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Who owns Parliament?

whoownsengland.org

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Re: Who owns Parliament?

#151

Post by pbhjpbhj »

dan-robertson wrote: post #9
kcartlidge wrote: post #6

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 neve…

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

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

Re: Who owns Parliament?

#152

Post by pyuser583 »

Teever wrote: post #26
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?

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

Or Italy. Especially Italy.

Re: Who owns Parliament?

#153

Post by barry-cotter »

kcartlidge wrote: post #46
p10jkle wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 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/

Re: Who owns Parliament?

#154

Post by pyuser583 »

B1FF_PSUVM wrote: post #139
kcartlidge wrote: post #6

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 neve…

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.

Re: Who owns Parliament?

#155

Post by karencarits »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #150
karencarits wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> 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?

Re: Who owns Parliament?

#156

Post by notahacker »

dan-robertson wrote: post #12
kcartlidge wrote: post #6

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 neve…

> 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’.

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.

Re: Who owns Parliament?

#157

Post by PeterisP »

pmyteh wrote: post #73
waylandsmithers wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 n…

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 governa…

"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.

Re: Who owns Parliament?

#158

Post by refurb »

permo-w wrote: post #123
bombcar wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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.

Re: Who owns Parliament?

#159

Post by PeterisP »

exdsq wrote: post #145
simonh wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"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.

Re: Who owns Parliament?

#160

Post by dTal »

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…

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.)

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