h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

In days-gone-by the Royals worked pretty hard. Organising The Crusades, fighting the Spanish and the French, doing the roster for the beheadings.

Their wealth, as is much of all old British family (and church) money, is based on the spoils of war plus a bit of good old exploitation of the resources of countries they invaded.

Maybe so, but the bottom line is the current royals do bugger all and get paid lots and lots of wonga for it. Furthermore, people like us give them this money. Unfair.

They don't do b****r all, my friend. I'd agree with you if there were only you and me in the world, but you shouldn't forget that royalty in your and my country is doing a nice job keeping an expensive real-life soap opera going that makes 'the bold and the beautiful' drool with jealousy. Many people love the fairytale that the monarchy is.
Well at least in Holland they do. I don't, but I'm not alone.

two points...

1) We have an official religion? How so?

2) Civil list: if I had every detail of my life splashed over the gutterpress, was unable to work in such controversial and dangerous areas as (say) PR, and had to spend an inordinate amount of time shaking people's hands, amongst other stuff.... yeah, I'd want a bit of compensation too.

It would appear that the UK Royals effectively pay their own wages from the tourism they generate... the rest of the benefits are 'free'.

my point exactly.

Another point is that all the profits from the royal estates are donated to the country. The accounts comission did the maths and discovered that if you take the income from the royal estates into account then the Monarchy actually generates a PROFIT of £55 million. So if you want rid of the Monarchy then you'll have to find £55 Million from somewhere. So which hospital are you going to close?

Am I the only one in favour of having an honourary president, who is elected or selected, but has no more power than the Queen. *Certainly* better than the American system.

One of the most irksome features of the monarchy is the unwarranted amount of airtime given to the half-baked views of some. Prince Charles is, in my view, a philosophical lightweight, but was given a large slice of airtime (a Reith lecture) to expound his anti-scientific, New Age 'philosophy' , if such witterings can be so dignified by this term.
He is in a uniquely privileged position to promulgate these views about 'almost impenetrable layers of scientific rationalism'. Well, they may be impenetrable to him, but a healthy dose of rationalism is more often than not the way to the answer to a problem, not the cause of it. Moreover, his cherry-picking of the more appealing tenets of religion and his woolly idea of the sense of the 'sacred' as he puts it, betrays his lack of understanding of the less appealing aspects of religion (bigotry, sectarianism, dogma), let alone real-world issues. He may hate GM foods, but are famine and vitamin-A blindness 'sacred'? He should go to those countries which would benefit immensely from the advances in science and technology, or just engage with the world at large and in depth, with its poverty and deprivation. Locking oneself away in a monastery before pronouncing on these issues is not 'engagement' of any kind. Heaven preserve us from philosopher-kings.

Somehow I doubt that Felonious Monk would be so against Prince Charles sharing his philosophy if it had been in accord with his own philosophy. Lest we forget, other famous people get similar benefits in being able to shape the nation's consequences - but I don't see a campaign to get the spice girls to SHUT UP about "girl power" - nor was there one against the Beatles to point out that Money can indeed Buy You Love, which is why you see so few 20yr old models going out with 80yr olds on the state pension.

Personally, I'll complain much louder about the amount of airtime that is given to expressing Rupert Murdoch's views - may devils ever spit in his face - but of course, he's not royalty, so that's OK then...

of course, I meant consciences, not consequences. Though it comes to the same thing eventually...

I object to ANYBODY in a position of privilege and power using it to try and shape the world to their own ends or interests or merely to indulge their muddled thinking. Charles is one of these people: royalty has tried to meddle in politics ever since it stopped governing by divine right, sometimes with good results (Prince Albert being a case in point, but he was rather more of a progressive than Charles and rather better at joined-up thinking). At least Rupert Murdoch's viewpoint (and my own) is COHERENT, even if I don't generally agree with it! How Charles can simultaneously preach about respect for the environment and nature, go foxhunting and drive an Aston Martin is beyond me. Perhaps you'd care to enlighten me?

Sounds more like it's Prince C who needs to be enlightened...

Lucinda asked: We have an official religion? How so?

Because Henry the Eighth started a new one when he broke away from the sect run by bunch of frock-wearing men based in a commune just outside Rome.

The Romans wouldn't grant him a divorce from his first wife. He wanted the divorce because she had proven hopeless in the basic royal female role of producing male heirs.

Consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds - as someone more intelligent than me said...

What's wrong with foxhunting and a respect for the environment and for nature? This has been covered to death elsewhere, but *if* you believe that foxes need to be culled, hunting is the best way to do it (big if, though) - you might disagree, but it's a valid viewpoint, and one help by a substantial number of people. Similarly, the issue isn't what car you drive, so much as how much you drive it - a jaguar that's never used is doing much better than a ford ka that commutes an hour daily.

I'm sorry to break this to you, but people in power/fame/priviledge will use their power to try and shape the world - that's practically the definition of power. You can object all you like, but don't expect anyone to take any notice unless you're in a position of power yourself.

uh, yeah, I know my history, but my point is that it's just that: History.

Rome is no longer the centre of the known world, and we no longer have an official religion. What's the issue?

Huw,

I do agree that the Queen was born into a life of extreme privellege, but she works very hard on behalf of our nation. I heard her say in one of the fly-on-the-wall type programmes that being Queen isn't something she does, it's something she IS. It's a great responsibility.


To quote you:

"No royal has ever earned the outrageously high amounts of money they get."

Please remember in the old days, the King would lead his country's troops into battle. Edward I was well known as one of the most courageous warriors of his time (and outlived William Wallace, contrary to the scene of his death in the film Braveheart) What about Henry V at Agincourt (apologies if misspelled). You obviously seem to be an expert on the royal family - do you know for example who was the first King of England?



Bassman

*Z steps in to dumb down the debate*

I'd like to burn them all and liberate their estates and palaces, lets start with prince phillip!

Lucinda, I am not sure what your point is about Britian's official religion. I do appreciate that we are not forced to worhip as anglicans any more, that people are free to choose their own religion or lack of it. But it does have the status of most favoured religion still. Which is bizzare really, as last I heard the number of practicing RC's now outnumbers the number of practicing Anglicans in Britain.

And unless I was paying even less attention to the house of lords reform than I actually thought I was (and this is possible), are there not a whole bunch of anglican bishops embeddeded into our so-wonderful-political-system-we-surely-don't-need-to-even-think-about-reforming-it?

I didn't have a point - I was asking a question... Specifically, I wanted to know what elements of the system, as is, made you feel that Church of England is the official religion... for example, one rumor about the recent census was that any religion which got more than 3% on the census would become "an official religion of the UK" - and therefore we ought to all put down "Jedi"... that was in a newspaper, though, so it's not hugely reliable...

Actually, the presence of spiritual leaders in the house of lords is one of the few things I like about that house - I'd be in favour of adding a few similar seats to represent the full range of religious views in the UK - but I think it's good that religous concerns about, eg, cloning/homelessness/immigration/... are represented at that level. One would hope, similarly, that bishops and such are marginally less corruptable, on the whole, than certain other members of the political system...

We also have "law lords" last I checked, who do a similar thing with legal concerns. Again, I welcome that - the people who are going to be trying to deal with the laws parliament is making really ought to get an extra say. And again, judges are supposedly picked for their impartiality, fairness, intelligence, and low corruptness - so they too are likely to have an edge over those who are picked for the size of their smile...

Lest anyone think I feel our system is wonderful... it's pretty horrendous for a number of reasons. The lack of proportional representation, the out-dated "first past the post" voting in districts, the uncertain status of EU vs UK, the dodgy systems for electing party leaders, the elements of the system which only work because of failing tradition rather than clear rules, the filibustering, the gerrymandering, the unelected second house, the grey area around party funding and the limits on spending on elections, the grey area between the government and the party-in-power, and much much more.

However, the monarchy is not, for me, a problem - nor am I clear how exactly having a president is going to help matters in any kind of practical sense - in fact I can see a number of ways in which it could make things much worse.

I put jedi in my census!

Counting down to star wars day 4/5/01!