“I am your king.” “Well, I didn’t vote for you.” “You don’t vote for kings.” “Well, how’d you become king, then?”
[Angelic music plays… ]
King Charles: “The Lady of the Lake, her arm clad in the purest shimmering samite, held aloft Excalibur from the bosom of the water, signifying by divine providence that my ancestor, Arthur, was to carry Excalibur. That is why I am your king.”
Peasant: “Listen. Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.”
You can’t expect to wield supreme executive power just ’cause some watery tart threw a sword at you!
SHUT! UP!
I mean, if I went around saying I was an emperor just because some moistened bint had lobbed a scimitar at me, they’d put me away!
Help! Help! I’m being repressed!
Now we see the violence inherent in the system!
One of the single best lines in all of cinema IMO.
“I had more swords than the other guy”
Mummy gave me the crown and we have too much money for anyone to object.
Forgive the Reddit link, the artist has only posted it there that I can tell.
For real, though…
I think everyone knows it’s ridiculous.
For some the monarchy is a living museum, they don’t have to like it, they just find it interesting.
The most expensive museum ever. Just what he’s wearing in that pic has a monetary value of more than the combined wealth of your extended family.
Imagine how much better the world would be if the wealth and land holdings (a sixth of the surface of the entire planet) belonged to the people in stead of the most privileged family in existence.
As far as what he’s wearing goes, it’s just a bunch of gold and jewels. Little that would actually help anyone do anything. We only consider it wealth at all because of the capitalist context around it.
That’s part of my point: the wealth and labor spent producing and procuring those ridiculous baubles could have been better spent improving the conditions of regular people, especially those that the system is actively stomping on.
Hell, the gold itself could have been put to myriad better uses than just adorning a spoiled idiot who believes in homeopathy and has a temper tantrum when someone gives him a pen that doesn’t work.
The royal family costs the UK tax payer 77p per year, most people aren’t outraged by that.
It can be argued that they attract a considerable amount of tourism, people that travel to the UK to see the Tower of London, the King’s guards, Buckingham palace and all the rest of it. There is also the “soft power”, people around the world are for some reason obsessed with the UK’s royal family and it does help with influence whether you’d argue that is for better or worse.
I understand that the obscene wealth they hold during a cost of living crisis is an image problem to say the least and I don’t defend that. Such obscene wealth is awful no matter who you are and according to the times rich list, there are at least 257 residents in the UK that are more wealthy than the Royals, some of them considerably so.
For the record, I’m not for or against the UK monarchy, I’m somewhere in-between and see validity in both sides of the argument.
Just as many people visit Paris as London. France is a republic. People go to see the buildings and stolen artifacts.
The royal family costs the UK tax payer 77p per year
If you believe that, I have a palace in Buckinghamshire to sell you 🙄
most people aren’t outraged by that.
Because it’s utter horse shit.
It can be argued that (repeats the same tired arguments that everyone’s heard a billion times before)
Yes, it can, but it shouldn’t. None of that justifies wasting billions of pounds on the royal family and letting them own most of the country tax free while enforcing austerity politics on an increasingly impoverished population with a deepening housing crisis.
It’s a grotesque waste of desperately needed resources and land.
For the record, I’m not for or against the UK monarchy
Yeah, I can tell by how you spent your first sentence making up an outrageous lie about how much of a financier drain on society they are, your second paragraph repeating all the usual pro- monarchy clichés, and the third disowning the second.
Thanks for wasting my time and that of anyone else reading it with your wishy-washy nonsense.
Ok, if you can find an unbiased source that says it costs the UK taxpayer more than 77p per person per year, I’ll read the rest of your comment.
https://news.stv.tv/scotland/how-much-does-the-royal-family-cost-a-breakdown-of-86-3m-in-key-figures
While I get your point the royal bullshit would just be placed in a museum similar to the royal regalia of the HRE or Lombardy. But yeah theyd probably be better off being kept as exclusive museum pieces rather than being put on the head of some inbred dipshit every once in a while.
But then I will miss out when it’s my turn to be king!
Sure you will, Ralph
Yeah but what would people dream of?
\s
You have a man who’s spray painted himself bright orange… Badly running for the premiership of your country.
We elected Boris Johnson to PMship. We aren’t better.
I’ve only ever seen the Queen in this regalia and I can’t not see it as crossdressing when Charles does it.
Lidia Thorpe is not wrong when Briitish colonialism fucked the world. The British should be held accountable for that. However, this arguement can be made to absolve the Australian government of their fuckery with indigenous people.
Sure, Australia didn’t become federate until the early 1900s. However, I would imagine sometime prior to that Australia was acting more or less as an independent country.
What do you mean by “The British should be held accountable”?
Who, exactly? And how, exactly?
The monarch, the government, the entire population?
Reparations? If you sell everything - crown estates, crown jewels, all the art, everything - are you going to deliver $7.28 to every single person in a former colony?
How about we look forwards, instead? There’s little to be gained in trying to make current-day nations pay reparations for things that their ancestors did.
Interesting take. Let’s not hold anybody to account by that logic. So what if the car I drive is stolen, I didn’t steal it. So what if the lady that I paid to have sex with was coerced, I didn’t force her. So what if the wealth that I stole from others is used to persecute the rest of the world…
So in your two hypothetical situation, what benefit does punishing you provide to any of the victims?
There’s little to be gained in trying to make current-day nations pay reparations for things that their ancestors did.
“We will not blame [King George] for the crimes of his ancestors if he relinquishes the royal rights of his ancestors; but as long as he claims their rights, by virtue of descent, then, by virtue of descent, he must shoulder the responsibility for their crimes.”.
-James ConnollyHow about we look forwards, instead?
How about we look at the present? Because colonialism isn’t over. People are still suffering from it right now. The global south is still actively being colonized and exploited right now.
You can’t drive a knife into someone’s ribs then say “what’s in the past is in the past, we need to look forward instead” when your hand is still holding the blade. How can you hope to start the process of healing if you haven’t even taken the knife out all the way?
Now, I don’t have all the answers for how that healing process is going to work for the world, but I’m pretty sure a billionaire dancing around in a golden hat and velvet robes with a title that says “God made my bloodline special so I can stab whoever I want” isn’t a part of it.
she was removed for speaking up against colonial criminals as an indigenous person. fucking boot lickers. probably literally too; wouldn’t be surprised.
Is anyone gonna talk about the article or just virtue signal about hating monarchy?
I hadn’t heard albo wanted to become a republic, that’s pretty interesting, but unlikely to materialise into anything because the Australia public almost certainly won’t vote for it.
This is par for the course of Lidia Thorpe, she’s been very hard to work with, even for other Aboriginal activists. She’s a contrarian that’s doesn’t seem to do much besides complain, just like the commenters on Lemmy.
Yeah, if we can’t even manage to enshrine a bloody advisory body to parliament with no powers into the constitution, then good luck getting a republic with the conservative media grip over this country.
I’m actually astonished how left-leaning we are in general, given the situation. But yeah, the Voice to Parliament referendum gives me very little hope in people voting to become a republic.
SUBJECTS WILL ALWAYS SUPPORT OR PROTEST AGAINST THE RULER… It was, is and will be the norm for monarchy.
This ultra privileged section of society do nothing really nothing and just use tax payers money to showcase their immense wealth.
Let that indigenous LADY SENATOR go berserk against the RULER OF THE COMMONWEALTH who is much more energised and privileged to focus on courting with his newly „announced wife“ rather than providing advice to the problems normal people.
AT LEAST LEND AN EAR TO THE VOICE OF THE GENERAL PUBLIC.
…well he’s not…
Oh boy, wait til you learn about the Commonwealth.
The Commonwealth isn’t the countries with the British Monarch as head of state.
But yeah, the British Monarch is the head of state in Australia. Annoyingly
I was in favour of mummifying HRH so that her preserved corpse could continue to be our figurehead leader. Honestly, as stupid as it sounds, I don’t think anyone can argue that it’s more stupid than the status quo.
i guess they have their own gods from the dreamtime
Associated Press - News Source Context (Click to view Full Report)
Information for Associated Press:
MBFC: Left-Center - Credibility: High - Factual Reporting: High - United States of America
Wikipedia about this sourceSearch topics on Ground.News
https://apnews.com/article/australia-canberra-king-charles-visit-4ea87d39d17c4a9fe3cbfab3455fb8f7
