
The Queen and I - pepys
http://harpers.org/archive/2016/02/the-queen-and-i/?single=1
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dijit
Preface: I'm British.

It's very trendy to hate on the monarchy, rationally it makes sense but if we
look at the numbers they bring in more money to the country than they take
out, Elizabeth evokes a sort of stability in our politics and it's not certain
how those affects are felt.

To take the words from Stephen Fry: "It is rational to assume that countries
without a constitutional monarchy are freeer, however, the countries which are
freeest are Denmark, Norway, Sweden- and they have a monarchy."

[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eJQHakkViPo](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eJQHakkViPo)

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cmurf
Define free. What's the exact metric for this ranking? It sounds quite a bit
more complex and even nebulous than who makes the best butter.

I do like this part, "Mrs. Tony Blair was raised in a working-class family in
Liverpool and became a successful barrister. Snobbery: the British disease."
There's something weirdly similar here, where a fairly huge chunk of working
class voted for the person born with $million in his pocket, and quite
literally hate the woman born into a working class family and actually worked
for most of her life (and was the bread winner) up until heading to D.C. It's
almost a kind of self-hate variety of snobbery.

~~~
arethuza
That part isn't true though - Blair went to private schools, notably the elite
Fettes College as a boarder.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Blair#Education](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Blair#Education)

The idea that anyone typically "working class" went to Fettes in the late
1960s is rather amusing - it is still rather grand to this day.

Edit: The reasons for the widespread hatred of Blair in the UK have _nothing_
to do with his background.

Edit2: Apologies - I misread, not used to reading "Mrs Tony Blair"....

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brucelidl
The quote is referring to Cherie Blair, not Tony.

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georgeecollins
I think the author is trying to say-- in an entertaining way-- that while
everyone is getting sentimental and nostalgic about the longest reining
monarch of Britain, do not forget that monarchy is useless and antithetical to
modern ideas such as meritocracy and sexual equality.

Queen Elisabeth grew up in a time when the monarchy was far more threatened
because of the political changes of the 1930s and the actions of her uncle.
Knowing how precarious her situation was she tread very carefully. All it will
take is one foolish ancestor to expose monarchy as an expensive and useless
anachronism.

It is probably good for tourism though!

~~~
ginko
>It is probably good for tourism though!

As an Austrian I'm not buying that argument. It's not as if you need to tear
down all the royal palaces when you abolish monarchy. If anything you can give
tourists deeper entry, since no one lives there anymore. Just take a look at
Schloss Schönbrunn, the Imperial palace in Vienna, which has way more visitors
than Buckingham palace for the simple reason that it is open the entire year.

~~~
megablast
Good point. But you also need to take into account events like Royal weddings,
which are huge for tourists.

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branchless
The Blair example in the absence of monarchy is wrong - the person said that
because Blair is hated, not because they are a snob.

Agree on the insane lies about their thrift.

Bit of a waste of an article. The author is clearly against the monarchy yet
fails to enumerate many points in spite of the length.

What amazes me most is Americans. They profess a love of freedom and equality
yet love the royals.

~~~
gozur88
>They profess a love of freedom and equality yet love the royals.

Why would this amaze you? We're free to love the royals because for us it's
consequence-free.

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branchless
I guess I'd hope for the mental leap a child could make that one should not
support those who enslave our fellow man.

~~~
gozur88
That's beyond hyperbolic. The royals exist on the sufferance of the British
electorate - you could get rid of them tomorrow if it strikes your fancy in
the same way you got rid of hereditary peers in the House of Lords.

And while they're not technically completely without power, if the royals
tried to actually _exercise_ power it would be stripped from them immediately.
And they know it.

These days, for the most part the royals are a show for tourists.

~~~
branchless
They are in hock with the press. Recently they upped their share of crown land
rent. Barely discussed. The power structures are more complex than simply what
is possible in theory.

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_benedict
Today we have modern dynasties based on money - even at the micro-level,
wealth promotes greater power and wealth for its descendants.

A large segment of society hate the very concept of a monarchy, but their
inheritance is actually far more constrained than a typical dynasty's, as the
state retains ownership of all of the monarchic portions (they of course have
significant private wealth as well).

I, personally, feel we would be hypocritical to dismantle the monarchy before
we dismantle inheritance wholesale. i.e. 100% inheritance taxation (though I
don't propose this is absolutely straightforward; there are many
complexities).

This is a deeply unpopular view, but if we hate this kind of power and wealth
inequality, we should really deal with it, not make some silly gesture about
an artefact of history.

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cmurf
I really like Harper's. I've had a subscription for many years. One of my
favorite things is the Harper's Index, the juxtipositioning of seemingly (and
often actually) unrelated things is an entertaining mind fuck.

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kevinwang
Not sure what I just read, but it was pretty entertaining

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draw_down
This is so good.

