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Post by ahinton on Jul 30, 2013 7:58:38 GMT -5
Are all births "vulgar" in your eyes? Of course. They are a thing not mentionable in polite society. Children should not make any sort of appearance until they are at least able to converse. Children have to appear somewhere and someone has to help them learn how to converse, &c., but the question was about actual births, not children and your answer to that conveniently suggests that, if vulgarity is to be universally eschewed and birth is indeed vulgar, the human race is thereby saved from all responsibility for having to continue at all. And on the James question, now that kleines c has so kindly sought out and contributed the photograph I can see that it would never have worked. But that by no means means that Willliam should stop exploring! That last comment is of the "have you stopped beating your wife yet?" variety to the extent of making the assumption that you're unqualified to make that William is "exploring" now.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 30, 2013 13:07:36 GMT -5
I agree, ahinton. As far as I am aware, the Duke of Cambridge is more than happy with his wife. Of course, I understand that those of another sexual persuasion may not see it that way, but perhaps they can consider it from a heterosexual point of view, Gerard?
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Post by Deleted on Jul 30, 2013 23:07:44 GMT -5
In the accompanying poll, I note that only one member has voted to abolish the monarchy. Neil? I suppose that it is worth asking whether the United Kingdom, the Commonwealth and the rest of the world would be better off without Queen Elizabeth II and her successors, and who would make a better head of state(s)! Of course, you could have a directly elected President, like President Obama, although would anyone really want president kleines c? If not me, whom?
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Post by neilmcgowan on Jul 31, 2013 2:26:33 GMT -5
Yes, I favour abolishing the monarchy. Not especially for the vast cost to which these n'ere-do-wells put the country, but primarily for the consitutional and institutional wrong they represent.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 31, 2013 2:39:09 GMT -5
I suppose that I would ultimately argue that we are all equal, Neil, even here online in 'The Third', but some of us are manifestly more equal than others. It was always thus?
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Post by ahinton on Jul 31, 2013 6:34:11 GMT -5
Yes, I favour abolishing the monarchy. Not especially for the vast cost to which these n'ere-do-wells put the country, but primarily for the consitutional and institutional wrong they represent. A ne'er-do-well by definition never does well - i.e. never does any good for anyone; whatever you or anyone else might think of the royal family as a whole, I do rather think your suggestion that none of them has ever done any good for anyone to be an unduly sweeping statement, actually. I am not party to knowledge of the precise year-on-year figures for the net cost to the British taxpyer either of the royal family as a whole or of HM the Queen alone, but I suspect that it may not be as unfeasibly and unreasonably large as some of Republican persuasion might assume; it occurs to me, for example, that the actual annual "savings" that will be generated by the latest round of government state benefit cost cuts may likewise be considerably smaller than claimed and hoped by those who have implemented them. I realise that the cost is not the principal thrust of your anti-monarchist argument, but since it's even been mentioned I would submit that the point of so doing might be questionable unless supported by reliable actual figures. As to your perception of the unconstitutionality of the British monarchy (do you by the way regard other current monarchies in the same way?), Britain has no written constitution, so one might argue that any alleged unconstitutionality isn't worth the paper on which it's not been written. I'm not quite sure what you mean by the institutional inappropriateness of the British monarchy, so perhaps you might care to clarify this in order to demonstrate what percisely you consider to be "wrong" about it. Whilst not by any means a committed monarchist (since I am not really certain quite what it's supposed to be there for), I suspect that the wholesale abolition of the British monarchy would be less than easy to justify and would in any case require the democratic support of a majority of the electorate that, if put to a referendum, I somehow doubt that it would receive.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 31, 2013 7:16:59 GMT -5
Out of interest, ahinton, what sort of referendum makes sense to you?
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Post by ahinton on Jul 31, 2013 7:31:51 GMT -5
Out of interest, ahinton, what sort of referendum makes sense to you? I was not actually advocating one, as my post should make clear but, should the possible abolition of the British monarchy be given due consideration by those whom it is supposed to serve, it ought, in my view, either have to form part of the manifesto of every electable political party at a UK General Election or be put by the government of the day to the electorate in a simple referendum that asks whether or not that institution should be abolished - in other words, a simple "yes or no" referendum as should be the case if there's ever to be one about Britain's continued EU membership or is the case in the forthcoming one on Scotland's continued membership of the United Kingdom (not that I'm advocating the former referendum and the latter is, of course, already scheduled).
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Post by Deleted on Jul 31, 2013 7:34:53 GMT -5
As something of a Scot, ahinton, are you in favour of Scottish independence? Out of interest, what do you consider your own identity to be?
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Post by ahinton on Jul 31, 2013 8:56:26 GMT -5
As something of a Scot, ahinton, are you in favour of Scottish independence? Out of interest, what do you consider your own identity to be? I am not "something of a Scot"; I am a Scot - although some might (or might not) argue that I am also "something", whatever that may or may not mean. My personal view of Scottish independence is that, in some respects, Scots are already "independent" in the way that some Catalans regard themselves as being "independent" of Spain without necessarily having either to be classified as such by reason of actual formal political independence or possessed of anomisoty towards Spain. That said, I am not especially convinced that political independence for Scotland any longer holds the possible relevance today as it might once have been argued to do. The fact that the entire UK as currently constituted is a member of EU and will remain so until or unless either that membership is terminated either by EU (most unlikely) or as a consequence of any future referendum on that membership held in Britain under the auspices of the British government of the day effectively means that an independent Scotland would have to reapply for EU membership (if so it chose - and it almost certainly would so choose), as its secession from the remainder of the current UK would automatically bring about the termination of the relationship with EU that it had previously enjoyed as a part of a member thereof; Scots will have to bear this in mind as part of their decision making apparatus when the referendum comes next year. On the other hand, the breaking away of Scotland from the rest of UK could well ultimately turn out to be of considerable historical significance in spelling the beginning of the end for the UK of (the currently tripartite) Great Britain and Northern Ireland, so I do regard next year's referendum as being of an importance too great to dismiss. As to my "identity", whatever that's suppose to be, it is as it is. I am a composer and a Scot although perhaps rarely both at the same time ( pace my compatriot Thea Musgrave who once declared that she is a woman and a composer but rarely both at the same time).
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Post by Deleted on Jul 31, 2013 10:09:40 GMT -5
For the record, Sydney, I am a Londoner, as it is the city in which I was born and brought up, although I would not choose to call myself English, principally because my mother is Welsh. So British, and European, it will have to be. We all carry around with us multiple identities, and it strikes me that if I claim to be European, it is worth defining exactly what I mean. Here I am, now in Leipzig, at home. Barfusz
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