badgerx16

Do they still charge a penny ?

If I did you wouldn't get one. We are currently 'co located' with the Primary Care Trust.

Ssssssh, they can't handle the truth.

Everybody that disagrees with dunce is wrong, HTH !

Bit miffed that PNE are down, now need Blackpool to go down to get a 'local' match. ( Can't get more local, I'm currently based at Bloomfield Road ). Just glad to be on the way up again.

AV is not 'truly democratic', nor is it the system I would prefer - that is Single Transferable Vote, which is far more democratic and proportional. However, we are not having a referendum on adopting PR, we are being offered AV as an alternative to FPTP, therefore AV gets my vote as it is better than what we have, but is far from being what I would choose, ( I view it as nothing more than the first step to a properly accountable system ). The controlling faction in the coalition, the Tories, had to offer a referendum on the electoral system as a condition of the LDs joining them, but they have flexed their muscles and forced the LDs to accept a far weaker motion than they would themselves have ever chosen. The LDs were backed into a corner and have found themselves pushing for a system most of their members would never have asked for.

It'll take a similar time to sort out the mess the Casino Capitalists dumped on the world's financial systems.

Also cannot be ( or be married to ) a catholic.

I don't see why; the low turnout, which will probably lead to a NO vote, will merely confirm the apathy with which the majority view the current political scene. The amount of effort being expended by the Tories, and many Labour 'big guns', in support of the NO campaign shows their own insecurity with the concept of having to be truly democratic, and also the very low opinion they hold of the electorate in general.

As opposed to the entirely clear, honest, and truthful analagies on the 'baby' and 'flak jacket' posters.

And Edward VIII nearly blew it.

YES YES Notre Dame, the Acropolis, The Vatican, the Winter Palace, ( have YOU ever been to Vienna ? ) Go back far enough and you find King John.

But these other countries have plenty of 'history', the characteristic that was proposed as the reason for retaining inherited obsequiance.

So they ARE just window dressing.

So the French, Germans, Austrians, Italians, Greeks, Americans, Chinese, and Russians are all mongs ? Not sure if the Swiss have ever had their own monarchy - true mongs surely ?

I am glad for you

At least the people who put them in their position had the choice of doing so.

Cleopatra

I have no issue with your general point of celebrating being British, goodness knows how much of that will be going on next year with the Olympics. We certainly need occasions that draw us together. It is just in my view the Royal family are an anachronism, if only for all the frippery, fawning, and defference we are expected to show them. I have respect for the Queen, if only because she's keeping her son out of harm's way, but all the peripheral creeping and crawling that people do; all the hangers on and outdated concepts lumped together as 'tradition', mean that all they are now is just another bunch of class B celebrities. They are just another disfunctional family, with very evident family failings - they all belch and fart, Charles preferred ****ging Camilla instead of Diana ( why ? ) even when he was married, the Duke of Edinburgh is a liability whenever there's a foreigner in range, goodness only knows what benefit Edward is to the country. Good luck to the newly weds, I bear them no malice, but don't see the need to go gushingly orgasmic over their nuptials, ( I'll leave that to William ).

So why do we need them ? Is it just window dressing ?

The precise extent of the royal prerogative has never formally been delineated, but it includes the following powers, among others: The power to appoint and dismiss the Prime Minister The power to appoint and dismiss other ministers. The power to summon, prorogue and dissolve Parliament The power to declare war and peace The power to command the armed forces of the United Kingdom The power to regulate the Civil Service The power to ratify treaties The power to issue passports The power to appoint bishops and archbishops of the Church of England The power to create peers (both life peers and hereditary peers) The power to take all measures to preserve the peacetime safety of the Crown All from an unelected position.

What has it to do with granting them 'special' status as overlords of the country ?

Ouch ! But explain exactly how ? I am not questioning anybody's right to live here, just their right to some form of ancestral and oudated feudal sovereignty over myself and my family. It is undemocratic and totally indefensible.

He claimed to be somehow "related" to them as he is British. There is a VERY small minority of people outside thir clique who can legitimately claim that position. I wasn't being rascist, nor claiming that the royals don't qualify as British - merely querying how that makes us all 'related'.

Are you predominantly German ? Or at least of direct descent from Sophia Electress of Hannover, ( which is a precondition for being in the line of succession ) ? Or perhaps you are descended from cousins married to cousins, going back many generations ?