The "Royals" Thread

Use this board for general non-cycling-related chat, or to introduce yourself to the forum.
reohn2
Posts: 45158
Joined: 26 Jun 2009, 8:21pm

Re: The "Royals" Thread

Post by reohn2 »

Clive Lewis article in the Guadian and with which I agree with in total:- https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... live-lewis
-----------------------------------------------------------
"All we are not stares back at what we are"
W H Auden
Tangled Metal
Posts: 9505
Joined: 13 Feb 2015, 8:32pm

Re: The "Royals" Thread

Post by Tangled Metal »

pwa wrote: 17 Sep 2022, 6:20pm
pete75 wrote: 17 Sep 2022, 10:29am
pwa wrote: 17 Sep 2022, 9:31am Is it authoritarian to believe an unborn life matters? I think that belief lies outside left/right or even authoritarian/liberal if you look at it deeply. I'm not arguing for or against that position, but I am saying that holding that belief doesn't say much about your leanings on other matters.
From a religious point of view there's no such thing as an unborn life. The Bible says life begins with the breath. If you don't believe have a read of the book of Genesis - it's in there somewhere,.near the beginning.

From the point of view of abortion do they think that only they are bothered about the unborn baby and that women who choose to have an abortion do say without, in many cases, a great deal of sometime spainful thought. What is authoritarian is the view that a woman can't do what she chooses with her own body.
With her own body and the other life that she bears, is how it is seen if you believe that life begins before birth. And that is why taking a strong anti-abortion stance (not my own, by the way) is not necessarily a sign that one is authoritarian generally. If you genuinely hold that view, you believe that abortion is killing. There is a dilemma of a woman's rights versus her unborn child's life. A lot of Catholics agonise about that. That's what struck me when I saw the abortion question on that survey. It leads to a simplistic judgement about you without getting beneath the surface of your answer.
OK suppose PWA is right that the bible says life begins at first breath then it's not a religious belief that life begins before birth. That's against Christian teachings in the bible. So what is it if you force a woman to carry a foetus to birth no matter what her wishes? Is that being authoritarian?
Authoritarian, adjective - favouring or enforcing strict obedience to authority at the expense of personal freedom.
Is all authoritarianism right wing or can it be from the other side of the political spectrum, or indeed all?
Tangled Metal
Posts: 9505
Joined: 13 Feb 2015, 8:32pm

Re: The "Royals" Thread

Post by Tangled Metal »

Also, can religion not be considered authoritarian too?
pwa
Posts: 17366
Joined: 2 Oct 2011, 8:55pm

Re: The "Royals" Thread

Post by pwa »

Tangled Metal wrote: 17 Sep 2022, 10:15pm Also, can religion not be considered authoritarian too?
And add to those thoughts the fact that practically all of us are "authoritarian" if by that we mean forcing people to do things. Even just enforcing speed limits, or telling seventeen year olds they can't buy ciggies. We all want to stick our oar in on some issues.
pwa
Posts: 17366
Joined: 2 Oct 2011, 8:55pm

Re: The "Royals" Thread

Post by pwa »

Back on the main subject, I was watching a 1992 fly-on-the-wall documentary on the Queen, with cameras following her around and catching a glimpse of a "behind the scenes" monarch. Yes, I know we all tidy up our behaviour when someone points a camera at us, but even so it shows something more like a real person. And she does come across as being surprisingly ordinary, in a good way. If it had been me doing that job, I'd have been driven mad having to spend so much time making inane small talk with people.

And when the King briefly spoke in Welsh at the Senedd on Friday, according to my daughter (who knows about Welsh and how it should sound) he was rather good at it. It was all correct and easily understood by a Welsh speaker, with only a non-intrusive non-Welsh accent making it less than perfect.
reohn2
Posts: 45158
Joined: 26 Jun 2009, 8:21pm

Re: The "Royals" Thread

Post by reohn2 »

pwa wrote: 18 Sep 2022, 5:08am Back on the main subject, I was watching a 1992 fly-on-the-wall documentary on the Queen, with cameras following her around and catching a glimpse of a "behind the scenes" monarch. Yes, I know we all tidy up our behaviour when someone points a camera at us, but even so it shows something more like a real person. And she does come across as being surprisingly ordinary, in a good way. If it had been me doing that job, I'd have been driven mad having to spend so much time making inane small talk with people.
I don't think anyone has a bad word for Elisabeth Winsor,by all accounts she was a very nice person.
It's the office of monarch and it's privilege I have problems with.
I do not recognise her as queen nor her son Charles Winsor as king or queen as much as I don't count myself a "subject" of their's in fact the thought makes me sick to my stomach as much as their so call national anthem does.
And when the King briefly spoke in Welsh at the Senedd on Friday, according to my daughter (who knows about Welsh and how it should sound) he was rather good at it. It was all correct and easily understood by a Welsh speaker, with only a non-intrusive non-Welsh accent making it less than perfect.
Practice makes perfect,but the accent is part of the language.
-----------------------------------------------------------
"All we are not stares back at what we are"
W H Auden
Bonefishblues
Posts: 11010
Joined: 7 Jul 2014, 9:45pm
Location: Near Bicester Oxon

Re: The "Royals" Thread

Post by Bonefishblues »

TBF we do have a particularly awful national Anthem. Almost wish I was French sometimes.
pete75
Posts: 16370
Joined: 24 Jul 2007, 2:37pm

Re: The "Royals" Thread

Post by pete75 »

pwa wrote: 17 Sep 2022, 6:20pm
pete75 wrote: 17 Sep 2022, 10:29am
pwa wrote: 17 Sep 2022, 9:31am Is it authoritarian to believe an unborn life matters? I think that belief lies outside left/right or even authoritarian/liberal if you look at it deeply. I'm not arguing for or against that position, but I am saying that holding that belief doesn't say much about your leanings on other matters.
From a religious point of view there's no such thing as an unborn life. The Bible says life begins with the breath. If you don't believe have a read of the book of Genesis - it's in there somewhere,.near the beginning.

From the point of view of abortion do they think that only they are bothered about the unborn baby and that women who choose to have an abortion do say without, in many cases, a great deal of sometime spainful thought. What is authoritarian is the view that a woman can't do what she chooses with her own body.
With her own body and the other life that she bears, is how it is seen if you believe that life begins before birth. And that is why taking a strong anti-abortion stance (not my own, by the way) is not necessarily a sign that one is authoritarian generally. If you genuinely hold that view, you believe that abortion is killing. There is a dilemma of a woman's rights versus her unborn child's life. A lot of Catholics agonise about that. That's what struck me when I saw the abortion question on that survey. It leads to a simplistic judgement about you without getting beneath the surface of your answer.
Taking a strong ant-abortion stance is authoritarian if that includes wanting to ban it. When abortion is legal, all are free to follow their own moral views.
You're right though, it doesn't necessarily mean the person is authoritarian in other ways, though looking at the anti-abortion justices, governers and states in the USA it's a pretty good indicator that they may well be. The Roman Catholic church, with doctrines like Papal infallibility etc, seems to be an authoritarian organisation as are the more fundamentalist protestant sects.
'Give me my bike, a bit of sunshine - and a stop-off for a lunchtime pint - and I'm a happy man.' - Reg Baker
sjs
Posts: 1306
Joined: 24 Jan 2010, 10:08pm
Location: Hitchin

Re: The "Royals" Thread

Post by sjs »

Bonefishblues wrote: 18 Sep 2022, 9:05am TBF we do have a particularly awful national Anthem. Almost wish I was French sometimes.
Agreed. Both music and lyrics. Odd that the tune is popular elsewhere as well, including for Liechtenstein's NA.
pete75
Posts: 16370
Joined: 24 Jul 2007, 2:37pm

Re: The "Royals" Thread

Post by pete75 »

Bonefishblues wrote: 18 Sep 2022, 9:05am TBF we do have a particularly awful national Anthem. Almost wish I was French sometimes.
'Give me my bike, a bit of sunshine - and a stop-off for a lunchtime pint - and I'm a happy man.' - Reg Baker
Stradageek
Posts: 1657
Joined: 17 Jan 2011, 1:07pm

Re: The "Royals" Thread

Post by Stradageek »

reohn2 wrote: 17 Sep 2022, 8:19pm Clive Lewis article in the Guadian and with which I agree with in total:- https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... live-lewis
The full article is even better https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... -privilege to quote a part:

But therein lies a fundamental truth about the institution of monarchy – it is a distraction. It is a spectacle exalted for exemplifying virtues that should be typical in public life and public behaviour. Casting such behaviour as exceptional allows the likes of Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and the economic elites they represent to break and exploit the rules for their own benefit and that of their very narrow class interest – of which the monarchy is an integral part.

For half of Queen Elizabeth II’s reign, our common life was destroyed by the privatisation of water, energy, public transport and council housing, by the desecration of our land through fracking and sewage in rivers, and by the despoliation of our common wealth in the selling off of children’s and elderly care homes to private equity groups. This all took place without so much as a royal murmur of disapproval.

Yet, at the same time, the royal family managed to exempt itself from more than 160 different pieces of legislation for its own economic advantage, such as the waiving of the 40% inheritance tax on the crown estate’s estimated £15.2bn of royal assets.

So while republicans should respect the language of “duty” and “sacrifice” monarchists have so forcefully claimed that the royal family makes on our behalf, we should not pretend that the reality is anything other than a lie. That is not what monarchy is. It may provide a symbolic way for us to recognise other people’s sacrifice and commitment to society – but the monarchy itself risks nothing and does not suffer, save for having the lives of the royal family become the stuff of celebrity gossip. Through it all, it remains the backbone of a power structure that traces its roots back to feudalism.

The idea of divine and indivisible sovereignty embodied in the monarch has been passed on to parliament. There it continues to legitimise the power of a close-knit elite community resistant to the fact that in a complex modern society all of us have a stake, and all should have a voice.
Ben@Forest
Posts: 3647
Joined: 28 Jan 2013, 5:58pm

Re: The "Royals" Thread

Post by Ben@Forest »

Bonefishblues wrote: 18 Sep 2022, 9:05am TBF we do have a particularly awful national Anthem. Almost wish I was French sometimes.
Though it has in recent years recently been described as, or criticised for, being racist, even in France itself.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/qz.com/132 ... again/amp/
thirdcrank
Posts: 36776
Joined: 9 Jan 2007, 2:44pm

Re: The "Royals" Thread

Post by thirdcrank »

Stradageek wrote: 18 Sep 2022, 1:11pm
reohn2 wrote: 17 Sep 2022, 8:19pm Clive Lewis article in the Guadian and with which I agree with in total:- https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... live-lewis
The full article is even better https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... -privilege to quote a part:

But therein lies a fundamental truth about the institution of monarchy – it is a distraction. It is a spectacle exalted for exemplifying virtues that should be typical in public life and public behaviour. Casting such behaviour as exceptional allows the likes of Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and the economic elites they represent to break and exploit the rules for their own benefit and that of their very narrow class interest – of which the monarchy is an integral part.

For half of Queen Elizabeth II’s reign, our common life was destroyed by the privatisation of water, energy, public transport and council housing, by the desecration of our land through fracking and sewage in rivers, and by the despoliation of our common wealth in the selling off of children’s and elderly care homes to private equity groups. This all took place without so much as a royal murmur of disapproval.

Yet, at the same time, the royal family managed to exempt itself from more than 160 different pieces of legislation for its own economic advantage, such as the waiving of the 40% inheritance tax on the crown estate’s estimated £15.2bn of royal assets.

So while republicans should respect the language of “duty” and “sacrifice” monarchists have so forcefully claimed that the royal family makes on our behalf, we should not pretend that the reality is anything other than a lie. That is not what monarchy is. It may provide a symbolic way for us to recognise other people’s sacrifice and commitment to society – but the monarchy itself risks nothing and does not suffer, save for having the lives of the royal family become the stuff of celebrity gossip. Through it all, it remains the backbone of a power structure that traces its roots back to feudalism.

The idea of divine and indivisible sovereignty embodied in the monarch has been passed on to parliament. There it continues to legitimise the power of a close-knit elite community resistant to the fact that in a complex modern society all of us have a stake, and all should have a voice.
So what's new there? eg Here's something I posted just a year ago as of yesterday

For those in favour of change, I can see that the Grand Fenwick nature of our system tends to legitimate what goes on, but that's hardly the fault of the monarch.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Fenwick
viewtopic.php?p=1639085#p1639085

That's no secret. The clever part would be to initiate change.
reohn2
Posts: 45158
Joined: 26 Jun 2009, 8:21pm

Re: The "Royals" Thread

Post by reohn2 »

thirdcrank wrote: 18 Sep 2022, 1:37pm ......That's no secret. The clever part would be to initiate change.
What do you propose?
Personally I can see no way other than revolution,preferably nonviolent,but most people are more concerned with telling everyone on social media(read sound asleep)what they had for breakfast or their latest hangover!
Which is just what those running the show,includingnthe monarchy want AFAICS.

PS, the present(manufactured)economic situation may just be the wake up call,it didn't rouse many as I recall,after the last 2008 crash,though since then the gap between rich and poor has grown as fast as the number of foodbanks!
-----------------------------------------------------------
"All we are not stares back at what we are"
W H Auden
User avatar
Mick F
Spambuster
Posts: 56359
Joined: 7 Jan 2007, 11:24am
Location: Tamar Valley, Cornwall

Re: The "Royals" Thread

Post by Mick F »

So, part of the French National Anthem discusses justice and no bras. :D
Screen Shot 2022-09-18 at 15.13.12.png
Mick F. Cornwall
Post Reply