261–270 of 1001 posts
Brexit is a disaster, Prince Charles is not really a charming person, Scotland wants to leave Great Britain and join the EU, Northern Ireland is split as ever.
God save the king.
It's weird, I've never considered myself a "royalist" but this news has affected me quite strongly. I just burst into tears unexpectedly on hearing this news and I don't quite understand why I feel so very sad. I guess I have grown up and lived my whole life (as a Brit) seeing and hearing the Queen, singing "God save the Queen" etc, and this news made me suddenly feel very old, very nostalgic, with the sense that all…
Time to end on a high? Shall we just abandon this whole monarchy thing and time to flip over to a republic and leave the much revered queen as the last ever monarch of the UK? Seems like Scotland is going to go independent, and if Scotland do Wales will only be a matter of time so may as well just can it now?
It works because she receives extensive training to be apolitical. (And if she is political, there are repercussions.)
It's weird, I've never considered myself a "royalist" but this news has affected me quite strongly. I just burst into tears unexpectedly on hearing this news and I don't quite understand why I feel so very sad. I guess I have grown up and lived my whole life (as a Brit) seeing and hearing the Queen, singing "God save the Queen" etc, and this news made me suddenly feel very old, very nostalgic, with the sense that all…
“I declare before you all, that my whole life, whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your service” Rest in peace.
It's weird, I've never considered myself a "royalist" but this news has affected me quite strongly. I just burst into tears unexpectedly on hearing this news and I don't quite understand why I feel so very sad. I guess I have grown up and lived my whole life (as a Brit) seeing and hearing the Queen, singing "God save the Queen" etc, and this news made me suddenly feel very old, very nostalgic, with the sense that all…
Apparently, when I was little, I got excited one Christmas when the Queen’s speech was on tv, because I thought it was my Grandmother… I used to take comfort in the idea that all things pass in time, now not so much. Probably because I realised that includes everyone I love, and myself! I’ve no great love for the monarchy, but this is certainly the end of an era in British public life and likely in UK international r…
Well this is precisely what is about to happen. There may be some hand wringing articles in major newspapers about whether the Royal head of state is still relevant, appropriate, blah blah blah, but there is approximately zero chance that anything will change in reaction to this news.
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Please don't take HN threads on generic flamewar tangents. It's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32769091 .
There are some that argue the monarchy constitutes a human rights abuse both against the people she took tax money from and against her own family which was forced to participate in the pageantry.
Calling those opinions "flamewar tangents" is incredibly dismissive.
Some view the monarchy as anachronistic. Of course there's merit to that argument but the monarchy as an institution really doesn't cost that much and has worked in the British political system as really a check on abuse of government power. The Queen's consent in forming government is routine but it can be withheld. Australia had an example of this where the Governor General (the Queen's representative in the Austra…
> Australia had an example of this where the Governor General (the Queen's representative in the Australian government) sacked the government and formed a caretaker governmen tin the 1970s.
Australia was ruled by a Liberal/Country coalition from the 1940s to the end of 1972. Finally the workers of Australia elect a Labor PM, and he was thwarted for three years and then removed at the behest of a hereditary monarch thousands of miles away. That sounds like abuse, but not of the type you mean.