Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Who owns Parliament?

whoownsengland.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 210 posts

Re: Who owns Parliament?

#141

Post by mr_toad »

Lio wrote: post #112
plonk wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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_I…

> 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.

Re: Who owns Parliament?

#143

Post by LAC-Tech »

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?

Re: Who owns Parliament?

#144

Post by exdsq »

spacedcowboy wrote: post #82
exdsq wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 foll…

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)

Re: Who owns Parliament?

#145

Post by exdsq »

simonh wrote: post #69
exdsq wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Afte…

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.

Re: Who owns Parliament?

#146

Post by pbhjpbhj »

Lio wrote: post #112
plonk wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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_I…

>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.

Re: Who owns Parliament?

#147

Post by spacedcowboy »

pessimizer wrote: post #137
thinkingemote wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Re: Who owns Parliament?

#148

Post by pbhjpbhj »

dane-pgp wrote: post #91
spacedcowboy wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 enforci…

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.

Re: Who owns Parliament?

#149

Post by satori99 »

Silhouette wrote: post #140
Hedepig wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 rea…

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...

Re: Who owns Parliament?

#150

Post by pbhjpbhj »

karencarits wrote: post #131
hef19898 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 [...] 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…

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.

Post reply on HN