Poll: How would you vote in a referendum to abolish the monarchy?

Would you get rid of the monarchy?

  • Abolish the monarchy

    Votes: 326 30.5%

  • Keep the monarchy

    Votes: 743 69.5%
  • Total voters
    1,069
If you are in favour of abolishing the monarchy, then you need to explain who would be the new head of state, and how that system would work. What kind of selection process do you advocate (e.g., election, or appointment), and how long would they remain in place?

It's not as simple as wrapping yourself up in the Red Flag and voting to abolish the monarchy, without proposing how our system would work in the event of that.
 
Avenged7Fold said:
You will find the mast majority of the very wealthy and powerful are like that because of birth and inheritance.
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I think you'll find that you are mistaken.

From Business Insider:

Billions of dollars really do grow on trees –– at least for the handful of Forbes' 2013 Billionaires who didn't have to work for their ten-figure bank accounts.

Of more than 1,400 billionaires listed, Forbes listed "inherited" as the source of income for only a handful.
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From Forbes:

Over the past 30 years, the origin of the wealth of the richest people in the United States has shifted away from old, inherited money. Our new metric, the self-made scores developed for the Forbes 400, shows that increasingly we find self-made billionaires among the ranks of the richest people in the country.
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Here's the list of the top 25 UK billionaires. I'm sure you can figure out that a majority are self-made.
 
As much as the monarchy doesn't truly serve any real purpose these days, they do bring in a lot of tourism, and we have had a monarchy for so long I think it'd be a shame to get rid of it totally.
 
So refreshing to see much sense and the vote turning out how it should be (in my opinion ofc) :)

I like the royals! Well Charles is a bit of a plank, but the rest of them do work hard and what they represent is part of our heritage etc. I think William and Harry are awesome :)
 
Mak3R said:
As far as I know they generate more money in tourism etc than they cost to fund. Also they have no, or at least exercise no powers of authority that I'm aware of so let them have at it.
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That's true, but it's even clearer than that:

A large part of income from the monarch's own assets (which they inherited, so stealing those assets from them would entail removing the legal right to inherit) is given (voluntarily, by the monarch's choice) to the state. The state gives the monarch 15% of it back to cover the costs of being head of state. So the state profits a great deal from the monarchy even if tourism is ignored. Doing that would be deceitful, since tourism brings a lot of money into the UK and a large part of that is from tradition and culture, especially the monarchy. Any even vaguely wealthy country or major company could build a palace more impressive than any of the royal palaces, but it wouldn't do much for tourism. It's not about the building, it's about the heritage and the fact that a monarch makes it a "real" palace.

In any case, the monarchy costs little or nothing to fund. Without a monarchy, we'd still need a head of state and all the infrastructure behind them so we'd be spending about as much anyway. Maybe more, since a President would expect to be paid.

Even if they did cost money that wouldn't otherwise be spent (they don't) and they didn't increase tourism (they do) and they didn't give the state almost 7 times as much money as the state gives them (they do), it would still be worth the minimal cost to maintain part of our cultural heritage.

EDIT: The last time a monarch of the UK formally exercised royal power was in 1708, although it was exercised informally to force voting reform through in 1832 which ended the rotten buroughs, laid the foundation for universal suffrage, secret ballot and generally the whole of our modern democratic system.
 
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History is what this country has and that monarchy is that link with that past to the modern age. Lose that and as someone said this place turns into another faceless durge of a place that could be any number of countries. The fact they are still here means we carry on some traditions which on face value you might think are pointless but when you think about it are pretty awesome
 
It's not a system I would support if it didn't already exist and it's bizarre and anti-democratic in principle. However, in practice I think it works well, the monarchy are a positive contribution to the country, and have a non-political head of state works very well on a diplomatic level and gives a useful focus for national pride.

So I'd vote for "keep".

Also, on a practical level, I don't think it would be right for the UK alone to vote to abolish the monarchy when they are head of state for many other countries in the commonwealth.
 
I wonder what Lizzers actually thinks of the current parliament, its nothing but childish bickering and frankly the equivalent of constant ****posts.
 
thep02 said:
Too right they're relatives of people who conquered then murdered and enslaved our ancestors.
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I never knew crimes were inherited like money.

thep02 said:
And reparations.
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Who would they apologies to? They certainly didn't wrong you and they didn't commit those crimes. Would it be fair for someone to cash in on the suffering of an ancestor and have some other ancestor pay for it?

ofc not
 
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