The Queen of England

[Dianaaa:]]

My 11 year old son asked me why do the British still have a queen? I told him I thought it was more or less a tradition, that there really was no real function of the royal household anymore. Am I right, does the Queen of England have any power and why do her "subjects" still support the cost and expense of having all those palaces and stuff. Is she worth it?

 

[Letty]

Can... of... worms...

[Opinion]
No, she's not worth it. Coming from someone who's got £13k of debt because the governemt "couldn't afford" to subside students anymore, and after doing that, had to live off the exact same unemployment money as my father did 30 years ago (depsite things costing about 4 times more), I think taxpayer's money could be far better spent than keeping her, her silly little corgi's and her cling-on relatives living in luxury.[/Opinion]

Rant aside, yes the monarchy in this country is more or less a figurehead now.

 

[dreCut]

It's even worse here in Canada! I mean, we really have no ties (other than ceremonial ones) to the British monarchy at all anymore, and I don't really see the point in spending so much money on the Governor General and all of the other "ceremonial" governmental positions. Don't even get me started on the senate, either!

 

[Blacklashes]

On the flipside though, the royal family and its traditions and such do generate quite a bit of income indirectly through tourism. Though probably still not enough to warrant the amount of money they have between them.

 

[woogletevoot]

As one of Her Majesties loyal(ish) subjects I do believe that the Royal Family do have a place and function.

Of course the traditional pomp and pagentry is wonderful for tourism, but as heads of state I think the Royals have done a great deal for various charities. Their presence does a great deal to boost the public face of charity. I'm unsure of the monarchy's actual political power, but I believe that they can go some way when visiting countries who still have a greater regard for royalty than they do government. I have always been impressed by the way the Thai people regard they're royal family (bit unrelated I know, but you get the idea)

So are they worth the money? I think now that they pay tax and the like, yes I do.

 

[twistedewings]

If you want to know if they've got any power, I should point out that the majority of the army are royalists, and military orders are still signed by the Queen.

 

[bosniangirlforever]

But the Queen would never refuse to sign anything presented to her by the democratically elected government.

 

[Cawo]

I'm learning all kinds of things about this. I didn't know the Queen had to sign off on stuff, and I didn't think about the tourism aspect. And who owns Buckingham palace, the queen, or the people of the country?

 

[Sai2301]

I'm not sure? I think it might be the state, or the Queen.

If it was the British people, I'd be gatecrashing and claiming squatters rights

 

[gkhjd]

I don't know how it works in Britain, but here in Canada we have the Governor General, who is the supposed representative of the Monarchy, who used to control the country when we were still a colony. Back in the day, the Governor General pretty much ran the show and did whatever he pleased, and enforced British rule here. As the country became more democratic and independent though, the Governor General lost more and more power, until the position has reached the point where it is today; the Governor General still has to sign each and every law passed by the Canadian government, but she would never refuse to do so, because she is appointed, and the government is elected. It's just a ceremonial role. Too bad we spend millions of dollars a year on it.

 

[thegame]

Ah, but she still has the right not to sign if she doesn't want...

The royal family owns Buckingham Palace ever since my Great-Great-add a few-Great Uncle gave it to the then King, Richard the Third (maybe I could've put that in Booksie's 1000th post thread?).

We have the same system as the Canadians with the Governer General. Did you know that in the 70's the Australian Governer General told the government at the time to step down from power because there was a blockage of power between the two parlimentry bodies? Another (un)interesting fact for you...

If you think that it costs so much to keep the royal family as they are at the moment, start adding up the costs involved in changing that arrangement: change the currency, change the legal system (including a way to ensure that all current and past laws are upheld in your new democracy/republic), relinquish ties with all other 'commonwealth' contries, etc.

(BTW should I mention that I'm a monachist and that I voted not to pass the last Australian referendum that would have made Australia a republic at this point? )

 

[BigDaddy]

-One function of the Queen is to appoint people to the House of Lords. his was used back in the 1930's to make a major change. When the push to establish the House of Commons as the more powerful branch of Parliment (being that it was elected by the people and represented them), the House of Lords tried to block this. The King reminded the more stubborn members of the House of Lords that it was his perogative to create/appoint as many lords as he deemed fit. This resolved the conflict rather quickly.
-The Queen (regent of the monarchy) knows that they would lose their power if they ever exercised it against the will of the people, however their power can be helpful in many instances where any special interests blatantly go against the will and best interests of the people. The Queen also serves a role as the ceremonial Head of State that allows the Prime Minister the oppurtunity to focus on the job at hand rather than spending his time dealing with these responsibilities. Whether or not this is truly worth it to her "subjects" is really a personal and collective decision.

 

[Heavy]

This is a good point that I hadn't thought of. Still, I think we generally spend too much money on ceremony. The governor general here recently spent millions of dollars of public money on a trip to Russia. I don't really know what she was doing over there, but I think she probably could have spent just a little less money... those funds could have gone into education or healthcare, rather then the Governor General's personal vacation fund.

 

[Coolbreeze22]

I'd prefer to spend millions on sustaining the monarchy, than on another nuke.

 

[FaneeshiaV]

I'm sure i read somewhere that the income the Royal family generates is more than double the cost of maintaining it. Also i have a lot more respect for the Queen than i do for the current Prime Minister. Just my opinion but i think the royals are worth keeping.

On the issue of who owns Buckingham Palace, it is owned by the monarch as is every other piece of land in the UK; she could technically claim any part of the UK for her own use, she never would but the power still exists.

 

[2ndtimearound]

A quick follow up on what Jim said about the Queen relative to Aus, in 2000 we had a referendum on whether Australia was to become a republic. Obviously, staying as a monarchy won, although it was a topic of very heated debate, including the idea of changing the national anthem, the most popular option as far as the media were concerned seemed to be 'Waltzing Matilda' . While that song may be an Australian icon, I don't think it's national anthem material

And no-body knows or cares about the governor general, unless something happens. I think something has happened only twice, the first being the incident Jim refered to, the second being a giant child sex scandal last year. The governer-general that was involved in that eventually stepped down, but it took him a very long time to do it.

 

[BrentM]

Marry me!!! Hit the nail on the head!!! Rock On!!

 

[MisseRzechkowski]

Somebody should actually do a proper study into tax payers expenditure to maintain the monarchy vs tourist income generated by them.

Col

 

[dungeoness]

I think that overall a Royal Family is a good thing.

However, they are worth hundreds of millions of £'s. I do think that by liquidating some assets and careful investment they could live without taxpayers money.

That would really get rid of the argument.

 

[SusanaF]

That would be very difficult to do, based on the fact that some of the tourism income generated by them is not actually generated by them - that is to say, would there be any less tourist interest in places like Buckingham Palace, the Tower of London, the Household cavalry etc. just because we didn't have a monarch? Looking across Europe, Versailles, Rome, Athens, all generate a lot of tourism by virtue of the history those places are steeped in. So how many people come to England to see the Monarchy, and how many come to see the attractions associated with the monarchy but which are not essentially tied to it?

I believe that the Monarchy is beginning to outlive its usefulness - particularly when you look at the media circus which is Prince Charles' love life, and the potentially damaging remarks consistently made by Prince Phillip.

A good monarchy could be immensely beneficial to England, but I do not think that that describes the current Royal Family.