The Royals

[dirtybeatfreak]

A wiki link, is that it?
Mind blown. You truly are the expert.

Ignoring half the post yet again. You truly are the troll

 

[Stephanie Peterson]

I really don't mind most of the Royals and the money they recieve as they do a lot of work behind the scenes and bring lots of wealth back to the country especially with tourism.
I also dont care a jot if someone is born into money with a silver spoon in there gob or went to a posh school, its what they are like now as a person that matters -

 

[Teh_Next]

Ignoring half the post yet again. You truly are the troll

A convenient call. Addressing someone else or not, you claimed expertise in a public forum. so come on, let's hear it.

 

[dirtybeatfreak]

A convenient call. Addressing someone else or not, you claimed expertise in a public forum. so come on, let's hear it.

Where did I claim this? I've asked you this several times. Link my post where I claimed this.

Oh you can't? That's because you imagined it. Mind you, you think there are lizard people lol...says it all really.

 

[Teh_Next]

Where did I claim this? I've asked you this several times. Link my post where I claimed this.

Oh you can't? That's because you imagined it. Mind you, you think there are lizard people...says it all really.

I would explain it to you, but fear you're too far brainwashed to understand. I do hope if you ever get offered an inheritance, you will turn it down because you didn't earn it

I think there are lizard people. Okay, erm, yeah...sure.

 

[dirtybeatfreak]

I think there are lizard people. Okay, erm, yeah...sure.

Just lol. That means I think I am an expert? I even explained what I meant when you questioned it the first time. I was referring to his post, not exclaiming my so called vast knowledge of the royals.

You're really clutching at straws and holding onto that one thing. Let it go, you will feel better

 

[Teh_Next]

Just lol. That means I think I am an expert? I even explained what I meant when you questioned it the first time. I was referring to his post, not exclaiming my so called vast knowledge of the royals.

You're really clutching at straws and holding onto that one thing. Let it go, you will feel better

Well explain it then.

These lizards need justifying

 

[Cryogenic]

If it was appropriate protocol for the particular situation, yes. My question: Why are you asking a question irrelevant to the text you're quoting? Bowing to someone does not mean that you see them as a living god. Far from it. The custom for that, at least in my cultural heritage, is at least kneeling on both knees and possibly completely prostate on your belly. Bowing is a far lesser thing, absolutely not for a "living god". Even in the days when people really believed that the monarch ruled by divine right and was the chosen of god, the most formal protocol was to go to one knee because the monarch was not a god. There are some cultures in which the ruler was regarded as a living god, but this was never one of them.



One person can't do 2 jobs. If you made the PM head of state you would have to have someone else in another position to do some of the work the PM currently does plus some additional staff. You would not be reducing even the cost of security because you'd still have 2 people. In addition, there are additional costs for the head of state that would be completely unaffected by who did the job. Building maintainence, grounds maintainence, staffing costs, travel costs, diplomatic function costs. The cost savings of making the PM head of state would be at best minimal even if you were to steal the Queen's personal possessions (which you would have to do in order to avoid a huge increase in costs).



Both our lineages were more likely living in wattle and daub roundhouses (which are a quite sophisticated and very efficient method of construction in the circumstances that existed in the past), not "a straw hut". When the harvests were OK, their lives would have been OK for the time. The gap between them and the wealthy elite wasn't hugely different to how it is today. I am a peasant. The level of technology has changed and that has vastly improved everyone's lives, but I have to work more than my medieval peasant ancestors did to survive.

Perhaps you'd like to think of not being enslaved or murdered by whatever raiders attacked or by the followers of whoever was ruthless enough to have seized power in your locality? That usually didn't happen because the authorities enforced a reasonable degree of peace. Without that, it would have happened routinely.

Besides, "retaining some aspects of our own cultural heritage" does not mean "considering only the worst aspects of life in the past" or even "replicating all aspects of the past". It's largely ceremonial and symbolic. For example, the state opening of Parliament symbolises parliament's independence from the crown. That's an important part of this country's heritage. It's worth keeping.

An interesting and intelligent assessment.

In the modern world, the police and the army now protect us and peace and civil disobedience is now maintained but not by the monarchy. As far as customs go, Spanish bull running is still in - don't you think things should change with time to modernise, after all jailing homosexuals is now banned and this is within the past 100 years?

To refer to yourself as a peasant is simply degrading and humiliating, I'm sure your parents would be absolutely livid if they heard this. You are a human being living in the first world, and equal to anyone of my other countrymen and women, try to have some respect for yourself man. There is no reason why you cannot send your children to a private school or live in a nice house - it would certainly be more comfortable than a wattle and daub roundhouse especially with the supersize mortgages they are offering these days. If you bought a London terrace many years ago, you would be worth close to a million today. This is enough to buy your own castle in Scotland. You would then be a Scottish aristocrat, and eligible to mix in Royal circles with other wealthy land owning individuals.

 

[Angilion]

An interesting and intelligent assessment.

In the modern world, the police and the army now protect us and peace and civil disobedience is now maintained but not by the monarchy.

True, but the context for that statement was the past, not the present. I was countering the assertion that the monarchy in the past was all about taxes and hanging people.

As far as customs go, Spanish bull running is still in - don't you think things should change with time to modernise, after all jailing homosexuals is now banned and this is within the past 100 years?

Things have changed with time and will continue to do so. I think that an important question is what to change. There's no need to change everything simply because it's old.

To refer to yourself as a peasant is simply degrading and humiliating, I'm sure your parents would be absolutely livid if they heard this.

Referring to myself as a peasant is honest. My parents tend to favour honesty over delusions of grandeur.

You are a human being living in the first world, and equal to anyone of my other countrymen and women, try to have some respect for yourself man. There is no reason why you cannot send your children to a private school or live in a nice house - it would certainly be more comfortable than a wattle and daub roundhouse especially with the supersize mortgages they are offering these days. If you bought a London terrace many years ago, you would be worth close to a million today. This is enough to buy your own castle in Scotland. You would then be a Scottish aristocrat, and eligible to mix in Royal circles with other wealthy land owning individuals.

Now you're just fooling yourself. The claim that wealth is so easy to obtain that there's no reason to not be rich is nothing but a flimsy facade of an excuse that exists only to blame peasants for being peasants. For that reason, I think your views are less enlightened than mine - you're blaming peasants for being peasants and I'm not.

I suppose I could send my children (if I had any) to a private school, but I doubt if the school would accept them if I couldn't pay the fees. So while your claim is technically true as written, it's not actually true.

If you have a time machine I can use, I will go back in time and buy a London terrace many years ago. Preferably in Kensington. You can rent out a 2 bed terrace for £100K a year there. Without that time machine, how do you propose I do it? On a tangent, that's essentially how the Duke of Westminster became extremely rich. Not the current one, who inherited the money. Two of his ancestors. Their marriage combined a fairly large amount of useless cheap land close to London (at the time) and enough money to build some luxury housing on it. Close enough to the city to conveniently travel to it, far enough away from the city to be away from the smell and the crowding and the general nastiness of the place. They rented the housing to wealthy people and made a vast amount of money while retaining ownership of it all. Which their descendents are still doing. A smart move, good foresight, good planning and good implementation...and requiring not insignificant wealth to start with.

 

[Narj]

I'm quite grateful that we have the Queen. Regardless of the idiots frequenting Westminster throughout her life, she has continued to carry out her duties with dignity and has been an amazing ambassador for our country.

I also hold Prince Charles in high regard, even though he gets a bit of stick.

There are some I really don't care much for but as others have pointed out, the Royals generate more than they cost so I'd rather we didn't just become another bland republic with awful politicians as figureheads. The Royals are part of our national identity whether you like them or not

 

[Cryogenic]

If you have a time machine I can use, I will go back in time and buy a London terrace many years ago. Preferably in Kensington. You can rent out a 2 bed terrace for £100K a year there. Without that time machine, how do you propose I do it?]

The fact is anyone can inherit (do your parents not live in a house of their own?), and anyone can become wealthy. The ex-owner of this forum for one, so if you think a 'peasant' cannot also achieve something in business, you are wrong, and you would not need a time machine for this, just hard work and dedication Perhaps, I am more enlightened than you on this occasion

 

[hominid]

Do as I say not as I do.

 

[Angilion]

The fact is anyone can inherit (do your parents not live in a house of their own?), and anyone can become wealthy. The ex-owner of this forum for one, so if you think a 'peasant' cannot also achieve something in business, you are wrong, and you would not need a time machine for this, just hard work and dedication Perhaps, I am more enlightened than you on this occasion

No, because you are blaming peasants for being peasants. That is the inevitable flip side of your claim that that there is no reason for a person to not make themselves rich - if there is no reason for a person to not be rich, it's entirely their own fault if they're not rich. You're peddling the "lazy peasant" idea. Your claim that anyone can become wealthy is just more of the same. It's so obviously not true that it's not even laughable.

Your claim that anyone can inherit is another of those technically true but wildly misleading statements. Anyone can inherit, but that does not mean they will. A person might not inherit anything. A person might inherit nothing of any material value. In order to inherit wealth, a person must be favoured by a wealthy person who dies. That's not true for everyone. Not everyone, for example, has a dead relative who owned a house and assigned it to them in their will.

Also, your initial suggestion was buying a terrace in London in the past. That would, of course, need a time machine. It would also need enough spare money to make that purchase, which is something else that a modern day peasant wouldn't have. But the time machine would, I think, be an even bigger problem to overcome.

It's true that a tiny, tiny, vanishingly miniscule minority of people can become rich through a combination of luck, someone else backing them, an idea that's just right for the time and place, a lot of skill and a lot of work. Your claim that everyone can do so, that there is no reason to not do so, is simply wrong. You might as well claim that everyone can become a Premier league football player and that there's no reason for anyone to not do so (so anyone who doesn't become a Premier league football player is a lazy failure who deserves to fail). If you're making up such wildly implausible claims, why stop there? Everyone can become a wizard! Everyone can become a dragon! Everyone can become a flying unicorn!

 

[Cryogenic]

No, because you are blaming peasants for being peasants. That is the inevitable flip side of your claim that that there is no reason for a person to not make themselves rich - if there is no reason for a person to not be rich, it's entirely their own fault if they're not rich. You're peddling the "lazy peasant" idea. Your claim that anyone can become wealthy is just more of the same. It's so obviously not true that it's not even laughable.

Your claim that anyone can inherit is another of those technically true but wildly misleading statements. Anyone can inherit, but that does not mean they will. A person might not inherit anything. A person might inherit nothing of any material value. In order to inherit wealth, a person must be favoured by a wealthy person who dies. That's not true for everyone. Not everyone, for example, has a dead relative who owned a house and assigned it to them in their will.

Also, your initial suggestion was buying a terrace in London in the past. That would, of course, need a time machine. It would also need enough spare money to make that purchase, which is something else that a modern day peasant wouldn't have. But the time machine would, I think, be an even bigger problem to overcome.

It's true that a tiny, tiny, vanishingly miniscule minority of people can become rich through a combination of luck, someone else backing them, an idea that's just right for the time and place, a lot of skill and a lot of work. Your claim that everyone can do so, that there is no reason to not do so, is simply wrong. You might as well claim that everyone can become a Premier league football player and that there's no reason for anyone to not do so (so anyone who doesn't become a Premier league football player is a lazy failure who deserves to fail). If you're making up such wildly implausible claims, why stop there? Everyone can become a wizard! Everyone can become a dragon! Everyone can become a flying unicorn!

To try and fail, is better than not trying at all was my point but success can be virtually guaranteed though good life choices. What if you and the wife both worked (dual income), this would give you quite a bit of spending/investment power. What if you then bought a car park etc. for residual income, or bought and sold on eBay. You could work your way up step by step, incrementally using market analysts, market indicators and advisors such as experienced business bank managers to setup multiple mini side businesses. You may still fail but be less likely to do so. Once you acquire enough holdings over a long period of time, you could buy cheapish farmland and become a respectable ‘landowner’. Don’t be so pessimistic, or hard on yourself!

 

[Werewolf]

You sound almost like you're preaching the gospel of wealth which is largely nonsense.

A working couple depending on their qualifications and luck (and remember having a good degree doesn't mean as much as it used to, and will typically leave you in a fair amount of debt to start your life off*...) may not be earniong much more than the national average, which doesn't leave a great deal for investment once you've allowed for things like the overheads of getting a house (if you can save the deposit needed).
If you ever want to have kids it's even worse because you have all the expenses of children, including things like childcare/nursery..

I know some highly qualified people who are in couples where they both work, most of them are struggling to some degree or another to even get a house because their (reasonably well paid- or at least better than the average) jobs require they work in certain areas, and those areas are expensive for housing, and commuting isn't an option because that'd just be shifting the money from housing to transport and meaning an already long day becomes even longer.

An author who I follow made a comment about "self made" people (and he was speaking as one), that was pretty much and I'm paraphrasing "most self made people are self made thanks as much to the assistance of others, and a lot of luck as their own hard work".
Which when you look at most of big names in the tech industry is true, if just down to things like parents being able to afford to send them to a good university/help cover their living costs when starting up their first business.



*One of the things that a lot of people who went to university in the 60's/70's/80's forget is that they typically got much/all of their tuition paid for directly (often with some level of support to help cover living costs), these days you can be 20-50k in debt just from tuition fees even if you work a part time job (which in itself hinders you a bit, as it means you're not working on your education as much).

 

[Diagro]

these days you can be 20-50k in debt just from tuition fees even if you work a part time job (which in itself hinders you a bit, as it means you're not working on your education as much).

Debt, I don't like that word. Especially when used to describe student loans.

Its not a traditional Debt, It has NO impact on your ability to borrow / get credit. It doesn't even show up on credit checks.
Its more of a Graduate Tax once you earn enough to reach the threshold. Just like normal Income Tax.

Therefor, Its a Tax. No more, No less.

 

[stigggeh]

Debt, I don't like that word. Especially when used to describe student loans.

Its not a traditional Debt, It has NO impact on your ability to borrow / get credit. It doesn't even show up on credit checks.
Its more of a Graduate Tax once you earn enough to reach the threshold. Just like normal Income Tax.

Therefor, Its a Tax. No more, No less.

Student Loans are taken in to consideration for mortgages, it is seen as a monthly outgoing they consider it in relation to whether or not you can afford the repayments.

I can see what you are saying about it being treat as a tax, but it certainly is considered in some cases.

 

[Angilion]

To try and fail, is better than not trying at all was my point but success can be virtually guaranteed though good life choices. What if you and the wife both worked (dual income), this would give you quite a bit of spending/investment power. What if you then bought a car park etc. for residual income, or bought and sold on eBay. You could work your way up step by step, incrementally using market analysts, market indicators and advisors such as experienced business bank managers to setup multiple mini side businesses. You may still fail but be less likely to do so. Once you acquire enough holdings over a long period of time, you could buy cheapish farmland and become a respectable ‘landowner’. Don’t be so pessimistic, or hard on yourself!

You're still doing it. Maybe you're a believer, despite how wildly implausible it is, but you're still just blaming peasants for being peasants. Including me, obviously. So you're being a lot harder on me than I am, since you're claiming that there is no reason for me not to be rich because you're claiming there's no reason for anyone to not be rich. You must think that I am monumentally lazy and stupid. Fortunately, that doesn't bother me because I think you're just fooling yourself for ideological purposes and thus your opinion on the matter is too unrealistic to care about.

Are you even aware that the great majority of people are not rich? If so, how do you reconcile that with your stated belief that there is no reason for anyone to not be rich?

 

[vanillaface]

I haven't read the thread, so apologies if this has been mentioned, but it's quite reasonable to expect that Meghan was chosen for Harry rather than him choosing her himself.
I'd imagine that there is some video held by MI5 of Harry snorting coke off a dog's willy, or something devastating like that, which allowed them to leverage him into making a choice which would weaken the monarchy.
No way did he choose her of his own free will.

 

[MissChief]

I haven't read the thread, so apologies if this has been mentioned, but it's quite reasonable to expect that Meghan was chosen for Harry rather than him choosing her himself.
I'd imagine that there is some video held by MI5 of Harry snorting coke off a dog's willy, or something devastating like that, which allowed them to leverage him into making a choice which would weaken the monarchy.
No way did he choose her of his own free will.

Why not? If she was 'chosen' I'd really have expected them to pick a nice posh white British girl from the gentry of the UK rather than a mixed race Canadian?