about all of his funeral plans. It honestly reminds me of the end of the movie Zardoz. (He had his funeral planned for years.)
To everyone who feels sad by these news, my condolences. I respect your pain.
However, I have to confess that to whenever I hear that someone aged 90+ (80+, even) died, I don't really feel sad. Actually, I feel an urge to praise this person's achievements, as I'm aware we are all mortals, and death is unavoidable.
I prefer to rejoice in how much this person has witnessed throughout her life, how she had enough health to keep her wits until the end, how she could raise children, grandchildren, and even know her great-grandchildren.
What else can we humans aspire? Living forever is out of question. As soon as we are born, we are bound to die. So it's a pretty good life to be able to reach a good age, knowing that all our dear ones are set for life, raising families of their own, and living their lives the way that is best suited for them.
This is not just theory. I felt this when my grandfather died, aged 95, when my grandmother died aged 96, and when other people I knew died old enough for their deaths not really come as a surprise.
“Don’t go overboard. She’s a very old woman who had to go some time” were the last instructions Peter Sissons received before announcing the death of the Queen Mother (aged 101) in 2002. I thought that was quite funny.
I think what's "shocking" (not necessarily sad) thing about this is that she's been a presence for such a long time. Who here can remember a time from before Elizabeth II was the queen? She's been queen from before most people here were born and has always been present.
> What else can we humans aspire? Living forever is out of question. As soon as we are born, we are bound to die.
I don't know, living to anywhere between 1'000 to 1'000'000 years of age would surely be quite the interesting experience, lots of things to learn, lots of things to experience. Such numbers might seem humorous but in the grand scheme of things that's still nothing, given the age of Earth and all that.
I get the feeling that if humans approached aging and death as an engineering problem, in a few centuries to a few thousands of years a viable solution might just spring up.
If nothing else, then fighting aging and everything that comes with it is definitely worth it, so the last decades of your life don't consist of being trapped in a degrading flesh prison and possibly suffering from ailments that will take away your ability to be a person (e.g. Alzheimer's or other neurodegenerative conditions, or serious health conditions due to aging).
Of course, most people don't like to think about their own mortality or consider it (or diseases that may affect them later in life) a serious problem, much less a solvable one. For some religion is enough, for others ignorance does nicely. It feels like we might benefit from more focus on this and research in this direction.
Realistically, one just has to take care of themselves as best as they can and spend their time well.
> Actually, I feel an urge to praise this person's achievements...
Regardless, this is admirable. A life well lived is one worth celebrating, with its many achievements and its impact on the people around them.
When there's a dictator or other unjust rule, the one thing you know that will end that rule is death. That not happening would change things incredibly. Imagine if the same old politicians of 1950 were still in power, we'd still be trying to pass desegregation. Death of the older generation allows new ideas to flourish. I feel sorry for the children of the first generation to avoid death(if it could even happen)
Science advances one funeral at a time. - Max Planck, paraphrased.
So does culture, for that matter.
I wonder what impact it will have if/when people do start living for 300 years or more (which some people claim we could see within our lifetime). What happens when racist, openly homophobic grandpa isn't just someone you uncomfortably bear and forgive, but someone with a lot of power and money because they've been around the longest? Investments, compound interests, connections, so many things that would mean that the younger generation would have less and less power and hope as time goes by.
Pursuit of endless life is a movie trope - the fountain of youth - and inevitably concludes with punishment for those who seek it out.
I suspect there’s a strong biological reason we age and die. We compete against our children for the limited resources of our planet. Our genes need to recombine or else evolution stalls.
For now the only true path to immortality is through having children.
> For now the only true path to immortality is through having children.
That's not immortality, though, that's heritage.
In my eyes, immortality (if such a thing could even exist, entropy and unforeseen circumstances aside) would imply the continued existence of one's consciousness/mind.
Being "remembered", or other platitudes about "immortality" does nothing for you, when you no longer exist.
The pursuit of extended life might be seen as an expression of greed in fiction a lot of the time, but surely eating healthily is a good thing to do, right? What about exercise? What about having a good sleep schedule and not using harmful substances? Why would medicine be any different? Why would fixing one's faulty organs or other biological mechanisms be any different? In my eyes, it's just a scale of things you can do to have a better life, however long it might be.
As for the biological aspects, sure, nature didn't make us to live a thousand years. Then again, it didn't make us to fly through the sky in metal boxes close to the speed of sound.
I feel like people would be more environmentally and politically conscious if they knew that they'd need to live in the world that they create for the following millennia, instead of being able to ruin things for everyone with their greedy and megalomaniacal goals and then die.
When you're young the thought of death is terrifying, but when you're old (whatever age that is) death is expected and sometimes welcomed. I remember my grandmother, who died when she was 99, joking about being alive too long, but there's an element of truth to it.
Dying in your thirties or forties? “Tragic.” Fifties? “Such a shame.” Sixties? “Too soon.” Seventies? “A good run.” Eighties? “A life well lived.” Nineties? “Hell of a ride.”
I adamantly reject the belief that some people are inherently better and deserve special treatment by society and before the law because of their ancestry.
This includes all nobility and royalty titles.
Historically and traditionally, nobles are/were the owners of the land. Shoddy job they've done at taking care of the environment. Overpowered by the industrialists, the new ruling hegemonic class (since the aftermath of WWII); who have been clever to stay out of the public view, unlike these historical noble and royal icons.
If the monarchy wouldn't exist as an institution, a lot of that money would still go to the upkeep of the various domains that comprise it. The Buckingham palace won't disappear if the UK becomes a democracy. Assuming all of that money goes into the personal wealth of the members of the royal family is a little naive.
So one of the worlds best tourist attractions has died. Bummer. What is the point of the UK royal family again other than being a very expensive family on welfare? (UK tax payers paid them some 50M pounds for “support”.)
I’ll admit growing up I had some affinity for all the good in the world Pincess Diana was doing. And then she died. Which was sad. Her life ruined by the royal family and a failed marriage to guy who wasn’t faithful. And then many years later after visiting the UK and learning how much the public supported them financially etc and how little power they had and other than being the face of the money I asked myself: “what is the point of it all? To sell tabloids?”
As the most visible monarch of our times, I do wonder if the % of world population that will mourn her (either as colonizers or allies), will be greater than the % that will bade good riddance (as the colonized).
My blood boils everytime I remember how the brits cut off thumbs of my people, the silk weavers.
People underestimate the atrocities done by British empire, one tiny example is when they chopped off thumbs of handloom weavers to stop the Indian business spread within India in order to sell their goods from Manchester produced from the stolen cotton from India again, my clan of people were the silk weavers since more than a millennium and were wiped out of existence. Even now I sometimes hear the horror stories from my Grandpa who lost a lot of kin and daily bread due to the greedy pigs and jealous barbarians that the empire was.
The words imperialism and colonialism don't do justice for the horrors they brought upon us.
I generally have empathy towards the dead, but for this incident, I hardly care.
Do you also hold that against Liz Truss? She and Queen Elizabeth played equal parts in those atrocities; ie none, even though they are part of the same institutions that did have a part in that history.
Edit: With all those things in perspective I ask the same question, would the late Queen of England have given up imperialism and colonialism and gave the nations to themselves if she lived during that era? Or was it convenient that she or anyone in power now didn't have to oversee the imperialism.
Do you really think her abdicating the throne would have done anything at all to solve these perceived wrongs?
To answer your first question, yes, and she did. During her reign, Canada, Australia, South Africa, and other Commonwealth nations were all granted full state sovereignty. Prior to that, they had some independence, but were ultimately under the control of the UK. Some of these countries still retain her/King Charles as a head of state, but he holds no power over them, and he has an independent representative (in Canada, this is the governor-general, who theoretically holds more power than the prime minister).
That's not entirely accurate. A number of the Dominions were both de jure and de facto independent sovereign states by the mid-1930s as a result of the 1931 Statute of Westminster and enabling local laws. Some of the Commonwealth realms, notably Australia and New Zealand which only removed the right of appeal to the UK's Privy Council in 1986, only partially implemented the Statute and retained some aspect of UK involvement in their judicial, civil, and parliamentary systems for years longer.
The Statute of Westminster removed the ability of the British parliament to legislate for the Dominions unless at their request and with their consent. It also turned the Dominions into Commonwealth Realms where the monarch served as head of state separately in each, with their consent, and constrained by laws and rules unique to each.
That is, King George V ceased being the King of the 'United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and of the British Dominions beyond the Seas', and became separately the King of the United Kingdom, King of South Africa, King of Australia, King of New Zealand, etc. The Governor-General became the King's representative, but was constrained by local legislation and was usually someone appointed by each country.
It was still a bit messy in some cases, and Australia and New Zealand weren't sure right up until they adopted new legislation just after WWII whether they were truly independent in foreign policy. But some of the countries, like the Union of South Africa, became fully sovereign the moment the 1931 Statute was passed, and only needed to implement additional legislation in 1934 to clarify and localise it.
South Africa of course became a republic in 1961, but all that did was change the head of state from being the Queen to being a State President. It didn't change anything about the country's legal relationship to the United Kingdom.
So it's wrong to say Charles has no power in Commonwealth realms today, as he has as much power as each country assigns him (and by extension his representative Governor-General) in its own laws and he exercises it separately and distinctly from his powers as King of the UK.
> With all those things in perspective I ask the same question, would the late Queen of England have given up imperialism and colonialism and gave the nations to themselves if she lived during that era?
Are you ignoring the fact that many British colonies did gain independence during Elizabeths reign?
As someone in the same situation I find this opinion to be equivalent to a Vietnamese man telling everyone he is reminded of the Vietnam war on the day that Barack Obama dies.
A lot of colonial atrocities happened during Elizabeth II's reign, directly under her rule. Afaik, Vietnam War was well over when Barack Obama became president.
So if she's a puppet that can't really change things for the better, why this enormous thread with so many people gushing over her?
If she was just another paper pusher and camera model in a world filled with them (like you seem to be saying), her death isn't one of any significance to humanity.
If she was someone who could have used her influence to change things for the better, like Diana would have if she'd been alive - if the Queen was someone who could have done that and didn't, because she didn't want to risk her position, then the anger in this thread is justified and deserved.
Then how about a Vietnamese person getting upset about Emmanuel Macron?
The French ruled Vietnam even more harshly than the British did India and did it for almost 100 years. They extracted everything they could economically, prevent any Vietnam from gaining anything more than token power. Then fought a war to keep their colony that killed millions of Vietnamese.
Why not try their monarch? if they've abolished that system they're more modern than the Brits. If they're irrelevant, that's probably the right place. Which is what I say of the British monarchs, they should be irrelevant but their society hangs on nostalgia and influences the same through the media while conveniently forgetting the past.
I don't see any other monarch's death being in the news and the public crying, some thoughts for you.
The Queen is a symbol of the UK's terrible past just as much as Barack Obama is a symbol of the USA's terrible past. In fact, the Queen was a figurehead and had zero authority over any decisions that the British government made.
Nobody chooses to be born into their specific circumstances. Barack Obama overcame all of the circumstances of his birth and became more powerful than the Queen, who gained her position by birthright.
Scoffing at someone for benefiting from the circumstances of their birth is an outdated, pessimistic and cynical worldview in my opinion. It's out of touch with a world where Barack Obama and Rishi Sunak and Leo Varadkar are world leaders. Everyone is free to keep having those views though, I just don't relate at all.
Is this to imply that a country has nothing to gain by going to war with another country? Obviously not, war costs billions, and the US wasn't directly (or arguably indirectly) under threat from vietnam, so there wasn't any reason to engage in war unless they had something to gain (or fear losing, which seems just as bad).
Going by the logic that the US had something to gain in engaging with war in Vietnam, or any of the other many places they've done so, it stands to reason that future presidents would benefit from it. Maybe not in extracted wealth, but to say anything goes unless its directly earning money from it seems a bit odd.
This is an important take, the bloody legacy of British rule over India is still painful for many here and their loved ones/ancestors that suffered, died defending their nation, or were enslaved.
If I remember correctly, the plan is that UK TV channels cancel all entertainment programs for the next ten days, so I look forward to more people going outside for the end of summer.
Even so, it's a different era now. When Diana died, the TV and radio were certainly very different for a good week thereafter. Nowadays, even if most TV and radio changes its schedule, there's Netflix, YouTube, Disney+, BBC iPlayer, 'catch up' services and all the rest, so you could very easily not be exposed to the national mood in the same way.
Let's leave aside the atrocities committed by British Colonialism. In fairness, those crimes are far bigger than any one person. Instead, focus on the individual. This is a woman who brow beat her daughter in law to the such a degree, that her two choices viable options were suicide or deportation. All for the crime of being born with a trace amount of black blood in their veins. This was not a good human being.
I was in London during Covid, and the Queen's Speech to the nation during the pandemic was a pivitol and powerful moment.
"We should take comfort that while we may have more still to endure, better days will return: we will be with our friends again; we will be with our families again; we will meet again."
Lots of people, especially in former colonies, are justifiably glad to hear of her passing. For instance, the people in Kenya or India whose family survived the war crimes inflicted by the British under her reign.
Those of us who suffered under the White Australia (White Stolen Generation) fiasco are also glad to see this heinous war criminal perish. She was a significant component in Western imperialist desire and should have been prosecuted for crimes against humanity multiple times over.
It's good that she was able to go with her family by her side in a place she loved. There will be lots of mourning in the UK. I'm anti-monarchy but she's clearly left quite the legacy, and people that have met her have only great things to say about her manner and attitude.
I'm also anti-monarchy, but if we had to have one, I'm glad it was her :) I've never met or didn't know her, but she came across as a good person and it's odd to know that she's gone.
Argh, and she was so close to overtaking Louis XIV as the longest reigning monarch in history! I was really hoping we'd beat the French.
But seriously, this is a momentous day for Britain and the world. She was a titan of public life, known to billions. The world will never be the same without her. I don't know what these means for Britain but I expect it will be quite destabilising.
The many-many crisis' going on, the strikes, the incredibly unpopular ascent of a new prime minister and now this?
Definitely destabilising.
I suspect a collective mourning and unity of the country followed closely by civil unrest the likes of which hasn't been seen in living British memory.
I've never really understood how we can still have monarchies but I do believe Elizabeth was probably one the better ones that have sat on those thrones.
A few years ago I looked into how much power she had and I was shocked. I was also shocked by how much that monarchy owns.
It depends on what you mean by "owns" too. My understanding is that legally the monarch (or is it the Crown, I know there is some kind of distinction) is the landlord of last resort for all of his or her holdings. In the case of the British monarch, that includes not just the isles, but the Commonwealth realms as well. Any property taxes in those realms are technically feudal rents.
And yeah the British monarch's theoretical legal power is immense. For one thing the UK armed forces swear loyalty personally to the monarch, not to the government! The monarch could go to war with Parliament again and the military would be upholding their oath!
The late Queen was a woman of impeccable public ethics though. In some sense it's more admirable for a person who is not bound by the law to choose to follow it scrupulously, which she did.
You've nailed it. I'd never really given the UK Monarchy much thought but a few years ago I spent a little time looking into it and was fairly well shocked by how immense their power and wealth is.
I think it's fair to say that Elizabeth was exceptional for how she handled her position as Queen but the United Kingdom is always just one "King" away from a disastrous ruler and that could get very ugly very fast and potentially for a very long time.
That said, same could happen here and for much the same reasons, which basically comes down to issues of common sense and fealty. If the first is low and the second high the odds of getting caught up in a shit storm are pretty good.
Yes I was, but that was just a part of it. The "United Kingdom" is huge. It's hard for me to imagine, for example, how Australians are still owned and controlled by that Monarchy.
In practice it's not much different here since we still have the military draft but so far we can still fire a "President" via impeachment if they go crazy on us. The UK's "subjects" do not have that power, they are truly akin to chattel.
As an American watching with dismay over the past five years or so, I can see some virtue in having a non-partisan head of state (realizing that that does not mean the Royal Family is beyond ideology). Not sure how that would work in our republic, but I feel like it would help with national unity during divisive political times.
Out of curiosity, how visible is the President of Germany in the media and everyday life? Are the doings of the President talked about and reported on? As an outsider from the United States, I'm aware that you have one, but they get almost no exposure here in the media. People here with a passing familiarity with international current events could probably tell you who the Chancellor of Germany is, but far fewer could name the President.
the president isn't very visible. Probably quite a few Germans who aren't politically interested couldn't tell you who holds the office. But nonetheless when there's big social disagreements, anything extremely divisive or a crisis the president usually will have something to say, to unify people somewhat. Ideally the president is sort of like the moral consciousness or representative of the country as a whole. Also it depends on the person. Gauck our last president who was a Lutheran Pastor was quite outspoken on moral questions or democratic issues and somewhat of a divisive figure, the current president is more of a former career politician and much less so.
Not very at all. Nobody talks about the president. The chancellor is who is viewed as the leader of the government, and who is talked about regularly. President is hardly mentioned - anecdotally, never.
Could there be any code that breaks as a result of this? Can't think of anything, but wondering if there is something deep in some Civil Service script.
Lots of effusive praise in this thread. When I heard the news, I cheered, and felt giddy for a little bit, then the feeling subsided. I’m Canadian and have been forced to observe this bizarre institution my whole life. Seeing any bit of the monarchy and the British empire chip away feels good.
Where I'm at, we hear a lot more about the British monarchs than any other monarchs.
For instance, I just found out that Norway, for instance, also has a monarch. So does Sweden (?), and several other countries. But they — the Nordic monarchs — are unheard of in my country, and don't seem to have the same level of influence internationally.
Is that your experience as well?
(FWIW, my country was a former British colony but the British royalty is NOT my country's head at all).
Bloom County. Comic strip. Back in the 1980's did a whole series after William was born poking fun at the royals. I collected a whole shoebox of comics including most of that series. Long since put it in the trash, but I have never seen any of those strips again. Oh but google:
https://www.google.com/search?q=bloom+county+prince+william
Thoughts for the family, and all people affectively attached to the monarchy
That being said, given the geopolitical situation, I would not want to be responsible for the sitting arrangement of international dignitaires at the funeral.
(In a fantasy book, it would be the "perfect" occasion for every one to meet on "sacred ground", observe a truce, and get so drunk that unexpected settlements get found.
Braindead comments which add nothing to the discussion are allowed if they are bland, pro-monarchy messages. Anything critical of the queen will need to be carefully supported or it will be flagged.
For those of us in the colonies, this is complicated. For better or worse, HRH QEII brought an element of stability to our government.
I believe that she could have handed off power to her son sooner, but I understand that she was probably torn on that. She's probably the best monarch we could have hoped for, and any future monarch won't be able to live up to her standard.
I'll need to thread lightly before I get banned by Dang for not loving the british queen!
If we observed monkeys and saw that one was showered with gifts and jewellery their whole lives because they were offspring of two other particular monkeys.. we would chuckle at that. Not for being the strongest, tallest, biggest, smartest or best at something. Just for existing.
Years ago, I remember reading about how her family remained during WW2 while it was being bombed, against what was certainly “sensible” advice, and sharing in the hardship that everyone else was going through.
Even generations and culturally separated, this sort of shared hardship left a lasting impression on me; and she certainly represented the best of the UK.
How many other 96 year olds have interacted weekly with all those prime ministers? And also met all the other significant figures in that time?
Churchill faced down (figuratively) Hitler and Mussolini, which makes him a heroic and legendary figure. (He was also a racist monster). Until yesterday, she was a living person who had actually talked to him at length, regularly when he was alive. That's amazing to think about.
Seeing people and events on the news is nowhere near the same thing as being a witness to those people or events. You have to be on the scene of, or at least nearby, the events or speak first hand to the people who are involved. News reporters are witnesses to historical events as well. Their viewers are not. (This is putting aside what the legal profession might consider a "witness").
I said she was a witness to many important things, which is absolutely correct.
Now begins the crucial and cringeworthy task of C-level executives (and those mimicking them) all over the world posting about this on LinkedIn and emailing all employees regardless of how many of those receiving the message have any connection to the UK or the Commonwealth.
I’m not saying this doesn’t matter, of course it does. It’s sad like any death is, and it’s meaningful to many people. But there are many kings and queens out there, and just because this one meant a lot to you doesn’t mean you should start roleplaying a member of the British nobility.
The only decent and respectful way to approach this for all parts involved in my mind is to acknowledge it, pay your condolences and move on. That’s the respectful and sane common ground we can all agree on.
As soon as you start making business decisions based on this for a global company (like global days of mourning, for example) you are, in my humble opinion, treading on thin ice.
This type of cultural hegemony kills the employer-employee relationship.
I don't believe in monarchies generally, and this sentiment remains throughout my life, although for slightly different reasons that keep improving with age. The more I read and know about history, the more I understand that the ideal of the Enlightened Monarch is a rare event, that can be destroyed in a single generation (we only have to look at Imperial Rome history for quite a few examples).
Still, I do really respect the person and work that Elizabeth II did thorough her entire life, I really believe she helped improve the world with her limited power.
Many purely democratic countries - mine included - would be so lucky to have her as the head of state.
When I saw the news of her death on Twitter I had a really uneasy feeling, I don’t know how to describe it… it’s like mortality slapped me across the face. From all indications she was a strong and noble queen. May she rest in peace.
With the transfer of the crown to King (Prince) Charles, is there an explainer article that provides a comprehensive information on who is deemed the next in line in multiple scenarios (i.e. assume next in line dies, the heir/heiress are incapable, challenging someone's ascension to the throne, etc).
This would make for a good read and understanding of how the royalty works.
On the topic, I think what Queen Elizabeth has done despite of the challenges within her sovereignty is being a living example on how to rule and govern, without negatively interfering with how the affairs and progress of the state needs to be carried out.
Makes me wonder what sorts of things will be triggered by this event. I bet security services are on high alert, and for some reason I'm a little worried about getting on my flight in a couple hours.
I probably am. I had a dream a few days ago that I was in a plane crash, then a major world event happens just before I fly? The world feels very unstable at the moment.
For some reason it seems extremely surreal to me that England now will have a king again. "The King of Great Britain" sounds like something out of a history movie, not present.
Interestingly the details of the planned operation London Bridge https://www.politico.eu/article/queen-elizabeth-death-plan-b...
were posted today on some British news site before her death, when all others confirmed her stable health. Some insiders obviously were in the know earlier today.
The articles probably landed on the top 10 list of most read articles (due to Google hits) after the Buckingham Palace statement this morning that the doctors are recommending continuous monitoring of her health, which probably was British understatement for "Her situation is bad".
I wonder how many of the Commonwealth Realms are going to retain their monarchies. We might see Canada, Australia, New Zealand (and the rest of them) becoming republics.
I, too, am sad. I am deeply attracted to the model of the servant leader and the hero.
I'm particularly attached to leaders who make the best of a bad situation, in her case the retreat of the British Empire. I think courage in retreat is much more rare than courage in victory, and might bring more value to society.
My (our) relationship to Queen Elizabeth seems to stem less from the history or even events, and more from her extensive media depictions, mainly movies and series of late. Many of them focus on her as long-suffering: beset by crises she cannot really control, both emotional and political. Her stalwart response turns out to be the best available - at once non-intrusive, but pointing the way out. When she speaks, it is not to tell people what to do, or what is right and wrong, but to summon our better nature.
I understand this attachment may be seen as emotionally immature and even regressive. In her case, it seems benign. However, something like these sentiments underlies people's attachments to other leaders who seem disruptive to societies and companies.
Modeling heroes is in many ways deeper than even learning a trade, and yet we seem to leave it to chance. Can do better? Can we mourn Queen Elizabeth II without falling prey to false gods?
King Charles should consider stepping down in favour of William. We need someone fresh to take on the upcoming difficult times ahead for the disintegrating UK.
William's children are too young to fulfill their role as immediate heirs. It's probably best to let Charles reign as long as possible until his grandchildren reach their majority.
All my rich feelings about this as a millennial woman are from watching Netflix's The Crown.
I think that fact is absolutely incredible, and I'm just noticing how it works, the glimpses of feeling I get as I scroll news feed... images from real photos of the queen seamlessly woven in with flashes of scenes and emotions evoked from watching... Even emotional bits that I KNOW are not legit accurate/real.... My mind treats it all as one category anyway.
The show is an elegant testament to what fiction does, to portray a woman's epic coming of age and into the power and duty of something much bigger than her, across a century.
Our literature just doesn't have that grandness anymore, there are no literary novels by writers today about today that do this. Aesthetics there have changed in their scope somehow.
It's all on our film and tv technology to refresh these themes of responsibility, inner steeliness, honor, sacrifice, respectability etc... to make what's old new again.
I'm certain before the show I cared nothing, and after it, I care a lot.
You've learned something from fictional propaganda. Are you now prepared to face the truth of her reign and the immense suffering it caused for millions of people?
No, I'm saying the suffering happened because of her reign. She was the direct cause - as a heinously racist, totalitarian monarch sovereign - of endless policies that caused calamity and suffering across the globe.
There are literally millions of people who see her as the criminal she truly was.
Drat, she had less than two years to go to pass Louis XIV.
I have been a republican for most of my life and don't like to have her name in my passport. Nevertheless the first time we brought our young son to the UK we had a picture of him in front of Buckingham Palace (and I have the same picture of myself at that same ___location).
RIP. I've always believed that there was a place for constitutional monarchy in the world. As the world hurtles forward, having a tether to the past grounds us, reminds us that we are not ahistorical, but part of a continually unfolding story.
Not sure why this is downvoted. Really curious of the Kremlin's response, given the juxtaposition of the history and current events (UK bring an early and strong militaristic supporter of Ukraine).
Yep. This morning there was a debate on QE2's page about the wording for Elizabeth's death section and they already had a draft written for when it was officially announced. This event was really well telegraphed hours ahead (BBC in all black, cancelling their afternoon programming, everything straight from Operation London Bridge started at 8 or 9 ET)
The Wikipedia article on the British Monarchy is (as expected) informative:
> The monarch and their immediate family undertake various official, ceremonial, diplomatic and representational duties. As the monarchy is constitutional, the monarch is limited to functions such as bestowing honours and appointing the prime minister, which are performed in a non-partisan manner. The monarch is also Head of the British Armed Forces. Though the ultimate executive authority over the government is still formally by and through the royal prerogative, these powers may only be used according to laws enacted in Parliament and, in practice, within the constraints of convention and precedent. The Government of the United Kingdom is known as His (Her) Majesty's Government.
I wasn't aware that the monarch appointed the prime minister, but here you have the last one the Queen made:
> Liz Truss has became Britain’s next prime minister after meeting with Queen Elizabeth II, who asked her to form a new government.
The Wikipedia article later notes that prime minister appointment appears to fall into the ceremonial category:
> The sovereign has the power to appoint the prime minister. In accordance with unwritten constitutional conventions, the monarch appoints the individual who commands the support of the House of Commons, usually the leader of the party or coalition that has a majority in that House. The prime minister takes office by attending the monarch in a private audience, and after "kissing hands" that appointment is immediately effective without any other formality or instrument.[15] The sovereign also has the power to dismiss the prime minister, but the last time this power was exercised was in 1834, when William IV dismissed Lord Melbourne; since then, prime ministers have only left office upon their resignation, which they are expected to offer to the monarch upon losing their majority in the House of Commons.
I honestly don't think anyone will care about the monarchy much after this. Charles just has zero charisma and William is pretty wooden as well. The queen had a vibe and presence that won't be repeated.
The non-ceremonial stuff is PR and goodwill for the UK. She's essentially fostered economic cooperation between the Commonwealth for decades. That has been quite important and should not be understated. The American view that her duties are fluff is a lazy take.
I saw that Prince George is third in line. I wonder how that would work if he ended up a child king? In that case, I’m guessing he would just be doing what he’s told to do.
The crazy thing is that we not ever see 10 billion at this rate. Globally we are down to 2.1 births per woman, and the majority of nations now have a birth rate below 2, meaning most countries are below replacement. And even the positive birth rate countries are rapidly trending downwards (with the exceptions of Uzbekistan, Kahzakstan, and Iran).
It will be very interesting to see how the population J curve flatlining affects global society. We live in interesting times.
As an Irishman, while our two countries might not have always gotten along well, she always came across as a good person who took her role seriously and executed as well as anyone could. RIP.
Are you expecting end of monarchy? There was recent rule change for succession to not depend on gender that makes it more likely there will be a queen in future. For example, Prince Charlotte is now third in line instead of fourth after her younger brother with the old rules.
Charles (10 - 20 years of reign puts us in the 2030s)
William (30 - 50 years puts us between 2060 - 2080)
George (30 - 50 years puts us between 2120 - 2140)
The next possible female monarch is if George dies for some reason (passing onto Charlotte) or if George has a daughter first which would mean she'd take the throne well into the 2100s.
George is already nine years old, I doubt he will be alive in 2120, let alone 2140 (that would require him to live till 127 years of age). You have to rethink your math here. If we assume he'll die at 100, that brings us to 2113.
Ah yep. Forgot to include another 'skip' generation of either abdication or short reign like Charles will be, since my assumption was that William serves a term similar in length to his grandmother.
I'm echoing what others have said but as a Commonwealth citizen turned British citizen with a grandmother who was the same age but died last year, I can't help but feel an extended member of my family has passed.
I am not a monarchist by any means, but I felt an attachment and affection for the Queen that made me value the institution. I know she led a privileged life but ceaseless service and consistency across literal generations is, to my view, no easy ride.
At her coronation Eisenhower was president and she saw 13 US presidents while queen (and there was an additional three between her birth and when she became the queen.) Victoria actually saw more presidents come to power in her lifetime since there was a greater tendency for one-term presidents earlier in US history.
England colonized us and left the place in a mess - not hatred but ambivalent compared to my wife who prattled to the kids about it (I wanted to sleep).
She did her best in a system that does it best to rob you of being an individual - her behind the scenes limited intervention to get the Commonwealth and misguided scumbag Thatcher to at least condemn the Apartheid regime.
I hope Charles does some of his more zany things like climate change and sustainability.
could this influence some of the last remaining royalties around the world? I don't think charles or his son will ever be well respected. Elizabeth was faithful to her role, very conservative, oversaw the end of the british empire, probably the last recognized monarch worldwide. Without her, the royalties of saudi arabia are somewhat without peers , which may delegitimize them in the eyes of their citizens.
The last monarch of her kind; I don’t think the British monarchy institution will ever be the same nor future monarchs looked at with the same respect.
This is not a rant nor a flamebait. I am a commonwealth citizen and a staunch republican.
I am against monarchies by principle.
Unfortunately the king/queen of England is also the Supreme Governor of the Church of England which goes against my principles as well since I am an atheist.
I do not wish ill will on the royal family, but as a humanist who believes that every man, woman and child born on this planet is equal in rights, I cannot accept nor promote a system of governance that deems certain people to be above others by simply being born in the right family.
I am sorry for the loss caused by her death and I feel sad for her loved ones but that loss should not stop people form pushing for the creation of genuine republics in the countries within the commonwealth.
I think certain commonwealth countries will rethink whether they want Charles to be their official head of state. With Elizabeth dead, the memory of british empire becomes much more faded
As a long time lurker and infrequent poster, I am positively revolted by moderation's handling of this topic. Under the guise of "disallowing flamebait" HN's moderation team has systematically driven out anyone expressing negative opinions of an individual. At the start of this topic, there was a diversity of viewpoints[0] but now there is only trite, non-intellectually gratifying comments praising the queen or expressing their despair at her death (which is a weird sentiment for someone most have never met).
As a second-generation immigrant from an Asian country, I have to admit that I was ecstatic at hearing the news. For someone who's family was poor to the point of drinking rotting bone stew and foraging grass partly due to the queen refusing to decolonize until Britian lacked the military might to do so, the only reaction anyone in my close circle could have is positive. This is juxtaposed with the prevailing sentiment here where it's socially unacceptable to celebrate her death. I wonder if all the moralist harping about how one should never celebrate a person's death felt about Stalin, or how they would react to the death of Carmen Ortiz or Vladimir Putin.
I really enjoy my time lurking here in this small corner of the internet and I hope that the moderators here step it up and either 1. ban politically divisive topics or 2. moderate away both trite positive and negative comments.
Lots of comments in this thread have been expressing negative opinions. The only issue is that such comments need to remain within the site guidelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html). Those rules don't get suspended when people feel strongly for legitimate reasons—if we did that, we might as well not have the rules at all.
It's true that there's an asymmetry in that it's much easier for the people making positive comments not to break the site guidelines. In a way that's not fair—but it applies to all threads equally, regardless of whether the topic is monarchy or something else. It's also an unfairness we can't do much about—it's intrinsic to the problem of how to operate this forum.
We do try to make special allowances for negative comments that break the site guidelines but also include enough information to explain why the person feels the way they do, in a way other commenters can learn from. I did that in a few cases in this thread. What we don't make special allowances for is garden-variety flamewar, which there was also a ton of in this thread.
If you see comments that did not break the site guidelines but were moderated anyhow, that's bad and I'd like to see links so we can correct our mistakes (or, in the case of user flags, user mistakes). Mistakes are inevitable when trying to moderate threads with 1500 comments or whatever; moderation is guesswork, and hasty guesswork at that. But we're always willing to take a second look, and when we do see a mistake, to acknowledge it and fix it.
>"It's true that there's an asymmetry in that it's much easier for the people making positive comments not to break the site guidelines. In a way that's not fair—but it applies to all threads equally, regardless of whether the topic is monarchy or something else. It's also an unfairness we can't do much about—it's intrinsic to the problem of how to operate this forum."
Why are positive but controversial comments fine, but negative but controversial comments bad? Why is what's positive and negative defined solely in relation to the thread being posted in?
What if Vladimir Putin had a heart attack and dropped dead tomorrow. Certainly, that would be far more historically consequential than the death of the Queen. It would therefore have even better claim to being posted on HN.
Would you only allow positive comments on that thread? Comments that eulogized Putin as an emblem of stability and moral authority? Would you freeze or delete any comments that questioned that response?
I say this not to be facetious. It's a more extreme example, but I don't think it's qualitatively different.
Clearly, it doesn't make sense to allow only positive comments regardless of the subject. When it's highly ideological and contested - as is true of both Putin and the Queen - that just arbitrarily empowers one side of the debate and infuriates and alienates the other half.
I honestly think the only fair response - short of superhuman feats of moderation - is to delete the thread.
Why are positive but controversial comments fine, but negative but controversial comments bad?
That's not what the comment says, though. It doesn't say anything about 'controversial', just that positive comments more readily avoid running into guideline trouble. Maybe it helps if you replace 'positive' with 'boring and anodyne', since the mechanism still applies. Boring and anodyne comments usually don't require as much moderation.
But it is what happened in practice. The Queen is controversial: whether you laud her reign or question it, that's true. The whole point is that praising the Queen as a 'moral authority' is not anodyne.
As far as I can see, the PG principle that Dang refers back to is disanalogous. PG was speaking about the valence of comments - whether they were nice or mean - not whether they supported or opposed an ideological position.
Only if practice includes arguing against things that weren't said. Dang didn't say controversial, I didn't say praising the Queen as a moral authority is anodyne. You can work your way back to whatever conclusion you like that way, but don't substitute your own reasoning for that of your interlocutors.
Practice refers to what's done. I am really trying to have a good faith conversation here.
PaulHoule posted that the Queen was a 'moral authority'. I replied setting out a few reasons why that might not be true.
What did Dang do? Tell me off and detach my subthread, while the original comment from PaulHoule still stands.
Clearly, that's telling me that positive but controversial comments are fine, but negative but controversial comments are not.
That is replicated across the entire thread. Praise of the Queen is controversial (my interpretation) but allowed (moderation in practice). Criticism of the Queen is controversial (my interpretation), but disallowed (moderation in practice).
Your comment looks like a close call. The "moral obsequiousness" thing was probably too sharp and personalized, and if you're arguing that someone who is being broadly mourned is unworthy of warm regard, you probably want to make that point in more than just two sentences. As your statements get more controversial, they need to be written more carefully, because you have to consider more than just the impact of your ideas on the world, but also how your writing will affect the thread: even if you're absolutely right and making an important, intellectually curious point, if the way you writes it starts a 30 comment slapfight, you've done more harm than good.
I think if you'd written this comment on any other day, it wouldn't have been singled out, and also that there's a colorable argument that you got swept up in a bunch of really awful comments that happened to express the same sentiment.
But also: you could have just put more effort into it. As it stands, the comment you're talking about could be persuasive only to someone who takes your word on things, because it doesn't support any of the arguments it makes.
(I don't care at all about QE2 other than to say that I once made a joke about the death of Princess Diana in a bar in Calgary a few months after the event, and that is a mistake I won't make again, so there might be something to the idea that being casually and curtly dismissive of the Commonwealth's feeling about the queen is a poor arguing strategy.)
I appreciate you taking the time to write this thoughtful response. I am sympathetic with some of it, and certainly I could have been more diplomatic.
>"But also: you could have just put more effort into it. As it stands, the comment you're talking about could be persuasive only to someone who takes your word on things, because it doesn't support any of the arguments it makes."
No one reads long walls of text, not least in threads with >1000 comments. Concision is a great virtue in nearly all communication. I would say two things to the refrain that I didn't 'support' any of my assertions, and that my post 'could be persuasive only to someone who takes your word on things'.
First, they are a form of 'immanent critique'[1]. Anglo-American society recognises some basics moral and political norms. These include the idea of equality and that people shouldn't be privileged because of blood or race, the idea of liberty and that one people should not coercively rule another, and the idea of democracy and that a people ought to choose its own government. I made some simple observations to the effect that the British monarchy egregiously violates all three.
In this sense I don't need to argue for my evaluative premises because they're all bromides within our gestalt. But if you juxtapose them with some basic facts about the monarchy, suddenly it becomes obvious that there's a catastrophic contradiction. I am working from premises most people accept to a surprising - but I think obviously correct - conclusion.
Second, this same burden of 'support' is not being applied to those on the other side of the conversation. The person to whom I was responding said nothing to support their assertion that the Queen was a 'moral authority' other than that the Queen didn't succumb to personal scandal. A standard that lots of very bad people meet.
First: I laughed audibly at the idea that "nobody reads long walls of text". Long walls of text are practically a cheat code on HN.
Second: most people who write these kinds of "concise" comments are not engaging with dialectical reasoning; they're just dashing off sneering barbs. Clearly, you're getting pattern matched with them. If you had merely added the reference to "Immanent critique" in your original comment, as an explanation for why it was so curt, you'd have escaped that filter!
Obviously, the burden of support isn't applied to people expressing warm thoughts about the queen, because virtually none of them are barbs. They're called "bromides" for a reason!
You can write excitatory arguments, and even give HN heartburn in the process. But you have to do so carefully (or at least sparingly, taking pains not to join a chorus of rhetorical capsaicin), or you're going to get caught out the way you did here. Provocations (in any direction) generally need to earn their keep here, which is usually as simple as some kind of demonstration of good faith in your writing --- it doesn't need to be a wall of text (though if you're angling for Internet points, that'll help).
>"Obviously, the burden of support isn't applied to people expressing warm thoughts about the queen, because virtually none of them are barbs. They're called "bromides" for a reason!"
Let me just cut to the chase and say that I fundamentally disagree with this. One version of what you're saying is that controversial agreement needs a lower standard of proof than controversial disagreement. I see absolutely no reason for that. Western thought is built from Plato on the idea knowledge is arrived at only through dialectical criticism - not the asymmetrical favouring of agreement.
But, maybe that's not what you meant. Perhaps you meant that disagreement is more liable to be a 'barb' - to be 'provocative', as you later say - than disagreement. From a functional view of managing HN to minimise conflict, the less provocations the better. First of all, what is and is not provocative is relative to the person. Deifying the Queen is provocative to me and, evidently, many other people in the thread. My provocation, if you want to call it that, was not the first in the chain. Yet it was singled out. The other thing is that if you take this conclusion to its logical conclusion it will simply end up enforcing and consolidating the opinion of the majority, against any dissenting minority. Again, to go back to basics, Socrates was put to death exactly because he called into question the settled views of Athenian society.
Category error. I don't think controversial arguments have different standards of proof for validity. This isn't a debate society, it's a community. It has norms grown over the last decade that allow it to continue growing by welcoming anonymous newcomers without burning itself down. Your comment was, reasonably, perceived as rancorous. We have an immune system tuned to rancor. Its response to your comment was allergic rather than immunologic, but I don't blame the pollen when I step outside and need to blow my nose, if only because there's no point in doing so.
A major gripe I have about this is the selective enforcement of this "positive bias" based on what seems to be favoritism towards Western sentiments and the ensuing under correction of errors.
To give an extreme example, these two comments in different threads are basically the same in terms of sentiment, prose and effect, however, one criticizes the CCP for their genocide of Uighurs, and the other criticizes the Queen. The difference here is one comment is at the top of the discussion while the other got the user banned.[0][1]
The "likeliest explanation" of ignorance for [0] here doesn't hold since moderation has posted comments on the topic and again, it's the top comment of an extremely popular thread.
Here are some more examples of popular but off-topic for HN comments against Putin and Cloudflare respectively.
Dang, a million kudos to you for curating the site, but this topic has been an absolute train-wreck and I hope you can at least take it off the front page.
The ones that aren't there, are not there! I can link you to some that aren't, but they show up as [flagged] and don't do a good job of illustrating my point[0].
Thank you for sharing your diverse perspective. Many Indian friends tell be the bloody legacy of British rule over India has had a lasting negative impact on life and liberty of their people and nation still felt to this very day.
There’s a lot of debate in this thread about the rights and wrongs of monarchy, the extent to which the Queen chose to serve, and so on. There isn’t much context about Britain as it was when she became Queen. Since I used to be a historian, I figured I’d throw some in.
Princess Elizabeth wasn’t originally expected to become Queen. Her father was only the second son of King George V and was not expected to become King either. But, in a move that was deeply shocking at the time, the older son, King Edward VIII, abdicated in 1936 so that he could marry a divorcee.
The abdication crisis was complicated and further complicated by the Commonwealth. The members of the Commonwealth, all of whom had Edward VIII as their king, had to agree to the abdication. The government of the Irish Free State, as it was then known, used the opportunity to dramatically reduce the role of the King.
Elizabeth’s father became George VI and she became the heir presumptive. At this point (1936) it still wasn’t clear that she would become Queen. She was just 10 years old and if her parents had a son, he would leapfrog his older sisters and become the heir.
Edward VIII had become Duke of Windsor after the abdication and he remained something of a thorn in the sides of the royal family and British government. There were fights about money and titles and whether the Duke would be allowed to return to the UK. There were bad feelings all round. In 1937 the Duke visited Nazi Germany, which infuriated the British government. During World War II he was considered to be pro-Nazi and was for a while under surveillance by the Americans.
Things had in some ways calmed down by 1952, when George VI died. But the UK was still intensely feeling the effects of World War II. There were several financial crises, the country’s debt was enormous and rationing didn’t end until 1954.
The British Empire had also continued to fall apart. Today many people consider that a good thing, with countries gaining independence and people gaining self-determination. But from a monarch’s perspective, losing an empire is a pretty terrible failure.
I’ve missed out all sorts of things because this was already so long. But that, roughly speaking, was the situation when Princess Elizabeth became Queen Elizabeth II in 1952.
In movies as well as in real life kings and queens are always played by the others. People like a big show - now they have a reason for a big show - but at the end of the day she was just an old woman living much too wealthy off taxes representing an anachronistic system of government.
First of all, let’s give a round of applause to Charles. Few thought he would be king. Many assumed Liz was holding on just to spite him. You did it, Chucky!
Second, now is a good time to figure out if Reptoids can hold their shape when dead. I’ve never seen a definitive answer in the literature.
With the Pandemic, and the death of the Queen, and several other events, we can now say that the beginning of the 2020s marks the true cultural beginning of the 21st Century. These times will look increasingly different from whatever came before.
As Queen, she met 14 US Presidents (15 total) and 16 Prime Ministers (17 total). Whatever our feelings toward the anachronism of hereditary monarchies, she's been a participant in (and witness to) a significant amount of modern history.
The Queen ruled since my dad was born, a fixture of my life if not an influential one here in the colonies. Her dying feels so strange. Like if the moon just went away one day.
Not being a citizen of the commonwealth, I have no political beef in this, I can only admire her for holding her office for a longer time than most here (including me) have lived. Being the formal head of once a colonial empire turning into a commonwealth with these days most of the member nations rightfully going their own way, she was an important participant in the history of hundreds of millions of people.
Her role was one of constance over a long time in which the world changed a lot. She was a truck driver in WW2 and became queen not too long after that considering she was queen till today. Now an era ends and a new one begins.
As someone who has no idea what this monarchy means or what powers it has in the UK government, I was wondering if there was a good resource to learn more?
As tests of a "new" government go, the implementation of Operation "London Bridge" (Protocol related to the period of mourning, state funeral and coronation) is certainly going to be an interesting one to watch unfold.
With the track record of successive Tory governments however... Interesting for perhaps the wrong reasons.
Rip. May she rest in peace. And the timing was impeccably terrible... Charles doesn't have the skills, charisma, connections or political capital to help his nation in the upcoming hard times.
I'm sorry. I disagree that this is flame bait, but respect your interpretation. I do think it's important to recognize the crimes of historical figures especially in cases where people fall over each other about how much of a saint they are.
I have strong feelings about her, and exactly because this is HN I chose to not air them in this forum.
Arguably ignoring the negative aspects is spreading fake news disinformation, which is a problem on the Internet in general nowadays.
Probably not, but it will almost certainly spark renewed conversation in countries like Australia and NZ about becoming republics (but still Commonwealth members).
There's a history of monarchist sympathy in Ireland, partly stemming from the history of anglo-irish wealth in Dublin (readers of this journalist's paper) but also the political party that's been in power for the past 11 years would be historically sympathetic (as I guess would some subset of their voters).
That said, none of the above is broadly representative of a majority, and apart from the one example she posts there of a tweet being shared out of context, there's been a very loud and varied anti monarchy sentiment expressed within Irish (not American) media and circles today. Much of the reportage is in fact not misinformation.
All: please don't post flamebait, including ranting against monarchy or railing against "the nobility" like it's 1770. Such reflexive comments are not on topic here. We want curious conversation. Please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
This story is on topic because it's a major historical event and history has always been on topic here. If it doesn't produce an intellectually curious response in you, you're welcome to find something else that does—there are plenty of other things to read—but in that case please refrain from posting.
Positive-empty comments aren't substantive either, but as pg pointed out way back when HN was getting started (https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html), those are benign. The comments we need to avoid are the malignant ones.
Edit: by positive-empty I just meant comments like these:
I'm not telling you guys to be royalists! I'm just asking you not to post crap comments, which this thread was filled with when I first saw it. We don't care what you're for or against, we just care about people using HN as intended.
Edit 2: I think the problem is that this comment has outlived its usefulness at the top of the thread because the bottom of the barrel comments have mostly been moderated away, whether by user flags or by us. I'm going to unpin this and mark it offtopic now. Please don't post any more bottom-of-barrel comments!—and if you see some, please flag them.
> please don't post flamebait, including ranting against monarchy or railing against "the nobility" like it's 1770.
I am kind of curious about what this means exactly. Is any criticism of the monarchy off limits? Is the purpose of this thread for people to air their positive thoughts about this lady?
For example, I find non-British people that are genuinely sad about her passing to be pretty bizarre. It’s a fascinating event to look at how we tend to form parasocial relationships with carefully curated depictions of people.
It’s even more bizarre when we make actual rules to enforce orthodoxy and stifle criticism of parasocial relationships with carefully curated depictions of people.
This insistence on an arbitrary standard of decorum and the compulsion to play out a socially-prescribed bit of theater is pretty odd. Queen Elizabeth was paradoxically both not powerful enough to warrant lumping her in with British failings and at the same time so powerful that we are compelled to speak highly of her.
My post (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32769925) was not for or against monarchy, or about monarchy at all. It was about tedious, low-quality internet comments. I'm against them.
(Edit: that first sentence is really a template instantiation. When I post like this, it's never for or against <T>. It's always just about internet comments. People who are against <T> (or for it) often react like we're for <T> (or against it), but this is an illusion. It could quickly be cured by grokking the template, since at that level all these posts are entirely the same.)
It may not make so much sense now, but this thread was filling with the worst sort of dumb flamebait when it got started. That it isn't so now is because I've spent the last 3 hours refreshing the page and meticulously moderating it. If some of my comments are a little dyspeptic, that's because dealing with tedious comments is tedious, and I sort of pep myself up by letting loose a bit. Not the finest of practices but esprit de corps is also a need.
Your post begins "All: please don't post flamebait, including ranting against monarchy or railing against 'the nobility' like it's 1770." To then state that this post "was not about monarchy at all" feels like gaslighting. Perhaps you didn't intend to write about monarchy, but in fact you did.
I see what you mean! But note the words flamebait, ranting, and railing. That is what I was asking people not to do, same as always. Thoughtful, non-flamebait comments were not excluded.
I should have said it differently because I gave the impression of being on one side when the truth is that I don't care; and qua moderator, I really don't care.
You use words like "odd" and "bizarre" to describe many people's reactions to the QE's passing...
I humbly suggest that it's it is simply that you don't understand a certain perspective here. That's totally fine -- completely fine -- because there's no reason to expect we all could or should share the same perspective on this.
I humbly also suggest that, while there are certainly many criticism that could (and should, probably) be leveled in good reason against monarchies in general, and perhaps this monarchy in particular, today is maybe not the right day to do it.
Today a lady who was very meaningful to many people has passed. Why not let them grieve?
Imagine someone important to you died today. They surely weren't perfect, but is today the day to harp on their negatives? The monarchy has been around for centuries. If your criticisms have any merit, they will still have impact a few days from now.
Anyway, whether you're lucky enough that no one important to you has died (yet) or because you don't have that sensitivity, let me assure you: today isn't the day to pursue your criticisms of those that have passed today. Hang on to it for now andtell everyone about it later. If it's really something worthwhile, it will have legs later, too.
Likely 99% of the people here have zero personal relationship with her. Those that do, are preparing for her funeral, not posting here. It is a worthwhile question to ask why so many people have this feeling for a person they have never met. Now is when most of the eyes are on this issue. Saying it is "too soon" is just trying to delay criticism of the monarchy to when people have lost interest and have moved on to other news.
800 comments like “why is monarchy still a thing in 2022?” would be tedious and redundant. Now we have 700 comments of “didn’t really care that much until right now but I just broke down in tears”, which is merely boring.
Extremely well put. I am from one of the countries that was absolutely slaughtered by the so called great britain, and I have as much desire to share my opinion and views, as the folks who are mourning the loss.
Don't feel discouraged. You are not alone. There are, unfortunately, millions of people across the globe whose opinion about this heinous war criminal are being silenced so that the 'feel-good' propaganda can propagate.
Those of us who make the effort to understand the truth of world affairs will always be targeted by those who wish to mould the world to their view. Such is the nature of imperialism.
Elizabeth and her empire is STILL TODAY responsible for much, much suffering - at immense scale. This is a truly scary fact for those who live inside the propaganda bubble that protects them from knowing anything about the victims of the empire.
And if you have something to contribute then contribute it. But if it is just to say "boo queen" then don't be surprised if it receives a poor reception.
There are plenty of critical comments. The sort we want to avoid is shallow negativity, because it's the opposite of curiosity.
Another way to look at this is that we want reflective comments rather than reflexive ones*. Reflex means predictable and predictable means tedious. Tedium is really what we're trying to avoid on HN—not criticisms of monarchy. I'd have thought that was painfully obvious, but I realize it's neither so obvious nor so painful to people who don't deal with it full time.
Pro status-quo bias. Monarchy isn't as relevant as it used to be but trusting the judgment and leadership of the elite is as relevant as ever and allowing positive-empty comments just reinforces that belief here. I guess that's just the sort of bias HN is ok with.
I just meant that if people post things like "RIP" or "That's sad", it's void of information and therefore unsubstantive, but doesn't contribute to destroying the site. I just meant to repeat the point pg was making 15 years ago about "empty comments", and I'm sure the queen was the last thing he had in mind (https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html).
I was not making a case for royalism! just a case against tedious internet battles, and boy is monarchism one of those. (I mean, "Good riddance. The world is rid of a horrible person who has done horrible things" - ? Good grief. At least give us something amusing.) (that was a random example I just ran across)
That's still implicitly making a pro-royalist community, at the cost of making a less flame-baitey community.
Pro-status-quo comments are inherently going to be less divisive because they don't challenge people, and seeing this thread full up of folks commenting on how personally meaningful the queen was to them without ever really being involved in their lives is a testament to that.
That said, I think it may also just go to show that's why royalism discussions shouldn't be the bread and butter of this community.
---
Thanks for the response by the way. I disagree with some things here but I also talk with a number of people from wildly different viewpoints. A true testament to y'alls work.
This thread is full of people who are ignorant of the crimes against humanity committed by this individual, and the war crimes and war criminals she protected during her reign.
The monarchy is still politically relevant in the UK[1]. But it seems dang prefers to have pages of saccharine platitudes than allow any discussion of the desirability of monarchy in the modern world or any critical discussion of the Queen's legacy. Curiosity is only encouraged if it doesn't put wealth and power under it's microscope. Then it becomes tedious.
As I wrote here three years ago[1]:
> Indignation isn't shallow or boring, it's the driving force behind social progress. Indeed, lack of indignation indicates either the inability to imagine a better world or perhaps the natural satisfaction with the status quo of someone who finds themself sitting on the upper rungs of society as currently structured. The latter no doubt describes many of us here.
Indignation isn't the arch-enemy of intellectual curiosity; apathy and bovine conformity are. This status-quo bias is what you would expect of a forum run for the benefit of a Silicon Valley for-profit institution, but it's still disappointing.
This is a very common criticism when one happens to disagree with the target of some positivity. Sometimes it's a reasonable criticism, but usually it's an oversimplification we allow ourselves to indulge in. Positivity can have intrinsic value even in the absence of some accompanying objective substance.
On the other hand, and similarly to my first point, I agree that indignation too is not inherently value-less. However, there are miles between useful indignation and snarky tangents.
I don't see how the GP was arguing that any kind of positivity would be bad. The problem is more having different standards for positive and negative comments on the matter and apparently forbidding any kind of criticism. That doesn't seem very much in the spirit of free speech of this site.
That being said, an important person died I can understand that it's generally not good style to start with the negative comments right away.
Yes, and it is detrimental to the espoused value of intellectual curiosity. Sincere disagreement is fertile soil for productive discourse. It gives each side an opportunity to test and refine their beliefs and learn from one another. If you suppress one side or the other, no one is forced to be rigorous in their thinking or reexamine their priors. Everyone gets trapped in an intellectual local maximum. The result is threads like this, full of comments nearly identical to each other and devoid of anything interesting.
But this isn’t a criticism of “saccharine platitudes,” it is specifically criticizing a policy that considers such platitudes as benign while censoring negative comments of equal intellectual value. You can’t claim a high horse of “intellectual curiosity” when this thread is full of positivity fluff. If that remains, so too should the low-effort indignation.
Obviously dang is free to moderate as he sees fit, but this attempt to rationalize bias as some philosophical ideal of fair high-quality moderation is worth criticizing. This all stems from the insistence that HN remain “politically neutral,” which is a mythical concept for comfortable people who want to be insulated from conversation that threatens their comfortable lives. Politically neutral is always politically defensive of the status quo, and moderation to that effect always ends up with threads like these that end up skewed in favor of the position deemed to be politically “neutral.”
It might be an interesting historical event for people who don’t live in the UK
But some of us have to live with this… a family that have got immensely rich from being head of state, a family that have interfered in laws to their advantage, a family that we have no choice over whether they continue to be the head of state
dang, Paul Graham is British; has it factored into your decision of keeping the comments deferential to the Queen.
My condolences to British people who held the Queen at high esteem. But frankly world is a bigger place than Britain and America. Not everyone from the British former colonies will appreciate the Queen. if they express the feelings about the monarchy in a respectful way; do you see an issue?
There was no "decision of keeping the comments deferential to the Queen". In any case, PG having been born in Britain does not factor into any decisions on HN.
I believe I've answered your other question in a few places:
... as well as in the comment you're replying to (starting at "I'm not telling you guys to be royalists!"). If you read those comments and still have a question that isn't answered there, I'd be happy to take a crack at it.
The point I made was not really about monarchy, but about comment quality on HN. Low-information, high-indignation comments—such as repetition of well-worn political points—is the classic low-quality case that we're most hoping to avoid here. Especially because they tend to evoke even worse from others.
if you has said something like "we're not interested in this thread turning into another opportunity to litigate the pro's and cons of the monarchy" I would agree with you.
But specifically saying not to comment negatively while allowing positive comments on what is clearly a hotly contested issue is ridiculous.
Why is it malignant? Monarchy is the foundation of the whole system. It goes from the top all the way from the bottom. That's like saying blood is a malignant influence on the body.
Please don't take HN threads further into predictable, generic flamewar. It's tedious, and therefore off topic. The site guidelines ask commenters in several different ways not to do this.
The monarchy has utterly usurped UK's "democracy" and continues to use its powers to oppress innocent human beings across the world. The crown regularly interferes in the democratic machinations of the UK.
The fact that the UK doesn't have the social capital to prosecute their known, actual war criminals - because they are factually protected by the crown - should be a clue of the malignant effect of the monarchy, in itself.
He says not to "rant against monarcy". Criticism of elizabeth is fair game I think, although still early for that. We ll see a lot of criticism of her and monarchy in general in the next months.
Personally i can see why brits may have feelings for her, but i dont consider her remarkable. Her legacy is basically that she lived in 96 of the most impactful years in human history and oversaw (from a distance) the end of the british empire. None of that was her making, she merely stood there as a prop. Her greatest achievement was that she led a conservative life, married only once, never participated in anything progressive, meshing well with the anachronistic rituals of monarchy.
There is a difference between criticizing monarchy in a civilized manner and flamebating. A civilized discussion is 90% of the value of hn compared to, say, reddit.
> this ever more fascist government from undermining fundamental aspects of our supposed democracy.
this seems like quite a contradictory position to take. royalty is undemocratic, but you lost respect for them when they chose not to use their unearned power to interfere with the actions of democratically elected officials?
are there not better reasons to not respect the monarchy?
They have a veto, they didn't exercise it to protect democracy, and the only person with power to prorogue parliament was the Queen so she became actively involved in the subversion of our democracy. Keeping parliament open would have been more democratic, and was the default line. There are other reasons, but that was what pushed me over the edge personally to accepting they may be a useful aspect of our pseudo-constitutional monarchy to considering that they genuinely only want to maintain their positions, to feed at the trough.
this doesn’t justify the contradiction in terms of disliking them for being undemocratic, but losing all respect for them because they refused to use their undemocratic veto
whether proroguing parliament was right or not - it wasn’t - it would absolutely have been worse if they had interfered. one is a temporary political tactic by an elected official to push through legislation - or lack thereof - the other would have completely and unreservedly undermined our democratic institutions as they have worked for over 200 years
I think you slightly misunderstand the role of the royals in this country. they are not consciously acting figures who take an active role in politics. they’re more like the chair that the speaker sits in, or some of the pretty furnishings in the houses of parliament. they’re an aesthetic and we put up with them for that reason and that reason only. you wouldn’t expect the paper that a law is written on to make sure the law itself is democratic and for the same reason you shouldn’t expect the current regent to do the same. they’re a part of the machinery, not a person working it
HN would be a complete shit show without dang. What you call "heavy handedness" is what I call the most appropriate, fair minded guidance to keep threads from turning into flamewars.
I've been warned by dang before, and when I was, after I took a minute to cool down from what I was responding to, I realized he was exactly correct. I'd encourage y'all to do the same - the parent's comment that there is "a requirement that we do not speak ill of that monarchy" is a gross, and honestly annoyingly incorrect, mischaracterization of what dang said.
There are many places where you can get light moderation and get to say what you want. Reddit comes to mind. HN is different largely because of that moderation; it's a feature not a bug.
Engagement and return visits aren't the primary goals of this community. Indeed, "As a rule, a community site that becomes popular will decline in quality" (https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html)
The site's goal is to encourage deeply interesting content, in terms of both posts and comments.
Not to mention that she was the last monarch to have any memory of WWII and served as an ambulance mechanic. Now that generation that remembered the horrors of fascism has mostly passed and we find ourselves in a period that seems to have many echos of the 1930s with a new rise of authoritarianism and fascism around the world.
> Not to mention that she was the last monarch to have any memory of WWII
That's probably not true. There's the Dalai Lama and Simeon II of Bulgaria, who were minors but at least Simeon surely remembers (his father died in suspicious circumstances, he had an unconstitutional regency, and then he was dethroned, expelled and spent his life in exile).
> Now that generation that remembered the horrors of fascism has mostly passed and we find ourselves in a period that seems to have many echos of the 1930s with a new rise of authoritarianism and fascism around the world
It's honestly infuriating that with the wealth of information available at everyone's fingertips so many people are so easily making the same mistakes as a century earlier.
King Harald V of Norway (born 1936) and Queen Margrete II (born 1940) are old enough to remember WW2. So is Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands (born 1938, abdicated).
I think the grandparent comment’s author forgot to insert a “British” in front of monarch.
I think you're picking hairs, given how much influence Nepal and Bulgaria have on the world stage, compared to QEII's 70 years as one of the most powerful heads of state on earth, probably the most powerful, given the duration.
Actually the British monarch has a lot of power, de jure, they just don't use it due to "tradition". They're the ones who appoint prime ministers, and they're the ones who dissolve parliament for new elections. Traditionally they do those things at the behest of others, but de jure it's their right. (Note: those two powers are the ones abused by Hindenburg in Weimar Germany to de facto appoint whomever as chancellor based on his power to dissolve the Bundestag if they disagreed with his choice)
No. Royal prerogative is only exercised on advice of the prime minister, the cabinet or by the consent of parliament. Constitutional convention is not just tradition. And the fact that the constitution of the UK is uncodified doesn't mean the monarch has any de jure powers. Even the prorogation of parliament on advice of the prime minister was held to be unlawful: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R_(Miller)_v_The_Prime_Ministe...
> I think the grandparent comment’s author forgot to insert a “British” in front of monarch.
"she was the last British monarch to have any memory of WWII" is pretty weird too, though, since her father George VI was the only other monarch alive during WW2. I guess unless you also count her uncle Edward VIII who was alive throughout WW2 and had previously been a British monarch. If that counts then sure, she was the last of three British monarchs to remember WW2.
The Dalai Lama and Simeon II of Bulgaria were both heads of state during WW II. But China invaded Tibet in 1950, and by 1960 the Dalai Lama ruled nothing. And Simeon lost his throne in 1946 (though he did get elected prime minister many years later).
Is the Dalai Lama a monarch? I see a resemblance in how monarchy works to how the Dalai Lama is chosen, but it's not obvious to me this is the same kind of thing.
Monarch is not a precisely defined term. It usually (though not in the case of popes) also requires that the holder be part of the country’s traditional aristocracy or nobility. Lifetime heads of state of regimes issued from modern revolutions (North Korea or Iran, for example) are not usually considered monarchs.
I guess the only real definition of monarch is social and cultural: someone who claims to be one and is broadly recognized as such.
> It usually (though not in the case of popes) also requires that the holder be part of the country’s traditional aristocracy or nobility.
Not really. Reza Khan was just a colonel in the army before the coup that later established him as Shah of Iran. Osman of the Ottoman Empire and his descendants for a very long time had no aristocracy or nobility to speak of, only temporary (land reverted to the Sultan at death) land owners.
Yep, one of the most popular monarchies, the Holy Roman Empire, was an elective monarchy (mostly theoretical after the Habsburgs took over, but still).
> It's honestly infuriating that with the wealth of information available at everyone's fingertips so many people are so easily making the same mistakes as a century earlier.
I think it's more about wilful ignorance than truth. I saw a video the other day with a US student protesting a speaker at his uni, and saying how he thought that some political violence could be useful. He then went on to admit he didn't know what the speaker looked like, nor what they believed, nor had he ever seen or heard anything they'd done. He'd just seen a poster saying that this person was bad, that was enough for him.
I've thought for a long time that when the generation that fought in the war, or even grew up in it, has died out, that's when idiots like this student will be free to make something terrible rise. Fight for freedoms like speech while you can.
Which war? There's a couple dozen at any given moment. I fought in some, have a bunch of friends who fought in a couple entirely different ones, too. I probably won't die for another 40-50 years, so rest easy I guess? What's the special quality of "the war" that makes its participants repel tigers I mean keep idiots like this alleged student from mucking things up?
Okay, what are the magical qualities of "the war you mean WWII" that make its participants, who have special significance to you the British, repel the unruly youth of the United States? Or, is it possible you're just a grouch, the latest in a line stretching back to at least Socrates, complaining about "kids these days?"
I know that the US has a reputation for producing idiots but believe me, they exist in other places too, hence why I didn't specify the States, but you feel free to make it all about you.
If you want to say I'm a liar, say it. Otherwise, what is your point? That I'm producing some sinister narrative by sharing a thought with an anecdote attached? Perhaps I'm part of a bot army, pushing a narrative insidiously through the medium of <checks notes> a comment on HN.
I think that while its certainly ignorance. it's more about complexity (which ignorance thrives in), wherever complexity lies, divisions do as well. ignorance itself does not necessarily have to be wilful. I suppose I'll say, this is not a counterargument, I somewhat see your point and wanted to expand on it.
That's a good point. It's also often the case that the differences aren't as big as they seem to outsiders. One of the benefits of going abroad for a while is to be able to see your own country's politics from a distance, and the one your in's closer. It's easy to see that the Overton window is often quite narrow.
However, I don't know many places where mainstream politics would accept political violence as anything but extreme in almost every case. I'm not sure the fringe is growing, but to come round to my initial point, I'm worried that it will after the last WWII generation dies out.
>It's honestly infuriating that with the wealth of information available at everyone's fingertips so many people are so easily making the same mistakes as a century earlier.
I agree, but for me it's more infuriating how often I see this comparison used when when the modern version is primarily head-canon catastrophizing despite the same people making the comparison advocating and practicing behaviors that are even closer to what they decry, all while pretending they're not. Nuance and introspection are sorely lacking everywhere.
Strongly disagree. "The antifascists are actually the facists because they won't tolerate my facism!" Strong paradox of tolerance vibes you've got there.
And I, in turn, strongly disagree with you. The paradox of tolerance is a product of sloppy thinking and mostly amounts to tribalism in a fancy coat. And antifascists refuse to tolerate many things substantially milder than actual fascism.
Yep I’d definitely refuse to tolerate mild fascism, thanks I don’t want to go to shooting war over it. It’s bad enough seeing people I love and care about beaten or harassed out of their homes.
This is basically where Howe’s 4th turning thesis comes from. The cycle repeats over the course of around 80 years more or less as the generations die off.
Ahh yes, that photo of Elizabeth changing an ambulance tire, one of the great public relations triumphs of the 20th century. So humble! She's just like one of us...
I don't lightly ban an 11-year-old account, but we've warned you many times, and you've done little but post flamewar comments lately, including nationalistic and religious flamewar.
The site guidelines do ask people not to respond to egregious comments, since those just fuel the flames (this is HN's equivalent of "please don't feed the trolls"), but the problems with what you were posting were much worse than that.
Time to end on a high? Shall we just abandon this whole monarchy thing and time to flip over to a republic and leave the much revered queen as the last ever monarch of the UK?
Seems like Scotland is going to go independent, and if Scotland do Wales will only be a matter of time so may as well just can it now?
Not sure where you're getting the idea Scotland is likely to go independent, the 'no' vote has been consistently 5% higher than 'yes' for a long time, except for during Partygate. Add in the fact that the Tories will likely not be in government, an aggressive Russia (SNP policy is to get rid of their nukes) and it's probably unlikely. Welsh independence is polling at 25%
Enlightenment ideals are an affront to all that is good in humanity and the victims of Robespierre and the industrial revolution know it better than anyone.
Let us push to the opposite side and make away with enlightenment and its destructive path. In a couple centuries enlightenment has put us closer to death than any and all kings.
As much as I love Enlightenment principles, I've learned with age that Reason is not enough for human society to flourish. People need something that goes beyond reason, or even explicitly against reason, to find meaning in their own existence.
A constitutional monarchy is an unreasonable construct, but its perseverance is a symbol of continuity and certainty in an existence that is so often chaotic and uncertain. It provides reassurance to many, and mutes the worst excesses of political turmoil. As long as it really stays out of the fray (and that's sadly not always been the case, with Elizabeth II, and it's likely her son will be even worse), then I don't have a problem with it. Like religion, I don't need it, you don't need it, but many do - and they might as well have it.
Elizabeth nor Charles are claiming devine right. They are a unfiying vestige of times past, providing as she did a human constant, an embodiment of the Commonwealth.
So long as their heredity isn't overtly providing them the ability or write or enforce law, it does not seem an affront to democracy.
The royal prerogative includes the powers to appoint and dismiss ministers, regulate the civil service, issue passports, declare war, make peace, direct the actions of the military, and negotiate and ratify treaties, alliances, and international agreements.
While Elizabeth has CHOSEN to not use these powers much, any future monarch can. Just look at the U.S. in the last 6 years to see what happens when a country relies more on historical norms rather than law.
> The royal prerogative includes the powers to ...
Not really. In practice these powers belong to parliament and the monarch performs a merely ceremonial role; actions are performed in his or her name but not at her behest. In the English constitution parliament is sovereign and the monarch acts on its instructions.
Really, that's not true and hasn't been since 1688.
She held the power of royal prerogative but couldn't ever exercise it because Parliament retains the right to dismiss and choose a new monarch anytime they like.
The issue of royal prerogative was settled in the Glorious Revolution when Parliament decided it didn't like the King, James II and just selected a new one.
Every year we remind the monarch at the State Opening of Parliament that they can't ever use their royal prerogative.
The monarch might have influence but ultimate power rests with Parliament.
She has had weekly un-recorded meetings with the head of government for seven decades. I don't know the degree to which these influence policy or not, but if that isn't an affront to democracy I don't know what is.
Recent polls show support for Scottish independence dropping. Charles becoming king may affect that of course, but I wouldn't say it's at all clear that "Scotland is going to go independent".
I agree on the idea of dropping the monarchy on a high though, as long as we go for a presidential system similar to Ireland rather than the USA...
Because it's a good idea to separate the role of head of state from that of head of government as a bulwark against governments taking unconstitutional actions. It also gives you an apolitical chief diplomat and a respected voice outside of party politics that helps moderate discourse and to counterbalance executive power.
The president is someone who can sit above day-to-day politics, and can be very useful in a time of crisis - for example, I'm pretty sure Italian political history would be even more tumultuous without having had a president to bridge the gaps between administrations.
Shall we just abandon this whole monarchy thing and time to flip over to a republic and leave the much revered queen as the last ever monarch of the UK?
I'd vote no, because then we'd end up with people like Boris Johnson or Liz Truss as our head of state(!!) The monarch nowadays is important for what they prevent. The Queen stood in the way of someone like Boris getting access to all the 'bling' of state. A big shift would need to occur before we could become a sensible republic, particularly in dismantling a lot of the ceremonial aspects of British life. Perhaps even a collective head of state like the Swiss could work.
As an American, I kind of envy the fact that there's a referee who can step in when needed. She stepped into Australia's government shut down and fired the whole government in the 1970s during a government shutdown.
It works because she receives extensive training to be apolitical. (And if she is political, there are repercussions.)
There isn’t. If the Queen ever steps in, it’s immediately a constitutional crisis that threatens the entire legitimacy of our democracy. Her role has been purely ceremonial for the longest time.
At least this is true for Canada. I have to imagine it’s very similar for the rest of the Commonwealth. Every instance of involvement that wasn’t ceremonial has been doing precisely what the Prime Minister has requested of her via the Governor General, such as dissolving parliament. Which I guess makes that ceremonial too.
I think that when people see the world 'monarchy' they still have the vision and ideas of monarchies from medival ages. Modern european monarchies that are still around are nothing but and, to be honest, I have no idea what would have changed really if they were no longer here
I know none of us knew her personally but this doesn’t seem like a sentiment shared by most, and it is definitely not something to bring up when she isn’t even in the ground yet.
The phrase "you people" is a putdown and the entire comment was aggressive and rude. Please don't post like that to HN. If you review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html, you'll see how much it goes against the intended spirit of the site.
I've been banning every account in this thread that is breaking the site guidelines and also has a recent history of breaking the site guidelines. Fortunately your account doesn't pass the second test! but if you wouldn't mind reviewing the rules and sticking to them, we'd be grateful.
I realise she has just died and it's unbecoming to do anything but laud the person, but this is just moral obsequiousness.
She claims fealty by right of blood, reigned as the crown of an extraordinarily cruel empire, and frequently interceded in the democratic government of Britain to protect her private interests.
I'm sure an account named Emma_Goldman comes by these sentiments honestly, but please don't take HN threads into generic ideological flamewar. We want curious conversation here, not tedious talking-point battle.
You mostly do a pretty good job of avoiding that, for which we're grateful, but on the other hand, (a) we have had to warn you about this before, and (b) this subthread is a classic generic flamewar tangent—just what we want to avoid on HN.
I appreciate the job you do and know it's hard. But I am not quite seeing this. How is
a thread full of panegyrics to the Queen on the front page of HN curious and non-ideological, but me questioning whether - as one of many posters eulogized - that she was a 'moral authority' incurious and ideological?
Maybe it did fan the flames of controversy to question the deification of the Queen, but the deification of the Queen is controversial. I live in Scotland, I know. Surely the right thing is to just ban threads like this in the first place if you don't like ideology.
> reigned as the crown of an extraordinarily cruel empire
What are the empires you're comparing it against? To call it "extraordinary" makes the claim that its level of cruelty is substantially greater than the "ordinary" cruelty of other examples. Were the Russian, Japanese, Ottoman, and other 19th and early 20th century empires substantially less cruel than the British empire?
Not to mention, as other commenters point out Elizabeth was coronated during a period of decolonization, with India departing the empire less than a decade earlier and most of its colonies in Africa and Asia following suit over the next couple decades.
She was a good person, and has my respect but she was also a symbol of a deeply flawed system of governance.
There are lots of notable figures that have died recently (Gorbachev alone may have saved the world as we know it), that don’t get the same, almost pathological level of admiration. It’s not normal to break down crying because a person you never met died at age 97.. that’s hundreds of years of indoctrination, social, and religious manipulation at work.
I would argue, on the opposite, that being unaffected by the passing of significant symbols of our lives/traditions, is the product of modern indoctrination.
Civil unrest is going to happen when you rule for 70 years.
When you say "extraordinarily cruel" then maybe you refer to the 2,100,000 to 3,800,000 Bengals you starved to death
The murder of 13 people (the inciting incident of the troubles) by the British army is not exactly comparable; even taking into consideration the total losses during that time of 3,500~, hardly comparable at all.
The Troubles - was literally a rebellion violently suppressed... for 3 decades.
Let alone all of the Unionists are staunch monarchists and were tightly linked to government institutions.
I wasn't comparing anything to anything. You think that comparing The Troubles to bengal Famine, somehow excuses you from writing an obvious false sentence.
PS: Civil Unrest isn't Civil Unrest, when the army is literally shooting.
I just don’t see it as “extraordinarily cruel” when comparing to other cruelty committed. I see it as quite significantly reduced.
I’m not saying she was perfect, but describing her reign as extraordinarily cruel is a real stretch.
I really don’t want to talk about the troubles but if I’m going to be a dick I will mention that the IRA intentionally targeted civilians, I don’t think the military at that time are as black as they’re painted. It’s all villains I’m afraid.
What the hell are you talking about? This mindset is not remotely "mainstream". I've never once in my life heard anyone talk about Ireland as if it's a place that the UK still owns or feels entitled to.
> The way Ireland was publicly handled after 2016
Do you mean Northern Ireland? Northern Ireland is a different country from Ireland, and as far as I'm aware the reason it's still part of the UK is because a solid majority of its citizens want to be part of the UK, not because it's been imposed on them from outside.
I believe he's referring to talk post-Brexit of annexing Ireland to get rid of the problem, rubbish about Ireland becoming part of the UK again to "fix Brexit", and to top it all off, Priti Patel's threats[1] to starve Ireland.
The post-Brexit discourse in the UK regularly featured threats to Irish sovereignty of various kinds, including from prominent Tories, which makes it sufficiently mainstream to matter. I'd recommend you have a read over what Fintan O'Toole and Tony Connelly have written on Brexit over the past few years.
Do I think such opinions are representative of most Britons? No. But they have been a major part of the mainstream discourse peddled by people with prominent voices and in positions of power. There is some part of the English psyche that sees Ireland as a wayward province and not a real sovereign state: witness the moaning and complaining when the UK became a third country about Irish people using the EU lane in airports that we were being "treated specially" - that kind of thinking assumes that Ireland is not its own sovereign state.
Also, the "solid majority" in NI isn't so solid anymore. Unionism is on the decline, nationalism is gaining more of a foothold, and the broad apathetic middle is growing. There's a reason why Sinn Féin is now the largest party there.
[1] Let's leave out the multiple levels of historical irony in what she said, and just focus on the fact that Ireland can feed itself five times over even though agriculture is now a tiny part of the economy, but the UK doesn't produce enough food to feed itself.
I'm sorry, but I think that Irish media is giving you an exaggerated view of Ireland's significance in the British psyche. The sad truth is that your typical Englishman doesn't think of Ireland much at all except when watching rugby and drinking Guinness.
I've never heard anyone talk about annexing Ireland or making Ireland part of the UK again (aren't those two things synonymous?). I have heard Brits complaining about having to use non-EU lanes at airports, but that has nothing to do with Ireland - it's a completely predictable and negative consequence for Britons of a very divisive and unpopular political decision. I promise you that few people in England care either way what happens to Ireland, or at least no more than we care about, say, Sweden or any other near-neighbour who we're not at war with.
Hell, even Northern Ireland doesn't get much attention here, and that's part of our country. Most young Brits today are completely uneducated about the Troubles (although they've heard of it) and probably can't name a single Northern Irish politician. Brexit was a welcome reminder to the rest of us that Northern Ireland exists; our current dilemma is caused by the necessity of reconciling two utterly incompatible goals - keeping Northern Ireland within the same system as the UK while maintaining an open land border with an EU country. (The irreconcilability of these goals was pointed out by many people before the referendum, so I guess we can't say we weren't warned.)
> the "solid majority" in NI isn't so solid anymore.
Yep, I'm aware of that, and Brexit has definitely eroded that majority. Irish unification (as foretold by Star Trek) within my lifetime seems increasingly likely. Good for them - it's for the people of Northern Ireland to decide for themselves and I truly don't care which way they decide.
That was not my intended emphasis, but I think you could make a good case for it anyway. It involved the dispossession and genocide of native peoples in North America and Australasia. It was built on slave plantations in the Caribbean, and led to state-engineered famines in India. The total human toll is enormous.
Yes, the Queen took the throne at the twilight of the British Empire. But it was in the midst of the Malayan emergency, the Mau Mau uprising, the Suez crisis was on the horizon, and South Africa had just launched the apartheid regime. Those were all, in different ways, attempts to stamp out democratic independence. Britain didn't relinquish its sub-Saharan African and Caribbean territories until the 1960s. You cannot cleanly separate the Queen from the empire which she crowned.
The Queen willingly became head of a Commonwealth that included dependent colonies, and a British state that was actively repressing several independence movements. That the head of the Commonwealth is coupled with it is obvious, not my 'choice'.
If that's your measuring stick then Adolf should get the credit for creating the right condition.
European colonial power would have never left if they hadn't got into war of attrition with Hitlar.
British left their biggest colony India only when Indian soldiers revolted and they were too weak to crush it post WW2. It was simply not possible to rule after this incident.
Elizabeth II was the most decolonial monarch in history. Almost all our colonies gained their independence during her reign, and insofar as the empire was "extraordinary cruel", almost all of that cruelty occurred before her reign.
By all means let's have a reasoned discussion about the legacy of the empire, but this is not the place.
Given that most empires in history were pretty darn cruel, you might have to justify the idea that the British Empire was extraordinarily cruel, especially given that the Queen only reigned in its last years and that many of the former members of the Empire chose to stay on as part of the Commonwealth. Also the British Empire is unique (AFAIK?) in having wound itself up more or less peacefully at the end, rather than needing to be destroyed by a massive rebellion or war - the usual way empires usually die (well, except for the pesky Americas of course... but that was a bit before Liz's time!)
> former members of the Empire chose to stay on as part of the Commonwealth
Being in the Commonwealth doesn't mean "staying on" the British Empire - it just means belonging to a very, very loose trade block on which Britain temporarily exercised an outsized influence. Recent developments (like the inability of subsequent UK governments to replace Commonwealth leadership) have shown that even that influence has now gone. At this point the Commonwealth is little more than an administrative construct for trade-related issues.
The Queen was not responsible for the acts of her children once they became adults, whatever they may be, no more than any mother is. As for comments about what she was like in private, who can really say?
But perhaps more to the point - does it matter? The Queen was The Queen and not Elizabeth Windsor because of the exceptionally strict and rigorous separation she kept between her private life and her public role. She had a very long life, yet rarely if ever did it become known what her personal or political views actually were. Undoubtably she had help in this from an establishment that tacitly agreed to uphold these conventions, but ultimately it was down to her. The Queen was, in some very real sense, not an individual with a personality and all the complexities individuals bring but an abstraction, a constitutional icon, that was created and maintained by a woman named Elizabeth Windsor through sheer force of will.
This is easier to see when you contrast it with King Charles III of course, whose personal views and personal life is well documented. A big question mark is whether he will now adopt the conventions that his mother sustained and become that abstraction, or whether he will be a monarch of opinions.
W.R.T. the Empire, this is probably not the thread for it, but it slowly became the Commonwealth over the period of Elizabeth's reign and it did so in a unique and largely peaceful manner. She was born just after World War 1, into a world that had been torn apart by war between empires. She died in a world where empires had long ago ceased to exist. Where there were exceptions to that peaceful transition, it wasn't because the Queen sent in her army to capture or recapture territory as it was for most of history. That's the reason she was the Queen and not merely a Queen: it's that legacy of peaceful transition that left her the notional reigning monarch over large parts of the world, even decades after the British Empire had ceased to exist. Even if that's a mere historical convention and not political reality, what other empires had such good relations with its old territories like that? Not many, and the Queen deserves a lot of credit for that outcome.
I am not being mean but that is historically illiterate. Britain had over seventy overseas territories in 1952, including swathes of dependent colonies across Africa and the Middle East. The Labour government that had just left office had a full-throated vision of a recrudescent British Empire. Britain violently repressed independence movements in Malaysia, Kenya, Cyprus and Yemen while the Queen sat on the throne. South Africa had just entered into apartheid. The Suez Crisis was still to come.
She and her family is responsible for a lot of atrocities around the world. Yet a lot of people here are eulogizing as if she was a saint who taught art of living to the people.
To me this is a demonstration of power of conditioning and media management.
My family is Argentine. The Queen’s son personally boarded a war ship to travel 7000km away to kill Argentines because they dared assert sovereignty against another country in a completely separate hemisphere of the Earth. The idea that the days of empire building are behind us is false.
Argentina itself is a creation of Spanish Imperialism, and British control of the islands dates to that same era, before Argentina became a nation. I don't see how either one can be claimed to be more or less creations of Imperialism than the other.
The fact is the British foreign office had been trying to find ways to offload the islands on Argentina for ages. The British government felt they were an expensive nuisance that were an obstacle to better relations in the region. The Galtieri regime only invaded because they needed a boost in popularity. Negotiation is one thing, but military occupation quite another.
There is (or could have been) a legitimate discussion to be had about the history of control of the islands. Sure. But those who resort to pre-emptive military force, when facing no threat to themselves, have no business complaining when the resulting conflict goes against them. Suez is a good example of us learning that lesson the hard way.
My understanding was that the Falklands voted to remain in the UK and the UK fought to defend that democratic wish. If this is wrong please inform me so I can update my knowledge. If it's correct though, I don't see how fighting to defend a democratic mandate is a bad thing? Aren't we all cheering on Ukraine for exactly this right now?
Yes, all of the British voted to remain. None of the Argentine, or other South Americans were legally allowed to cast a ballot. I guess that's the UK's idea of a democracy.
Surely the only people who should have got a vote in this matter are the people living on the island? If you’re going to let everyone vote on everything then the entire world would end up being owned by China because it’s got the most people.
> Surely the only people who should have got a vote in this matter are the people living on the island? If you’re going to let everyone vote on everything then the entire world would end up being owned by China because it’s got the most people.
I wasn't aware of this, so there were Argentinians and others who were permanently living on the island who weren't allowed to vote? Surely this is not the case today? I would definitely have to read more from all sides to get a better picture of the entire event from all perspectives.
Can you describe what they did, personally, that makes them responsible for atrocities? Yes I know she was head of state, but she had no significant executive or legislative power. I don't see how she's responsible in a practical sense for such things any more than any British citizen.
> In one instance the Queen completely vetoed the Military Actions Against Iraq Bill in 1999, a private member's bill that sought to transfer the power to authorise military strikes against Iraq from the monarch to parliament.
A wise move indeed, if Blair's record is to be taken into account.
RIP. As a Canadian I've always liked that we technically had the Queen as our head of state. I wonder how attitudes will change now that her 70 year reign.
I have an idea that's only half insane. Bear with me. Let's assume we want to get rid of the monarch as Canada's head-of-state. Canada will not be able to feasibly do so because it opens up too many difficult questions about re-structuring our government. Ergo, we will probably just coast on the status-quo. But we could use the desire for everything to stay the same to our advantage by declaring the Queen Elizabeth II the Eternal Monarch even in death.
The Monarch of Canada is a ceremonial position. The Monarch's representative (the Governor General) is appointed by the Prime Minister and has no real power (see: the King-Bing Affair for legal precedent), and therefore could technically be done by anyone from anywhere (even beyond the grave). Politically speaking, absolutely nothing would have to change. The Monarch's effective power in our political system would go from basically zero to literally zero, thus eliminating an avenue for potential abuse of power that we risk by keeping a living Monarch as head-of-state. We could achieve this without having to re-open difficult constitutional questions. Traditionalist Canadian institutions with "Royal" in their names (Mounted Police, Army, Airforce, etc) would not have to change their names or branding. Heck, we wouldn't even have to change the designs on our money. Literally nothing would change except closing a loop-hole (albeit a very low-risk one) for potential power abuse in our political system.
The only down side is that smug know-it-alls can say "actually Canada is not a democracy, it's a Constitutional Necrocracy"
The Governor General does, and must, have real power. The King-Bing affair was controversial, but the Governor General's action was arguably justified, and negative opinions of it do not set a precedent that the Governor General can never do anything. The Governor general arguably should have taken a more active role in some recent times - when Paul Martin and Stephen Harper were trying to dodge (successfully, it turned out) votes of non-confidence, which have to be allowed in a democracy. Certainly, if the Prime Minister blatantly violates constitutional convention, such as by refusing to resign after losing the confidence of the House, it is necessary for the Governor General to dismiss them.
Since the Governor General must have real power, it follows that the Monarch must have real power regarding the appointment of the Governor General - rejecting the Prime Minister's request to dismiss or appoint a Governor General when this is clearly an attempt to fill the position with someone who will allow the Prime Minister to act non-democratically.
A dead person will not be able to fulfill this role.
> Since the Governor General must have real power, it follows that the Monarch must have real power regarding the appointment of the Governor General - rejecting the Prime Minister's request to dismiss or appoint a Governor General when this is clearly an attempt to fill the position with someone who will allow the Prime Minister to act non-democratically.
Counter-hypothetical: what if the Monarch decided to act against the Prime Minister and appoint a Governor General to act against their mandate? Both your hypothetical and mine are incidents of "bad-behaviour" going against norms to push agendas. We would prefer were that neither were possible. However in your hypothetical at least the person exhibiting "bad-behaviour" (the Prime Minister) has some mandate given that they were democratically elected. Whereas in my hypothetical the person exhibiting "bad-behaviour" is an inherited position held by someone in lives in a far-away place and may have only set foot in the nation they are meddling in a handful of times.
In either situation we're accepting the risk of bad-faith actors manipulating the structures of power, but if we ditch the Monarch, at least the person doing so is in someway accountable to the people. Harper was successfully able to dodge a confidence vote, but in the end he was ousted from power in a democratic process. I'd argue that's the better scenario.
The difference between a bad-actor Prime Minister and a bad-actor Monarch is precisely that the latter, in today's world, clearly has no legitimacy outside of enforcing well-established norms. So a Monarch appointing their unelected friend as Governor General, contrary to the Prime Minister's wishes, would simply result in an extra-legal declaration that the country is now a republic, or possibly that the Monarch is now the next person in line of succession (ie, forced abdication, again, extra-legal). In contrast, a Prime Minister who tells the Monarch to dismiss the Governor General and appoint their friend as Governor General instead, after loosing a confidence vote and refusing to resign, will presumably have the backing of some segment of the population (unless they're just insane), and hence will be much more dangerous, if the Monarch declines to exercise their power to refuse this request.
I do not think it is a good idea to assume that a Monarch will always be viewed as having no legitimacy outside of enforcing established norms. While that is certainly the case now, I would not want to rely on that being true forever. After which we would have to rely on benevolence (or perhaps indifference) of undemocratic executive power.
Could we not solve the problem of the PM appointing a lackey as Governor General with other form of check-and-balance that requires zero input from individuals with no connections to a democratic process? Perhaps a similar way that Supreme Court Justices are appointed (candidates recommended by the Prime Minister and approved by the federal cabinet). While not immune to abuses of power, I would like this better than a Monarch being that check-and-balance.
In the unlikely event that the UK were to abolish or deprecate its monarchy, Canada would still prefer not to re-open the Constitution. This might indeed lead to Canada worshipping "The Crown" without anybody to wear said ceremonial headgear.
In other words, the logical contortions of a democracy naming one family as being more important than anyone else, and it being a family without power anyway, are less painfully absurd in Canadian politics than discussing the Constitution. ^_^
Because they have no power and we get to hold the actual elected leaders in contempt, as is right and just. The alternative is electing one, and that kind of worship messes with people's heads. Look how bonkers some Americans get about their blessed president.
I don't agree with the argument that having a Monarch somehow shields Canada from worship of it's leaders, or enables us to hold our leaders in contempt. Absolutely no one in country thinks of the Monarch as our head of state except in a technical sense. The Prime Minister is for all practical purposes. Having a monarch in no-way shields Canadian leaders from hero-worship. Nor does it make Canada uniquely able to hold politicians accountable. It's our Westminster-style parliamentary system that (somewhat) achieves that by concentrating less power in the hands of an individual, which could exist independent of the Monarch. It already essentially does since the King-Bing Affair in the 1920s cemented the Monarch's influence as purely ceremonial.
The status quo has a lot of momentum and you need some sort of catalyst to make the change. Liz managed to avoid much controversy so that catalyst never appeared - perhaps her death will trigger the will to change it
Not that this is quite the right time, but is there any list of the Queen's achievements that isn't simply "she lived for very long" and "she witnessed some important events"? I fail to see why this is impressive.
The role of the Monarch is not easy to qualify. She is a symbol of continuation, stability and unity. Her neutrality makes her look like she is doing exactly nothing, when it's the source of her power and influence. She lives above politics.
Beyond that, the Queen has real so called reserve powers that in theory she could use in time of great crisis to change government or stop laws (she used it once I think). But she can't use them in an authoritarian manner or else risk losing them and tarnish her legacy.
I reckon having to endure listening to whatever moron PM is currently in power every week for seventy years is a decent achievement. In all seriousness though, I'd say that not fucking up for an entire reign is a pretty big achievement. Can you name any other celebrity (for lack of a better word) that hasn't really put a foot wrong in all that time?
Put aside what you think about monarchies and royals and look at the actual person. She was completely dedicated to serving other people in the same way that the very best of our uniformed services are and it's why she gets so much respect from just about everyone.
In a way, it reminds me of musicians who aren't particularly known for their collectivism. I don't know for sure, but I can't imagine it's particularly fun to play the same song that made you famous in your twenties and play it every night for the next 50 years. A lot of them can't stand it and stop playing their old songs. Or stop touring all together.
This is kind of what the Queen has done but rather than just every night for an hour and a half, it's literally been every single day of her life. But she went to all those events and met all those people because even though it was the millionth time for her giving a medal to someone, it was the very first time for the other person receiving it. They were overjoyed getting to shake her hand and tell all their friends and family that they got to meet the Queen. And that's what she cared about.
She's done all this every day and not moaned once about it. Put yourself in her shoes. Yes, you get a fancy house and free money. But the life you have to live in exchange for it is not your own. You don't get to pursue your own individualist desires and dreams. All of those are put aside for your duties. At all times in public and most likely a lot of the time in public, you must act completely dignified. No emotional outbursts, you must be the rock that others lean on. You don't really get to retire, you just carry this on until you die.
There have been countless monarchs both in Britain and across the world who have not been up to the job. They've blamed others, shirked duties and abused their powers. But not this one. She really was the real deal.
It's impressive because the rest of us have to read about these things in history books or in the news. She was there for it all, not only witnessing, but discussing, events of profound significance with the people at the center of them.
And, I think, show-me-the-achievements represents a misunderstanding of the role of the monarch in the British government and British culture. It's not comparable to the Prime Minister or the US President, for example.
Her main achievement was utterly subordinating her personal life to the requirement of her public life. No one has any idea of what her personal belief was on any matter more consequential than what brand of cornflakes she ate.
Take a counselling course and you’ll quickly learn that truly listening to people is a difficult and very valuable skill. Ask any counsellor and they’ll tell you that even for the most compassionate people, it can actually be quite emotionally exhausting to give their undivided attention to someone for hour after hour, day after day. It is in fact, best practice for BACP counsellors to schedule an hour with another BACP therapist for every 12? hours (this might not be the exact number but it’s somewhere in this ball park) spent with clients in order to discuss their own state of mind and decompress. The Queen had many luxuries but I doubt this was one of them.
A Queen, without power is a fake; it's just a title but with the inability to do anything because successive governments over time striped the Royal Family of any and all powers, and any that do remain can be vetoed by the Govt.
This media circus, is a form a worship.
Sure people can cry for a person such as the Queen, a person they do not know except for what they see on TV or in other forms of media. Personally I don't get it, I think Israel bombing Gaza killing children (just an example) is far more sad
>A Queen, without power is a fake; it's just a title but with the inability to do anything
The power the queen had was very minimal, but she did still have some power. Maybe you don't consider minimal power to be sufficient to be considered a monarch?
>This media circus, is a form a worship.
Are you using worship to just mean a high level of respect? If that is the case then fine, I assumed you were using it as thinking of the queen as divine.
>Sure people can cry for a person such as the Queen, a person they do not know except for what they see on TV or in other forms of media.
Most of us don't know any person in Gaza so it is just a number or image on a TV. It doesn't really seem any different than the queen in that respect.
Also, a random kid in Gaza likely doesn't impact us in the way the Queen can. If a kid in Gaza makes a speech are you going to hear about it? What about the queen?
>Personally I don't get it, I think Israel bombing Gaza killing children (just an example) is far more sad
It is irrelevant though? People can be sad for multiple things. There have been multiple threads on HN over the years about Israel / Palestine and other places going through turmoil. Why can't you just let people express sadness without trying to one up the sadness?
Great Britain is still a monarchy. However, it’s known as a constitutional monarchy and now King Charles III is the holder of this title. However since it’s a constitutional monarchy, most of the governing power rest with the parliament.
Although she was Commander-In-Chief, she gave responsibility to the prime minister and the Secretary of State for Defence, along with other officials. Theoretically she could have ordered a strike against the white house but this would be vetoed by the govt.
She had the ability to declar war, however the government doesn’t need the Queen’s permission.
She could have issued an order of Dissolution of Parliament, but parliament is not the same as the government. The British government is the one that actually rules in the UK. Also such an act would have caused an absolute uproar among UK
citizens and probably ensured the beginning of a Republic
So she has "power" in name only, but no real power which was my point, everything has been taken away from her ... and now also King Charles.
It's usually reserved for "Important people in tech" plus or minus whoever dang and the people who actually own Y Combinator care about.
HN is NOT an unbiased, unaffiliated, open forum. They make no effort to hide that fact, but so many people here put it on a pedestal instead of understanding that it's just orange reddit with good moderation.
Don't worry too much about for money. From what I know, the royal family brings in far more in taxes on merch / tv coverage rights / other revenues than it takes to sustain them. They also have a considerable estate which is likely profitable.
I just said "top in HN..". I have no intention of starting a flame-war but seeing the amount of valid comments deleted it seems to me that despite being indifferent about this news, the only rhetoric left in this thread is praise, why is praise not flamewar?. I am not inviting comment on this unpopular opinion but asking for a reflection from fellow 'hackers' of how one-sided intelligent conversations are becoming here. People who may have a different opinion about this news may be afraid to state their facts. And individuals like me, indifferent, cannot express our indifference about this event
We don't delete comments, but flags (whether from users or moderators) do kill them, which means only users with 'showdead' turned on in their profile can see them.
If you see a [dead] comment that's actually following the site guidelines and using HN as intended, I'd appreciate a link so we can unkill it.
THE QUEEN IS DEAD, LONG LIVE THE KING... HIS MAGESTY KING Charles Philip Arthur George!! (formerly Prince of Wales) THIS IS THE WAY.. to announce a Monarch's death guys!!!
Why is she seen as the maternal head of a nation ? : Well, that's the historic role played by royal families in Europe, there are references to the tradition in heads of state elected around the world with POTUS' family referred to as "The First Family"
You don't need to understand the tradition to respect it if you haven't lived there or experienced it.
> commentator on twitter put it well saying "It felt like we all lost our Grandmother"
This is a nice, soft and mushy comment that will gather likes and retweets. It also influences one into suspending critical thinking and follow a narrative of reverence
Some folks are born into riches and royalty - why put them on a pedestal simply because they sit on a throne?
I mean, the argument isn’t that she’s worshipped. It’s that the position is seen fondly as a traditional family who represent the nation.
Let’s extend your argument to the extreme, by your logic if you got into the tech industry simply because you were born into the top ten percent cohort of the world, why should you be allowed to have the opportunity that most of the world didn’t?
A rational individual such as yourself should see that you won the statistical lottery. Why should you have that opportunity because of your birth?
For whatever historical reason that nation follows a familial structure of inheritance, call it genes, call it whatever, it is what it is. You don’t need to understand the structure or even agree with it to respect the fact that a lot of people live in that structure and have done so for centuries.
Public support for monarchies is independent of whether they’re actually good or bad. I think everything about them is gross and revolting. Other people think otherwise.
Thankfully democratic countries aren’t creating new monarchies. Nor should they.
(Edit: actually I took a second look and your account history doesn't seem to be as I described it above—perhaps I got my wires crossed—so I've unbanned it for now. Please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and don't post like that though! It's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for.)
This is pretty off brand for HN, really. Even if you don't agree, that doesn't make it "flamebait" , the queen also was fine with sending Alan Turing to jail for being gay, I can find many other things along those lines. I don't understand the need to protect the image in this forum of a person who has not done anything really for regular people. YC being an american company makes it even worst, we here in the US don't own any kind of respect or courtesy to any royal, is literally part of the Oath of Allegiance. If you personally loved the queen, maybe don't read the comments? Otherwise be consistent and also ban people commenting on how bad russians are.
Pretty sure "She died as she lived, protecting pedophiles and dodging taxes" is about the most "on-brand" ban you can get here.*
This is zero to do with image protection; I couldn't care less. What I care about, when doing this job, is not having dumb flamewars. There's not a lot more to it than that.
I'm sure it's my fault for not being clearer, but you guys are taking this completely the wrong way if you think it has a whit to do with monarchism. It has to do with internet comments. That's all.
* but we wouldn't ban an established account for just one comment, and it looks like I made a mistake about that account's history, so I've unbanned it now. I wouldn't have done that if you hadn't replied, so thanks!
I get were you are coming from, but what I'm trying to say is: when someone considered evil by us (in the west) dies, would you hold the same standards? I respect what you do, and I know is super hard. I don't mean to be toxic or anything, just pointing out what I feel is important.
I'm not entirely sure what you mean, but since you asked above if we "ban people commenting on how bad russians are", the answer is sure: nationalistic flamebait is not welcome on HN and we ask people to stop doing it and ban them if they don't stop doing it.
Banning vs. just scolding depends on what else the account has done on HN, but we don't moderate differently depending on the country people are talking about—or at least we try not to.
Needless to say, that particular case is complicated by the war, but commenters can make their substantive points about that without attacking any ethnic group.
Also, a true & correct comment would be unsubstantiated anyway (if that had been what dang had said) if it lacked reference or other such 'evidence'. It doesn't mean 'untrue'.
Btw, your account isn't banned, but your submissions are getting killed because HN's software thinks you're running afoul of the rule against using the site primarily for promotion—see https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html: "Please don't use HN primarily for promotion. It's ok to submit your own stuff occasionally, but the primary use of the site
should be for curiosity." Those are very different motivations!
Our software detects that sort of submission history and starts filtering the posts once the percentage of own-posts is too high. IIRC, I warned you that this might happen in an email a week ago.
On HN, the idea is for people to submit stories that they ran across and personally found intellectually interesting, not because they have something to promote. It's fine to post your own work, as long as it's interspersed with interesting posts from unrelated sources. But when an account only submits promotionally, it feels like they're not participating as a community member, and HN users notice this and flag the posts. It's not in your interest to post like this—the audience will eventually start using unkind words like "spam" and emailing us with complaints.
What to do instead: build up a track record of interesting submissions from unrelated sources, and intersperse your own articles with those. The software considers submission histories adaptively, so if you do that, your own-posts will eventually stop getting filtered.
If you dig up interesting things from a variety of places, things people haven't run into before, you'll be perceived as a community contributor rather than someone trying to market something. Particularly good are stories on out-of-the-way topics that rarely or never get attention. The best submissions are the ones that can't be predicted from any existing sequence: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor....
From YOUR guidelines: "If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic." but there we are: a dozen of posts about Queen Elizabeth II's death on HN...
Some of the comments you've been taking action on have had some foul language but this one is just an opinion.
There are some that argue the monarchy constitutes a human rights abuse both against the people she took tax money from and against her own family which was forced to participate in the pageantry.
Calling those opinions "flamewar tangents" is incredibly dismissive.
If by foul language you mean profanity, we don't care about that.
The GP comment was definitely a flamewar tangent: 'flamewar' because it's a classic political battle, and 'tangent' because it touches the original topic at one point and then veers away from it.
Tangents can be fine if they're unpredictable, but generic tangents are predictable and those are the worst sort of thread on HN. They're so predictable that they're the opposite of the curious conversation we want here.
I think in the future it might be better to say "This comment is not up to HN's editorial standards to produce curious conversation" rather than asserting that it is "flamebait tangent". Using such strong language is a type of flamebait in itself (and the number of comments criticizing the moderation of this thread should be evidence that others agree).
I take your point but I think it's more important to avoid bureaucratese.
The number of comments criticizing moderation in this thread is not because I used the word flamebait. I've used that word thousands of times on HN. Rather, it's a function of my screwing up with https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32769925. That happens sometimes—usually when I mis-pre-assess people's feelings.
The GP comment is certainly not a top quality comment but there are many "positively disposed" comments of much worse "quality" that have not motivated a specific moderator response warning.
As for it being "flamebait", within this context anything that motivates this classical political battle will be a comment on the opposite side of a topic to one's own opinion. Moderation would need to be balanced in restricting such comments to effectively restrict "flamebait" - yet only comments on one side are being killed.
"Foul language" is a very rough measure. The parent's thought could have been communicated with less sarcasm ("Sad that ... ?") and bitterness ("doesn't deserve").
Edit: Further, some topics, no matter how carefully broached, are just a bad value proposition. They may have a bad ratio between their intrinsic value (importance, relevance, etc) and how likely they are to spawn a low-quality thread (and how low that quality is likely to be).
Indeed - the implication that a statement merely containing anything factual or backed by evidence makes the whole thing uncriticizable ("but it's true") is maybe the most common fallacy made in defense of provocative statements.
"Delete the whole" is not how threads work on HN. The way that threads work on HN, assuming that they're on topic, is that people should post intellectually curious comments and avoid posting unsubstantive or predictable ones.
Dang, does this post 'gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.'? Should it be on HN? I don't believe so. The only intellectually interesting thing about the monarchy is how we let them persist now all the fake divinity is gone. Which is what my comment is intended to spur conversation about. So claim what you like, it's your site, but I believe you're wrong.
I genuinely believe the interesting aspect of Elizabeth's death is the focus it can (if we allow it) put on the inherent injustice of monarchies. But OK, you don't. Fine, its your site. The temp ban/rate limit was kinda low key uncalled for. I was civil.
We rate limit accounts when they post too many low-quality comments and/or get involved in flamewars. You've posted quite a few low-quality comments lately, not just in this thread. I'm sorry if it came across the wrong way, but this is standard HN moderation, and one of the few software tools we have to try to dampen the decline of this place.
If you want to build up a track record of posting better-quality comments for a while and then ping us at [email protected], we'll be happy to take a look and hopefully remove the rate limit; we do that all the time.
And no, I'm not going to debase myself and beg you to remove something you implemented out of pettiness. It's your error, and it's unfortunate (for me) that you wield your power like this.
> Do you even remember the name of the king that queen elizabeth inherited? When he died?
I'm not at all invested in the royal family, but I think this question actually makes the point of why it's a big deal: she's been the queen for such a long time that very few people alive can remember a time when she wasn't the queen. It marks the end of a long era.
Generally I agree with the sentiment, but at the same time this is impactful, because this is a person that has been in the public eye for people's entire lives, so it presents as somewhat of a shock. It's a reminder that the only constant is change and that death comes for us all... at least that's why I think many people have a strong reaction to the news. My personal reaction is "meh".
As for how major a historical event Elizabeth II's passing is, only history can tell and history tells it's stories with a delay, so we'll have to see. It could mark the beginning of the end of the monarchy in the UK, for example, which in turn could coincide with other major changes.
This is an internet entertainment site. It's not possible to "oppose literal fascism" here—that's a category error.
All that is possible is to make pointless comments—either curious ones or tedious ones. "Literal fascism" comments are the latter and those are off topic, so please don't.
If comments opposing fascism are not suitable for this site, surely posts eliciting broad support for fascism should be subject to similar restriction?
If HN is choosing to continue to platform a discussion on a politically loaded topic such as this, then either anti-fascist sentiment should be permitted, or neither.
We ban accounts that post flamebait, which you've done more than once lately. Can you please stop? It's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for.
Good riddance. The world is rid of a horrible person who has done horrible things, and who has never once tried to do the right thing in the face of adversity.
She could have done so much more, spoken out against so many atrocities, in her own family and Britain's role in the world in general. She could have attempted to use the last vestiges of monarchical power - likely ending the monarchy in the process - and stopped Brexit, or this turmoil that has ensued because of it.
But she chose not to do any of this. Because the "prestige" of this disgusting tradition was worth more to her than the lives of any of the citizens she "rules" (symbolically) over.
It would have been hard to have had a worse monarch than her.
There are countless comments praising her that are allowed to stand. She is a historical figure, there will be people disagreeing. Labeling comments that criticizes her as "flamewar" and banning their accounts isn't enabling curious discussion, it is creating an echo chamber that protects the status quo.
Look at Liz Truss' cabinet and the overall upward mobility of minorities in the UK and explain how there's any credible argument of fascist/racist leadership that pervades (as opposed to harasses) UK society? No doubt your assessment standard will be perfection from which you will cherry pick counter examples, but the reality is no country in the world has integrated more successfully - overall - than the UK.
There were admirable things about her as a person, but the concept of monarchy is a stain on humanity. I can't respect anyone who supports the idea of superiority by virtue of bloodline.
Some view the monarchy as anachronistic. Of course there's merit to that argument but the monarchy as an institution really doesn't cost that much and has worked in the British political system as really a check on abuse of government power. The Queen's consent in forming government is routine but it can be withheld.
Australia had an example of this where the Governor General (the Queen's representative in the Australian government) sacked the government and formed a caretaker governmen tin the 1970s.
The American system of relying on centuries of tenuous interpretation of a fairly short document just isn't as much of an improvement as you think.
The Australian constitution allows for the Governor General to have "reserve powers" without specifying what they are.
Ultimately all these systems rely on trust.
It's wild to think the Queen began her reign with having weekly chats with Winston Churchill all the way up to appointing Liz Truss just this week. Her father fought in World War I. She lived through World War II. It's wild to think about.
It's also wild to consider the Queen never had an exepctation of ruling. An abdication caused that to happen. The happiest and freest time of her life may well have been living on Malta prior to that, living a fairly normal life with her husband and young family.
Institutions exist to protect the people, not the institutions themselves. Never forget that.
>... check on abuse of government power. The Queen's consent in forming government is routine but it can be withheld...
> Australia had an example of this where the Governor General (the Queen's representative in the Australian government) sacked the government and formed a caretaker governmen tin the 1970s.
Australia was ruled by a Liberal/Country coalition from the 1940s to the end of 1972. Finally the workers of Australia elect a Labor PM, and he was thwarted for three years and then removed at the behest of a hereditary monarch thousands of miles away. That sounds like abuse, but not of the type you mean.
> then removed at the behest of a hereditary monarch thousands of miles away. That sounds like abuse
You forgot to mention the part where Australia immediately held an election. The poor victimised Labour party, who you would have us believe was wrongly removed, lost the vote by a landslide.
If the people wanted Whitlam's government, and thought it was a grave injustice, they would have voted them back in. They were clearly unpopular given the election results. The end result was decided by the people, not the Queen/Governor General/Liberals.
>The American system of relying on centuries of tenuous interpretation of a fairly short document just isn't as much of an improvement as you think.
Having an unelected, unaccountable individual who leeches off the tax system: this is anachronistic but fair, it's about balance of powers, its an important part of our cultural heritage, it doesn't even cost that much why do you care.
Having strong founding principles and rights that are cautiously amended: this is tenuous, this goes too far, free speech too extremist, why bad man own gun.
One could argue that a current monarch's reign is not exactly leeching of the public money as it were, but a difficult and thankless job that one just can't get out of.
> An abdication caused that to happen. The happiest and freest time of her life may well have been living on Malta prior to that, living a fairly normal life with her husband and young family.
My only source is the show The Crown but I'm fairly certain her uncle abdicated the throne when she was still a child, putting her in line for the throne. It was not after she was married to Phillip.
While I admire the Elizabeth's dedication to preserving her own family's inheritance, I fundamentally do not believe anyone can inherit a country. The monarchy should die along with the monarch.
Not a Brit, but my respect for the queen has always been tremendous, representing the British monarchy and being a public figure for all my life and seemingly forever, such that her death seems unreal, reminding us that she was a human being and nice old lady after all. I was even hesitant to turn on the news. RIP.
This is the most disappointing thread I’ve seen on HN in a long time. A large number of accounts have been banned and rightly so. There are lots of good and interesting comments, but also lots of comments dancing on her grave. This is one of the lowest, meanest and fundamentally uninteresting things one can engage in.
I would say there are many things lower one can engage in than commenting on an internet forum on a news event, not least, presiding over decades of colonial terror and genocide.
It might be worth considering that comments you find offensive due to their apparent disrespect might be justified in their anger in some way you can't directly relate to.
She's dead. She has ceased to be. If you think this is an appropriate time to trot out grievances, which I'm sure are all well justified, then we have a different understanding of common decency.
Common decency is a concept most often wielded to increase social control and to stifle challenges to social norms. Where was decency when the monarchy was plundering and altering the lives of millions?
Westerners are generally able to understand this idea, because they are for instance receptive to criticism of Japanese revisionism and loyalty to the Emperor. Yet there's a mental block when it comes to applying this concept to Western monarchies.
The subject wasn't any grievances of mine (I had trotted none before your comment) - the subject is those lavishing praise. You imply trotting out grievances would not be "commonly decent", but what of the opposite? Praising someone who has brought so much pain and suffering to the world? Is that what you consider decent?
I feel sad for the british empire, she was like the figure that represented the whole Great Britain. I think it’s the start of a Long way down.
Brexit is a disaster, Prince Charles is not really a charming person, Scotland wants to leave Great Britain and join the EU, Northern Ireland is split as ever.
The word "Majesty" holds meaning that few people today contemplate. Her life was lived in complete service to her people, and was inextricably linked to the nation she ruled. That's a relic of a bygone era, and I think we lost something on the way.
I believe we have witnessed the passing of a truly great human being, born into power within a system that is completely unjust. She could have disrupted her society, but instead she did her best to maintain the culture while helping as many as she could and harming as few as possible.
I am an American, and I am grateful to have been among her contemporaries in a way that I cannot say that about any other British monarch.
I've dreaded writing these words for quite some time now, because to me, she's become the prototype of someone who hasn't been quite alive for some time now, but still embodied the spirit of a nation - a nation arguably in perceived decline, but still somehow held together by the almost poetic and optimistic belief that as long as the Queen is alive, the nation will prosper or, at the very least, persevere.
At the same time, I feel relief that even the Queen may die, and life still goes on. May she rest in peace.
I have never liked the queen or the British monarchy. To me they are the biggest symbol of oppression in history and set my people and continent several centuries back while they enriched themselves. Never an apology, never any reparations.
So while i will not jump around and rejoice, I would be lying if I said I did not feel some happiness and relief at the news. And i think always will as this monarchy chips away.
I am not alone in these sentiments, but our sentiments as Africans have never really mattered in the grand scheme of things.
This press release from one of South Africa's bigger political parties expresses this succinctly. They did not mince their words and i know there are plenty of Africans who feel the same.
She was a symbol of an institution that has brought perhaps the most harm out of any institution in our time. She was also the leader and sovereign of the UK while they engaged in atrocities against Malaysia and much of the rest of Asia and as GP points out Africa. She is not just "some women" and it is a position of privilege to see her as such.
The same language has a very different meaning when coming from a people who have been colonized rather than coming from the colonizer. People who have been oppressed have every right to celebrate the passing of their oppressors.
This is honestly a bafflingly ignorant comment. The British royalty are responsible for reprehensible acts against humanity. To pretend as if the queen is no different than any other person undermimes centuries of oppression by the British empire.
