[HN Gopher] London's ancient cart marking ceremony
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London's ancient cart marking ceremony
Author : zeristor
Score : 57 points
Date : 2023-06-24 11:42 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.ianvisits.co.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.ianvisits.co.uk)
| zeristor wrote:
| This is from 2008:
|
| https://www.ianvisits.co.uk/articles/cart-marking-287/
| zeristor wrote:
| Just a rather barmy selection of vehicles, shouldn't some be
| electric?
| timthorn wrote:
| From the article:
|
| > The range of vehicles can be anything from a Smithfield meat
| cart to old wagons, steam engines, and buses to the very latest
| in electric cars and lorries. It's a very eclectic mix.
| zeristor wrote:
| "I'd like a vehicle licence for my pet steam traction engine
| Eric."
|
| Perhaps one might get to see the mythical cat detection van?
| euroderf wrote:
| Wot, it's got the word "car" crossed out and the words "steam
| traction engine" written in in crayon.
| zeristor wrote:
| Luckily the Lord Mayor will be there to personally approve
| it:
|
| https://youtu.be/8nmfRzRlhMw
|
| Edit: A better video linked
| prox wrote:
| The whole area of this place is very interesting from a
| governmental perspective. You got the City of London which has
| its own governing and even police, and you got an area called
| Temple which also has its own powers historically.
| phas0ruk wrote:
| I love London
| sandworm101 wrote:
| For every anachronistic ritual there is always some simpleton who
| believes it to still be legally important. I give it about a week
| until one of the "freemen" idiots gets ticketed for using a
| soldering iron to create his own wooden license plates.
| blibble wrote:
| the rights of the Freeman in the City are still very real
|
| if you're drunk and disorderly and are a Freeman the police
| will put you in a taxi home, instead of in a cell
| tomatocracy wrote:
| I've been involved in a few Livery Company/City things, and
| I've never met someone like this. Some livery companies still
| have a strong connection to their trades and some do still even
| retain regulatory roles - for example the Scriveners and the
| Farriers.
|
| Mostly the people who are involved view these things as a
| combination of a fun day out with the opportunity to meet
| interesting people and support some form of charitable cause
| (the older Livery Companies these days are effectively large
| charitable foundations).
|
| There was quite a good documentary series about the City
| including the Livery Companies a few years ago called Stephen
| Fry's Key to the City (you might be able to find some of it on
| YouTube) - I'm not usually a fan of his but it actually gave a
| very good insight into it all.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Search youtube for "sovereign citizen". There are thousands
| out there who are obsessed with license plate issues, people
| who believe they can issue their own plates because
| "government" doesn't really exist or that all plates need to
| be signed with quill and ink. These people will latch onto
| any old ritual or tradition to justify their warped views.
| _dain_ wrote:
| We don't have license plates. We have number plates.
| Angostura wrote:
| Yes, but you are trying to connect a _largely_ US-centred
| type of nuttery with an ancient UK ritual.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Indeed, you could consider the freemen/sovereign citizen
| thing to be an _ancient US ritual_ (for definitions of
| "ancient" applicable to the US).
| compiler-guy wrote:
| The ceremony itself is over 400 years old and its current
| form is about 170 years old.
|
| If there are issue with it as you describe, it shouldn't be
| too hard to link to a news story about one.
| astonex wrote:
| This just had me reading about Livery Companies of the City of
| London for an hour. It's great that some history and traditions
| are kept alive. And now I can walk around the City and keep an
| eye out for their coats of arms on the buildings.
| ivix wrote:
| To understand how ancient this is, the Worshipful Company of
| Carmen's history began in 1272.
|
| For US audiences, this operated as something like the DMV,
| hundreds of years before anyone had thought of such a thing. Over
| time obviously, these functions were taken over by a national
| government agency, but as the Worshipful Company of Carmen had
| had hundreds of years of history until that point, the traditions
| were kept in ceremonial form.
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