Who owns Parliament? | Hacker News Reader

Who owns Parliament?

whoownsengland.org

137 pointsdrjohnson198 comments

> 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.

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).

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).

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

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

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.)

In Australia, this still happens.

The man is the story below, discovered a house in Sydney whose occupant had died. He changed the locks with no-ones permission and started renting the property out to other people. He did this for 20 years before filing the paperwork to take ownership.

Relatives of the the decease owner were contacted, and they tried to to fight him, but he won in court fairly convincingly -- And got himself a $1.5M house and 20 years of rent payments.

https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/national/nsw/developer-wins...

It was more than 20 years since the last recorded owner:

> Justice Darke said when the last owner Henry Thompson Downie died in 1947, he did not leave a will and no representative was appointed to the deceased estate.

> A tenant was living in the property at the time, and she remained there for a further 51 years until she died in April 1998.

Who was paying the property tax I wonder, and did the gov't even notice? I suppose that's the "council rates".

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

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.

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.

That’s true in many places beyond the UK. The US has similar laws where if you meet the requirements of ownership and nobody contests it for X years, you can claim it.

Adverse possession dates back to all the way to the Code of Hammurabi. Arguably, it is a necessary part of property ownership itself because otherwise you could never know whether you (or the person you bought it from) owned a specific piece of land at all. Someone could always come by with an old deed and say that it belonged to them.

Land title systems are really interesting.

You are correct that under the deed system, proof is held by the owner through a link of subsequent deeds. Some countries still use this system. When I bought a house you could see ownership going all the way back to the establishment by the British Crown, then the provincial government, then the township, then the city, then the developer and then 5 different owners. All of that is captured and maintained as records (either by the owner exclusively or a land registry).

Other's have moved to a central registry. Basically the registry owned by the government is the sole "source of truth" about land ownership. If ownership is not registered, then it's not recognized. If there are any errors (say a fraudulent purchase that actually get included in the system), it's covered through title insurance.

When I bought property in Tokyo, you could see all the times the previous owners made any changes the the old (splits and mergers) as well as how many mortgages have been taken out on it.

I was quite surprised at how much private info was on it, and the record of it supposedly will last til the government falls or something I guess. Will archaeologists from the future stumble upon some filing cabinet and have a good laugh at my debts?

It likely will be used to determine how people lived in the ancient days of the 2000s, similar to how we use beer receipts from the time of the Pharaohs to deduce how life was back then.

In the state I live in, the "adverse possession" has to last 17 years.

One of our neighbors had put a fence about 3 feet on our side of the property line. It was falling down (he also had a swimming pool; both state & city laws required a fence around the property). My sister had a property survey done (by a registered land surveyor). After finding out the fence was on the wrong side of the property line, she had the fence taken down. The neighbor was arrested when he removed the survey markers (a felony in our state). At his trial, he then tried to use "adverse possession" as an excuse and that he should be awarded the property. If he had filed a court action for adverse possession before he was arrested, he would have gotten away with it.

If he had fixed the fence so that my sister's dog didn't escape, he'd still have the use of the property. And we would have been happy with it.

Robert Frost wrote "Good fences make good neighbors". That guy proved that bad fences make for a bad neighbors. Especially when other neighbors decided to take sides on the issue. Lots of people decided to call the city's Code Enforcement office to use the law to make others suffer.

Heh that's so old it's in Proverbs: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Proverbs+22%3A2...

Never remove the ancient boundary stone that your ancestors set up.

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.

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!

> So the Govt doesnt always know who owns bits of land

This is completely bonkers to me.

Isn't this the main purpose of government? Of a nation? How can you defend property rights without having some kind of authority that knows who owns a certain property?

And from some kind of IT perspective, keeping a national computer database of property ownership is trivial, has been trivial for decades, and a paper-based database has been trivial for centuries?

> One of the biggest databases of who owns what in this country belongs to a company not far from Swindon!

And you're not nationalizing this because...?

> This is completely bonkers to me.

So you need to look into the City of London, the Magna Carta, the Remembrancer and realise that the UK is the only parliament where an unelected body can veto everything Parliament votes on! That is the power of the City of London, but it doesnt advertise this fact for obvious reasons, but its why this country holds onto to its ceremonies so much.

> How can you defend property rights without having some kind of authority that knows who owns a certain property?

So the City & Guilds is a City of London thing, and tradespeople have been used for hundreds of years to act like a secret army. Well its the tradespeople who do the City of London's bidding because a master tradesman can introduce planned obsolescence into pretty much any work carried out. For example, a plumber could leave some flux on a copper pipe and over the years this will corrode into a tiny pinhole where water drips out and slowly ruins a part of the property. Now are you going to inspect every inch of copper pipping in your house?

The plumber will have had their money and long since gone. You get another plumber in, they identify the problem and repair it typically without explaining how or why it happened. These are tricks of the trade which get used for repeat business. The best one's are listed on the stock markets!

Some renters may be more familiar with saturated animal fats left down the sink when leaving, pretty much everyone who is good at their job has some sort of malicious compliance, and you can read about that on Reddit.

Now the beauty of all this is, some problems are actually red flags but you wont always know they are a red flag. Its like a form of stealth communication in plain sight and free speech is a licence to gossip and gossiping involves rumours which can be used to inflict psychological harm on their victims. Its surprising what the law does not allow as evidence in court.

>And you're not nationalizing this because...?

You obviously dont know how whistle-blowers get treated. I'm sure you are familiar with the phrase "accidents happen"?

One of my first lessons as a kid given to me was keep my mouth shut by pain of death.

However it would be remiss of me to not point out that Govt NHS, Military & Police are not engaged in their own forms of criminality as well.

Well in fairness England was only unified in 927 CE and there are families who have been there longer than that.

I'm constantly surprised that grown adults can believe modern "democracies" are actual democracies.

How many election cycles do you need to go through before you realise a change of government is largely ceremonial, with only a few slight tweaks of policy?

Much of the true power in a western democracy is not elected. Civil service, the judicial system, the media, big business. Being a prime minister can largely be seen as an apprenticeship before you can sit on a board of directors at a major corporation.

Is this an emperors new clothes thing? A cultural taboo to point it out? Your man on the street can see it plain as day, but some how educated people who become very knowledgeable about the official structure of government seem the most invested in democratic LARPing.

Am I the annoying guy pointing out that wrestling is fake when people are trying to enjoy the show?

> Is this an emperors new clothes thing? A cultural taboo to point it out?

If you believe in some broadly unpopular view, there's always the possibility that you're just wrong. In the US we saw substantial shifts in policies over the last three presidential administrations, shifts that had real-life impacts on countless people. And while I can't speak directly to the health of the UK's democracy, I suspect that you may be exaggerating the degree that the different parties agree with each-other.

> Am I the annoying guy pointing out that wrestling is fake when people are trying to enjoy the show?

Probably closer to the annoying guy who suggests giving up when your team is faced with a hard problem.

I promise I'm not going to argue about abortion, but it's the most obvious example I can see here.

If the "ceremonial" change in government that happened in the US in 2016 had gone the other way, we would 100% guaranteed not see the Roe v. Wade ruling being overturned. It will be a judicial action that reverses this policy, but it required the election of Trump to happen. This is not a slight tweak. The count of the votes in that election resulted in real policy differences. Nothing ceremonial about it.

This isn't kayfabe. Ask a UK fisherman how real the impact of the 2016 Brexit vote was. My the thinnest of margins, a non-binding referendum gave an elected government what they needed to make dramatic changes in policy. No tweaking here.

Of course I won't pretend that all power rests in the hands of "The People." Yes, civil servants, judges, and media barons all have vast amounts of power to agitate for war, ban e-cigarettes, or legislate from the bench.

But the people do have one lever, and I'm glad our culture considers poo-poohing it a taboo.

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.

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.

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.

Also, parliament learned lessons about the mess it gets into when there's nothing above them.

Cromwell was even worse than the king before.

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.

You're aware that Brits aren't subjects, right ? That they're all citizens barring some really obscure corner-cases...

We’re a constitutional monarchy AND a democracy. The monarch is the disabled root account of the nation. The government is the sudoers

That is one of the more brilliant (and accurate) analogies I have ever seen!

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?

Can you do that without rebooting? Rebooting nations tends to be a messy affair. Just ask France.

"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

Move fast and break things

- Napoleon Bonaparte

There is a story, often told, that upon exiting the Constitutional Convention Benjamin Franklin was approached by a group of citizens asking what sort of government the delegates had created. His answer was: "A republic, if you can keep it past 19 years. At that time the sudoers will change the repositories used for OS updates." [1]

"What country before ever existed a century and half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve it’s liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the contents of sudoers? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of sysadmins and backdoors. It is it’s natural manure." [2] Thomas Jefferson

[1] https://constitutioncenter.org/learn/educational-resources/h...

[2] https://www.monticello.org/site/research-and-collections/tre...

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.

A revolution is more like wiping the drive and installing a new OS - from a backup that still contains malware from the previous revolution.

I'd say it's more like an upgrade. The release notes promise all sorts of improvements, but they often bring new bugs.

> 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.

Or Italy. Especially Italy.

Rebooting is old school. People are like, look we rebooted our Windows in 1777 why are you still using that outdated Constitutional Monarchy stuff? Don't you realise we gave up monarchs hundreds of years ago? Meanwhile we have been live patching and running pacman daily and have installed packages for metric, proportional voting(not everywhere), gun control, universal healthcare and plastic bank notes.

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.

LOL. Great comment.

But it's not just Scotland. The War of the Roses had some multiple inheritance problems, too.

> 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.

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.

Even when there is an ISA relationship the subsequent objects are never quite the same as the root object for which the system was designed.

President Boris. Sounds fantastic. Perhaps not though, yeah?

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.

We already have a non political head of state. I’m not sure I see any benefit in us switch to a system like Italy or Germany.

I am not British, so I have no skin in the game. But the issue in general is not the fact that there is a head of state with a mostly-ceremonial role, it’s all the baggage that comes with the monarchy (detailed by others in this thread).

I find the general feeling here is that the system isn't perfect, but none are really and what we have has worked for a long time and there isn't much desire to change it.

We'd just be switching for the baggage of an elected head of state and I'm not sure there is any stomach here for another issue that divides so deeply after going through the Brexit campaign/process.

Nope nope nope nope. Requiring privileged access is a code smell. Capability based government now!

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.

> 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.

>It turned out nobody liked a system without a superuser //

Somehow the guy who managed to take over was an even bigger shit of a person than most of the past monarchs and so the people agreed to have a monarch again under a 'better the devil you know [and can limit with magna carta]' sort of deal.

It's like how we got screwed out of PR by being offered AV.

The monarchy would love for you to believe they're only a ceremonial head of state. It makes their sinister and self-serving wielding of power much easier. In fact the Queen routinely gets laws changed in her favor, and the details of the process by which this happens are not widely known. The monarchy is a vast and private rent-seeking apparatus that exists to perpetuate the interests of its family members and their business holdings, and is inexplicably afforded vast political power and reverence. It is a rotten leftover that has no place in the 21st century.

As for "some definition of fine", I think it is increasingly clear that the UK is not fine and has in fact never been fine, or even much of a democracy, and has been essentially run by a corrupt aristocracy for centuries. It's not a secret that the whole lot of them all went to Eton - that should raise eyebrows among anyone not inured to the whole sordid business.

(Well, I should say that it's only really England with this issue. But England is the imperial core of the UK. Its satellite states are more sane, but thoroughly subjugated.)

As an American, we don’t have anything like you corrupt aristocracy and class system. But we do have a corrupt billionaire class and systemic racism, so actually it’s the same thing after all. Instead of Eton, Harvard and Yale are the schools of the upper crust; it’s virtually impossible to be on the Supreme Court unless you attended one of those universities.

And instead of a queen, we have Kardashians and Elon (blessings and peace be upon him), who also seem to attract worship for things other people do. It’s almost like human nature tends to reproduce the same problems no matter the system of government.

>In fact routinely gets laws changed in her favor.

"Routinely" is a pretty substantial claim - certainly there have been occasions where the crown has been involved in negotiations over their own tax affairs.

Other than that, what 'routine' changes in legislation would you point to?

Well, that's the thing. No one can really say, because - get this - it's a secret.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/feb/08/queen-lobbie...

> significant amounts of legislation regulating otherwise quite ordinary activities have required consent. The Queen pays tax, so (for example) finance laws require consent. The Queen is an employer, so (for example) child support and pensions laws require consent. And so on... All correspondence containing requests for consent, replies and the documentation of any related discussions have always been shrouded in absolute privacy.

But hey, I'm sure it's fine, no need to look any closer, right? The Queen is such a nice old lady, surely -

> The documents uncovered by the Guardian provide remarkable evidence that this process accords the Queen’s advisers a genuine opportunity to negotiate with the government over changes in proposed laws, that they do sometimes secure such changes before giving consent, and that they are even prepared to threaten to withhold consent to secure their policy preferences.

Ah. Oh dear.

If I were a Brit, I'd be more concerned that the Parliament can do literally anything with a simple majority vote.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliamentary_sovereignty_in_t...

Because investing both sovereignty and power in a single institution inexorably leads to tyranny. Examples abound.

> 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.)

As an Australian we solved this by having root's resources swapped out and hosted on storage paid for and hosted in the UK.

We have another privileged account called gg which inherits all of root's privileges. Given that the root account may be transferred in the not too distant future there is increasing interest in making gg the new root. As to why we need such a privileged account in the first place to host garden parties and cut ribbons, gg provides a supervisor process that can kill deadlocked governments and respawn them.

It seems a bit silly but at least our government isn't based on VMS.

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?

I'd see the governors has some kind kerberos authorized set of admin accounts. And we are the lowly users and sudoers.

Something like that. And with the Governor General as the VM root.

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.

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.

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.

The Dutch continued celebrating Queen Juliana's birthday (April 30th) as their national day when Queen Beatrix succeeded her, as they didn't want to move an event which is traditionally celebrated outdoors to January.

Beatrix was succeeded by King Willem-Alexander, who was born on April 27th- so the national day moved to his actual birthday. April 30th is now known mainly for confused tourists expecting a party that happened three days earlier.

Ah! Good ol' DNS. Nothing can go wrong now!

We don't really update it for each new monarch, it's just a set of rules. They were last changed fairly recently, to remove male primogeniture in case Prince William had a daughter as his first child (though he didn't). Every single Commonwealth country had to pass its own individual bill amending the Act of Succession, and it finished in 2015[1]. It's pretty unlikely they'll change again any time soon, the only thing that's still up for much debate is the requirement that the person sitting on the throne isn't Catholic.

It'd be a hell of a scandal if these laws got out of sync, and yet it would be one of the stupidest scandals in history.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perth_Agreement

The AU/CA/NZ servers were based on the UK server image and the GECOS field of root still says "Queen Victoria, heirs or successors" but is otherwise disabled. The servers are all run by separate orgs in independent data centres and have diverged substantially from the original image. Possibly root may still have physical access to the UK server but the threat is considered minimal.

>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?

The supreme court?

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).

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.

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.

The queen was exercising secret veto power, I don't think root was disabled.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/commentisfr...

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...

>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.

When you disable an account, processes running under that account are still live, and can still spawn children.

I hope you're not suggesting we kill the processes.

SIGSTOP is reversible and unblockable.

You can just deny them the resource quota.

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.

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.

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.

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

There are some republics in Europe that did indeed overthrow their royalty/aristocracy...

And others that thought they did, only to find that they were the arms and legs of an even more brutal and incomprehensible regime.

And eventually those nations got rid of those too.

Really? Which ones?

I can’t tell if this is supposed to be even more of a scathing condemnation compared to what OP said.

> 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.

Some people are also more wicked, less empathetic, more manipulative, and more opportunistic.

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.

Today is a regular bank holiday. Only the Friday bank holiday is extra.

I thank you for the correction.

Isn't Thursday the BH Monday but moved, so not quite the regular BH either.

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.

> 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’.

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

Amen to that. The more you know about the City of London (which is NOT the city of London), the fishier the whole setup sounds.

"An ancient, semi-alien entity lodged inside the British nation state." "The last of England's rotten boroughs."

Predating Parliament and not subject to it. Kinda makes ya wonder if the entire purpose of Brexit was to resist any hint of financial regulation by the EU.

Over the years The Guardian has had a number of interesting articles about the City, such as [1].

[1]https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/oct/31/corpor...

That's a stretch. England was technically a republic, and had technically become a republic over the issue of Parliamentary privilege.

But in practice what happened is that a Parliament purged of royalist sympathisers got little done before being dissolved at gunpoint by a general and replaced it with a council of "holy men" picked by the Army, then that council decreed that the general should have all the powers the king had previously enjoyed bar the title (which he later turned down) and then he ruled much like the previous king, convening Parliaments only when he saw fit, before his powers were inherited by his son despite his son's lack of aptitude for using them or support. Arguably the most democratic bit of the lot was ironically the restoration of the monarchy (passed by a less-restricted Parliament, due to a shift in the balance of military power, and generally considered to have been popular with the wider public). The UK already had the tradition of Parliaments elected by a narrow franchise passing legislation, the only difference is that it became senior military figures convening them and shutting them down. And whilst Parliamentary and military factions clashed over many things, they all agreed that movements raising crazy notions like non-landowning classes having voting rights needed to be suppressed

First modern military coup d'etat might be closer to the mark.

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.

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.

Seems like their special status is more of a burden today.

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.

> 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...

> 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_...

In the UK laws are signed into being by the monarch, formally they're like writs from the monarch about what they wish. Parliament and the legislature are just advisors. It's a bad look for a country claiming to be democratic.

The monarch chooses the PM, it's 'her majesty's government' according to law and tradition; she refused Australia's choice of PM in the past IIRC.

> It's a bad look for a country claiming to be democratic.

Perhaps, but rather bad looking than bad functioning; I'm not intimate with how the Stuart Restoration worked, but the monarchy in Norway was introduced in 1905 by vote and has been widely popular since. If the monarchy and its role in the constitution and the sosicety have continuous support by a majority of the population, then it is a good look for a country claiming to be democratic?

We have a similar situation with German President, our head of state. The president has to sign laws once they are passed by both chambers of parliament. Usually Presidents sign, almost, whatever is put in front of them. Quite some time ago government had a phase when they tried to pass laws that were later struck down by the constitutional court. That prompted the then President to do some due dilligence and return proposed laws to parliament. Needless to say politians were not amused.

That being said, our Presidents have not real power in the legislative process, pretty much like most Monarchs do.

Playing this process, like in your example, is fair game if doesn't happen all the time.

There are very real issues that would be solved, not abstract ones like in the article above. See, for example, https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/series/queens-consent

> 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.

> 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.

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.

"as long as they can get Parliament to pass an Enabling Act" is a huge qualifier - if the elected representatives are agreeing to it, that's not a dictatorship, and in UK no act of parliament can't bind itself or a future parliament from changing its mind at any point of time, so that dictatorship would last from an Enabling Act until a Disabling Act.

It is a big qualifier, but not entirely that big. Yes, it would mean that the decision to start the dictatorship was democratic, but you could definitely arrange it so there is no Disabling Act. Don't forget that to pass such an Act would need the Royal Assent, which the government is now in a position to refuse. Yes, that's a breach of constitutional convention, but we'd be well past that point.

So the plan goes something like this: pass the Statute of Proclamations[0], optionally repeal by proclamation section 4 of the Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Act 2022[1] to keep your complaisant Parliament in place indefinitely, optionally make a proclamation preventing them from meeting, definitely refuse Royal Assent to a Disabling Act, and then govern by decree as you please.

Obviously this isn't failsafe in any way. Dictatorships aren't stable just because they've got legal cover, and the politics would need to be carefully managed. But there's nothing in our constitution that would prevent it.

[0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proclamation_by_the_Crown_Ac...

[1]: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2022/11/enacted

> 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.

> 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.

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.

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.

> The taxation of assets (beyond a certain point so that people don't need to sell their home) and not just income.

That’s a great way to discourage investment and capital formation and encourage emigration. There’s a reason wealth taxes are not popular in OECD countries.

https://taxfoundation.org/wealth-taxes-in-the-oecd/

That rather assumes that untaxed wealth (as opposed to income) is productive wealth, which is not necessarily the case. And that even if it were, there's an assumption that the (perhaps valid) concerns are the priority and not the introduction of a fairer system.

> There’s a reason wealth taxes are not popular in OECD countries.

Well, there are two reasons: the Prisoner's Dilemma, and good old fashioned bribery (or "campaign financing" as we euphemistically call it).

Fortunately, however, the recent agreement for a global minimum corporation tax rate[0] shows that major economies can sometimes solve the coordination problem needed to avoid the "race to the bottom" that capitalists try to impose on nation states.

A modest proposal would be that the top 1% of wealth holders in the world would have to pay a 1% annual tax to their country of residence. The WTO could be tasked with determining the true wealth of any multi-millionaires who bribe national officials into under-reporting their holdings. Any country that defects from this agreement, and any multi-millionaire who hides in one of those countries, would be met with sanctions and treated like the corrupt oligarch that they are.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_minimum_corporate_tax_r...

> they own huge parts of the country

And they would keep owning them if they were made to abdicate

Only if we let them.

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)

The more pressing issue with land ownership in the UK is that we don't even know who owns large chunks of it.

American here. How is that a pressing issue?

It makes it harder to introduce a land value tax, I guess?

Does it? Seems like if the State doesn't know who owns a piece of land, it can just auction it off.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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).

> 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.

The only reason for the Queen to prorogue parliament when Boris was clearly lying about it --he was avoiding democratic dissent against him-- is to avoid making a kerfuffle that risked setting Tories against Royalists (these groups being largely coterminous). Basically, I felt she might be a person of upright morals and firm beliefs right up until that point; then she proved she's just doing everything to keep the money flowing for her family and didn't really care about 'her subjects' and so does not deserve our respect, not in the least.

One wonders who the Queen's "advisors" are. They surely hold enormous power for how unknown they are.

The "deep state" nature of the Queen's advisers[0] is the second dirtiest secret of the British monarchical system, after Queen's/Prince's Consent.[1]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privy_Council_of_the_United_Ki...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen's_Consent#Vetting_of_bil...

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.

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.

That’s true of the US but ignores the fact only 3 countries in the world don’t have written constitutions - the UK, New Zealand, and Israel. I’m not being sarcastic when I say a lot of this is managed in the form of strange old traditions that, if stopped, would render the country fairly useless till they’re all codified somewhere.

"would render the country fairly useless till they’re all codified somewhere"

Not really, almost all of the things done by government for the daily management of the country are not related to the constitution and are already codified.

You would need to figure out, agree and codify a mechanism for changing power, but you can arrange it so that you have years to do it and codifying that small part is not that huge of a task; USA had long conventions but that was more because of the need to actually create a country; and many other countries post-revolutions have functioned quite reasonably while codifying the constitutions, because it really doesn't affect the daily things, and you can run on interim rules (in UK's case, continuing as before for a limited time) until it's done.

Don't Canada and Sweden also lack written constitutions?

"According to ... the Constitution Act, 1982, the Canadian Constitution consists of the Canada Act 1982 (which includes the Constitution Act, 1982), acts and orders referred to in its schedule (including in particular the Constitution Act, 1867...), and any amendments to these documents."[0]

"The Basic Laws of Sweden (Swedish: Sveriges grundlagar) are the four constitutional laws of the Kingdom of Sweden that regulate the Swedish political system, acting in a similar manner to the constitutions of most countries. ... Together, they constitute a basic framework that stands above other laws and regulation, and also define which agreements are themselves above normal Swedish law."[1]

You're right, though, that sounds a lot like the arrangement that Israel has, and the Wikipedia article for the "Basic Laws of Israel"[2] says (without citation):

"Israel is one of 6 countries (along with Canada, New Zealand, San Marino, Saudi Arabia and the United Kingdom) that operates entirely or in part according to an uncodified constitution..."

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_Canada

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_Laws_of_Sweden

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_Laws_of_Israel

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.

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?

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.

I'm American. And I agree with everything you've said.

The Second Amendment isn't well represented, by either side of the political aisle. The original intent wasn't for frontier justice, recreational hunting or self-defense. The second amendment was a check on government power, no different than the checks and balances between different branches. An armed populace was always a potential risk, the idea was that freedom was worth that risk.

The core societal question is do we still believe that?

If one believes that it isn't, then the constitution should be amended to reflect the tradeoff between safety and security the populace is willing to accept.

If one believes it is, then one must look for other ways to moderate risk and accept that any group that has power will sometimes abuse it.

You claimed American society was in ruins. You have failed to support that claim.

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.

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...

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?

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.

Do you know how many countries have unwritten constitutions? Hint: it’s the same number of countries that will use the Metric system after Boris has his way.

(Answer is 3, albeit they’re different sets apart from the UK)

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.

The foxes are in charge of the henhouse. Tory party members and the monarchy - two intimately related groups characterized by extravagant and unearned privilege. There is little point in reforming just one.

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.

>a weekly chat with the PM every week.

To be fair, a weekly chat at any other frequency would be quite eccentric!

"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."

Speaking as someone who was just such a person (although at the time I did it, in the service I was in, there was no loyalty oath at all), while I can see the issue with this, I would really not have felt comfortable going on record as loyal to parliament or the the people of the UK. We should just bin it entirely; it's a job, with legal conditions and requirements. No need for any weird oaths.

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.

The relevant observation here is that you, and most schoolchildren, and most prime ministers, have a capacity for self-awareness and a sense of shame.

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.

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.

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 ἄριστοι - àristoi, 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.

> 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.

> The Republic guarantees religious and civil liberty, equal rights and equal opportunities to all its citizens, and declares its resolve to pursue the happiness and prosperity of the whole nation and of all its parts, cherishing all the children of the nation equally and oblivious of the differences carefully fostered by an alien government, which have divided a minority from the majority in the past.

From the Proclamation of the Irish Republic, 106 years ago.

> Even going back to only 100 years ago the idea that "we are all equal" would have sounded ridiculous.

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).

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.

England has had a de facto republic for about 350 years - since the end of the English Civil War.

Meh, I'd set it at the Magna Carta, but OK, sold, I know when I'm getting a good deal ;-)

This "constitutional monarchy" thingie has to be the most bare-faced ... ah, "truth" since comrade Augustus informed the Senate that the Republic was working normally.

Must be "turn-about is fair play" at work.

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.

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...

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-...

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.

> 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.

It sounds like someone made up another meaning of "own"

In a lot of cases, "owning" is less good and using the word "own" to describe it is just misleading.

Like how shareholders "own" a company. Funny kind of owning. "Owning" a field; it's not like you can take it home in the back of your car; it's not like owning a pair of shoes.

The problem with words here isn't people making up another meaning of "own"; it's that "own" is used for a lot of cases where, frankly, people just don't "own" it.

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.

"You are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody."

- Rousseau

In Canada, who owns Parliament (Centre Block)? Public Services and Procurement Canada, the government arm responsible for the ownership of federal properties.

I'm actually disappointed, going by the title I thought this would show which politician was bought by which special interest group :))

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Clinton_(funk_musician)

Duh.

I checked the article on the extreme off chance...

Super interesting article but nearly unreadable font for me.

That is a problem you can easily fix yourself in a variety of ways. The easiest is to use your browser's reader mode.

Yeah I scaled it up about 10x and then I could read it. Just figured I'd post the critique in case the author read it here.

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