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Who owns Parliament?

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Re: Who owns Parliament?

#181

Post by kcartlidge »

barry-cotter wrote: post #153
kcartlidge wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/

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.

Re: Who owns Parliament?

#182

Post by exidy »

henrikschroder wrote: post #108

> 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 s…

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

Re: Who owns Parliament?

#183

Post by hef19898 »

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…

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.

Re: Who owns Parliament?

#184

Post by Angostura »

dTal wrote: post #160
Lio wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>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?

Re: Who owns Parliament?

#185

Post by EliRivers »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #90
simonh wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

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 accountab…

"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.

Re: Who owns Parliament?

#186

Post by Tangurena4 »

refurb wrote: post #158
permo-w wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

Re: Who owns Parliament?

#187

Post by EliRivers »

noja wrote: post #134
neilwilson wrote: post #106

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.

Re: Who owns Parliament?

#188

Post by pmyteh »

PeterisP wrote: post #157
pmyteh wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

Re: Who owns Parliament?

#189

Post by SenHeng »

refurb wrote: post #173
seoaeu wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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?

Re: Who owns Parliament?

#190

Post by dTal »

Angostura wrote: post #184
dTal wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>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.

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