There is a reason why all the data and calls go through the BT Tower in London, and why it is guarded like a fortress. All the taps are there.
You mean the same public that accepts and sponsors a "royal" class in 2015?
We make money from the royals, does that change your opinion?
Please don't bring in our royals as if they're somehow the reason of anything. There is a symbiotic relationship in regards to the royal family that you have to understand, the people who hate them are jealous- yet would probably not like the spotlight they have. They do bring in a net gain to the country, they are educated enough in certain scenarios to represent us quite well.
I don't take exception to them, but if the public /did/ then government could restrict the funding to Her Majesty. (Which has happened a lot before and has constituted the closure of many of her castles.)
You say it like it's a bad thing -- that those jealous should be ashamed of themselves or something, when it's the other way around.
Democracy is all about people being jealous of royalty (kings, feuds, pharaohs) having all the power, land, free food and honors, for just being "born" special, and putting and end to that charade.
I'm curious, are you saying that with a straight face? Because there's no way you can look at capitalism / US politics and believe that it's any different.
That said, modern government/economy is unfair too, but at least those on top get their power from something tangible (money) as opposed to some bloodline and most people are not exactly serfs.
If they fucked it up and created the plutocracy they did, fine. That was their mistake to make.
We still have an unelected upper house of parliament that actually has power, as well as our unelected, divinely appointed monarch.
We were never given the choice of fucking up our own republic. We should have been by now.
The figures usually provided show a lot of income from Crown land, which belongs to the state. Or, they put a big figure on tourism -- which would probably be even bigger if tourists could pay to have a look inside the palaces and castles.
15% of the profit goes back to the monarch.
Incidentally, the Queen still "advises" the Prime Minister in weekly meetings.
First, because making money isn't a final justification for everything, and especially keeping an antiquated and anti-democratic institution around.
Second, because a country can still make money showing off palaces, changes of the guards, its royal past and the like without maintaining a royal class. Heck, maybe even more money, e.g. by expropriating their castles and estates as state property and making them into luxury hotels and such.
In fact this whole "we're making money off of them" only counts their annual expenses, and balances it by some touristy influx and purchases (that it also assumes would go totally amiss without the royals). That ignores all the land property they occupy which amounts to tens of billions -- (£7.3 billion for the Crown Estate alone), and which could be state property in a democracy.
Finally, there all these "blue blooded" that get a "royal pathway" to politics in the House of Lords and such -- further pushing their agendas and interests into the whole of politics...
They are symbolic of the obscene luxury, wealth, power and elitism that comes from the absurd and archaic concepts of hereditary privilege and 'divine right'.
Sod the money, we'll make do without it. Just get rid of them.
The fact we still have a queen tells us we’re no more sophisticated than bees.
It's guarded like a very noticeable landmark in London for the same reason that most targets are guarded - because of bomb threats. As they had a bomb explode in the BT tower, it's not an unreasonable thing to do.
Oh, and not all calls and data go through there. I think they still get a fair chunk of microwave comms but that's a very small proportion. If the taps are really there then GCHQ are mostly tapping BBC broadcasts.
The real hub is Telehouse: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telehouse_Europe
and
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastering_the_Internet
As I understand it, this is just Project Tempora being officially acknowledged, post-Snowden. The cat is already out of the bag anyway.
The best way to announce such a shitty program officially is in another bag full of shit. That's why May has done this now.
http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2013/jun/21/gchq-mastering-the...
As long as the average voter in this country has a job, x-factor, can visit the pub on a sunday afternoon and get away on holiday once a year nothing is going to change.
Plus since the 1980's or so the people seem to have been conditioned into a very self-serving and xenophobic bunch.