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

131–140 of 210 posts

Re: Who owns Parliament?

#131

Post by karencarits »

hef19898 wrote: post #41
vasco wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are not irrelevant in the sense that they are a declaration of the nation that there are special people by birth. In a society so worried about equality, it is appaling that multiple countries in europe not only have populations that leave under monarchy, but that they seem to be in favor.

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 was signed by the King and the prime minister, so the government recommended the King not to sign). See https://lovdata-no.translate.goog/artikkel/vil_kongen_nekte_...

Re: Who owns Parliament?

#132

Post by Terry_Roll »

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…

So the Govt doesnt always know who owns bits of land, there are companies who make it their business like this website to find out who owns what and they are used by supermarkets and other property related businesses for land bank purposes. One of the biggest databases of who owns what in this country belongs to a company not far from Swindon!

If you are a landowner, one of the ways to reduce your tax bill is to work with your neighbouring landowners, so a trust owns the land and it "gifts" some land, like a field to another trust in return for services previously undertaken. The point being there is no monetary value exchange, ie its not taxable. The only people who know about the arrangement will be the two trusts and the accountancy firm(s), and it will be a big name accountancy firm most of the time. I legally purchased this data from one landowner who relied on an inferior IT company to wipe their computers before reselling them as secondhand, and I simply restored all their data which is how I found out about the above. Ironically the Queen is a neighbour!

Other ways to reduce your tax bill is to say to the taxman, you have no money, but I have some antiques like a suit of armour or something historically of "national" interest I can offer as payment instead, HMRC will get the National Trust in to valuate it, HMRC say yes or no, and then on paper said antique is now owned by the National Trust. However the NT will say its best kept in its existing surroundings so keep hold of it for us, and we will pay you to look after it! You can spot some of these people because they have to open up their property at least one day a year to the public. It can be quite lucrative having the NT maintaining the upkeep of your family estate during lean times!

Re: Who owns Parliament?

#133

Post by bombcar »

dragonwriter wrote: post #130
bombcar wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That also exists in the US (because our common law is descended from the UK's) - adverse possession aka "possession is 9/10ths of the law". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adverse_possession

It exists in some US jurisdictions but even where it does, it's often been sharply curtailed. IIRC, in California adverse possession exists, but to benefit you must not only be openly possessing the property but also paying the property taxes on it in the period required to establish the claim.

Yeah, the most common way for adverse possession to come into play is with boundary disputes - for example if you built part of your garage on your neighbor's land.

It's also become less necessary as accurate accounting of land has become more common.

Re: Who owns Parliament?

#134

Post by noja »

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.

Re: Who owns Parliament?

#135

Post by FireBeyond »

Even as a Scottish and then Australian "republican"... I thought that some of the conclusions in the article were just as confusing.

"Since 1664 no monarch has set foot in the House of Commons"

"And yet it appears that the Queen has quietly asserted her claim to own Parliament."

Assuming validity of the claim for the purpose of discussion, these two things are not contradictory. The monarch could own Parliament and still recognize for symbolic or other purposes the tradition of not entering the House of Commons, entirely easily.

Re: Who owns Parliament?

#136

Post by bsedlm »

eadmund wrote: post #92
bsedlm wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd argue that while the current generation of nobles may in fact have done nothing much to earn them, they do have ancestors that fought bitterly, and in some cases quite sleazily, to earn and keep their privilege. the idea that "all men are equal" is not really true in Europe. And it's only supposedly true in America

> the idea that "all men are equal" is not really true in Europe. It's not really true in reality . Some folks are stronger, some faster, some more intelligent, some have more social connections, some are more charismatic. Even if we lived in a Harrison Bergeron dystopia there would be some inequality somewhere. I kind of admire an idealised British system which recognises inequality and attempts to channel it to goo…

it's supposed to be equal before the law... which it's not real in practice anywhere either. Usually one's networth changes the law, at least in Europe they're upfront about it.

Re: Who owns Parliament?

#137

Post by pessimizer »

thinkingemote wrote: post #101
spacedcowboy wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dunno. We chopped the head off the last one who pushed too far. That sort of lesson tends to have some permanency as it echoes down the ages.

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.

Re: Who owns Parliament?

#138

Post by throw0101a »

plonk wrote: post #22
Angostura wrote: post #15

We’re a constitutional monarchy AND a democracy. The monarch is the disabled root account of the nation. The government is the sudoers

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?

> Sounds like the system would be simpler if we removed root and gave capabilities to the sudoers instead.

A good portion of the top ten democracies are 'disabled root' (constitutional monarchy):

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index#By_country

As a Canadian I'm not so much "against" switching away for constitutional monarchy, but rather any proposal needs to ensure we stay high in rankings. See also (2021> Pts: higher is better):

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_in_the_World#Country_r...

(I have no comment/idea on 'useful' these metric actually are.)

Re: Who owns Parliament?

#139

Post by B1FF_PSUVM »

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.

Re: Who owns Parliament?

#140

Post by Silhouette »

Hedepig wrote: post #128
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

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 real owner will be notified of the attempt and then has quite a long period of time to address the matter, for example by getting any unauthorised occupants removed instead. It's only if the owner doesn't take the required actions in time and the occupants then go through a second round of paperwork that the occupants can take over the title and even then there are still some other big conditions they have to satisfy first.

(I am not a lawyer or property expert but I did have this explained to me at length by someone who was when I was considering buying a property and he had some concerns about the legal title.)

Post reply on HN