[HN Gopher] Who owns Parliament?
___________________________________________________________________
Who owns Parliament?
Author : drjohnson
Score : 104 points
Date : 2022-05-31 20:57 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (whoownsengland.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (whoownsengland.org)
| henrikschroder wrote:
| > The Crown Estate Commissioners have done this under the terms
| of the Land Registration Act 2002, which allows the Crown to
| register an interest in otherwise unregistered land.
|
| This is wild to me. What do you mean "unregistered land" ? How
| the hell can you have been a nation for centuries and still have
| land that no-one owns? How can you be uncertain about who owns a
| piece of land? How can you have disputes?
|
| Every single square centimetre of Sweden is mapped, surveyed,
| registered, and owned. There exists one national, public database
| of who owns what, which means that for every single square
| centimetre, I can ask who owns it and get a definitive answer. No
| uncertainties. No secrets. No confusion.
| bombcar wrote:
| Sweden is mapped that way because at some point they decided to
| do so, and any "unregistered land" became _something_ - likely
| property of the Swedish government.
|
| The UK has a much more ... involved understanding of land, and
| since it only has to be registered when sold (IIRC) there are
| large plats of land where the owner is not registered (even
| though it may be known).
| permo-w wrote:
| a quite fascinating quirk of UK land law is that squatters
| have a very impressive set of rights. If you squat on a piece
| of land for a long enough period of time without challenge,
| you can legally claim that land and take it into your
| ownership
| [deleted]
| Hedepig wrote:
| Double checked this and it's still correct, after a period
| of time a squatter can claim ownership if they can prove
| they've been living in the property.
|
| They can also get fined and/or sent to prison.
|
| Edit: it's also legal to squat in a non-residential
| building
| Silhouette wrote:
| _Double checked this and it 's still correct, after a
| period of time a squatter can claim ownership if they can
| prove they've been living in the property._
|
| That's not quite the whole story. The rules around
| adverse possession were changed a while back so that even
| if someone has been using some property for a long time
| they can't just file a bit of paperwork and take the
| legal ownership away from the real owner. The real owner
| will be notified of the attempt and then has quite a long
| period of time to address the matter, for example by
| getting any unauthorised occupants removed instead. It's
| only if the owner doesn't take the required actions in
| time and the occupants then go through a second round of
| paperwork that the occupants can take over the title and
| even then there are still some other big conditions they
| have to satisfy first.
|
| (I am not a lawyer or property expert but I did have this
| explained to me at length by someone who was when I was
| considering buying a property and he had some concerns
| about the legal title.)
| bombcar wrote:
| That also exists in the US (because our common law is
| descended from the UK's) - adverse possession aka
| "possession is 9/10ths of the law".
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adverse_possession
| dragonwriter wrote:
| It exists in some US jurisdictions but even where it
| does, it's often been sharply curtailed. IIRC, in
| California adverse possession exists, but to benefit you
| must not only be openly possessing the property but also
| _paying the property taxes on it_ in the period required
| to establish the claim.
| bombcar wrote:
| Yeah, the most common way for adverse possession to come
| into play is with boundary disputes - for example if you
| built part of your garage on your neighbor's land.
|
| It's also become less necessary as accurate accounting of
| land has become more common.
| esquivalience wrote:
| Unregistered doesn't mean unowned. It just means that the land
| registry, an official government register of ownership, doesn't
| have an entry (yet). The registration system was created in
| 1925 to replace the previous system of tracing ownership
| through a decentralised system of dusty old documents, but land
| normally only gets registered when it's sold or if the owner
| decides to register it.
| zinekeller wrote:
| In general, that's called the Torrens titles
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torrens_title) after the MP of
| South Australia (which is now an Australian state) which
| implemented it. It's actually not that common, to highlight
| this in the US only Guam (which was then part of the Captaincy
| General of the Philippines) is the only US territory or state
| fully implementing Torrens titles, with some states partially
| implementing it and some (like the area in and around Chicago
| and the state of California) repealing it.
|
| Edit: I need to clarify that some states/countries have non-
| Torrens land registries
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_registration) or deeds
| registries (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deeds_registration)
| but they only record what allegedly happened and ownership can
| be challenged in court, so these registries are not a
| _guarantee_ of ownership (unlike in Torrens titles where the
| titles are indefeasible and the only possible lawsuits are
| about the circumstances of the transfer like if the original
| owner was defrauded).
| Terry_Roll wrote:
| So the Govt doesnt always know who owns bits of land, there are
| companies who make it their business like this website to find
| out who owns what and they are used by supermarkets and other
| property related businesses for land bank purposes. One of the
| biggest databases of who owns what in this country belongs to a
| company not far from Swindon!
|
| If you are a landowner, one of the ways to reduce your tax bill
| is to work with your neighbouring landowners, so a trust owns
| the land and it "gifts" some land, like a field to another
| trust in return for services previously undertaken. The point
| being there is no monetary value exchange, ie its not taxable.
| The only people who know about the arrangement will be the two
| trusts and the accountancy firm(s), and it will be a big name
| accountancy firm most of the time. I legally purchased this
| data from one landowner who relied on an inferior IT company to
| wipe their computers before reselling them as secondhand, and I
| simply restored all their data which is how I found out about
| the above. Ironically the Queen is a neighbour!
|
| Other ways to reduce your tax bill is to say to the taxman, you
| have no money, but I have some antiques like a suit of armour
| or something historically of "national" interest I can offer as
| payment instead, HMRC will get the National Trust in to valuate
| it, HMRC say yes or no, and then on paper said antique is now
| owned by the National Trust. However the NT will say its best
| kept in its existing surroundings so keep hold of it for us,
| and we will pay you to look after it! You can spot some of
| these people because they have to open up their property at
| least one day a year to the public. It can be quite lucrative
| having the NT maintaining the upkeep of your family estate
| during lean times!
| [deleted]
| FireBeyond wrote:
| Even as a Scottish and then Australian "republican"... I thought
| that some of the conclusions in the article were just as
| confusing.
|
| "Since 1664 no monarch has set foot in the House of Commons"
|
| "And yet it appears that the Queen has quietly asserted her claim
| to own Parliament."
|
| Assuming validity of the claim for the purpose of discussion,
| these two things are not contradictory. The monarch could own
| Parliament and still recognize for symbolic or other purposes the
| tradition of not entering the House of Commons, entirely easily.
| leto_ii wrote:
| I'm actually disappointed, going by the title I thought this
| would show which politician was bought by which special interest
| group :))
| [deleted]
| Angostura wrote:
| We're a constitutional monarchy AND a democracy. The monarch is
| the disabled root account of the nation. The government is the
| sudoers
| hiddencost wrote:
| The queen was exercising secret veto power, I don't think root
| was disabled.
|
| https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/commentisfr...
| cwillu wrote:
| When you disable an account, processes running under that
| account are still live, and can still spawn children.
| scottswelsh wrote:
| I hope you're not suggesting we kill the processes.
| cwillu wrote:
| SIGSTOP is reversible and unblockable.
| GauntletWizard wrote:
| I think this is the link you meant, because when I click
| yours I just get a favicon:
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/feb/08/royals-
| vette...
| bombcar wrote:
| >The documents also show that on other occasions the
| monarch's advisers demanded exclusions from proposed laws
| relating to road safety and land policy that appeared to
| affect her estates, and pressed for government policy on
| historic sites to be altered.
|
| I like to read this as the Queen demanding that such common
| things like "speed limits" and "drive on the correct side
| of the road" shall not apply to Her Majesty.
| ValentineC wrote:
| I don't know if this is more appropriate, but I've always
| thought of the monarch as PID 1, and parliament as a child
| process running under the root account.
| SulphurSmell wrote:
| Love this analogy. As a Canadian...we have the same monarch,
| but our own Constitution / elected officials. So...we are
| ourselves in the sudoers file...but surely we are different
| under this analogy than our UK brethren? What are we a VM with
| sudo root?
| gxt wrote:
| I'd see the governors has some kind kerberos authorized set
| of admin accounts. And we are the lowly users and sudoers.
| pmyteh wrote:
| Something like that. And with the Governor General as the VM
| root.
| stormbrew wrote:
| Technically we have a different monarch that is occupied by
| the same person (she is "the queen of the uk and the queen of
| Canada", not really "queen of the uk and Canada") and has the
| same rules of succession (implemented in a Canadian bill that
| must be updated in sync with the British equivalent when it
| changes).
|
| So it's maybe more like a Kerberos auth server with local
| configuration.
| dsr_ wrote:
| I suggest that in the next bill, rather than updating the
| Crown to rest in Charles's CNAME, you acknowledge that the
| Crown is perpetually Elizabeth II.
|
| That way you never have to change Birthday celebrations, or
| anything else related.
| goosedragons wrote:
| We already solved the birthday celebration problem. The
| Queen's official birthday in Canada is May 24th. Charles'
| official birthday in Canada will be May 24th. We just
| decided at some point the best monarch's birthday to
| celebrate is Queen Victoria and have stuck with it.
| SulphurSmell wrote:
| Ah! Good ol' DNS. Nothing can go wrong now!
| [deleted]
| lisper wrote:
| That is one of the more brilliant (and accurate) analogies I
| have ever seen!
| neilwilson wrote:
| It's probably more like the monarch is the disabled root
| account, and the prime minister has an unassuming username but
| with ID 0.
|
| The UK has an hereditary monarch with all the pomp and no power
| as cover for an elected monarch with no pomp and all the power.
| plonk wrote:
| Sounds like the system would be simpler if we removed root and
| gave capabilities to the sudoers instead.
|
| Edit: why does the disabled root account allocate so much RAM?
| Teever wrote:
| Can you do that without rebooting? Rebooting nations tends to
| be a messy affair. Just ask France.
| simonh wrote:
| Arguably every election that brings in a new government is
| a reboot. A revolution is more like wiping the drive and
| installing a new OS.
| KineticLensman wrote:
| > Arguably every election that brings in a new government
| is a reboot. A revolution is more like wiping the drive
| and installing a new OS.
|
| In the UK, Governments change but Parliament persists.
| The basics mechanism of state are unchanged until a new
| Govt defines and votes through new policies. Unlike the
| US, the UK's civil service doesn't substantially change
| as a result of an election.
|
| The last really significant change to Parliament was
| perhaps the 1832 reform act which got of rotten boroughs
| - constituencies with few if any voters that still
| returned MPs. Since then the House of Commons has gained
| primary over the House of Lords, whose main role now is
| delaying/modifying Govt proposals. The last big reboot
| was the Restoration.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| A revolution is more like wiping the drive and installing
| a new OS - from a backup that still contains malware from
| the previous revolution.
| scoopertrooper wrote:
| I'd say it's more like an upgrade. The release notes
| promise all sorts of improvements, but they often bring
| new bugs.
| plonk wrote:
| "Every operating system then, and every threat model,
| naturally expires at the end of 19 years. If it be deployed
| longer, it is legacy tech, and should be deprecated." -
| Thomas Jefferson
| scoopertrooper wrote:
| Move fast and break things
|
| - Napoleon Bonaparte
| orangesite wrote:
| Nope nope nope nope. Requiring privileged access is a code
| smell. Capability based government now!
| throw0101a wrote:
| > _Sounds like the system would be simpler if we removed root
| and gave capabilities to the sudoers instead._
|
| A good portion of the top ten democracies are 'disabled root'
| (constitutional monarchy):
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index#By_country
|
| As a Canadian I'm not so much "against" switching away for
| constitutional monarchy, but rather any proposal needs to
| ensure we stay high in rankings. See also (2021> Pts: higher
| is better):
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_in_the_World#Country_
| r...
|
| (I have no comment/idea on 'useful' these metric actually
| are.)
| bengale wrote:
| President Boris. Sounds fantastic. Perhaps not though, yeah?
| kergonath wrote:
| In a lot of countries, it would be much better than "prime
| minister Boris". Look at the president roles in Italy and
| Germany, for example. Not all countries in the world are
| the US.
| Lio wrote:
| Been there, done that already. The British have tried that
| before.
|
| We called it the Interregnum[1]. It turned out nobody liked a
| system without a superuser so the fix was a restoration plus
| tweaks to limit powers.
|
| You'll note this all happening well before others decided to
| repeat the experiment.
|
| The system has been ticking along at some definition of
| "fine"[2] ever since.
|
| 1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Interregnum
|
| 2. Personally I'm less concerned about who the ceremonial
| head of state is than I am about having a police force that
| refuses to investigate the Prime Minister for breaking the
| law[3].
|
| Whilst at the same time retrospectively investigating women
| for breaking the very same law by attending a protest about
| the murder of a woman by a serving officer of that very same
| police force.
|
| Now that is fucked up.
|
| 3. See private ABBA party.
| mr_toad wrote:
| > It turned out nobody liked a system without a superuser
|
| I thinks it's more the case that the commons at the time
| couldn't get their shit together.
| krona wrote:
| Because investing both sovereignty and power in a single
| institution inexorably leads to tyranny. Examples abound.
| ben_w wrote:
| The root account was written when it was fashionable to be
| object-oriented, so its resource allocation is all due to
| inheritance.
|
| Scotland in particular is upset because of certain issues due
| to multiple inheritance.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| LOL. Great comment.
|
| But it's not just Scotland. The War of the Roses had some
| multiple inheritance problems, too.
| gumby wrote:
| > The War of the Roses had some multiple inheritance
| problems, too.
|
| They defined a custom method combinator that squashed the
| diamond problem. Implementing it was literally painful
| for many of the people involved. Truly a killer problem.
| jameshart wrote:
| And then in 16.8.8 they imported a completely new package
| from the Netherlands called 'Orange' (but they rebranded
| it), and marked a bunch of things as 'protected' to lock
| down inheritance.
| [deleted]
| ThrowawayTestr wrote:
| plonk wrote:
| You could allocate only "software update" capability to one
| group, "execution" to another, and have a permission system
| for deciding who can do what.
| Victerius wrote:
| But what if the execution program took on a conscience of
| its own and decided to appropriate software update
| permissions for itself?
| gruez wrote:
| >The monarch is the disabled root account of the nation. The
| government is the sudoers
|
| except, even with "disabled root account", you can do "sudo su"
| to get a root shell. What's the equivalent of that in uk?
| pmyteh wrote:
| Pretty much exactly that. The Government can (and does)
| request a Privy Council meeting, which issues various kinds
| of Orders in the name of the Queen. The Queen's Speech is
| another (less instrumental) way of government using the root
| account directly.
|
| (Or, I suppose, you could `$ sudo su`and then `#
| instantiate_republic` to permanently promote the usual
| administrator account to root. Still not clear it's wise to
| directly govern from account 0, though).
| dragonwriter wrote:
| I'm not sure the Queen-in-Council is any more (or less) the
| person of the monarch distinct from the institutional
| government than, say, the Queen-in-Parliament is.
| _Everything_ is done in the name of the Queen, one way or
| another, and almost all of it is practically at the
| direction of the government.
| pmyteh wrote:
| Yeah, maybe that stretches the analogy too far. I think
| it _is_ distinct from ministers governing in their own
| right (or in the right of the semi-fictional unitary
| 'Secretary of State') though. Most statutory instruments,
| for example, are issued by and in the name of a minister.
| Obviously the appointment of the minister is an act of
| the Crown, and so is the passing of the original Act
| which authorises the order-making power. But the power is
| used directly from their own ministerial user account,
| IYSWIM.
| simonh wrote:
| The supreme court?
| olddustytrail wrote:
| The article never actually answers the question, because the
| monarch doesn't actually own the crown estate. It's an entirely
| different thing to the lands owned privately by the queen.
| JackFr wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Clinton_(funk_musician)
|
| Duh.
| fennecfoxen wrote:
| It might be nice for Parliament to own their own building but
| England more generally has a real problem where normal humans
| have a hard time owning the property their homes are built on,
| with all sorts of fun fun fun fun fun ground-rent renewal
| politics. Reforming those is more impactful and urgent.
| simonh wrote:
| Good news. Ground rent is going to be banned from the end of
| this month on new leases. It'll take a while for it to be
| eliminated completely but it's firmly on the way out.
|
| https://www.gov.uk/government/news/future-homebuyers-to-be-f...
| dane-pgp wrote:
| Except the government has only done the bare minimum for
| leasehold reform, and has seemingly abandoned the more
| ambitious plans it had promised for this session of
| parliament[0]. As for the Leasehold Reform (Ground Rent) Act
| 2022, it's worth reading the small print:
|
| "Certain types of leases are also excepted by the LRGRA 2022
| such as business leases, statutory lease extensions of houses
| and flats, community housing leases and home finance plan
| leases. The LRGRA 2022 will not apply to leases granted under
| contracts entered into prior to the commencement of the Act,
| unless in accordance with an option or right of first
| refusal."[1]
|
| [0] https://nationalleaseholdcampaign.org/leasehold-reform-
| broke...
|
| [1] https://www.keystonelaw.com/keynotes/the-end-of-
| residential-...
| kcartlidge wrote:
| Here in the UK we're one day into a two day extra 'bank holiday'
| for the Queen's jubilee (70 years).
|
| Seems a good time to remind people of great sites like these,
| places that take the time to gather the evidence that reveals the
| truth behind royalty - _descendants of thieves and murderers
| still profiting off the proceeds of their ancestral crimes, with
| their only 'qualification' being an accident of birth_.
|
| We've never been a democracy. And we never will be as long as we
| have an aristocracy and a royalty with priviledges and titles
| both unearned and undeserved.
| dan-robertson wrote:
| > We've never been a democracy
|
| I've definitely heard it argued that the brief commonwealth
| between Charles I and II was the first modern democracy, where
| 'modern' means a system somewhat like current democracies
| rather than 'after 1500'.
| olivermarks wrote:
| May be of interest in relation to the opaque nature of
| British history -
|
| The City of London's strange history Lord Glasman on what the
| Romans did for the Square Mile
|
| https://www.ft.com/content/7c8f24fa-3aa5-11e4-bd08-00144feab.
| ..
|
| Alway interesting to try to read the tea leaves on the
| relationship between the two UK entities who run the two
| sovereign states - the palace and the city of London
| simonh wrote:
| We could get rid of the monarchy tomorrow and ordinary britons
| would notice zero change in our political and democratic
| freedoms. They are politically irrelevant, a few completely
| peripheral procedural and technical issues aside that make no
| real difference in the grand scheme of things.
|
| I'm not sure if that's an argument for or against keeping the
| monarchy to be honest. They're a historical vestigial appendage
| of the state, but the idea that we're any less of a democracy
| because they're there is kind of silly.
| krona wrote:
| If I were prime minister I think having to have a private in-
| person chat with the monarch every week would probably have a
| profound impact on how I went about running the country on
| her behalf.
|
| It's like a schoolchild having to explain themselves to the
| headmaster.
| teknopaul wrote:
| If you got rid of the monarchy tomorrow you could bet your
| life that Tory government would be immediately selling of
| assets to buy voters.
|
| There is little other reason to keep the monarchy, but that's
| enough.
| vasco wrote:
| They are not irrelevant in the sense that they are a
| declaration of the nation that there are special people by
| birth. In a society so worried about equality, it is appaling
| that multiple countries in europe not only have populations
| that leave under monarchy, but that they seem to be in favor.
| hef19898 wrote:
| None of that monarchs is involved in actual legislative,
| executive or judicative activities. Sure, they are heads of
| state, but that's where it stops. European monarchs don't
| write laws, don't sign laws, are not part of the elected
| government.
| karencarits wrote:
| > European monarchs [...] don't sign laws [...]
|
| At least in Norway, laws have to be signed by the King
| and the prime minister (with a few exceptions); for
| example, in 1975 the King did not sign a law passed by
| Parliament/Stortinget and the law did not become
| effective (this was, however, a special occation related
| to a strike where the two parts found an aggreement after
| the law was passed by Parliament but before it was signed
| by the King and the prime minister, so the government
| recommended the King not to sign). See https://lovdata-
| no.translate.goog/artikkel/vil_kongen_nekte_...
| dane-pgp wrote:
| > European monarchs don't ... sign laws
|
| That may be technically correct (the best kind of
| correct), but the details are more interesting:
|
| "Since the sixteenth century no [British] monarch has
| actually signed a Bill themselves. Instead, the monarch
| signs what are known as Letters Patent which announce
| that an assent has been given."
|
| https://www.open.edu/openlearn/society-politics-
| law/law/what...
| plonk wrote:
| Seems like their special status is more of a burden today.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| Unfortunately not politically irrelevant at all. The Queen
| has directly interfered in legislation, and she also has a
| weekly chat with the PM every week.
|
| It's unlikely they talk about tea and biscuits.
|
| But the real issue is that the Queen _legitimises hierarchy
| and privilege._ Instead of modelling democratic authority and
| meritocracy, she models the opposite - vast inherited wealth
| and land ownership, without accountability.
|
| She is also the head of the armed forces, who swear an oath
| of loyalty to her personally - not to Parliament, and
| certainly not to the people of the UK.
|
| In the UK she has Sovereign Immunity, which means she
| literally cannot be convicted of any crime. She can't even
| interviewed.
|
| None of this would be a problem if she was in any way
| outstanding, but unfortunately the Royal Family have made
| some exceptionally poor choices. The Prince Andrew trial -
| and his $12m bailout - is just the most recent scandal in a
| long series of shady events and associations.
| kcartlidge wrote:
| > _They are politically irrelevant, a few completely
| peripheral procedural and technical issues aside that make no
| real difference in the grand scheme of things._
|
| At the very least they own huge parts of the country, and the
| Queen has (and exercises as per recent Guardian stories)
| vetos and opt-outs of the laws the rest of us must follow.
|
| Regardless of that, even as a basic principle our country
| reeks of deference and class.
| arlort wrote:
| > they own huge parts of the country
|
| And they would keep owning them if they were made to
| abdicate
| basisword wrote:
| Only if we let them.
| simonh wrote:
| We could always confiscate your property while we're at
| it. Every little helps. After all there can be few on
| this forum that aren't in the upper decile of wealth
| globally. Property is theft!
|
| (er, kidding in case that wasn't obvious)
| nicoburns wrote:
| The more pressing issue with land ownership in the UK is
| that we don't even know who owns large chunks of it.
| MockObject wrote:
| American here. How is that a pressing issue?
| dane-pgp wrote:
| It makes it harder to introduce a land value tax, I
| guess?
| eadmund wrote:
| Does it? Seems like if the State doesn't know who owns a
| piece of land, it can just auction it off.
| MockObject wrote:
| If the state really doesn't know who owns a piece of
| land, what's stopping someone from squatting? Wouldn't
| the owner have to prove ownership to the state, to
| activate law enforcement?
| dane-pgp wrote:
| If the state were so keen to serve the interests of the
| public, it would have auctioned off this land already,
| regardless of whether a land value tax had popular
| support.
|
| I suppose I'm hoping that if people knew who really owned
| the country, and who would be the winners and losers of a
| LVT, there would be such strong support for one that it
| would be politically untenable to oppose it.
| spacedcowboy wrote:
| _shrug_ and it riles some people up, which at least is
| entertaining. Most of us don 't care.
|
| Tbh, if you look at the performance of the queen compared
| to the performance of recent prime ministers, well, let's
| just say it's not a shining example of democracy at it's
| best.
| dane-pgp wrote:
| By that logic we should make Charles the Prime Minister
| and shut down parliament.
|
| Maybe the reason the Queen is so respected is that she
| doesn't (visibly) exercise much power, and the lesson
| there is actually that Prime Ministers should be more
| limited in what they can do of their own volition
| (without broad consent from the public, in the form of a
| truly representative parliament and an independent
| judiciary enforcing a codified constitution).
| spacedcowboy wrote:
| > By that logic we should make Charles the Prime Minister
| and shut down parliament
|
| Uh huh. I think reductio ad absurdum wants to have a
| word.
| p10jkle wrote:
| They get 25% of crown estate profits, but I'm not sure they
| really 'own' that land per se. And in general, the elite
| own a huge amount of the UK (most notably Oxbridge colleges
| with incredible land ownership). We can make a case to take
| 'back' the Queen's private or crown estate land, but why
| just them? IMO, casting judgement on what historic
| ownership is 'rightful' is really hard.
| kcartlidge wrote:
| We'd struggle to fairly take it back; probably not even
| worth trying. And whilst I never said so specifically I
| presumed it apparent that I never meant just the Queen. I
| accept I could have been clearer (sorry).
|
| The first steps might be:
|
| - An end to the honours system (entirely - even though
| many 'commoners' get them now it perpetuates the class
| concepts)
|
| - Fair _and universal_ application of inheritance tax to
| reduce the inequalities over the generations
|
| - The taxation of assets (beyond a certain point so that
| people don't need to sell their home) and not just income
|
| All those have arguments for/against, but it would be
| good for them to be honestly discussed and considered by
| those with the power to effect change.
| simonh wrote:
| As I said, peripheral procedural and technical issues aside
| that make no real difference.
|
| The idea that these mean we have no democracy is absurd,
| and does no credit to the reasonable arguments for
| disestablishmentarianism.
| dane-pgp wrote:
| I believe that disestablishmentarianism is usually
| understood to refer solely to the question of whether the
| Church of England should be the Established (i.e. state)
| church.
|
| There are probably some antidisestablishmentarianists who
| disagree with that definition, though.
| exdsq wrote:
| We don't have a written constitution, so if you remove all
| the pomp and tradition it's highly likely some things do
| actually go wrong as people forget they're meant to happen.
| simonh wrote:
| The US constitution is a handful of pages, and only a few
| lines actually specify how the government should function
| on a day to day basis. If they forgot everything but the
| constitution and worked out everything else again from
| scratch, the result would likely be completely
| unrecognisable.
|
| Furthermore there's an argument to be made that the UK
| system of government is considerably more modern that that
| of the US. After all, their system is essentially a direct
| copy of the UK system of the time, with a few minor tweaks.
| The house is parliament, the Senate is the House of Lords,
| and the President is an elected King George V. Signing laws
| is Royal Assent, dissolving the House is Prorogation, he
| can even pardon criminals. I say George V specifically
| because the powers of the crown have been massively
| reformed since, really from Queen Anne onwards, but the US
| system has remained frozen in time.
| spacedcowboy wrote:
| Living in the US, and looking at how (for example) their
| second amendment has ruined their society, but it's
| considered heresy to countenance change to the holy
| document, I really don't want the UK to go down that path.
|
| There are places with written constitutions that have
| turned out better than the US one, but if you look at
| parallels between the UK and other nations, the US is the
| most likely one for the UK to follow. That way lies ruin.
| jaywalk wrote:
| You live in the US, but refer to "their" society as if
| you're not a part of it. So if "their" society is in
| ruins, why do you choose to continue living there? Surely
| you can head off to any number of countries that would
| suit you much better, and allow you to be a part of their
| society.
| spacedcowboy wrote:
| Ah, the old "if you don't like it, leave" advice.
|
| Well, in life, you might come across some situations
| where running away isn't really an option. I've got an
| (American) wife who likes it here, and a kid whose
| schooling I don't want to interrupt.
|
| Yes. If it were just me, I'd leave. I've made enough
| millions that I could live quite happily back in my home
| country, but, you know... Life. Not just your own opinion
| counts...
| jaywalk wrote:
| So then maybe "society is in ruins because people are
| allowed to own things I don't think they should be
| allowed to own" is a bit hyperbolic, yes?
| spacedcowboy wrote:
| _shrug_ you have your opinion, am I not entitled to my
| own ? And since when did not liking something mean you
| weren 't entitled to criticise it ?
|
| American society _is_ screwed up, IMHO. A large part of
| that _is_ due to the policy of fear used by authorities,
| due to guns, and another large part is due to the wide
| "independent" streak within the society - I put it in
| quotes because it's really just selfishness, and guns are
| the poster-child for that attitude.
|
| _shrug_ Nothing I say can matter, I can 't even vote,
| but it doesn't mean I don't have eyes to see.
| engineer_22 wrote:
| The US Constitution has been regularly amended since the
| beginning. Your claim that it would be heresy falls flat
| here.
|
| 2nd amendment ruined society, exactly how? The US still
| enjoys the largest economy and military in the world
| respectively. Religious and personal freedoms are
| codified in law. What is in ruins?
| spacedcowboy wrote:
| I didn't claim that amending the constitution was heresy.
| I claimed that removing the second amendment is heresy.
| And I stand by that.
|
| [edit: on re-reading, the above is not true. I _meant to_
| claim that removing the 2A was heresy. My bad]
|
| Look, this is just an opinion, but from the outside
| looking in, your society is frankly awful at looking
| after its _people_ , and the everyone-gets-a-gun made
| sense a few hundred years ago with frontier justice, but
| certainly doesn't today. The gun culture doesn't create
| (as claimed) a "polite society", it creates a society
| based on fear, where everything is much more dangerous
| because guns are, at least potentially, involved.
|
| I've been stopped by the police twice in my lifetime for
| speeding - once when I was a kid just passed his test,
| once a decade or so ago driving up the 280 to SF Airport
| and running late. The one in the US was a far more
| fraught affair - I suddenly remembered advice to keep
| your hands visible, don't make any sudden moves, etc.
| etc.
|
| In contrast the UK one was a walk in the park. Got the
| ticket, the policeman even cracked a joke to reduce the
| tension, and the worst part was telling my mother (I was
| still driving on her insurance).
|
| That's an anecdote, not data, but it's a microcosm of any
| interaction with the police. Over here every tinpot town
| has military hardware and SWAT teams because the
| criminals might have guns, the police are poorly trained
| in general, SWAT teams included, and the interaction
| between police and policed is far more tense, controlling
| and authoritative as a result. Because of guns being so
| prolific, the Peelian principles of policing are pretty
| much impossible to apply, and so US police do their job
| with overwhelming force for the given situation and
| employ fear as a standard tactic...
|
| Every shopkeeper is more alert for guns; Another
| anecdote: I was being driven from McCarrean airport to a
| hotel in Vegas for a trade show before I started living
| here, and my cab driver pulled out in front of someone,
| who chased him, got alongside and pulled a gun (!!!). My
| cab driver pulled one right back at him (!!!!!!). They
| yelled at each other and went their different ways. Could
| have gone a lot differently. This sort of thing doesn't
| happen in civilized society.
|
| > The US still enjoys the largest economy and military in
| the world respectively. Religious and personal freedoms
| are codified in law
|
| Well, great ? It doesn't change how American society
| interacts. And the abuse of "religious freedoms" to
| oppress people is another huge problem in American
| society in general. I wouldn't go claiming that one,
| personally.
|
| To be clear, I didn't mean that the 2A was the _only_
| reason American society is ruined, but it 's more along
| the lines of (with apologies to EI, this is from memory):
|
| "The gun doesn't kill people, _people_ kill people "
|
| "Well, yes, but the gun _helps_ , doesn't it? I mean, if
| I walked up behind someone and yelled BANG! they're not
| _very_ likely to drop dead, are they ? They 'd have to be
| pretty dodgy on the old ticker for _that_ to kill them "
|
| In the same way, the 2A hasn't killed American society,
| but it _helps_.
|
| Feel free to disagree :) I don't really care about fake
| internet points, and I realize this isn't a popular
| opinion in America, but from the outside looking in -
| y'all are nuts.
| throw2597 wrote:
| dane-pgp wrote:
| > ordinary britons would notice zero change
|
| But that only proves that what we have now is an elective
| dictatorship where the Prime Minister of the day effectively
| exercises all the powers of the sovereign, without any real
| accountability or separation of powers.
|
| Removing powers from the Queen (or even just codifying them
| in a written constitution) would be the first step towards
| fixing this democratic deficit and allowing the people to
| choose someone more suitable to hold those powers, with a
| proper mandate to support them.
|
| The particular reform I propose is introducing a "Governor
| General" role for the UK, who has the power to veto laws,
| treaties, and wars, but remains nominally answerable to the
| Queen just as the Prime Minister pretends to be. To be
| eligible for the role, candidates would need to be nominated
| by 20% of MPs, and they would be elected in a national
| election using the Supplementary Vote method.
| waylandsmithers wrote:
| > elective dictatorship where the Prime Minister of the day
| effectively exercises all the powers of the sovereign,
| without any real accountability or separation of powers
|
| (As an American) this is a more pessimistic view of how it
| appears to me. Maybe I'm being naive but the voice of the
| people does appear to provide accountability. The idea that
| David Cameron felt the need to resign after the Brexit vote
| because he no longer had the support of the public seems
| like a big deal to me. We're not really big on admitting
| defeat over here.
| pmyteh wrote:
| It's complex. There's nothing really to stop a British
| prime minister going full dictator if they want, as long
| as they can get Parliament to pass an Enabling Act. And
| that's not an entirely fanciful proposition: they have
| the support of a majority of the House of Commons pretty
| much by definition and the Lords have very little power
| in practice.
|
| Our constitution is built on the so-called 'good chap
| theory of governance', which is that power is in the
| hands of people 'like us', and therefore reasonable. If
| the PM loses a vote of no confidence he's obliged to
| resign. What makes him? Nothing. But that's the
| convention and it's been followed until now.
|
| It's also a constitutional convention to resign from
| ministerial office if caught lying to Parliament. (Yes,
| really!) That one, though, looks defunct: Boris Johnson
| is a serial liar, and has managed to get himself referred
| to the Privileges Committee of the Commons for lying over
| his lockdown breaches _despite his majority in the
| Commons_. Will he resign? Will he hell. He doesn 't want
| to, and all the Commons can do is bring the whole
| government down (and even then only if he is prepared to
| resign then). He's made it clear he doesn't care, and the
| Conservative Party in the Commons has made clear they're
| not willing to face an election over it, so that's that.
|
| A similar thing happened over the Prorogation of the
| House just before Brexit. That was fairly
| straightforwardly a contempt of Parliament, and the
| advice to prorogue was found to be unlawful by the
| Supreme Court. But nothing of consequence happened to
| those in charge as a result.
|
| I'm grateful our political culture isn't _quite_ as
| buggered as that of the US at this point, but I 'd be
| grateful for slightly stronger guardrails against
| misconduct than simply hoping it doesn't happen.
| spacedcowboy wrote:
| > But that only proves that what we have now is an elective
| dictatorship where the Prime Minister of the day
| effectively exercises all the powers of the sovereign,
| without any real accountability or separation of powers
|
| No it doesn't. It just means it's irrelevant to ordinary
| life.
|
| What they have has no bearing on how I live. Zero. Nada.
| Zilch.
| etothepii wrote:
| Of course it's underserved. But the person of the sovereign in
| the British system can be a unifying figure impossible with an
| elected Head of State.
|
| Don't agree? Just look at how the red half of the US talk about
| Obama and the Blue half talk about Trump.
| joaonmatos wrote:
| As long as you keep the Head of Government away from the
| sovereign, presidents can be harmless enough to avoid this
| kind of polarisation.
|
| Maybe look at Ireland or Portugal as examples of republics
| where the president keeps the constitutional safeguards
| (dissolving parliament, vetoing laws, and what not), and
| you'll see that they are not exactly polarizing figures.
| Instead, the prime ministers are, as they should (they head
| partisan politics).
| kcartlidge wrote:
| I really don't care about that.
|
| I also don't care about how dutiful the Queen is and what
| she's sacrificed to the role - though to be clear I _do_
| believe both those things at a personal level.
|
| It doesn't matter what incidental good it accomplishes if it
| goes against the fundamental principles of equality.
| annyeonghada wrote:
| Equality is not "a fundamental principle", this is a modern
| conception of how society should be run while fundamental
| principles are absolute and eternal.
|
| Even going back to only 100 years ago the idea that "we are
| all equal" would have sounded ridiculous. As an example, we
| could take the accounts about the role of schools in
| various educational systems in Europe: it was widespread
| belief that the function of such institutions was to select
| the aristoi - aristoi, from which it derives aristocracy -
| the best among the best. School was intentionally set up as
| an _exclusionary_ institution, opposed to our "inclusive"
| endeavor: it was considered obvious, a "fundamental
| principle" even, that some people were better, in some
| sense or in another, than others.
| kcartlidge wrote:
| > _Equality is not "a fundamental principle", this is a
| modern conception of how society should be run while
| fundamental principles are absolute and eternal._
|
| Fundamental means foundational. But regardless of whether
| or not the definition you choose to follow (and they do
| vary) adds more nuance, it's pretty obvious what was
| meant by the phrase fundamental principle. And pretty
| obvious from the context that it was in fact referring
| to, as you put it, the "modern conception".
|
| It really feels like you've picked up on a trivial
| phrasing at the cost of ignoring the intent, probably as
| a means of introducing some eloquent but irrelevant
| knowledge on etymology and derivation which adds nothing
| to the discussion.
|
| It doesn't matter what it was like 100 years ago. We live
| now. And equality is fundamental to our current
| conceptions of an ideal democracy. Or foundational if
| you're still offended by the word choice.
| B1FF_PSUVM wrote:
| There in the UK you've had a republic for some six or seven
| centuries, your kings are mere entertainers hired and fired at
| will, as Charles I found out.
|
| You do have a ruling class, but monarchy is not your problem.
| The Roman senators hated the Caesars with good reason, they
| gave the people too good a deal.
| bsedlm wrote:
| I'd argue that while the current generation of nobles may in
| fact have done nothing much to earn them, they do have
| ancestors that fought bitterly, and in some cases quite
| sleazily, to earn and keep their privilege.
|
| the idea that "all men are equal" is not really true in Europe.
| And it's only supposedly true in America
| keybored wrote:
| I can't tell if this is supposed to be even more of a
| scathing condemnation compared to what OP said.
| eadmund wrote:
| > the idea that "all men are equal" is not really true in
| Europe.
|
| It's not really true in _reality_. Some folks are stronger,
| some faster, some more intelligent, some have more social
| connections, some are more charismatic. Even if we lived in a
| Harrison Bergeron dystopia there would be some inequality
| somewhere.
|
| I kind of admire an idealised British system which recognises
| inequality and attempts to channel it to good ends. I think
| the House of Lords as it was prior to 1911 made a lot of
| sense; I think that the honours system makes a lot of sense.
| I think that there's a lot to be said for having a monarch
| who is powerful in theory but weak in practice and a prime
| minister who is weak in theory although powerful in practice.
| bsedlm wrote:
| it's supposed to be equal before the law... which it's not
| real in practice anywhere either. Usually one's networth
| changes the law, at least in Europe they're upfront about
| it.
| keybored wrote:
| Some people are also more wicked, less empathetic, more
| manipulative, and more opportunistic.
| Mikeb85 wrote:
| There are some republics in Europe that did indeed overthrow
| their royalty/aristocracy...
| goatcode wrote:
| And others that thought they did, only to find that they
| were the arms and legs of an even more brutal and
| incomprehensible regime.
| keybored wrote:
| Really? Which ones?
| [deleted]
| Mikeb85 wrote:
| And eventually those nations got rid of those too.
| dan-robertson wrote:
| Today is a regular bank holiday. Only the Friday bank holiday
| is extra.
| kcartlidge wrote:
| I thank you for the correction.
| goatcode wrote:
| The longer you live, the more you realize Thrasymachus was
| right. There is no order except for what the generations forget
| that their ancestors pretended was order, alongside the peace
| you build and maintain with your next-door neighbors.
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| In the UK we generally ignore this problem because we "know" that
| the Queen will not bring about a constitutional crisis because
| she realises that presented with a choice between the duly
| elected Prime Minster of the day and The Queen, all of us
| democratic citizens will of course choose the elected politician
| ... no wait ... err hang on ...
|
| The British constitution is complicated.
| spacedcowboy wrote:
| I dunno. We chopped the head off the last one who pushed too
| far. That sort of lesson tends to have some permanency as it
| echoes down the ages.
| thinkingemote wrote:
| Also, parliament learned lessons about the mess it gets into
| when there's nothing above them.
|
| Cromwell was even worse than the king before.
| pessimizer wrote:
| France had their Cromwell moment, too, but they didn't
| revert everything afterwards. Turns out it requires a lot
| of furious, dangerous energy to destroy entrenched
| genetically-based status quos hundreds of years old. You
| can choose to come out of it as citizens rather than
| subjects.
| nwah1 wrote:
| "You are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth
| belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody."
|
| - Rousseau
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| neilwilson wrote:
| The Crown owns parliament because it is in England.
|
| Nobody except the Crown can hold land in England. You can only
| own an interest in land (Freehold being one of them). If the
| holder of any land dies intestate, then the land reverts to the
| Crown 'bona vacantia'.
|
| The same would happen if Parliament ever dissolved itself as an
| institution.
|
| Another little quirk of history.
| noja wrote:
| > Nobody except the Crown can hold land in England.
|
| It sounds like someone made up another meaning of "own" and
| given it a different name ("hold") to making the "owning" less
| good.
|
| I can't imagine any situation where the Queen points at a piece
| of land and says "I'm having that" and people just accept it.
| aftbit wrote:
| Super interesting article but nearly unreadable font for me.
| [deleted]
| lisper wrote:
| That is a problem you can easily fix yourself in a variety of
| ways. The easiest is to use your browser's reader mode.
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