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Anti-royal protesters are being arrested in the U.K. as 'Not My King' tag grows

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Re: Anti-royal protesters are being arrested in the U.K. as 'Not My King' tag grows

#311

Post by krapp »

gerdesj wrote: post #273
matthewh806 wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see this exact same comment did pretty well on Reddit too: https://www.reddit.com/r/unitedkingdom/comments/xckw5v/comme... 1. Not all of the arrests have been made at a "funeral" 2. It wasn't a funeral 3. If you're going to have a very public precession, parading a body through the streets with all the obedients lapping it up, surely you have to have a level of tolerance for dissenting voices? I imagine the disrupt…

"with all the obedients lapping it up" What exactly is an "obedient"? Are you really deploying a disparaging tag on people who are mourning? That seems a bit crass to me. "we need room for the dissenting voices too" - I saw on C4 (UK TV channel) this evening, some people in Scotland describing their disaffection with the Monarchy. That's fine and quite right. I also find the sheer amount of coverage a bit overwhelmin…

>We will pop out of the other side of this event and the world will continue to turn but we must remember that a King and his bros and moes (sorry!) and their kids and grandkids and great-grandkids have lost a pretty decent human. As have we all.

If that "pretty decent human" saw you were on fire, she wouldn't have deigned to put you out with her piss, and neither would any of her "odd lot." She wasn't your doddering, sweet old grandma, she was literally draped in blood-jewels stolen from two subjugated and enslaved continents.

Re: Anti-royal protesters are being arrested in the U.K. as 'Not My King' tag grows

#312

Post by pyuser583 »

munk-a wrote: post #179
rtpg wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean… why would the royal family be allowed to “keep” anything in an abolished monarchy? Obviously you should just seize roughly all the property. It’s a product of the State, not the royal family working hard

Maybe? That's a really complicated question honestly - how much of their personal property actually is hereditary wealth and how much is a benefit of their station. I can tell you the answer is neither 0% nor 100% - the royal family (if dethroned) shouldn't be thrown out as paupers and it shouldn't be granted personal control of spaces that enjoy public use. Where precisely that line should be drawn is complicated bu…

King Georges stamp collection is worth 10s of millions. It’s also 100% private property.

When King George died, his stamp collection went to his widow, who kept it until her death at 102.

There’s probably personal property like that scattered throughout the family tree.

Re: Anti-royal protesters are being arrested in the U.K. as 'Not My King' tag grows

#313

Post by robocat »

matthewh806 wrote: post #184
ysavir wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> surely you have to have a level of tolerance for dissenting voices? To the procession or the monarchy? If you say the procession, sure. If you're talking about dissenting voices against the monarchy, I think that can be done without disrupting a memorial service.

I would say both; you can oppose the procession itself for all of its pomp and archaic tradition at a time where the country is dealing with a cost of living crisis and also have that also be more broadly a protest against the monarchy in general. A large portion of the life of the royal family is public, even funded by the taxpayer, so to me it makes sense to allow for opposing viewpoints to be heard. Perhaps you ca…

> a cost of living crisis > funded by the taxpayer

To respond only to your financial arguments: there are different ways of looking at the costs and benefits of the UK royals.

Firstly, taxation:

“the monarchy cost the taxpayer £102.4m”. Last tax year HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) “collected £716.0 billion in taxes”[0].

Let’s assume the “cost of living crisis” affects 10 million people. £100 million given to them would mean an extra 10 quid per person per annum. A worthwhile difference, but hardly solving the problem. There’s way more pounds of flesh or fat to cut elsewhere in the budget.

Secondly: costs and waste are easy to see, but gains are often not seen. Does the UK earn more from the royals than the royals cost?

“[The royals] contributed an estimated $2.7 billion annually to the U.K. economy prepandemic. The impact the royal family has on the U.K. economy is mostly through tourism, but Haigh notes there are other financial benefits, such as free media coverage of Britain (which was an estimated $400 million in 2017). There are also many valuable royal warrants granted by the monarch—essentially a stamp of approval on high-end consumer products like Barbour jackets and Johnnie Walker whisky. [snip] The economic advantages for companies and institutions in the royal family’s orbit far exceed the $550 million cost associated with the family’s massive operating expenses, according to Haigh.”[-1].

Of course, there are non-monetary costs and gains of the monarchy that are much harder to value.

Pure ownership in dollars “How The Royal Family’s $28 Billion Money Machine Really Works”[-1³] can be compared against the wealth of other dynastic wealth families. It doesn’t make the top 10 in the world[π]. And probably not #1 in the UK[§] with the first royal family showing at #12 (although there are non-$ benefits such as status of being royalty, and non-$ costs/risks).

Even in New Zealand we are all paying a few dollars a year for costs related to the monarchy[1].

[-1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/arielshapiro/2021/03/10/inside-...

[0] https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/hmrc-tax-and-nics-r...

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monarchy_of_New_Zealand

[π] https://www.investopedia.com/articles/insights/052416/top-10...

[§] https://www.thetimes.co.uk/sunday-times-rich-list

Edits: added details.

Re: Anti-royal protesters are being arrested in the U.K. as 'Not My King' tag grows

#314

Post by pyuser583 »

TheCoelacanth wrote: post #293
munk-a wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe? That's a really complicated question honestly - how much of their personal property actually is hereditary wealth and how much is a benefit of their station. I can tell you the answer is neither 0% nor 100% - the royal family (if dethroned) shouldn't be thrown out as paupers and it shouldn't be granted personal control of spaces that enjoy public use. Where precisely that line should be drawn is complicated bu…

It's a complicated question with regards to some of their property. It's not at all complicated with the Crown Estates. That is clearly public property. Otherwise Edward VIII would have kept it when he abdicated.

Edward VIII was pressured into giving up a lot of stuff he legally should have been able to keep.

He wasn’t good at making decisions.

Re: Anti-royal protesters are being arrested in the U.K. as 'Not My King' tag grows

#315

Post by azernik »

mattnewton wrote: post #254
mc32 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, the WBC is a well known agitator and not representative of people or even protestors at large. In any case, I contend it's in extremely poor taste and does not help further the cause, and actively creates antipathy.

Sure, but talking about the effectiveness of the protest tactic is totally different than whether or not the state should arrest and imprison you for protesting that way.

United States absolutism about freedom of speech is unusual, even among "Western" democracies.

Re: Anti-royal protesters are being arrested in the U.K. as 'Not My King' tag grows

#316

Post by thrown_22 »

vkou wrote: post #294
thrown_22 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Seattle/comments/gy5knm/latest_esca... The only fire and violence I see in that one is started by the guys in uniform.

Pretending that a country which regularly arrests people for saying mean things on twitter is somehow more civilized than the US is both brain dead and extremely dangerous.

The UK is a medieval hell hole whose sole redeeming feature is that it's contained by the Atlantic ocean.

Least we forget a main part of the protest are against a pedophile who probably ordered the murder of Epstein.

Re: Anti-royal protesters are being arrested in the U.K. as 'Not My King' tag grows

#317

Post by pyuser583 »

snickerbockers wrote: post #269

How much power does the British monarch still have? I'm from America so I didn't learn much in school about British history post-1776, but my understanding is that they never had an event like the French Revolution or American Revolution that suddenly ended their monarchy, just a long series of minor reductions in the royal family's power going back to the Magna Carta. From my own (admittedly uneducated on this topic…

> they never had an event like the French Revolution

English Civil War. Monarchy has been tool parliament ever since.

Re: Anti-royal protesters are being arrested in the U.K. as 'Not My King' tag grows

#318

Post by simple10 »

I was mostly indifferent about the role of the royals until listening to this interview of Jordan Peterson [1]. It's an excellent argument for 4 branches of government. Specifically, where monarchs play a symbolic role within government, diverting celebrity worship out of the executive branch.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5os9bT9zuo

Re: Anti-royal protesters are being arrested in the U.K. as 'Not My King' tag grows

#319

Post by pyuser583 »

Gigachad wrote: post #101
Janicc wrote: post #62

This is a country in which people who share memes mocking the trans flag are arrested. At least they're being consistent. Although obviously I'd prefer neither being arrested in the first place.

The official reason that guy got arrested was for "a tweet causing anxiety"

Performance reviews give me anxiety.

Re: Anti-royal protesters are being arrested in the U.K. as 'Not My King' tag grows

#320

Post by grecy »

user764743 wrote: post #37

> The new law allows police to act in cases which they deem to be "unjustifiably noisy protests that may have a significant impact on others" or seriously disrupt an organization's activities. Doesn't take a political science degree to see what's wrong with this law. When cops get to decide what is a justifiably loud protest and what isn't you no longer have the right to protest. Protests are meant to disrupt, if you…

> The new law allows police to act in cases which they deem to be "unjustifiably noisy protests that may have a significant impact on others" or seriously disrupt an organization's activities.

Also impressive the one lady was simply holding a sign. That doesn't sound very noisy to me...

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