[HN Gopher] Queen Elizabeth II has died
___________________________________________________________________
Queen Elizabeth II has died
Author : xd
Score : 2117 points
Date : 2022-09-08 17:33 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.com)
| ryanbytes wrote:
| nobodyandproud wrote:
| My deepest condolences.
|
| Years ago, I remember reading about how her family remained
| during WW2 while it was being bombed, against what was certainly
| "sensible" advice, and sharing in the hardship that everyone else
| was going through.
|
| Even generations and culturally separated, this sort of shared
| hardship left a lasting impression on me; and she certainly
| represented the best of the UK.
| swalls wrote:
| She died as she lived, protecting pedophiles and dodging taxes.
| dang wrote:
| We've banned this account for repeatedly posting flamebait and
| unsubstantive comments. That's not allowed here.
|
| If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email
| hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll
| follow the rules in the future. They're here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
|
| (Edit: actually I took a second look and your account history
| _doesn 't_ seem to be as I described it above--perhaps I got my
| wires crossed--so I've unbanned it for now. Please review
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and don't post
| like that though! It's not what this site is for, and it
| destroys what it is for.)
| superchroma wrote:
| Prince Andrew _is_ a pedophile, it 's not unsubstantiated,
| that's a monstrous thing to allege.
| dang wrote:
| Unsubstantive [?] unsubstantiated.
| superchroma wrote:
| Is this the hill you're electing to die on? I'm shocked.
| dang wrote:
| Yes? I've used that word thousands of times and it has
| purely to do with comment quality: https://hn.algolia.com
| /?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que....
| OJFord wrote:
| Unsubstantive, not unsubstantiated.
|
| Also, a true & correct comment would be unsubstantiated
| anyway (if that had been what dang had said) if it lacked
| reference or other such 'evidence'. It doesn't mean
| 'untrue'.
| masterof0 wrote:
| This is pretty off brand for HN, really. Even if you don't
| agree, that doesn't make it "flamebait" , the queen also was
| fine with sending Alan Turing to jail for being gay, I can
| find many other things along those lines. I don't understand
| the need to protect the image in this forum of a person who
| has not done anything really for regular people. YC being an
| american company makes it even worst, we here in the US don't
| own any kind of respect or courtesy to any royal, is
| literally part of the Oath of Allegiance. If you personally
| loved the queen, maybe don't read the comments? Otherwise be
| consistent and also ban people commenting on how bad russians
| are.
| dang wrote:
| Pretty sure " _She died as she lived, protecting pedophiles
| and dodging taxes_ " is about the most "on-brand" ban you
| can get here.*
|
| This is zero to do with image protection; I couldn't care
| less. What I care about, when doing this job, is not having
| dumb flamewars. There's not a lot more to it than that.
|
| I'm sure it's my fault for not being clearer, but you guys
| are taking this completely the wrong way if you think it
| has a whit to do with monarchism. It has to do with
| internet comments. That's all.
|
| More at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32771818 in
| case it helps.
|
| * but we wouldn't ban an established account for just one
| comment, and it looks like I made a mistake about that
| account's history, so I've unbanned it now. I wouldn't have
| done that if you hadn't replied, so thanks!
| masterof0 wrote:
| I get were you are coming from, but what I'm trying to
| say is: when someone considered evil by us (in the west)
| dies, would you hold the same standards? I respect what
| you do, and I know is super hard. I don't mean to be
| toxic or anything, just pointing out what I feel is
| important.
| dang wrote:
| I'm not entirely sure what you mean, but since you asked
| above if we "ban people commenting on how bad russians
| are", the answer is sure: nationalistic flamebait is not
| welcome on HN and we ask people to stop doing it and ban
| them if they don't stop doing it.
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&
| que...
|
| Banning vs. just scolding depends on what else the
| account has done on HN, but we don't moderate differently
| depending on the country people are talking about--or at
| least we try not to.
|
| Needless to say, that particular case is complicated by
| the war, but commenters can make their substantive points
| about that without attacking any ethnic group.
| shaftoe444 wrote:
| God save the King.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| The last monarch of her kind; I don't think the British monarchy
| institution will ever be the same nor future monarchs looked at
| with the same respect.
| phtrivier wrote:
| Thoughts for the family, and all people affectively attached to
| the monarchy
|
| That being said, given the geopolitical situation, I would not
| want to be responsible for the sitting arrangement of
| international dignitaires at the funeral.
|
| (In a fantasy book, it would be the "perfect" occasion for every
| one to meet on "sacred ground", observe a truce, and get so drunk
| that unexpected settlements get found.
|
| Sadly, we don't live in a fantasy book.)
| frosted-flakes wrote:
| Yes, Prime Minister had an amusing bit about that, and how they
| definitely weren't going to be seated in alphabetical order.
| wtcactus wrote:
| I don't believe in monarchies generally, and this sentiment
| remains throughout my life, although for slightly different
| reasons that keep improving with age. The more I read and know
| about history, the more I understand that the ideal of the
| Enlightened Monarch is a rare event, that can be destroyed in a
| single generation (we only have to look at Imperial Rome history
| for quite a few examples).
|
| Still, I do really respect the person and work that Elizabeth II
| did thorough her entire life, I really believe she helped improve
| the world with her limited power.
|
| Many purely democratic countries - mine included - would be so
| lucky to have her as the head of state.
| badcppdev wrote:
| I am sad for her passing. Was tuned into the news all afternoon
| waiting for the announcement even thought the writing was clearly
| on the wall and the announcement still made me tear up.
|
| But for all the talk of duty, morals, and leadership I saw none
| of that in the Queen. I saw a figurehead. Shaking hands and
| listening but what did she contribute? Definitely not morals or
| direction.
|
| People talk of her speech in 2020 during Covid in which she spoke
| about WW2 and how we need to stand together. And for me that just
| makes me feel that she could have made a huge difference in the
| global struggles that we are going to face coping with climate
| change. She could have made a real difference last year or 10
| years ago. Or 40 years ago.
|
| Her son has been more vocal about caring for the environment. Is
| it too much to hope that he will spend some of his influence
| swaying the new UK PM away from her reactionary pro-fossil fuel
| agenda. As the climate crisis starts to feel more and more like a
| existential threat is it foolish to hope for an ally.
|
| The Queen is dead. Long live the King
| xg15 wrote:
| I honestly wonder how much actual options she had in her
| position. The office of king/queen in the UK is both a
| cornerstone of the country and severely restricted by centuries
| of history. It might be that her taking any specific kind of
| political position might have been seen as damage to the
| democratic system of the uk.
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _I saw a figurehead. Shaking hands and listening but what did
| she contribute? Definitely not morals or direction._
|
| But that's her role -- as figurehead. The job is to be a
| symbol, not a leader. Leading is left to the democratically
| elected politicians, and for good reason. And it's not the new
| king's job to sway the PM. It's literally the opposite of his
| job.
|
| And if you don't think she contributed morals? Her behavior was
| impeccable. She contributed morals leading by example.
| dimensionc132 wrote:
| One person should not receive so much attention. People die. We
| all die. Yes, I understand she was a fake Queen of a country, but
| so what?
|
| Why do we feel we need to worship these people, be it royalty or
| celebrities? They are just people, like you and me who happen to
| be famous.
|
| People are dying in Gaza too, maybe spare a tear for them.
| _-david-_ wrote:
| >Yes, I understand she was a fake Queen of a country, but so
| what?
|
| She was a real queen, albeit with little power. What is a fake
| queen?
|
| >Why do we feel we need to worship these people, be it royalty
| or celebrities?
|
| Can you point to anybody worshipping her? Talking about a
| person or showing them respect is not worship.
|
| >People are dying in Gaza too, maybe spare a tear for them.
|
| Can people not do both?
| dimensionc132 wrote:
| A Queen, without power is a fake; it's just a title but with
| the inability to do anything because successive governments
| over time striped the Royal Family of any and all powers, and
| any that do remain can be vetoed by the Govt.
|
| This media circus, is a form a worship.
|
| Sure people can cry for a person such as the Queen, a person
| they do not know except for what they see on TV or in other
| forms of media. Personally I don't get it, I think Israel
| bombing Gaza killing children (just an example) is far more
| sad
| nly wrote:
| She did have power. She chose not to wield it or interfere,
| and trust in the system.
| dimensionc132 wrote:
| She was a figurehead only
|
| Although she was Commander-In-Chief, she gave
| responsibility to the prime minister and the Secretary of
| State for Defence, along with other officials.
| Theoretically she could have ordered a strike against the
| white house but this would be vetoed by the govt.
|
| She had the ability to declar war, however the government
| doesn't need the Queen's permission.
|
| She could have issued an order of Dissolution of
| Parliament, but parliament is not the same as the
| government. The British government is the one that
| actually rules in the UK. Also such an act would have
| caused an absolute uproar among UK citizens and probably
| ensured the beginning of a Republic
|
| So she has "power" in name only, but no real power which
| was my point, everything has been taken away from her ...
| and now also King Charles.
| _-david-_ wrote:
| >A Queen, without power is a fake; it's just a title but
| with the inability to do anything
|
| The power the queen had was very minimal, but she did still
| have some power. Maybe you don't consider minimal power to
| be sufficient to be considered a monarch?
|
| >This media circus, is a form a worship.
|
| Are you using worship to just mean a high level of respect?
| If that is the case then fine, I assumed you were using it
| as thinking of the queen as divine.
|
| >Sure people can cry for a person such as the Queen, a
| person they do not know except for what they see on TV or
| in other forms of media.
|
| Most of us don't know any person in Gaza so it is just a
| number or image on a TV. It doesn't really seem any
| different than the queen in that respect.
|
| Also, a random kid in Gaza likely doesn't impact us in the
| way the Queen can. If a kid in Gaza makes a speech are you
| going to hear about it? What about the queen?
|
| >Personally I don't get it, I think Israel bombing Gaza
| killing children (just an example) is far more sad
|
| It is irrelevant though? People can be sad for multiple
| things. There have been multiple threads on HN over the
| years about Israel / Palestine and other places going
| through turmoil. Why can't you just let people express
| sadness without trying to one up the sadness?
| dimensionc132 wrote:
| Great Britain is still a monarchy. However, it's known as
| a constitutional monarchy and now King Charles III is the
| holder of this title. However since it's a constitutional
| monarchy, most of the governing power rest with the
| parliament.
|
| https://medium.com/dose/does-the-queen-of-england-have-
| any-r...
| privatdozent wrote:
| She always struck me as a person with extraordinary character and
| integrity. RIP
| torbTurret wrote:
| protomyth wrote:
| The driving the Saudi King story is my favorite
| https://www.businessinsider.com/queen-england-terrified-saud...
| pmontra wrote:
| Spoiler: "Queen Elizabeth II doesn't even have a driver's
| license. As Queen, she doesn't need one." but "as an Army
| driver during a war, she knew how to roll along Scotland's
| winding roads."
| 0xcafecafe wrote:
| Nice read!
|
| >>Queen Elizabeth II doesn't even have a driver's license. As
| Queen, she doesn't need one
|
| Didn't know that either.
| Phrodo_00 wrote:
| The king/queen's passport situation is also weird. British
| passports ask for passage "in the name of Her Majesty", but
| she theoretically doesn't need one since she can ask
| herself.
| OJFord wrote:
| Not to disagree, just to say the phrasing IIRC is that HM
| 'requests and requires' (that the bearer of the passport
| be allowed to pass 'without let or hindrance', and so
| on).
| dijit wrote:
| Same as passports; they're issued in her name, thus she
| doesn't need one.
|
| It's also true that she cannot be prosecuted for any crime
| except that of treason against the British people, but
| that's contestable. Since crimes are prosecuted in her
| name.
| confidantlake wrote:
| Ah she is legally above the law. Not that I am
| criticizing the monarchy. Just curiously pointing it out.
| mhh__ wrote:
| "Her Britannic Majesty's Secretary of State requests and
| _requires_ in the name of Her Majesty all those whom it
| may concern to allow the bearer to pass freely without
| let or hindrance and to afford the bearer such assistance
| and protection as may be necessary. "
| [deleted]
| SEMW wrote:
| Charles I tried that argument, it didn't go well for him.
| dijit wrote:
| Sure, but that was overturned 4 years later and caused
| many people to die.
|
| I wouldn't assume anyone to be as bold as Mr Cromwell
| was.
| whoooooo123 wrote:
| Argh, and she was so close to overtaking Louis XIV as the longest
| reigning monarch in history! I was really hoping we'd beat the
| French.
|
| But seriously, this is a momentous day for Britain and the world.
| She was a titan of public life, known to billions. The world will
| never be the same without her. I don't know what these means for
| Britain but I expect it will be quite destabilising.
|
| May she rest in peace. Long live the king!
| dijit wrote:
| The many-many crisis' going on, the strikes, the incredibly
| unpopular ascent of a new prime minister and now this?
|
| Definitely destabilising.
|
| I suspect a collective mourning and unity of the country
| followed closely by civil unrest the likes of which hasn't been
| seen in living British memory.
| hnarn wrote:
| Now begins the crucial and cringeworthy task of C-level
| executives (and those mimicking them) all over the world posting
| about this on LinkedIn and emailing all employees regardless of
| how many of those receiving the message have any connection to
| the UK or the Commonwealth.
|
| I'm not saying this doesn't matter, of course it does. It's sad
| like any death is, and it's meaningful to many people. But there
| are many kings and queens out there, and just because this one
| meant a lot to you doesn't mean you should start roleplaying a
| member of the British nobility.
|
| The only decent and respectful way to approach this for all parts
| involved in my mind is to acknowledge it, pay your condolences
| and move on. That's the respectful and sane common ground we can
| all agree on.
|
| As soon as you start making business decisions based on this for
| a global company (like global days of mourning, for example) you
| are, in my humble opinion, treading on thin ice.
|
| This type of cultural hegemony kills the employer-employee
| relationship.
|
| Be professional. Be reserved.
| I-M-S wrote:
| Stalwart and solemn, she lived a life submitted to one's duty.
| Truly an end of an era.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| Rest In Peace!
| Kenji wrote:
| nedsma wrote:
| May she rest in peace.
| Rackedup wrote:
| dheera wrote:
| Why democracy? Monarchy isn't great, but neither is democracy
| when most of your population is idiots who don't believe in
| science.
| UI_at_80x24 wrote:
| dang wrote:
| Don't post flamebait to Hacker News, please.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| rvz wrote:
| Good luck on moderating this one, dang. I think you need it.
| dang wrote:
| If accounts break the site guidelines and their history
| shows that they've been doing it repeatedly, we'll ban
| them. I've banned quite a few already.
|
| This is a housecleaning moment, since the accounts posting
| flamewar comments to this thread are so obviously not using
| the site as intended.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| prionassembly wrote:
| A toast to dang's health.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| FYI: When people are this age, they can die suddenly without much
| warning. I saw a headline a few hours ago about her family coming
| to visit, and I thought we'd have a few days.
|
| Both of my grandmothers died at 91 without much warning. Cherish
| your time with your elders, and don't procrastinate a visit.
| jesuscript wrote:
| Do we understand what makes it sudden yet? The point has been
| made many times about Biden, Bernie and Trumps age, but I guess
| that _suddenness_ doesn't quite kick in until 85+?
| gwbas1c wrote:
| Some tests (I think blood) can detect that a body is about to
| die. As far as why, the human body just can't go on forever.
|
| With my grandfather, who was 101, someone did a blood test
| and told us he was going to die very soon. A few hours later,
| when I visited, he was pushing his wheelchair around and
| pestering the social worker about all of his funeral plans.
| It honestly reminds me of the end of the movie Zardoz. (He
| had his funeral planned for years.)
|
| He died four days later.
| netsharc wrote:
| I mean, the family rushed there because they knew "this could
| be it", and the statement issued by the palace this morning
| "Following further evaluation this morning, the Queen's doctors
| are concerned for Her Majesty's health and have recommended she
| remain under medical supervision. The Queen remains comfortable
| at Balmoral." was probably meant to also be taken as a big
| warning, despite it sounding understated.
| Hongwei wrote:
| RIP. As a Canadian I've always liked that we technically had
| _the_ Queen as our head of state. I wonder how attitudes will
| change now that her 70 year reign.
| collegeburner wrote:
| michael1999 wrote:
| Because they have no power and we get to hold the actual
| elected leaders in contempt, as is right and just. The
| alternative is electing one, and that kind of worship messes
| with people's heads. Look how bonkers some Americans get
| about their blessed president.
| SonicScrub wrote:
| I don't agree with the argument that having a Monarch
| somehow shields Canada from worship of it's leaders, or
| enables us to hold our leaders in contempt. Absolutely no
| one in country thinks of the Monarch as our head of state
| except in a technical sense. The Prime Minister is for all
| practical purposes. Having a monarch in no-way shields
| Canadian leaders from hero-worship. Nor does it make Canada
| uniquely able to hold politicians accountable. It's our
| Westminster-style parliamentary system that (somewhat)
| achieves that by concentrating less power in the hands of
| an individual, which could exist independent of the
| Monarch. It already essentially does since the King-Bing
| Affair in the 1920s cemented the Monarch's influence as
| purely ceremonial.
| shawabawa3 wrote:
| People hate change is the short answer
|
| The status quo has a lot of momentum and you need some sort
| of catalyst to make the change. Liz managed to avoid much
| controversy so that catalyst never appeared - perhaps her
| death will trigger the will to change it
| dang wrote:
| I'm going to assume that you didn't see
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32769101 before you
| posted this. Please stop now, so we don't have to ban you.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| SonicScrub wrote:
| I have an idea that's only half insane. Bear with me. Let's
| assume we want to get rid of the monarch as Canada's head-of-
| state. Canada will not be able to feasibly do so because it
| opens up too many difficult questions about re-structuring our
| government. Ergo, we will probably just coast on the status-
| quo. But we could use the desire for everything to stay the
| same to our advantage by declaring the Queen Elizabeth II the
| Eternal Monarch even in death.
|
| The Monarch of Canada is a ceremonial position. The Monarch's
| representative (the Governor General) is appointed by the Prime
| Minister and has no real power (see: the King-Bing Affair for
| legal precedent), and therefore could technically be done by
| anyone from anywhere (even beyond the grave). Politically
| speaking, absolutely nothing would have to change. The
| Monarch's effective power in our political system would go from
| basically zero to literally zero, thus eliminating an avenue
| for potential abuse of power that we risk by keeping a living
| Monarch as head-of-state. We could achieve this without having
| to re-open difficult constitutional questions. Traditionalist
| Canadian institutions with "Royal" in their names (Mounted
| Police, Army, Airforce, etc) would not have to change their
| names or branding. Heck, we wouldn't even have to change the
| designs on our money. Literally nothing would change except
| closing a loop-hole (albeit a very low-risk one) for potential
| power abuse in our political system.
|
| The only down side is that smug know-it-alls can say "actually
| Canada is not a democracy, it's a Constitutional Necrocracy"
| cwillu wrote:
| Constitutional amendments that only come into force upon the
| death of the next monarch; I like it!
| radford-neal wrote:
| The Governor General does, and must, have real power. The
| King-Bing affair was controversial, but the Governor
| General's action was arguably justified, and negative
| opinions of it do not set a precedent that the Governor
| General can never do anything. The Governor general arguably
| should have taken a more active role in some recent times -
| when Paul Martin and Stephen Harper were trying to dodge
| (successfully, it turned out) votes of non-confidence, which
| have to be allowed in a democracy. Certainly, if the Prime
| Minister blatantly violates constitutional convention, such
| as by refusing to resign after losing the confidence of the
| House, it is necessary for the Governor General to dismiss
| them.
|
| Since the Governor General must have real power, it follows
| that the Monarch must have real power regarding the
| appointment of the Governor General - rejecting the Prime
| Minister's request to dismiss or appoint a Governor General
| when this is clearly an attempt to fill the position with
| someone who will allow the Prime Minister to act non-
| democratically.
|
| A dead person will not be able to fulfill this role.
| SonicScrub wrote:
| > Since the Governor General must have real power, it
| follows that the Monarch must have real power regarding the
| appointment of the Governor General - rejecting the Prime
| Minister's request to dismiss or appoint a Governor General
| when this is clearly an attempt to fill the position with
| someone who will allow the Prime Minister to act non-
| democratically.
|
| Counter-hypothetical: what if the Monarch decided to act
| against the Prime Minister and appoint a Governor General
| to act against their mandate? Both your hypothetical and
| mine are incidents of "bad-behaviour" going against norms
| to push agendas. We would prefer were that neither were
| possible. However in your hypothetical at least the person
| exhibiting "bad-behaviour" (the Prime Minister) has some
| mandate given that they were democratically elected.
| Whereas in my hypothetical the person exhibiting "bad-
| behaviour" is an inherited position held by someone in
| lives in a far-away place and may have only set foot in the
| nation they are meddling in a handful of times.
|
| In either situation we're accepting the risk of bad-faith
| actors manipulating the structures of power, but if we
| ditch the Monarch, at least the person doing so is in
| someway accountable to the people. Harper was successfully
| able to dodge a confidence vote, but in the end he was
| ousted from power in a democratic process. I'd argue that's
| the better scenario.
| radford-neal wrote:
| The difference between a bad-actor Prime Minister and a
| bad-actor Monarch is precisely that the latter, in
| today's world, clearly has no legitimacy outside of
| enforcing well-established norms. So a Monarch appointing
| their unelected friend as Governor General, contrary to
| the Prime Minister's wishes, would simply result in an
| extra-legal declaration that the country is now a
| republic, or possibly that the Monarch is now the next
| person in line of succession (ie, forced abdication,
| again, extra-legal). In contrast, a Prime Minister who
| tells the Monarch to dismiss the Governor General and
| appoint their friend as Governor General instead, after
| loosing a confidence vote and refusing to resign, will
| presumably have the backing of some segment of the
| population (unless they're just insane), and hence will
| be much more dangerous, if the Monarch declines to
| exercise their power to refuse this request.
| SonicScrub wrote:
| I do not think it is a good idea to assume that a Monarch
| will always be viewed as having no legitimacy outside of
| enforcing established norms. While that is certainly the
| case now, I would not want to rely on that being true
| forever. After which we would have to rely on benevolence
| (or perhaps indifference) of undemocratic executive
| power.
|
| Could we not solve the problem of the PM appointing a
| lackey as Governor General with other form of check-and-
| balance that requires zero input from individuals with no
| connections to a democratic process? Perhaps a similar
| way that Supreme Court Justices are appointed (candidates
| recommended by the Prime Minister and approved by the
| federal cabinet). While not immune to abuses of power, I
| would like this better than a Monarch being that check-
| and-balance.
| pontifier wrote:
| Makes me wonder what sorts of things will be triggered by this
| event. I bet security services are on high alert, and for some
| reason I'm a little worried about getting on my flight in a
| couple hours.
| glitchcrab wrote:
| I suspect you're somewhat overthinking/over-worrying here. What
| scenario do you see playing out with regards to your flight?
| pontifier wrote:
| I probably am. I had a dream a few days ago that I was in a
| plane crash, then a major world event happens just before I
| fly? The world feels very unstable at the moment.
| collegeburner wrote:
| dang wrote:
| We ban accounts that post flamebait, which you've done more
| than once lately. Can you please stop? It's not what this site
| is for, and it destroys what it is for.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| 6d6b73 wrote:
| I think allowing news not related to technology in any way
| destroys this side way more than any stupid comment someone
| posts
| dang wrote:
| Hacker News has never been purely about technology. You may
| be misunderstanding what's on topic here. Please see
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
| balentio wrote:
| It'd be great to have a hacker news for things that are not
| hacker news. I refuse to go to reddit, though.
| rbolla wrote:
| Om Shanthi .
| citilife wrote:
| Fun facts:
|
| - She ruled for 30% of the time since the American Revolution
|
| - She oversaw the largest reduction of landholdings of any empire
| in the history of the world. Notable because it was also one of
| the most peaceful transitions in history -- Australia, Canada,
| South Africa, Israel, Egypt, etc.
|
| - She oversaw the loss of Sterling the world reserve currency and
| the rise of another (the USD, EU).
| JAlexoid wrote:
| > She oversaw the largest reduction of landholdings of any
| empire in the history of the world.
|
| Notably, without loosing their royal power over those
| landholdings.
| citilife wrote:
| India, South Africa, ... etc
| S201 wrote:
| India's independence was 1947, before her 1953 ascension.
| citilife wrote:
| Fair, my general point was there were quite a bit in
| there.
| JAlexoid wrote:
| Yes, not every... but a lot of former dominions kept the
| aristocracy in place.
| _puk wrote:
| Ironically that is one of the first times I've seen
| lose/loose stand true for either interpretation.
|
| She didn't lose her royal power when handing over those
| landholdings, nor did she loose it (militarily) to prevent
| those reductions in the first place.
|
| Seems like she handled it well.
| JAlexoid wrote:
| In essence Westminster Parliament lost its power, but the
| Royal Family remained unaffected in many cases.
|
| There was little for the Royal Family to adjust to.
|
| They were the sovereigns of those nations, if independent
| from the UK. They still "appoint" the PMs of those
| countries and have a fair amount of political influence via
| governors.
| koheripbal wrote:
| The word "oversaw" is doing a lot of work here.
|
| She didn't do much herself.
| divbzero wrote:
| > _She oversaw the largest reduction of landholdings of any
| empire in the history of the world. Notable because it was also
| one of the most peaceful transitions in history -- Australia,
| Canada, South Africa, Israel, Egypt, etc._
|
| The peaceful diminishing of an empire should be remembered as
| one of the most remarkable achievements during her reign, a
| striking contrast to world leaders past and present who seek
| the reverse.
| Tsarbomb wrote:
| She has been Queen of Canada for 45% of Canada's existence as
| an independent nation. Wild.
| citilife wrote:
| I'm curious if they'll be splitting the monarchy between the
| children or keeping it consistent. Government could actually
| change quite a bit at this point across much of the west.
| bena wrote:
| Who is "they" in this case?
|
| Technically there is no one who could authorize that split
| except the current monarch. I'd imagine things will
| continue just as they were
| peeters wrote:
| I'm not sure what GP is speculating about either but as
| for succession, AFAIK sovereign countries in the
| commonwealth have their own rules. The head of state of
| Canada was not the Queen of England, it was the Queen of
| Canada, and theoretically nothing would stop the heir to
| those positions being different. In fact this was
| momentarily a topic of conversation in Canadian news
| outlets as the UK was talking about changing the rules of
| succession to be gender neutral and whether that would
| make for different heirs if the rest of commonwealth
| didn't change their rules in step. In practice that was
| moot since Prince William's firstborn was male.
| pmyteh wrote:
| They are separate, but the different countries have
| agreed to keep them coordinated. You're right that there
| was a conversation about the change to absolute
| primogeniture, with the different realms having to agree
| to pass the necessary legislation. If one realm had _not_
| agreed I suspect the change wouldn 't have happened,
| rather than the succession being split.
|
| That said, there is precedent. Victoria didn't inherit
| Hanover, which had been in personal union with the UK,
| because it had different succession laws (which excluded
| women). So it's just a matter of political will really.
| divbzero wrote:
| > _She oversaw the loss of Sterling the world reserve currency
| and the rise of another (the USD, EU)._
|
| Technically this occurred with the Bretton Woods agreement in
| 1944 [1] several years before Queen Elizabeth II ascended to
| the throne.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bretton_Woods_system
| Kon-Peki wrote:
| Another one:
|
| - At least in the US, Canadian diplomatic residences are owned
| by her. Where I live, the owner of the consulate general's home
| is listed in public records as "Her Majesty the Queen Right
| Canada".
|
| Here's another example from a few years ago:
|
| > Charlie Zelle confirmed Wednesday he has purchased a five-
| bedroom, five-bathroom Minneapolis lakeshore home that has been
| the official residence of the Canadian consulate general.
|
| > Records show Charles and Julie Zelle paid $1.65 million US
| for the property, with the seller listed as "Her Majesty Queen
| Elizabeth."
|
| https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/canada-diplomatic-residence-so...
| andrepd wrote:
| Not that this is quite the right time, but is there any list of
| the Queen's achievements that isn't simply "she lived for very
| long" and "she witnessed some important events"? I fail to see
| why this is impressive.
| jsmith99 wrote:
| Her main achievement was utterly subordinating her personal
| life to the requirement of her public life. No one has any idea
| of what her personal belief was on any matter more
| consequential than what brand of cornflakes she ate.
| kfrzcode wrote:
| Go here, scroll to the section entitled "References" and read
| some stuff.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_II
| jyscao wrote:
| Someone else linked this in the comments:
| https://www.businessinsider.com/queen-england-terrified-saud...
|
| > She remains the only female member of the royal family to
| join the military, and is the only living head of state to
| serve in WWII.
|
| Personally speaking, I definitely respect her for that.
| rcarr wrote:
| I reckon having to endure listening to whatever moron PM is
| currently in power every week for seventy years is a decent
| achievement. In all seriousness though, I'd say that not
| fucking up for an entire reign is a pretty big achievement. Can
| you name any other celebrity (for lack of a better word) that
| hasn't really put a foot wrong in all that time?
|
| Put aside what you think about monarchies and royals and look
| at the actual person. She was completely dedicated to serving
| other people in the same way that the very best of our
| uniformed services are and it's why she gets so much respect
| from just about everyone.
|
| In a way, it reminds me of musicians who aren't particularly
| known for their collectivism. I don't know for sure, but I
| can't imagine it's particularly fun to play the same song that
| made you famous in your twenties and play it every night for
| the next 50 years. A lot of them can't stand it and stop
| playing their old songs. Or stop touring all together.
|
| This is kind of what the Queen has done but rather than just
| every night for an hour and a half, it's literally been every
| single day of her life. But she went to all those events and
| met all those people because even though it was the millionth
| time for her giving a medal to someone, it was the very first
| time for the other person receiving it. They were overjoyed
| getting to shake her hand and tell all their friends and family
| that they got to meet the Queen. And that's what she cared
| about.
|
| She's done all this every day and not moaned once about it. Put
| yourself in her shoes. Yes, you get a fancy house and free
| money. But the life you have to live in exchange for it is not
| your own. You don't get to pursue your own individualist
| desires and dreams. All of those are put aside for your duties.
| At all times in public and most likely a lot of the time in
| public, you must act completely dignified. No emotional
| outbursts, you must be the rock that others lean on. You don't
| really get to retire, you just carry this on until you die.
|
| There have been countless monarchs both in Britain and across
| the world who have not been up to the job. They've blamed
| others, shirked duties and abused their powers. But not this
| one. She really was the real deal.
| cvoss wrote:
| It's impressive because the rest of us have to read about these
| things in history books or in the news. She was there for it
| all, not only witnessing, but discussing, events of profound
| significance with the people at the center of them.
|
| And, I think, show-me-the-achievements represents a
| misunderstanding of the role of the monarch in the British
| government and British culture. It's not comparable to the
| Prime Minister or the US President, for example.
| rospaya wrote:
| It's not about the achievment, but it illustrates a point how
| long she was a fixture in British public life.
| rafale wrote:
| The role of the Monarch is not easy to qualify. She is a symbol
| of continuation, stability and unity. Her neutrality makes her
| look like she is doing exactly nothing, when it's the source of
| her power and influence. She lives above politics. Beyond that,
| the Queen has real so called reserve powers that in theory she
| could use in time of great crisis to change government or stop
| laws (she used it once I think). But she can't use them in an
| authoritarian manner or else risk losing them and tarnish her
| legacy.
| MKais wrote:
| People are like a flock of sheep looking for a shepherd. This is
| the business model of all royalty/democracies around the world.
|
| Humanity needs an alpha male/female to lead the flock because it
| would have a better chance of survival than if everyone went
| their separate ways.
|
| Leadership and other corporate BS teaches nothing more than this
| truth: Ignore your own doubts, have a straight face and lead the
| herd where you want.
|
| The queen and her family cost less than 2$/year/brit, less than a
| stupid game on the app store.
| Hallucinaut wrote:
| I'm echoing what others have said but as a Commonwealth citizen
| turned British citizen with a grandmother who was the same age
| but died last year, I can't help but feel an extended member of
| my family has passed.
|
| I am not a monarchist by any means, but I felt an attachment and
| affection for the Queen that made me value the institution. I
| know she led a privileged life but ceaseless service and
| consistency across literal generations is, to my view, no easy
| ride.
|
| Rest in peace
| cauefcr wrote:
| adammarples wrote:
| [deleted]
| meowmeowmoo wrote:
| Wasn't he a sexual predator?
| hit8run wrote:
| I think he was one of Englands greatest child molesters.
| dang wrote:
| Posting flamebait to HN will get you banned here. No more of
| this, please.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
|
| We detached this subthread from
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32769157.
| privatdozent wrote:
| <<An introvert person in an extrovert job>>
| thevania wrote:
| i dont care, this is not tech news
| dang wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| drKarl wrote:
| collegeburner wrote:
| matsemann wrote:
| Why do you mean traditions are _not_ important?
| maxboone wrote:
| Meh, it's more than tradition. It also brings stability and
| help with diplomatic relations.
|
| De facto, the country is not a monarchy but rather a
| democracy.
| dimator wrote:
| Do they really have any power though? At this point they're
| there because they've always been there, but why is that bad
| on its own?
|
| It does give the people a sense of history and dignity about
| their longevity.
| gsatic wrote:
| bengale wrote:
| I'm finding this is hitting a lot harder than I expected.
| irrational wrote:
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| It feels strange when someone, who has been here since seemingly
| forever, dies.
|
| As it was recently discussed here [0], _You have a sad feeling
| for a moment, then it passes._ [1]
|
| [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32252198
|
| [1]:
| https://everything2.com/title/You+have+a+sad+feeling+for+a+m...
| [deleted]
| sgjohnson wrote:
| I wonder how many of the Commonwealth Realms are going to retain
| their monarchies. We might see Canada, Australia, New Zealand
| (and the rest of them) becoming republics.
| xbar wrote:
| I believe we have witnessed the passing of a truly great human
| being, born into power within a system that is completely unjust.
| She could have disrupted her society, but instead she did her
| best to maintain the culture while helping as many as she could
| and harming as few as possible.
|
| I am an American, and I am grateful to have been among her
| contemporaries in a way that I cannot say that about any other
| British monarch.
| mattlondon wrote:
| Time to end on a high? Shall we just abandon this whole monarchy
| thing and time to flip over to a republic and leave the much
| revered queen as the last ever monarch of the UK?
|
| Seems like Scotland is going to go independent, and if Scotland
| do Wales will only be a matter of time so may as well just can it
| now?
| de6u99er wrote:
| I think it's overdue. IMO Brexit would not have happened if GB
| wouldn't be a monarchy.
| frereubu wrote:
| Recent polls show support for Scottish independence dropping.
| Charles becoming king may affect that of course, but I wouldn't
| say it's at all clear that "Scotland is going to go
| independent".
|
| I agree on the idea of dropping the monarchy on a high though,
| as long as we go for a presidential system similar to Ireland
| rather than the USA...
| andrepd wrote:
| A President which is more or less an elected Queen of England
| is all I ask at this point.
| frereubu wrote:
| Which is pretty much what happens in Ireland: https://s3.sc
| oopwhoop.com/anj2/5e65e3cf2f1b745e07bed5fa/ceaf...
| walthamstow wrote:
| Germany and Italy too
| blibble wrote:
| dang wrote:
| Please don't cross into personal attack.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| blibble wrote:
| which part of that is a personal attack?
| dang wrote:
| The phrase "you people" is a putdown and the entire
| comment was aggressive and rude. Please don't post like
| that to HN. If you review
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html, you'll
| see how much it goes against the intended spirit of the
| site.
|
| I've been banning every account in this thread that is
| breaking the site guidelines and also has a recent
| history of breaking the site guidelines. Fortunately your
| account doesn't pass the second test! but if you wouldn't
| mind reviewing the rules and sticking to them, we'd be
| grateful.
| monsieurgaufre wrote:
| Why should we?
|
| It's a perfect moment to think about this.
| ProAm wrote:
| UI_at_80x24 wrote:
| dopamean wrote:
| jobs_throwaway wrote:
| she's dead, it's not going to offend her anymore
| acchow wrote:
| Her family is in mourning tho
| aaaaaaaaata wrote:
| ithinkso wrote:
| I think that when people see the world 'monarchy' they still
| have the vision and ideas of monarchies from medival ages.
| Modern european monarchies that are still around are nothing
| but and, to be honest, I have no idea what would have changed
| really if they were no longer here
| cameronh90 wrote:
| I believe that Charles is now officially already king.
| lawlorino wrote:
| Yes I think this is the case. The death announcement from
| Buckingham Palace refers to him as such.
|
| "The Queen died peacefully at Balmoral this afternoon.
|
| The King and The Queen Consort will remain at Balmoral this
| evening and will return to London tomorrow."
| [deleted]
| philistine wrote:
| The phrase _the King is dead long live the King_ exists to
| make sense of the whole concept.
|
| A throne is never empty. The second Elizabeth died, Charles
| became king.
| mechanical_bear wrote:
| But coronation will not occur for about a year.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| Coronation is just a ceremony.
| frereubu wrote:
| This threw me back to studying Ionesco at school - "Le roi
| se meurt! Vive le roi!"
| zeslinguer wrote:
| Not sure where you're getting the idea Scotland is likely to go
| independent, the 'no' vote has been consistently 5% higher than
| 'yes' for a long time, except for during Partygate. Add in the
| fact that the Tories will likely not be in government, an
| aggressive Russia (SNP policy is to get rid of their nukes) and
| it's probably unlikely. Welsh independence is polling at 25%
| david927 wrote:
| Yes! Let's push this as hard as possible. Monarchies are an
| affront to all Enlightenment ideals and belong in the history
| books.
| toyg wrote:
| As much as I love Enlightenment principles, I've learned with
| age that Reason is not enough for human society to flourish.
| People need something that goes beyond reason, or even
| explicitly against reason, to find meaning in their own
| existence.
|
| A constitutional monarchy is an unreasonable construct, but
| its perseverance is a symbol of continuity and certainty in
| an existence that is so often chaotic and uncertain. It
| provides reassurance to many, and mutes the worst excesses of
| political turmoil. As long as it really stays out of the fray
| (and that's sadly not always been the case, with Elizabeth
| II, and it's likely her son will be even worse), then I don't
| have a problem with it. Like religion, I don't need it, you
| don't need it, but many do - and they might as well have it.
| GamerUncle wrote:
| Enlightenment ideals are an affront to all that is good in
| humanity and the victims of Robespierre and the industrial
| revolution know it better than anyone. Let us push to the
| opposite side and make away with enlightenment and its
| destructive path. In a couple centuries enlightenment has put
| us closer to death than any and all kings.
| oynqr wrote:
| Do you happen to own a cabin in the woods, perchance?
| unethical_ban wrote:
| Are they?
|
| Elizabeth nor Charles are claiming devine right. They are a
| unfiying vestige of times past, providing as she did a human
| constant, an embodiment of the Commonwealth.
|
| So long as their heredity isn't overtly providing them the
| ability or write or enforce law, it does not seem an affront
| to democracy.
| kahrl wrote:
| The royal prerogative includes the powers to appoint and
| dismiss ministers, regulate the civil service, issue
| passports, declare war, make peace, direct the actions of
| the military, and negotiate and ratify treaties, alliances,
| and international agreements.
|
| While Elizabeth has CHOSEN to not use these powers much,
| any future monarch can. Just look at the U.S. in the last 6
| years to see what happens when a country relies more on
| historical norms rather than law.
| zeslinguer wrote:
| Not just Elizabeth but any other British Monarch in the
| last 300 years. The UK has one of the oldest and
| strongest democracies around.
| ajvs wrote:
| Except they lobby for tax cuts and exemptions so it doesn't
| touch their wealth, whilst getting money from the taxpayer
| also.
| _-david-_ wrote:
| Don't they let the government use their property for
| free? It seems like a mutual type of situation. Unless
| you are advocating for seizing land?
| andrepd wrote:
| She has had weekly un-recorded meetings with the head of
| government for seven decades. I don't know the degree to
| which these influence policy or not, but if that isn't an
| affront to democracy I don't know what is.
| wowokay wrote:
| Agreed
| kisero wrote:
| Definitely agree
| Someone wrote:
| Having the United Kingdom is orthogonal to them being
| monarchies. Australia and Canada are independent, but also
| monarchies
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monarchy_of_Australia,
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monarchy_of_Canada), so,
| presumably, Scotland and Wales could choose to do the same.
| petercooper wrote:
| _Shall we just abandon this whole monarchy thing and time to
| flip over to a republic and leave the much revered queen as the
| last ever monarch of the UK?_
|
| I'd vote no, because then we'd end up with people like Boris
| Johnson or Liz Truss as our head of state(!!) The monarch
| nowadays is important for what they _prevent_. The Queen stood
| in the way of someone like Boris getting access to all the
| 'bling' of state. A big shift would need to occur _before_ we
| could become a sensible republic, particularly in dismantling a
| lot of the ceremonial aspects of British life. Perhaps even a
| collective head of state like the Swiss could work.
| mhh__ wrote:
| With the queen gone the questions around royal consent and
| Prince Andrew and Charles nuttier opinions will be much harder
| to answer.
| wowokay wrote:
| I know none of us knew her personally but this doesn't seem
| like a sentiment shared by most, and it is definitely not
| something to bring up when she isn't even in the ground yet.
| [deleted]
| gwbas1c wrote:
| As an American, I kind of envy the fact that there's a referee
| who can step in when needed. She stepped into Australia's
| government shut down and fired the whole government in the
| 1970s during a government shutdown.
|
| It works because she receives extensive training to be
| apolitical. (And if she is political, there are repercussions.)
| Waterluvian wrote:
| There isn't. If the Queen ever steps in, it's immediately a
| constitutional crisis that threatens the entire legitimacy of
| our democracy. Her role has been purely ceremonial for the
| longest time.
|
| At least this is true for Canada. I have to imagine it's very
| similar for the rest of the Commonwealth. Every instance of
| involvement that wasn't ceremonial has been doing precisely
| what the Prime Minister has requested of her via the Governor
| General, such as dissolving parliament. Which I guess makes
| that ceremonial too.
| zander312 wrote:
| God save the Queen.
| VictorPath wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02D2T3wGCYg
| droptablemain wrote:
| May she be the last of her kind.
| savryn wrote:
| All my rich feelings about this as a millennial woman are from
| watching Netflix's The Crown.
|
| I think that fact is absolutely incredible, and I'm just noticing
| how it works, the glimpses of feeling I get as I scroll news
| feed... images from real photos of the queen seamlessly woven in
| with flashes of scenes and emotions evoked from watching... Even
| emotional bits that I KNOW are not legit accurate/real.... My
| mind treats it all as one category anyway.
|
| The show is an elegant testament to what fiction does, to portray
| a woman's epic coming of age and into the power and duty of
| something much bigger than her, across a century.
|
| Our literature just doesn't have that grandness anymore, there
| are no literary novels by writers today about today that do this.
| Aesthetics there have changed in their scope somehow.
|
| It's all on our film and tv technology to refresh these themes of
| responsibility, inner steeliness, honor, sacrifice,
| respectability etc... to make what's old new again.
|
| I'm certain before the show I cared nothing, and after it, I care
| a lot.
| hsavit1 wrote:
| dang wrote:
| Flamebait will get you banned here, so please don't post like
| this.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| lotux wrote:
| speedylight wrote:
| When I saw the news of her death on Twitter I had a really uneasy
| feeling, I don't know how to describe it... it's like mortality
| slapped me across the face. From all indications she was a strong
| and noble queen. May she rest in peace.
| [deleted]
| xwdv wrote:
| With the Pandemic, and the death of the Queen, and several other
| events, we can now say that the beginning of the 2020s marks the
| true cultural beginning of the 21st Century. These times will
| look increasingly different from whatever came before.
| paxys wrote:
| > In a statement, Buckingham Palace said: "The Queen died
| peacefully at Balmoral this afternoon. The King and the Queen
| Consort will remain at Balmoral this evening and will return to
| London tomorrow."
|
| Hearing "The King" in this context will take a _long time_
| getting used to.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| Yes. Interestingly, though, she was only the 3rd Queen in
| British history (Edit: Oops, ok, 6th actually. Edit 2: ok the
| point is that there have been many more kings than queens!).
| But since her reign was so long there are few people alive who
| can remember a king on the throne.
| nosianu wrote:
| Queen Victoria also reigned for a very long time - 63 years,
| seven months and two days.
|
| A list, British Kings & Queens - by Length of Reign:
| https://britroyals.com/reigned.asp
|
| These two women take the two top spots.
|
| By the way, in the otherwise completely unremarkable hobby-
| writer webnovel "Monroe"
| (https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/35398/monroe) the queen
| was a - very popular - side character. After the introduction
| of "magic" in our universe she got her youth back and started
| killing monsters using armor and huge sword used by her
| ancestors hundreds of years earlier, in a sword and magic and
| levels fantasy universe. The author kept writing chapters
| about this initially not very important side character after
| it turned out a lot of readers found the Queen returning to
| youth and becoming a sword fighting and magic throwing
| monster killer at least as if not more appealing than
| following the story's actual main character.
|
| Sample chapter where she appears (look for "queen", it's down
| the middle of this chapter): https://www.royalroad.com/fictio
| n/35398/monroe/chapter/84715...
| umeshunni wrote:
| Interestingly, for 134 of the last 200 years (i.e. 2/3), the
| UK was ruled by a Queen.
| jp57 wrote:
| Hm. I count six.
|
| Mary I, Elizabeth I, Mary II (joint monarch with Willam III),
| Anne, Victoria, Elizabeth II.
| jleyank wrote:
| 6th I think: Mary I, Elizabeth I (from Henry viii), Mary II
| (with William iii), Anne (both Stuarts), Victoria and
| Elizabeth II.
| ColinWright wrote:
| Surely not.
|
| * Matilda (Rarely listed)
|
| * Jane (1553 for 9 days)
|
| * Mary I (1553-1558)
|
| * Elisabeth I (1558-1603)
|
| * Mary II (1689-1694, joint with William III)
|
| * Anne (1702-1714)
|
| * Victoria (1837-1901)
|
| * Elisabeth II (1952-2022)
| bsedlm wrote:
| andrepd wrote:
| It's weird that this is met with such hostility on a website
| like hn. Probably just the sensitive timing.
| pphysch wrote:
| The royal family presently takes around PS100,000,000 each year
| from the UK to pay for their "duties". It's called the
| Sovereign Grant system.
| mariusor wrote:
| If the monarchy wouldn't exist as an institution, a lot of
| that money would still go to the upkeep of the various
| domains that comprise it. The Buckingham palace won't
| disappear if the UK becomes a democracy. Assuming all of that
| money goes into the personal wealth of the members of the
| royal family is a little naive.
| jackfruitpeel wrote:
| Sad on a human level, but she spent her years as the figurehead
| of an inherently fascist, racist institution -- royalty.
|
| "Whoever had created humanity had left in a major design flaw. It
| was its tendency to bend at the knees."
| dang wrote:
| Please don't take HN threads into political flamewar or on
| tedious generic tangents.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| jackfruitpeel wrote:
| Apologies. In retrospect a comment that didn't add much.
| ztgasdf wrote:
| bogantech wrote:
| > Sad on a human level, but she spent her years as the
| figurehead of an inherently fascist, racist institution --
| royalty.
|
| She was fighting fascist and Nazis before your parents were
| even born
| dang wrote:
| Please don't respond to a bad comment by breaking the site
| guidelines yourself. That only makes everything worse.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| balentio wrote:
| dang wrote:
| We've banned this account for repeatedly posting flamebait
| and unsubstantive comments. That's not allowed here.
|
| If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email
| hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that
| you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
| jackfruitpeel wrote:
| There were admirable things about her as a person, but the
| concept of monarchy is a stain on humanity. I can't respect
| anyone who supports the idea of superiority by virtue of
| bloodline.
| mariusor wrote:
| Excuse my cynicism, but current European monarchies are
| just diplomatic services that are bred instead of hired.
|
| They represent a "superior bloodline" only if you have a
| chip on your shoulder.
| 6d6b73 wrote:
| Fascism, communism and monarchy are a different side of the
| same coin.
| howmayiannoyyou wrote:
| Look at Liz Truss' cabinet and the overall upward mobility of
| minorities in the UK and explain how there's any credible
| argument of fascist/racist leadership that pervades (as opposed
| to harasses) UK society? No doubt your assessment standard will
| be perfection from which you will cherry pick counter examples,
| but the reality is no country in the world has integrated more
| successfully - overall - than the UK.
| dang wrote:
| " _Don 't feed egregious comments by replying; flag them
| instead._"
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| jackfruitpeel wrote:
| It's the concept of monarchy I have a problem with. Not the
| UK in particular ( though your actions in Northern Ireland
| remain shameful).
| ErikVandeWater wrote:
| dctoedt wrote:
| From the NY Times: "Her personal behavior, unlike that of most of
| her family, was beyond reproach, never tainted by even the
| remotest hint of scandal. Elizabeth offered her subjects a mirror
| of the high moral standards that many might aspire to but most
| generally fail to attain."
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/08/world/europe/queen-elizab...
| michaelwww wrote:
| I admired her grace and incredible sensitivity to the role she
| played. To use an Americanism: "they don't make 'em like her
| anymore"
| celticninja wrote:
| No they do not and for that very reason we should abolish the
| monarchy. It is nothing but disappointment and indifference
| from here on. Go out on a high note I say. It doesn't have to
| be in the French style, but it also doesn't not have to be in
| the French style.
| michaelwww wrote:
| I'm not British so I won't recommend what they do with their
| monarchy, but I agree with you that her descendants are an
| unimpressive lot
| origin_path wrote:
| William and Kate seem to be following in the Queen's
| footsteps though - they keep their head down and act
| dignified. He's the one who's next in line, so the antics
| of Harry+Megan don't count for much. After all the Royal
| Family has always had some characters who are more dramatic
| than others, but people judge it mostly by who sits on the
| throne.
| shapefrog wrote:
| Much time, effort, money and power has gone into giving
| you the impressions you have of the royals. They are not
| however, reality.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I do not find anything dignified about William and Kate
| either being bestowed a title due to the happenstance of
| the sequence and gender of one's birth.
|
| Harry and Megan are capitalizing on their circumstances,
| as are William and Kate.
| whoooooo123 wrote:
| What's gender got to do with it? We abolished male
| primogeniture - William is the heir because he's the
| eldest, not because he's a man.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Oh, I did not know that.
| michaelwww wrote:
| Prince Andrew is a bit of a problem...
| newaccount2021 wrote:
| rexreed wrote:
| What is the criteria for when a Black Stripe is added to the top
| of HN in the case of a notable death? Are the criteria set or is
| it arbitrary?
| mrguyorama wrote:
| It's usually reserved for "Important people in tech" plus or
| minus whoever dang and the people who actually own Y Combinator
| care about.
|
| HN is NOT an unbiased, unaffiliated, open forum. They make no
| effort to hide that fact, but so many people here put it on a
| pedestal instead of understanding that it's just orange reddit
| with good moderation.
| smarri wrote:
| I was in London during Covid, and the Queen's Speech to the
| nation during the pandemic was a pivitol and powerful moment.
|
| "We should take comfort that while we may have more still to
| endure, better days will return: we will be with our friends
| again; we will be with our families again; we will meet again."
| 2pEXgD0fZ5cF wrote:
| I gotta admit that it _is_ a bit weird to see british royalty
| being so heavily privileged that they even get special moderation
| treatment here on HN to protect them (?) from any negativity, or
| rather stop negativity about them.
|
| I'm not keen on the idea of using this submission to flame the
| Queen, I obviously agree with the general rule, what I mean is
| that other HN submissions on the deaths of people certainly
| didn't get this special treatment. It is also not at all enforced
| in both directions when looking at the obviously and comically
| over the top positive comments of low quality which contain no
| real substance.
| mlindner wrote:
| As a general rule, you don't criticize people who've just died.
| That's just common courtesy.
| immigrantheart wrote:
| Including Hitler? Mao? Genghis Khan? War criminals?
| 2pEXgD0fZ5cF wrote:
| It seems like you misunderstood or are misrepresenting what I
| wrote, what you are saying is something I agree with.
|
| While we have these kinds of submissions pretty regularly on
| HN, this is the first time in multiple years I've seen a
| reminder about this under almost every single negative
| comment and every comment containing critique. The reminder
| about the rule was even expanded on the concept of royalty.
|
| My point is not that talking ill of the dead should be
| allowed, my point is the selective enforcement of that
| sentiment with only a special, priviliged group benefitting
| from it.
| Grismar wrote:
| You say "special moderation treatment", as if it is something
| sinister. Have you considered that it may just be the fact that
| she was so broadly loved, that this happens naturally?
| 2pEXgD0fZ5cF wrote:
| Last time I checked, the comments aren't getting removed, are
| they? So I'm not sure I understand what you are trying to
| say, could you elaborate?
|
| It is pretty obvious that she is regarded positively by the
| majority here. Are you under the impression that I think
| otherwise?
| appleflaxen wrote:
| Great. Now the stock market is going to crash and we are going to
| slide into a global depression.
| BryLuc wrote:
| simonswords82 wrote:
| Winston Churchill (1951-55)
|
| Anthony Eden (1955-57)
|
| Harold Macmillan (1957-63)
|
| Alec Douglas-Home (1963-64)
|
| Harold Wilson (1964-70)
|
| Edward Heath (1970-74)
|
| Harold Wilson (1974-76)
|
| James Callaghan (1976-79)
|
| Margaret Thatcher (1979-90)
|
| John Major (1990-97)
|
| Tony Blair (1997-07)
|
| Gordon Brown (2007-10)
|
| David Cameron (2010-16)
|
| Theresa May (2016-19)
|
| Boris Johnson (2019-22)
|
| Liz Truss (2022 (two days ago) - current)
|
| Quite the reign! Can't help but feel a bit sad really.
| timeon wrote:
| It will be hard to define Second Elizabethan architecture.
| missedthecue wrote:
| 16 prime ministers came and went across her reign? Wow. Sounds
| like a year in the life of an Italian.
| whoooooo123 wrote:
| 15 - Wilson served non-consecutive terms.
| scaramanga wrote:
| Before she put an end to him :)
| Terretta wrote:
| Put another way, her Prime Ministers saw the world from 1874 -
| 2022, nearly 150 years.
| huhtenberg wrote:
| > _her Prime Ministers_
|
| I suspect that you don't realize how bizarre this phrasing is
| for the vast majority of the world.
| telotortium wrote:
| Why? Constitutionally the Prime Minister is just the
| "first" minister to the monarch. These days, of course, the
| monarch defers all governance to the Prime Minister, but
| the origin of the role is as an advisor of sorts to the
| monarch. It shouldn't sound any worse than saying Merrick
| Garland is Joe Biden's Attorney General.
| amachefe wrote:
| That is not true.
|
| There are many countries in the world who run different
| system of governments, and many as doing it quite
| successfully.
| huhtenberg wrote:
| What is not true?
|
| That phrase implies that she had PMs subservient to her.
| That's not how the UK monarchy is generally explained, at
| least not outside of the UK.
| flumpcakes wrote:
| She is the head of state. The UK isn't the only country
| she is head of state either. She has the power to
| dissolve UK government.
| SllX wrote:
| Under her reign it was Her Majesty's government and she
| took an active role in it that wasn't publicly visible.
| Laws did not take effect without her assent, and the
| government formed with her permission which was asked
| for.
|
| Under Charles III's reign, it will be His Majesty's
| government; how actively he takes an interest in its
| affairs will be on him, but at a minimum laws will not
| take effect without his assent and his permission will be
| asked for to form future governments.
|
| That's the system of the United Kingdom. It never stopped
| being a Kingdom, people just chose to view the late Queen
| as ceremonial because it was a convenient way to square
| the Throne with democratic ideals, but it really isn't
| all that ceremonial. The reason the customs held fast is
| because Queen Elizabeth II worked to make the system
| work. A different sort of Queen may have sparked a
| constitutional crisis or two by now and there's no
| guarantee she would have necessarily lost to the Commons.
| ddlatham wrote:
| And counting!
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| Heard on the BBC that Liz Truss was born 101 years after
| Winston Churchill.
| ectopod wrote:
| Truss was two days ago.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Too much to handle
| dym_sh wrote:
| ricardobayes wrote:
| Can't believe Brexit was voted 6 years ago, time flies so fast.
| IncRnd wrote:
| Along those lines, Britain joined the EU a year after
| Smalltalk-72 and K&R C were introduced. Smalltalk inspired
| Objective-C, which is still used today in Macs.
| origin_path wrote:
| The British Constitution can be seen as a large piece of
| legacy code which has never been tossed and rewritten from
| scratch, just incrementally patched and refactored over a
| really long period of time.
|
| Downside: lots of bizarre complexities, bits of dead code,
| stuff that works as long as nobody touches it etc. Upsides:
| it's _really_ stable.
| neilwilson wrote:
| Much like our DNA.
|
| As I get older I have more and more respect for
| Chestertons Fence.
| bregma wrote:
| Sounds like it's time to rewrite it in Rust.
| teamonkey wrote:
| Counterpoint: it feels like it's been going on forever
| that_guy_iain wrote:
| Yea, it seems like yesterday it got announced. I was working
| in Berlin with an English guy, he took it super hard. We went
| out for drinks after work and at the end of the night he was
| telling one of the Germans they were lucky - because they
| were still in the EU.
| Hamuko wrote:
| I feel slightly bad for Liz Truss, since I imagine that one of
| the things she will be remembered is that the Queen died less
| than 48 hours into her government.
| mns06 wrote:
| She was an abolitionist in her youth
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qfg1AQnWIM
| [deleted]
| andrepd wrote:
| Oh I'm sure she at least appreciates the opportunity to bury
| some unappealing news. News broke e.g. of her decision to
| rescind all restrictions on fracking (and - just a funny
| coincidence - of the fact that her campaign's biggest
| donation came from the wife of a BP exec), at about the same
| time as news of the Queen's deteriorating health.
| laumars wrote:
| I really wish lobbying and campaign donations were made
| illegal because in practice it's little different from
| bribery.
| odiroot wrote:
| It's a great cover for her potential early mistakes.
| laumars wrote:
| Truss wouldn't care about that. If anything she'll spin this
| to her advantage. It's pretty common for governments to
| release embarrassing documents or unpopular changes during
| busy news weeks, or at the weekend, knowing that peoples
| attention is elsewhere.
|
| You don't get to become a PM by playing nice.
| NoFingerprints wrote:
| She's already been busy: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-
| news/2022/sep/08/tom-scholar-...
| starfallg wrote:
| It's interesting you bring this up as in my view Truss is the
| antithesis of Queen Elizabeth II. Truss is somebody that
| would say anything that people wanted to hear to be popular
| and amass political power whereas Queen Elizabeth refrained
| from staying anything people didn't want to hear to be
| dutifully detached from the fickleness of politics.
| mhh__ wrote:
| She's got much bigger things to worry about.
| datavirtue wrote:
| jacoblambda wrote:
| Well at this rate she may end up more well known for
| dismantling the Northern Ireland Protocol and breaking the
| Good Friday Agreement.
| garren wrote:
| Alternatively, a new King took power less than 48hrs into her
| government. The ascendancy of a new monarch is at least as
| memorable as the passing of, in this instance his,
| predecessor.
| ddlatham wrote:
| Indeed she reigned for about 30% of U.S. history.
|
| (credit for observation goes to Matt Glassman)
| logicchains wrote:
| And she was queen of Australia for over 57% of its history.
| rozenmd wrote:
| Pretty sure she wasn't around for over 30k years
| wl wrote:
| 30,000 years veers well into the realm of pre-history.
| kixiQu wrote:
| For anyone wondering:
|
| > The Tjapwurung, an Aboriginal people in what is now
| southern Australia, shared the story of this bird hunt
| from generation to generation across an unbelievably
| large slice of time--many more millennia than one might
| think possible. The birds (most likely the species with
| the scientific name Genyornis newtoni) memorialized in
| this tale are now long extinct. Yet the story of the
| Tjapwurung's "tradition respecting the existence" of
| these birds conveys how people pursued the giant animals.
| At the time of this particular hunt, between 5,000 and
| 10,000 years ago, volcanoes in the area were erupting,
| wrote amateur ethnographer James Dawson in his 1881 book
| Australian Aborigines, and so scientists have been able
| to corroborate this oral history by dating volcanic
| rocks.
|
| ...
|
| > What are the limits of such ancient memories? For what
| length of time can knowledge be transferred within oral
| societies before its essence becomes irretrievably lost?
| Under optimal conditions, as suggested by science-
| determined ages for events recalled in ancient stories,
| orally shared knowledge can demonstrably endure more than
| 7,000 years, quite possibly 10,000, but probably not much
| longer.
|
| https://www.sapiens.org/language/oral-tradition/
|
| So, anyway, be it 10k or 30k, definitely within an era of
| "history" and not "pre-history"
| koheripbal wrote:
| You're illustrating the difference between a monarchy and a
| democracy.
|
| The regular rotation of power is a feature, not a bug.
| karlzt wrote:
| Features are bugs with clothes on.
| greenthrow wrote:
| cauefcr wrote:
| dang wrote:
| Would you please stop posting flamebait to HN? It's not what
| this site is for, and it destroys what it is for.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| cauefcr wrote:
| acqbu wrote:
| dang wrote:
| This is an internet entertainment site. It's not possible
| to "oppose literal fascism" here--that's a category error.
|
| All that is possible is to make pointless comments--either
| curious ones or tedious ones. "Literal fascism" comments
| are the latter and those are off topic, so please don't.
| cauefcr wrote:
| dang wrote:
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false
| &qu...
| andrepd wrote:
| Mate I dislike the monarchy and the Queen, but you managed to
| pick the most senseless thing to complain about. Wow.
| cauefcr wrote:
| mavu wrote:
| The Queen is dead, long live the ... King? Queen? What?
| [deleted]
| ProfessorLayton wrote:
| I have to wonder if people will be less receptive of the monarchy
| now that there's going to be a King instead of a Queen.
| datavirtue wrote:
| petesergeant wrote:
| I suspect the King in question is a bigger point than it being
| _a_ King. I think King William could easily carry the monarchy
| another generation
| beebmam wrote:
| lame-robot-hoax wrote:
| Speak for yourself
| beebmam wrote:
| People in the US vote for politicians out of spite and animus
| towards the other party, not because they endorse their own
| party or politicians.
| Psychoshy_bc1q wrote:
| which is even more stupid in my opinion
| lame-robot-hoax wrote:
| That's much different than cheering when someone dies.
| deadbeefq wrote:
| That's a shame. I'm no monarchist but appreciated her service.
| RIP.
| tehbeard wrote:
| As tests of a "new" government go, the implementation of
| Operation "London Bridge" (Protocol related to the period of
| mourning, state funeral and coronation) is certainly going to be
| an interesting one to watch unfold.
|
| With the track record of successive Tory governments however...
| Interesting for perhaps the wrong reasons.
|
| Unlikely to unite the nation either.
| ellen364 wrote:
| There's a lot of debate in this thread about the rights and
| wrongs of monarchy, the extent to which the Queen chose to serve,
| and so on. There isn't much context about Britain as it was when
| she became Queen. Since I used to be a historian, I figured I'd
| throw some in.
|
| Princess Elizabeth wasn't originally expected to become Queen.
| Her father was only the second son of King George V and was not
| expected to become King either. But, in a move that was deeply
| shocking at the time, the older son, King Edward VIII, abdicated
| in 1936 so that he could marry a divorcee.
|
| The abdication crisis was complicated and further complicated by
| the Commonwealth. The members of the Commonwealth, all of whom
| had Edward VIII as their king, had to agree to the abdication.
| The government of the Irish Free State, as it was then known,
| used the opportunity to dramatically reduce the role of the King.
|
| Elizabeth's father became George VI and she became the heir
| presumptive. At this point (1936) it still wasn't clear that she
| would become Queen. She was just 10 years old and if her parents
| had a son, he would leapfrog his older sisters and become the
| heir.
|
| Edward VIII had become Duke of Windsor after the abdication and
| he remained something of a thorn in the sides of the royal family
| and British government. There were fights about money and titles
| and whether the Duke would be allowed to return to the UK. There
| were bad feelings all round. In 1937 the Duke visited Nazi
| Germany, which infuriated the British government. During World
| War II he was considered to be pro-Nazi and was for a while under
| surveillance by the Americans.
|
| Things had in some ways calmed down by 1952, when George VI died.
| But the UK was still intensely feeling the effects of World War
| II. There were several financial crises, the country's debt was
| enormous and rationing didn't end until 1954.
|
| The British Empire had also continued to fall apart. Today many
| people consider that a good thing, with countries gaining
| independence and people gaining self-determination. But from a
| monarch's perspective, losing an empire is a pretty terrible
| failure.
|
| I've missed out all sorts of things because this was already so
| long. But that, roughly speaking, was the situation when Princess
| Elizabeth became Queen Elizabeth II in 1952.
| bzmrgonz wrote:
| THE QUEEN IS DEAD, LONG LIVE THE KING... HIS MAGESTY KING Charles
| Philip Arthur George!! (formerly Prince of Wales) THIS IS THE
| WAY.. to announce a Monarch's death guys!!!
| acqbu wrote:
| soueuls wrote:
| I am not British but I see monarchy positively.
|
| She was indeed an interesting character, witty, frail yet fierce,
| out of this time and truly royal.
|
| It's definitely the end of an era, that makes me a little bit
| nostalgic.
|
| I have been thinking about this for the past two hours,
| rewatching the speech she gave at 21. She was hesitant, unsure,
| obviously unprepared for the death of her father, yet she became
| a queen at the blink of an eye.
|
| One of my favorite speech, very human, a young lady suddenly
| realize the weight of her destiny, pledge to put her life, her
| only life, aside for the rest of her life. She spent the next 70
| years being the Queen, no matter what, never complained, never
| showed any sign of weaknesses, relentlessly performing diplomatic
| duties.
|
| Being right for 70 years is difficult. I think she genuinely
| tried.
| henriquemaia wrote:
| To everyone who feels sad by these news, my condolences. I
| respect your pain.
|
| However, I have to confess that to whenever I hear that someone
| aged 90+ (80+, even) died, I don't really feel sad. Actually, I
| feel an urge to praise this person's achievements, as I'm aware
| we are all mortals, and death is unavoidable.
|
| I prefer to rejoice in how much this person has witnessed
| throughout her life, how she had enough health to keep her wits
| until the end, how she could raise children, grandchildren, and
| even know her great-grandchildren.
|
| What else can we humans aspire? Living forever is out of
| question. As soon as we are born, we are bound to die. So it's a
| pretty good life to be able to reach a good age, knowing that all
| our dear ones are set for life, raising families of their own,
| and living their lives the way that is best suited for them.
|
| This is not just theory. I felt this when my grandfather died,
| aged 95, when my grandmother died aged 96, and when other people
| I knew died old enough for their deaths not really come as a
| surprise.
| secondcoming wrote:
| When you're young the thought of death is terrifying, but when
| you're old (whatever age that is) death is expected and
| sometimes welcomed. I remember my grandmother, who died when
| she was 99, joking about being alive too long, but there's an
| element of truth to it.
| KronisLV wrote:
| > What else can we humans aspire? Living forever is out of
| question. As soon as we are born, we are bound to die.
|
| I don't know, living to anywhere between 1'000 to 1'000'000
| years of age would surely be quite the interesting experience,
| lots of things to learn, lots of things to experience. Such
| numbers might seem humorous but in the grand scheme of things
| that's still nothing, given the age of Earth and all that.
|
| I get the feeling that if humans approached aging and death as
| an engineering problem, in a few centuries to a few thousands
| of years a viable solution might just spring up.
|
| If nothing else, then fighting _aging_ and everything that
| comes with it is definitely worth it, so the last decades of
| your life don 't consist of being trapped in a degrading flesh
| prison and possibly suffering from ailments that will take away
| your ability to be a person (e.g. Alzheimer's or other
| neurodegenerative conditions, or serious health conditions due
| to aging).
|
| Of course, most people don't like to think about their own
| mortality or consider it (or diseases that may affect them
| later in life) a serious problem, much less a solvable one. For
| some religion is enough, for others ignorance does nicely. It
| feels like we might benefit from more focus on this and
| research in this direction.
|
| Realistically, one just has to take care of themselves as best
| as they can and spend their time well.
|
| > Actually, I feel an urge to praise this person's
| achievements...
|
| Regardless, this is admirable. A life well lived is one worth
| celebrating, with its many achievements and its impact on the
| people around them.
| swagasaurus-rex wrote:
| Pursuit of endless life is a movie trope - the fountain of
| youth - and inevitably concludes with punishment for those
| who seek it out.
|
| I suspect there's a strong biological reason we age and die.
| We compete against our children for the limited resources of
| our planet. Our genes need to recombine or else evolution
| stalls.
|
| For now the only true path to immortality is through having
| children.
| tsol wrote:
| When there's a dictator or other unjust rule, the one thing
| you know that will end that rule is death. That not happening
| would change things incredibly. Imagine if the same old
| politicians of 1950 were still in power, we'd still be trying
| to pass desegregation. Death of the older generation allows
| new ideas to flourish. I feel sorry for the children of the
| first generation to avoid death(if it could even happen)
| sundarurfriend wrote:
| _Science advances one funeral at a time._ - Max Planck,
| paraphrased.
|
| So does culture, for that matter.
|
| I wonder what impact it will have if/when people do start
| living for 300 years or more (which some people claim we
| could see within our lifetime). What happens when racist,
| openly homophobic grandpa isn't just someone you
| uncomfortably bear and forgive, but someone with a lot of
| power and money because they've been around the longest?
| Investments, compound interests, connections, so many
| things that would mean that the younger generation would
| have less and less power and hope as time goes by.
| Teknoman117 wrote:
| If we could keep our brains running that long, I wonder what
| our perception of time would end up being.
|
| Would our minds scale to timescales that vast? Would we just
| start forgetting things as time went on?
| zimpenfish wrote:
| > Would we just start forgetting things as time went on?
|
| I mean, that happens even in the short 70 years most people
| get.
| SirLJ wrote:
| 90+ - Hell of a ride:
|
| Dying in your thirties or forties? "Tragic." Fifties? "Such a
| shame." Sixties? "Too soon." Seventies? "A good run." Eighties?
| "A life well lived." Nineties? "Hell of a ride."
|
| https://youtu.be/OgoBjEr8lsI
| [deleted]
| frosted-flakes wrote:
| Most people aren't mourning her, personally. They are mourning
| what she represents.
| mihaaly wrote:
| I believe this is quite healthy view you have and I think we
| feel sorry for ourself mostly that something in our life has
| gone.
| Beltalowda wrote:
| "Don't go overboard. She's a very old woman who had to go some
| time" were the last instructions Peter Sissons received before
| announcing the death of the Queen Mother (aged 101) in 2002. I
| thought that was quite funny.
|
| I think what's "shocking" (not necessarily sad) thing about
| this is that she's been a presence for such a long time. Who
| here can remember a time from before Elizabeth II was the
| queen? She's been queen from before most people here were born
| and has always been present.
| bmsleight_ wrote:
| New stamps, now bank notes. New Prison names
| triceratops wrote:
| "Her reign spanned 15 prime ministers starting with Winston
| Churchill, born in 1874, and including Ms Truss, born 101 years
| later in 1975."
|
| Unbelievable the history she was a witness to.
| basedgod wrote:
| Good riddance. The world is rid of a horrible person who has done
| horrible things, and who has never once tried to do the right
| thing in the face of adversity.
|
| She could have done so much more, spoken out against so many
| atrocities, in her own family and Britain's role in the world in
| general. She could have attempted to use the last vestiges of
| monarchical power - likely ending the monarchy in the process -
| and stopped Brexit, or this turmoil that has ensued because of
| it.
|
| But she chose not to do any of this. Because the "prestige" of
| this disgusting tradition was worth more to her than the lives of
| any of the citizens she "rules" (symbolically) over.
|
| It would have been hard to have had a worse monarch than her.
| nly wrote:
| Hard to see how she could have "stopped Brexit" given that
| there was a referendum on the issue.
|
| The British people reaped what they showed with that one.
| dang wrote:
| We've banned this account for posting flamewar comments. That's
| not allowed here, and you've been doing it repeatedly (e.g.
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32574659).
|
| If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email
| hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll
| follow the rules in the future. They're here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
| confidantlake wrote:
| There are countless comments praising her that are allowed to
| stand. She is a historical figure, there will be people
| disagreeing. Labeling comments that criticizes her as
| "flamewar" and banning their accounts isn't enabling curious
| discussion, it is creating an echo chamber that protects the
| status quo.
| anon291 wrote:
| While I admire the Elizabeth's dedication to preserving her own
| family's inheritance, I fundamentally do not believe anyone can
| inherit a country. The monarchy should die along with the
| monarch.
| jmyeet wrote:
| Some view the monarchy as anachronistic. Of course there's merit
| to that argument but the monarchy as an institution really
| doesn't cost that much and has worked in the British political
| system as really a check on abuse of government power. The
| Queen's consent in forming government is routine but it can be
| withheld.
|
| Australia had an example of this where the Governor General (the
| Queen's representative in the Australian government) sacked the
| government and formed a caretaker governmen tin the 1970s.
|
| The American system of relying on centuries of tenuous
| interpretation of a fairly short document just isn't as much of
| an improvement as you think.
|
| The Australian constitution allows for the Governor General to
| have "reserve powers" without specifying what they are.
|
| Ultimately all these systems rely on trust.
|
| It's wild to think the Queen began her reign with having weekly
| chats with Winston Churchill all the way up to appointing Liz
| Truss just this week. Her father fought in World War I. She lived
| through World War II. It's wild to think about.
|
| It's also wild to consider the Queen never had an exepctation of
| ruling. An abdication caused that to happen. The happiest and
| freest time of her life may well have been living on Malta prior
| to that, living a fairly normal life with her husband and young
| family.
|
| Institutions exist to protect the people, not the institutions
| themselves. Never forget that.
| triceratops wrote:
| > An abdication caused that to happen. The happiest and freest
| time of her life may well have been living on Malta prior to
| that, living a fairly normal life with her husband and young
| family.
|
| My only source is the show _The Crown_ but I 'm fairly certain
| her uncle abdicated the throne when she was still a child,
| putting her in line for the throne. It was not after she was
| married to Phillip.
| cowtools wrote:
| >The American system of relying on centuries of tenuous
| interpretation of a fairly short document just isn't as much of
| an improvement as you think.
|
| Having an unelected, unaccountable individual who leeches off
| the tax system: this is anachronistic but fair, it's about
| balance of powers, its an important part of our cultural
| heritage, it doesn't even cost that much why do you care.
|
| Having strong founding principles and rights that are
| cautiously amended: this is tenuous, this goes too far, free
| speech too extremist, why bad man own gun.
| mariusor wrote:
| One could argue that a current monarch's reign is not exactly
| leeching of the public money as it were, but a difficult and
| thankless job that one just can't get out of.
| VictorPath wrote:
| >... check on abuse of government power. The Queen's consent in
| forming government is routine but it can be withheld...
|
| > Australia had an example of this where the Governor General
| (the Queen's representative in the Australian government)
| sacked the government and formed a caretaker governmen tin the
| 1970s.
|
| Australia was ruled by a Liberal/Country coalition from the
| 1940s to the end of 1972. Finally the workers of Australia
| elect a Labor PM, and he was thwarted for three years and then
| removed at the behest of a hereditary monarch thousands of
| miles away. That sounds like abuse, but not of the type you
| mean.
| jollybean wrote:
| The Queen is dead, long live the King!
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| ed_db wrote:
| Very sad news
| talideon wrote:
| As an Irishman, while our two countries might not have always
| gotten along well, she always came across as a good person who
| took her role seriously and executed as well as anyone could.
| RIP.
| jeff-davis wrote:
| What points in history depended on her words or actions?
|
| (Sincere question about her legacy; not questioning whether she
| was important.)
| pipeline_peak wrote:
| "Everybody hates the President, everybody loves the Queen"
|
| - Jesus and Mary Chain
| 533474 wrote:
| dym_sh wrote:
| 533474 wrote:
| I just said "top in HN..". I have no intention of starting a
| flame-war but seeing the amount of valid comments deleted it
| seems to me that despite being indifferent about this news,
| the only rhetoric left in this thread is praise, why is
| praise not flamewar?. I am not inviting comment on this
| unpopular opinion but asking for a reflection from fellow
| 'hackers' of how one-sided intelligent conversations are
| becoming here. People who may have a different opinion about
| this news may be afraid to state their facts. And individuals
| like me, indifferent, cannot express our indifference about
| this event
| dang wrote:
| We don't delete comments, but flags (whether from users or
| moderators) do kill them, which means only users with
| 'showdead' turned on in their profile can see them.
|
| If you see a [dead] comment that's actually following the
| site guidelines and using HN as intended, I'd appreciate a
| link so we can unkill it.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| xg15 wrote:
| For some reason it seems extremely surreal to me that England now
| will have a king again. "The King of Great Britain" sounds like
| something out of a history movie, not present.
| yreg wrote:
| When she was born there were less than 2 billion people on Earth.
| Now there are almost 8 billion of us.
| weavie wrote:
| She started with Winston Churchill and ended with Liz Truss.
| evgen wrote:
| viridian wrote:
| The crazy thing is that we not ever see 10 billion at this
| rate. Globally we are down to 2.1 births per woman, and the
| majority of nations now have a birth rate below 2, meaning most
| countries are below replacement. And even the positive birth
| rate countries are rapidly trending downwards (with the
| exceptions of Uzbekistan, Kahzakstan, and Iran).
|
| It will be very interesting to see how the population J curve
| flatlining affects global society. We live in interesting
| times.
| viridian wrote:
| Follow up: I was curious about the math, so I thought others
| might find these numbers interesting as well:
|
| At current continual growth rates (assuming the decline comes
| to a dead stop and remains steady), we will see 10 billion
| people late 2044.
|
| If the decline of the last 10 years continues indefinitely,
| humanity would go extinct around 3913.
| hydrogen7800 wrote:
| And something like 90% of the world population was born during
| her reign.
| 6d6b73 wrote:
| You make it sound like 90% of people were under her reign
| while in fact 90% were thankfuly not her subjects
| glitchcrab wrote:
| No, that's not how it reads at all. It clearly implies that
| they were born during the period in which she reigned.
| w10-1 wrote:
| I, too, am sad. I am deeply attracted to the model of the servant
| leader and the hero.
|
| I'm particularly attached to leaders who make the best of a bad
| situation, in her case the retreat of the British Empire. I think
| courage in retreat is much more rare than courage in victory, and
| might bring more value to society.
|
| My (our) relationship to Queen Elizabeth seems to stem less from
| the history or even events, and more from her extensive media
| depictions, mainly movies and series of late. Many of them focus
| on her as long-suffering: beset by crises she cannot really
| control, both emotional and political. Her stalwart response
| turns out to be the best available - at once non-intrusive, but
| pointing the way out. When she speaks, it is not to tell people
| what to do, or what is right and wrong, but to summon our better
| nature.
|
| I understand this attachment may be seen as emotionally immature
| and even regressive. In her case, it seems benign. However,
| something like these sentiments underlies people's attachments to
| other leaders who seem disruptive to societies and companies.
|
| Modeling heroes is in many ways deeper than even learning a
| trade, and yet we seem to leave it to chance. Can do better? Can
| we mourn Queen Elizabeth II without falling prey to false gods?
| stakkur wrote:
| As Queen, she met 14 US Presidents (15 total) and 16 Prime
| Ministers (17 total). Whatever our feelings toward the
| anachronism of hereditary monarchies, she's been a participant in
| (and witness to) a significant amount of modern history.
| xchip wrote:
| rkuykendall-com wrote:
| You will find any news story of this magnitude on HN. Things
| like a new president. You're probably just not used to it
| because they are pretty rare.
| dtx1 wrote:
| rcarr wrote:
| Brit here. I'm no royalist but by God, if you're going to have a
| monarch, I don't think you could have ever asked for more than
| Liz.
| rurban wrote:
| Interestingly the details of the planned operation London Bridge
| https://www.politico.eu/article/queen-elizabeth-death-plan-b...
| were posted today on some British news site before her death,
| when all others confirmed her stable health. Some insiders
| obviously were in the know earlier today.
| netsharc wrote:
| But that article is dated September 2021. The Guardian also
| wrote about it in 2017: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-
| news/2017/mar/16/what-happens...
|
| The articles probably landed on the top 10 list of most read
| articles (due to Google hits) after the Buckingham Palace
| statement this morning that the doctors are recommending
| continuous monitoring of her health, which probably was British
| understatement for "Her situation is bad".
| encryptluks2 wrote:
| Also goes to show you shouldn't trust a lot of the sentiment on
| the Internet tody where people are like... "oh the monarchy, I
| love my serfdom."
| lordleft wrote:
| RIP. I've always believed that there was a place for
| constitutional monarchy in the world. As the world hurtles
| forward, having a tether to the past grounds us, reminds us that
| we are not ahistorical, but part of a continually unfolding
| story.
| seydor wrote:
| sometimes clinging for too long in the past causes violent
| movements
| mcbishop wrote:
| > From commoners to heads of state, the queen has been known to
| smooth over embarrassing situations with a gentle quip or two.
| According to Blaikie, at a Buckingham Palace Garden Party, a
| woman was chatting with the queen when her cell phone
| embarrassingly started ringing. "You'd better answer that," the
| queen told her. "It might be someone important."
|
| > Then there was the notorious incident that occurred during
| Charles and Madame de Gaulle's state visit to Buckingham Palace.
| "Somebody asked Madame de Gaulle what she was most looking
| forward to in her retirement, which was imminent," Blaikie
| writes. "Not speaking English much at all, she replied, 'A
| penis.' Consternation reigned for some time but it was the queen
| herself who came to the rescue. 'Ah, happiness,' she said."
|
| https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2021/08/behind-queen-elizab...
| the_lucifer wrote:
| Aw, may she rest in peace. :(
| birdyrooster wrote:
| The end of an era
| pigtailgirl wrote:
| -- Queen Elizabeth was cool in my books because - she was pretty
| quippy -
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgQpcC-ne64
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rd1v2OX6vE
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAD6P_y-ZAo --
| dang wrote:
| This story of how she pranked a couple of hikers near Balmoral
| is priceless:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uw9g1Q74t4s#t=48
| scrlk wrote:
| RIP. An end of an era for the UK.
| yuan43 wrote:
| The Wikipedia article on the British Monarchy is (as expected)
| informative:
|
| > The monarch and their immediate family undertake various
| official, ceremonial, diplomatic and representational duties. As
| the monarchy is constitutional, the monarch is limited to
| functions such as bestowing honours and appointing the prime
| minister, which are performed in a non-partisan manner. The
| monarch is also Head of the British Armed Forces. Though the
| ultimate executive authority over the government is still
| formally by and through the royal prerogative, these powers may
| only be used according to laws enacted in Parliament and, in
| practice, within the constraints of convention and precedent. The
| Government of the United Kingdom is known as His (Her) Majesty's
| Government.
|
| I wasn't aware that the monarch appointed the prime minister, but
| here you have the last one the Queen made:
|
| > Liz Truss has became Britain's next prime minister after
| meeting with Queen Elizabeth II, who asked her to form a new
| government.
|
| https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/9/6/uks-johnson-bows-out...
|
| The Wikipedia article later notes that prime minister appointment
| appears to fall into the ceremonial category:
|
| > The sovereign has the power to appoint the prime minister. In
| accordance with unwritten constitutional conventions, the monarch
| appoints the individual who commands the support of the House of
| Commons, usually the leader of the party or coalition that has a
| majority in that House. The prime minister takes office by
| attending the monarch in a private audience, and after "kissing
| hands" that appointment is immediately effective without any
| other formality or instrument.[15] The sovereign also has the
| power to dismiss the prime minister, but the last time this power
| was exercised was in 1834, when William IV dismissed Lord
| Melbourne; since then, prime ministers have only left office upon
| their resignation, which they are expected to offer to the
| monarch upon losing their majority in the House of Commons.
| alfl wrote:
| God bless her and long live the King.
| criddell wrote:
| Does the royal family do anything non-ceremonial? Do the royals
| have real power?
| snapetom wrote:
| The non-ceremonial stuff is PR and goodwill for the UK. She's
| essentially fostered economic cooperation between the
| Commonwealth for decades. That has been quite important and
| should not be understated. The American view that her duties
| are fluff is a lazy take.
| criddell wrote:
| Can she set her own agenda, or does she essentially work for
| the elected government?
| snapetom wrote:
| Sets her own agenda, but I mean she holds weekly meetings
| with prime ministers. It's all closely coordinated.
| criddell wrote:
| I saw that Prince George is third in line. I wonder how
| that would work if he ended up a child king? In that
| case, I'm guessing he would just be doing what he's told
| to do.
| kzrdude wrote:
| Regular meetings with the prime minister must count as having
| some power.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| I'm American, and I loved the Queen. May she rest in peace and
| may her record of service never be broken.
| erehweb wrote:
| Could there be any code that breaks as a result of this? Can't
| think of anything, but wondering if there is something deep in
| some Civil Service script.
| boffinism wrote:
| Bet someone will be rooting out hard-coded strings with
| incorrect pronouns in for years to come.
| ReptileMan wrote:
| Rip. May she rest in peace. And the timing was impeccably
| terrible... Charles doesn't have the skills, charisma,
| connections or political capital to help his nation in the
| upcoming hard times.
| knorker wrote:
| Maybe he'll be less corrupt than her, though. Unlikely, sure.
|
| Never forget that Beth used all of those skills to further
| enrich herself and her family, and protecting her pedofile son.
| dang wrote:
| Please stop posting flamebait comments to HN. We ban such
| accounts and have had to warn you about this multiple times
| before.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
|
| (for anyone rushing to post 'oh so you support $hideous-thing
| do you' - no, just trying to have an internet forum that
| doesn't suck)
| knorker wrote:
| I'm sorry. I disagree that this is flame bait, but respect
| your interpretation. I do think it's important to recognize
| the crimes of historical figures especially in cases where
| people fall over each other about how much of a saint they
| are.
|
| I have strong feelings about her, and exactly because this
| is HN I chose to not air them in this forum.
|
| Arguably ignoring the negative aspects is spreading fake
| news disinformation, which is a problem on the Internet in
| general nowadays.
| rafarios3 wrote:
| R.I.P. She was the real image of monarchy in the world for almost
| a century. God saves the Queen
| shp0ngle wrote:
| Fun fact about English royalty
|
| It's technically easier for a muslim to become king/queen than
| for a Catholic.
|
| Catholics are the only ones who are banned by law to become
| English royals.
| secondcoming wrote:
| Well yes, Catholics are/were considered to be loyal to Rome.
| But I'm pretty sure Tony Blair's government successfully
| repealed that restriction.
| shp0ngle wrote:
| Technically, Boris Johnson converted to Catholicism during
| his time as PM, while Blair did afterwards.
|
| So BoJo was the first English Catholic PM, I think
| [deleted]
| danielfoster wrote:
| gumby wrote:
| Drat, she had less than two years to go to pass Louis XIV.
|
| I have been a republican for most of my life and don't like to
| have her name in my passport. Nevertheless the first time we
| brought our young son to the UK we had a picture of him in front
| of Buckingham Palace (and I have the same picture of myself at
| that same location).
| heavyheavy wrote:
| rdm_blackhole wrote:
| This is not a rant nor a flamebait. I am a commonwealth citizen
| and a staunch republican.
|
| I am against monarchies by principle.
|
| Unfortunately the king/queen of England is also the Supreme
| Governor of the Church of England which goes against my
| principles as well since I am an atheist.
|
| I do not wish ill will on the royal family, but as a humanist who
| believes that every man, woman and child born on this planet is
| equal in rights, I cannot accept nor promote a system of
| governance that deems certain people to be above others by simply
| being born in the right family.
|
| I am sorry for the loss caused by her death and I feel sad for
| her loved ones but that loss should not stop people form pushing
| for the creation of genuine republics in the countries within the
| commonwealth.
| seydor wrote:
| I think certain commonwealth countries will rethink whether
| they want Charles to be their official head of state. With
| Elizabeth dead, the memory of british empire becomes much more
| faded
| deadcore wrote:
| As a Brit who's never really "followed" the Royals - I gotta say
| this makes me sad. The Queen stood for so much, in such a
| dignified way. May she rest in peace
| hangonhn wrote:
| As a former Hong Konger from before the handover but has long
| ago become American, the news also made me sad. I've always
| maintained a degree of affection for her throughout the years.
| I think the dignity you mentioned really helped in that.
| ipnon wrote:
| The Queen is the moral heart of the kingdom. She set an example
| for us. There remains a feeling that we lost a light to look
| towards.
| drewg123 wrote:
| This is an interesting world event, but I'm confused that it is
| considered on-topic here on HN. I had thought that non-technical
| news did not belong on HN. Can somebody please clarify the
| guidelines as to what is considered topical?
| [deleted]
| dang wrote:
| _On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting.
| That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to
| reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that
| gratifies one 's intellectual curiosity._
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| lucozade wrote:
| The guidelines are linked at the bottom of every page including
| this one.
|
| In practice, pretty much any topic where people can remain
| civil is generally ok.
| BerislavLopac wrote:
| And Josip Manolic still lives. [0]
|
| (For context, this politician's ability to keep outliving his
| peers is a local running joke.)
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josip_Manoli%C4%87
| yotamoron wrote:
| j0hnyl wrote:
| Generally I agree with the sentiment, but at the same time this
| is impactful, because this is a person that has been in the
| public eye for people's entire lives, so it presents as
| somewhat of a shock. It's a reminder that the only constant is
| change and that death comes for us all... at least that's why I
| think many people have a strong reaction to the news. My
| personal reaction is "meh".
| [deleted]
| OJFord wrote:
| She succeeded her father, George VI, if that's what you meant.
| dividefuel wrote:
| > Do you even remember the name of the king that queen
| elizabeth inherited? When he died?
|
| I'm not at all invested in the royal family, but I think this
| question actually makes the point of why it's a big deal: she's
| been the queen for such a long time that very few people alive
| can remember a time when she wasn't the queen. It marks the end
| of a long era.
| jbotz wrote:
| Symbols are important, even to history.
|
| As for how major a historical event Elizabeth II's passing is,
| only history can tell and history tells it's stories with a
| delay, so we'll have to see. It could mark the beginning of the
| end of the monarchy in the UK, for example, which in turn could
| coincide with other major changes.
| saberience wrote:
| It's weird, I've never considered myself a "royalist" but this
| news has affected me quite strongly. I just burst into tears
| unexpectedly on hearing this news and I don't quite understand
| why I feel so very sad. I guess I have grown up and lived my
| whole life (as a Brit) seeing and hearing the Queen, singing "God
| save the Queen" etc, and this news made me suddenly feel very
| old, very nostalgic, with the sense that all things pass in time,
| which makes my heart ache deeply.
| laustta wrote:
| Same here, sad news indeed
| dijit wrote:
| It's understandable, she's been a constant vague presence for a
| lot of British people.
|
| It feels like a minor part of our personal history died. I
| definitely feel saddened, even if I don't have a connection
| with royalty.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| She's also been a moral authority. She avoided the soap opera
| situations that have dogged the rest of the moral family and
| frequently she's shown leadership. In WWII she trained as a
| mechanic so she could do something tangible to support the
| war effort.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| > _the soap opera situations that have dogged the rest of
| the [royal] family_
|
| "Soap opera situations" seems like a gentle way to put it.
| Several of her family members have been accused of serious
| crimes, and associated with some very nasty people. For
| years they were shielded by their association with her.
| bigfudge wrote:
| Exactly. Her silence/defence of Andrew is shameful. No
| moral compass there. Her distinguishing feature has been
| to give no public interviews and to entrench
| antidemocratic privilege as best we can.
|
| Dangs top post irritated me because it felt like this has
| to be the time to remember the whole life - not just the
| fantasy we are typically sold.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| and I think things that were really sad like the triangle
| between Prince Charles, Princess Diana, and Camilla
| Parker Bowes.
| Beltalowda wrote:
| I really don't want to go on criticizing the queen at
| length here because I think it's a bit insensitive, so I'll
| be brief, but I don't think that "avoiding soap opera
| situations" is really the same as "being a moral
| authority". Not that I think she was horribly bad either,
| but my standards for "moral authority" are quite a bit
| higher. Royal families tend to be neutral to a fault.
| samstave wrote:
| techno_king wrote:
| verisimi wrote:
| An immoral authority. She paid no taxes, lived a lifestyle
| of luxury paid for by her so called subjects, has offshore
| accounts, no public accountability, etc. Very easy, paid
| for life. Nothing moral about it.
| markhahn wrote:
| Not just British people. Canadians, for instance, still have
| a role for the head of the commonwealth...
| murphyslab wrote:
| It's definitely affected me a bit today. She has a visual
| and historical presence in so many Canadian institutions,
| from her portraits hanging in my elementary school growing
| up, to our currency, the courts, and government itself.
| It's a bit hard to think of her as a real person sometimes,
| yet seeing Prime Minister Trudeau speak about her with
| glistening eyes tells me that she did more than purely her
| constitutional duty, but genuinely touched many, especially
| world leaders, with loving humility.
| onemoresoop wrote:
| >It's weird, I've never considered myself a "royalist" but this
| news has affected me quite strongly. I just burst into tears
| unexpectedly on hearing this news and I don't quite understand
| why I feel so very sad. I guess I have grown up and lived my
| whole life (as a Brit) seeing and hearing the Queen, singing
| "God save the Queen" etc, and this news made me suddenly feel
| very old, very nostalgic, with the sense that all things pass
| in time, which makes my heart ache deeply.
|
| I'm not even British and find myself feeling likewise. The
| Queen has been a fixture for a long time (before my birth and
| even before my parent's birth as well). It is also probably
| because of Queen Elisabeth's story was somewhat moving. It will
| take some time to get used to King Charles III...
| frereubu wrote:
| I'm very much the same, and have an enormous amount of respect
| for her. There's a part of me that wonders whether this feeling
| of continuity - from the start of her reign which was only a
| few years after the independence of India until now - has kept
| the country in a kind of a weird stasis though. It'll be
| interesting to see whether the UK's view of itself shifts
| significantly over the next few years.
| djitz wrote:
| I think it's quite understandable to have an emotional
| response. People who become fixtures in our lives die and it
| instantly fires the signals of our own mortality we spend our
| lives suppressing.
| icedchai wrote:
| As an American, the news also made me very sad. Though it's
| definitely not the same thing, we all "grew up" with the Queen.
| m000 wrote:
| Just reflect when we (as outsiders) were astonished by North
| Koreans mourning Kim Jong-Il.
| the_third_wave wrote:
| There is just that thing with those prison camps littering
| North Korea, the recurring famines, the fact that the Kim
| dynasty claims god-like status and more... so no, this is not
| a good comparison even though we of course do not really know
| how much of all this is known to the North-Korean populace.
| StacyC wrote:
| Beautifully said. I'm an American and I feel this one too for
| some reason. It feels nice to stop and reflect on this a bit
| today -- life, and all of it.
| jxramos wrote:
| there is something that harkens to our mortality when we
| witness something come to an end. I remember having some
| reactions to businesses failing and closing shop that I
| encountered as a youth. They always seemed and appeared so
| permanent. A place we'd always go to or pass by. Then the years
| go by and after encountering enough mainstays that had their
| heyday go under you realize that sentiment of durability and a
| perpetual landmark were never warranted in the first place and
| its kind of jarring and unsettling to realize how much flux
| there is in life.
| a_c wrote:
| Same here. And I'm an immigrant to the UK. Can't help but
| feeling sad
| hahaitsfunny wrote:
| tailspin2019 wrote:
| Fellow Brit here. I share this sentiment.
|
| I've never had strong views for or against the royal family but
| always felt genuine respect towards the Queen herself.
|
| She always appeared to be a morally strong character who tried
| to do the right thing.
|
| I always expected this would feel like a very strange moment
| when it finally arrived. I wasn't wrong.
| jll29 wrote:
| Even many non-Brits shared that respect and admiration.
|
| In 70 years, the number of gaffes/crises linked to her person
| (rather than other members of her family) are few, perhaps
| the only dents were the Diana incident and the secret
| influencing of the law by the crown ("royal consent" and
| "royal assent" - e.g. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-
| news/2021/feb/08/royals-vette...).
| PurpleRamen wrote:
| In some way, she was like one of those nice Grannies from your
| neighborhood. Had no big negatives, also not much positive for
| the average observer. Just a nice old lady, doing stuff with
| her family and being around for such a long time that she was
| some casual part of your world awareness.
| BoxOfRain wrote:
| The words 'God save the King' in the national anthem are going
| to feel very alien for a while I think, I feel a genuine sense
| of loss with the Queen's death. I think it comes from a place
| of national identity in general rather than royalism
| specifically, royalist or republican it can't be denied that
| Queen Elizabeth played a significant role in how the UK sees
| itself and to an extent how the rest of the world sees us and
| now she's suddenly not there.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| Honestly even the phrase from the article "In a statement,
| His Majesty the King said" struck me as unfamiliar.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| it seems to me _anachronistic_ Kings in Britain felt to me
| from another period. (save for 50 ish years post 1901.)
| jesuscript wrote:
| In most of our lifetimes we will also utter "The King and
| Queen of England" since Charles is already 76. British seem
| to treasure this tradition, where as we Americans
| definitely got rid of a Jefferson stature somewhere
| recently.
|
| _struck me as unfamiliar._
|
| Nope, it's been quite familiar to even someone several
| hundred years ago.
| amachefe wrote:
| There are many things (more than monarchy) that sets
| Americans and UK apart... even Europe generally.
|
| Europeans civilization are 1000s of years old, America is
| a baby compared to them, the history and memory are very
| different.
| worik wrote:
| > Europeans civilization are 1000s of years old
|
| Not really. The Greeks, the Arabs, yes. But 2,000 years
| ago the Europeans were were not "civilised" in the sense
| that we think of.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| > Nope, it's been quite familiar to even someone several
| hundred years ago.
|
| I'm not sure what point you're making here. I'm not
| claiming England has never had a King before, I'm
| pointing out that I'm used to seeing "Her Majesty the
| Queen" rather than "His Majesty the King" all over.
| epolanski wrote:
| Also all the stuff like Her Majesty Ship for every
| british navy vessel.
| secondcoming wrote:
| I don't think Camilla will become Queen, but I'm not 100%
| sure of the arcane rules
| bregma wrote:
| She is styled the Queen Consort. She is not a queen.
| Macha wrote:
| Queen Elizabeth's mother was also "Queen Elizabeth" as
| wife of the king, until her daughter took the throne and
| she became the "Queen Mother" to distinguish which Queen
| Elizabeth.
|
| (This is not the same as her mother being Queen Elizabeth
| I, which was the tudor queen from the 1500s, wife-of-king
| queens don't take up a number).
|
| It's a weird bit of asymmetry to the husband-of-queen
| title being decided on an adhoc basis, having been a
| prince of denmark, prince-consort of the united kingdom
| and prince of the united kingdom respectively.
| jesuscript wrote:
| Imagine it was as simple as Royal Member Level 2 and
| Staff Royal Family Member.
| mizzao wrote:
| I think GP may have been referring to Prince William and
| Catherine.
| atlgator wrote:
| Perhaps it's because the world is in such turmoil these days
| and we just lost one of the most (if not the most) stalwart
| figures on the world stage. I'm not British but that's how it
| hits me.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| And, I have this dreaded sense that the turmoil is only going
| to get worse.
| [deleted]
| Nursie wrote:
| Apparently, when I was little, I got excited one Christmas when
| the Queen's speech was on tv, because I thought it was my
| Grandmother...
|
| I used to take comfort in the idea that all things pass in
| time, now not so much. Probably because I realised that
| includes everyone I love, and myself!
|
| I've no great love for the monarchy, but this is certainly the
| end of an era in British public life and likely in UK
| international relations - I can't see the commonwealth nations
| welcoming King Charles as their new head of state.
|
| And it is weird, there are some things you just never expect to
| change. I'm hardly a spring chicken, but Queen Elizabeth was
| not only there my entire life, but Queen far enough into the
| past before I was born to have interacted with historical
| figures (like Churchill).
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| What is the sentiment like in the UK about Charles vs
| William? Heard lots of people calling for him to just hand it
| over to William straight away.
| jimnotgym wrote:
| It is said that the Queen was 100% against the idea of
| monarchs retiring. I suppose that harks back to the
| abdication crisis, but also undermines the concept of
| royalty altogether.
| Nursie wrote:
| I left the UK a year or so back and have been pretty anti-
| monarchist for as long as I can remember, so am probably
| not the best person to ask about the public mood on
| succession!
|
| I think there are probably a lot of people like me who,
| while anti monarchy in general, were not particularly anti-
| Elizabeth. However now that she's passed I would quite like
| the whole thing to be further de-emphasised, de-legitimised
| and removed from any remaining levers of power, however
| ceremonial or theoretical, and any remaining state subsidy,
| palaces and lands to be taken into public ownership etc
| etc.
|
| How many are of these opinions I am unsure.
| BLO716 wrote:
| Honestly, I think the US populous really feels the same
| about this but from the perspective our history. On the
| other side of the coin, is the UK has been one of longest
| running allies in the world with a common history born
| out of the womb of war. The romantic nature of nobility
| runs from a far, without the struggles of having the
| institution in that format - though some would argue we
| do, but in the oligarchy of wealth. I need not go
| further, as it treads that fine line.
|
| I myself, am in agreement however. If governance of the
| UK would modernize, the removal of generational status
| like what a monarch represents would be a step in the
| right direction. Why one would do that, and loose the
| history in the process? Not sure if the UK populous is
| ready for that, since its still a beloved part of the
| country and outwardly is a hallmark of the country's
| brand.
|
| I digress. I am probably just speaking ill of the dead to
| some, but just glad to be in the US for our
| representation structure of legislation and executive by
| proxy. Direct Democracy is the red headed step child of
| mob rule, and I'm content to not have that either.
| robbiep wrote:
| What sort of GPT-4 wrote this?
| barnabee wrote:
| I think this is a pretty common opinion, certainly among
| people I know.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| > levers of power, however ceremonial or theoretical,
|
| Less theoretical than many seem to think:
| https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/feb/08/royals-
| vette...
|
| They do this in secret, to preserve the illusion.
| BLO716 wrote:
| Not necessarily a bad thing, TBH. Think of it like our
| Senate in the US. The Senate is a longer view, while the
| House is the shorter populous public-opinion. Not sure of
| the Parliamentary influences, but someone who was as
| respected and revered in an status where one COULD get
| the longest view on staff (so to say) - why not?
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| The Senate doesn't pretend they're powerless figureheads
| who exist for tourism while exercising power in secret.
| youngtaff wrote:
| My hope is Charles does enough damage that we will finally
| get rid of the Monarchy
| bigfudge wrote:
| Before anyone dismissed this as a cheap shot or
| ungenerous, we need to remember that this is likely our
| only route to a republic given the absurd biases in uk
| media and establishment.
| worik wrote:
| Be very careful what you wish for
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| In what meaningful and useful sense will a republic be
| different from what the UK is now?
| billyruffian wrote:
| Well, it would be a lot harder to sack president Boris
| /s.
|
| I defer to the historian Niall Ferguson who said (I
| paraphrase) that purpose of monarchy is to protect the
| people from its government. From a UK perspective, it
| seems to work.
| secondcoming wrote:
| Charles isn't liked as much due to the Princess Diana
| situation (which didn't paint the Queen in great light
| either), but he'll be accepted as King. William doesn't
| seem to be as much in the spotlight as he used be.
| OJFord wrote:
| They're a popular couple for sure. I expect King Charles
| will be more 'active', in lieu of a better word, than the
| Queen was and thus more controversial. He's long been vocal
| in eco/green/environmental subjects in particular, which
| might be very interesting.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| Charles wrote a book on philosophy (Harmony:a new way of
| looking at the world) that is truly amazing. Please read
| it, it is very good.
|
| It starts with "this is a call to revolution..."
|
| A philosopher king!
| jonny_eh wrote:
| He's also a big proponent of quack medicine such as
| homeopathy, which isn't great IMO.
| origin_path wrote:
| I was told a few years ago that there's a general
| expectation that Charles will mostly focus on some long
| overdue reforms of how the Royal Family operates e.g.
| with respect to their business and land holdings, whilst
| leaving 'normal' politics behind. There have been changes
| he felt were important for years that he couldn't do
| whilst he wasn't King. And after that he might retire.
|
| Not sure how much truth there was to all that but it was
| a family member who told me and they follow this stuff a
| lot more than I do. It sounds plausible at least, and if
| that's how he does things, and then William becomes King,
| the monarchy might stick around for a while longer yet.
| OJFord wrote:
| That's true, I can't remember the phrasing but wanting a
| more 'slimmed down working royal family unit' as it were
| is another thing he's been vocal on. But I would say it
| has gone a lot more that way in recent years anyway,
| through some combination of the Queen agreeing/easing
| into it and 'helped' by some external factors of course.
| voisin wrote:
| > I can't see the commonwealth nations welcoming King Charles
| as their new head of state.
|
| Well this is precisely what is about to happen. There may be
| some hand wringing articles in major newspapers about whether
| the Royal head of state is still relevant, appropriate, blah
| blah blah, but there is approximately zero chance that
| anything will change in reaction to this news.
| Nursie wrote:
| Immediately? Perhaps not, but I think we'll see a bunch of
| countries breaking away from having the British monarch as
| their head of state in the next few years.
|
| I'm pretty sure that (for instance) Australia was just
| hanging on until we could be sure she was gone, the current
| government have already planned a referendum on it in a few
| years if they get a second term.
|
| (I say 'we', I am a relatively recent British migrant, and
| not a citizen yet)
| erehweb wrote:
| You may speak too soon. From
| https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/sep/08/queen-
| death-...
|
| "In many [Commonwealth countries] constitutions state that
| the Queen, specifically, is the head of state. In these
| countries, constitutions will need to be amended to refer
| to her successor. In countries such as Jamaica, where there
| is a strong independence movement, and Belize, these
| constitutional changes will also require a referendum,
| according to Commonwealth experts. This is expected to
| bring about a moment of political peril for the new
| monarch, who, after Barbados became independent in 2021,
| could face the loss of another prominent part of the
| Caribbean Commonwealth."
| amachefe wrote:
| This is NOT a new development. With or without the Queen,
| countries under the sovereign have been planning to
| leave, which is not opposed by anyone.
|
| Ironically, Commonwealth is actually getting bigger. The
| last commonwealth games was surprisingly well attended
| and celebrated.
| savingsPossible wrote:
| bigger in population?
|
| Or are countries *joining* ?
| badcppdev wrote:
| Why have you put joining inside asterisks? The simple
| answer is that yes countries have been joining [0]. Two
| new countries in 2022.
|
| 0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Member_states_of_the_Co
| mmonwea...
| nyokodo wrote:
| > political peril for the new monarch
|
| Losing almost any former colony is not going to make the
| top ten list of problems for the new King and might solve
| a few problems.
| stormbrew wrote:
| This is surprising tbh. When they changed the act of
| succession to remove default male succession, part of
| that was negotiating changes in succession acts around
| the Commonwealth. This implies that some or even most of
| those are unconstitutional? Weird.
|
| Anyways, it would be more surprising if the Commonwealth
| didn't lose a couple now and if a couple more didn't make
| plans for when Charles dies, which won't be all that long
| from now.
|
| I wish Canada was one of those, but all I'm reasonably
| hoping for is that we drop monarch icons on our cash.
| badcppdev wrote:
| The Commonwealth is not the list of countries that had
| QEII as their head of state. If you check the summary
| here:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonwealth_of_Nations you
| can read about it. That article has even been updated in
| the last 3 hours.
| stormbrew wrote:
| I am aware of that and did not say otherwise. I can see
| how you might have read that into what I said (as if I
| had said "across _all_ ") but my intention was across the
| countries in the Commonwealth that do share a monarch
| with the UK.
|
| Unless you're saying there are countries not in the
| Commonwealth that have her as the head of state which is
| news to me, but maybe i am mistaken.
| [deleted]
| wvenable wrote:
| In Canada, it would require changing the constitution and
| will open the floodgates for more changes. It was hard
| enough to do that once.
| Beltalowda wrote:
| I was reading [1] (from 2017) this afternoon, I guess it came
| up because the queen was reported as being ill.
|
| "People who are not expecting to cry will cry."
|
| Looks like they were right!
|
| Interesting read by the way which touches on many aspects.
|
| [1]: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/mar/16/what-
| happens...
| nazka wrote:
| We sometimes feel the weight of what we loved only when we lost
| them.
| vasac wrote:
| That's perfectly normal - people felt that way (cried) when Kim
| Il-sung died, for some reason some people tend to worship their
| rulers.
| orobinson wrote:
| I feel the same. I think it's because it really represents the
| end of an era. The 20th and early 21st century ushered in
| unprecedented improvements to quality of life in Britain but it
| has felt of late that that has peaked and the country is facing
| a serious decline: Brexit, the increasingly visible effects of
| climate change, the aftermath of covid, the possible break up
| of the union, rising costs of living, recession, possibly even
| war. The death of Elizabeth II coincides with the end of a long
| period of stability and comfort and is not only a poignant
| point in history itself but a marker for a transitional point
| in history for our country.
| isoprophlex wrote:
| You really hit the nail on the head. Watching footage of her
| inauguration drives home how the world changed during her
| reign. She lived through the entire crazy exponential
| increase in, well, everything.
|
| May she rest in peace.
| foobarian wrote:
| I think humans have evolved to need rulers and hierarchy to
| look up to to some extent. Look at what happened to Americans
| -- once the UK royalty was gone it was replaced with
| celebrity. It's just human nature.
| jollybean wrote:
| The Queen is not a 'ruler' though, she's a figurehead.
|
| Which is fully appropriate where it exists.
|
| I would be 100% against the US having a 'Constitutional
| Monarch' but I'm 100% in support of the UK Constitutional
| Monarchy, given that it has come from their long
| established culture, nearly a 1000-year-old 'contiguous-
| ish' institution.
|
| FYI in 1258 the Monarch signed documents which required him
| to 'Confer with Parliament' when changing rates of
| taxation. That's only 40 years past Magna Carta, and the
| first reference to 'Parliament'.
| dfraser992 wrote:
| The creatures known as "talking chimpanzees" have not
| evolved AT ALL. Rulers, presidents, hierarchy, celebrities,
| "influencers", the rich people... all of this is nothing
| but basic primate psychology. Or lobsters, if you are a fan
| of Jordan Peterson.
|
| Only those who can see beyond this and the flimsy
| foundation of it are actual "humans" in the connotative
| sense of that word.
| barrysteve wrote:
| This is one of those comments that won't age well.
|
| Reducing evolution and time down to a steady state
| worldview, doesn't work.
| educaysean wrote:
| My guess is that you consider yourself to be a part of
| that select group of "aware" individuals. How extremely
| human of you.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| Not to mention that she was the last monarch to have any
| memory of WWII and served as an ambulance mechanic. Now that
| generation that remembered the horrors of fascism has mostly
| passed and we find ourselves in a period that seems to have
| many echos of the 1930s with a new rise of authoritarianism
| and fascism around the world.
| throwaway1777 wrote:
| This is basically where Howe's 4th turning thesis comes
| from. The cycle repeats over the course of around 80 years
| more or less as the generations die off.
| mlindner wrote:
| I think you're exaggerating quite a lot.
| sofixa wrote:
| > Not to mention that she was the last monarch to have any
| memory of WWII
|
| That's probably not true. There's the Dalai Lama and Simeon
| II of Bulgaria, who were minors but at least Simeon surely
| remembers (his father died in suspicious circumstances, he
| had an unconstitutional regency, and then he was dethroned,
| expelled and spent his life in exile).
|
| > Now that generation that remembered the horrors of
| fascism has mostly passed and we find ourselves in a period
| that seems to have many echos of the 1930s with a new rise
| of authoritarianism and fascism around the world
|
| It's honestly infuriating that with the wealth of
| information available at everyone's fingertips so many
| people are so easily making the same mistakes as a century
| earlier.
| tialaramex wrote:
| Is the Dalai Lama a monarch? I see a resemblance in how
| monarchy works to how the Dalai Lama is chosen, but it's
| not obvious to me this is the same kind of thing.
| [deleted]
| valarauko wrote:
| Not a 'monarch', but a 'sovereign' would be a better fit.
| JAlexoid wrote:
| Single Ruler for life is still a monarch. The Pope is a
| monarch in Vatican.
|
| Monarchy is not necessary hereditary. And replacing
| monarch with sovereign, doesn't change the fact that it's
| a monarchy.
| sofixa wrote:
| Yep, one of the most popular monarchies, the Holy Roman
| Empire, was an elective monarchy (mostly theoretical
| after the Habsburgs took over, but still).
| jimmygrapes wrote:
| >It's honestly infuriating that with the wealth of
| information available at everyone's fingertips so many
| people are so easily making the same mistakes as a
| century earlier.
|
| I agree, but for me it's more infuriating how often I see
| this comparison used when when the modern version is
| primarily head-canon catastrophizing despite the same
| people making the comparison advocating and practicing
| behaviors that are even closer to what they decry, all
| while pretending they're not. Nuance and introspection
| are sorely lacking everywhere.
| eclipxe wrote:
| Strongly disagree. "The antifascists are actually the
| facists because they won't tolerate my facism!" Strong
| paradox of tolerance vibes you've got there.
| nmz wrote:
| > It's honestly infuriating that with the wealth of
| information available at everyone's fingertips so many
| people are so easily making the same mistakes as a
| century earlier.
|
| Alas, there is no algorithm yet for "truth".
| brigandish wrote:
| I think it's more about wilful ignorance than truth. I
| saw a video the other day with a US student protesting a
| speaker at his uni, and saying how he thought that some
| political violence could be useful. He then went on to
| admit he didn't know what the speaker looked like, nor
| what they believed, nor had he ever seen or heard
| anything they'd done. He'd just seen a poster saying that
| this person was bad, that was enough for him.
|
| I've thought for a long time that when the generation
| that fought in the war, or even grew up in it, has died
| out, that's when idiots like this student will be free to
| make something terrible rise. Fight for freedoms like
| speech while you can.
| vages wrote:
| King Harald V of Norway (born 1936) and Queen Margrete II
| (born 1940) are old enough to remember WW2. So is Queen
| Beatrix of the Netherlands (born 1938, abdicated).
|
| I think the grandparent comment's author forgot to insert
| a "British" in front of monarch.
|
| Edit:
|
| > [Simeon II] is, along with the current Dalai Lama, one
| of only two living people who were heads of state from
| the time of World War II.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simeon_Saxe-Coburg-Gotha
|
| However, Elizabeth II did not become Queen until well
| after WW2.
|
| (Removed erroneous statement about the Swedish king being
| old enough to remember WW2; he was born in 1946.)
| tshaddox wrote:
| > I think the grandparent comment's author forgot to
| insert a "British" in front of monarch.
|
| "she was the last British monarch to have any memory of
| WWII" is pretty weird too, though, since her father
| George VI was the only other monarch alive during WW2. I
| guess unless you also count her uncle Edward VIII who was
| alive throughout WW2 and had previously been a British
| monarch. If that counts then sure, she was the last of
| three British monarchs to remember WW2.
| gizajob wrote:
| I think you're picking hairs, given how much influence
| Nepal and Bulgaria have on the world stage, compared to
| QEII's 70 years as one of the most powerful heads of
| state on earth, probably the most powerful, given the
| duration.
| valarauko wrote:
| Tibet, not Nepal
| drieddust wrote:
| Yep Fascist Hitlar came to India to starve millions of
| Indians to death in man made famines.
|
| Killing people in gas chamber quickly or slowly starving
| them to death, which one is worse?
| dang wrote:
| We've banned this account for repeatedly posting flamewar
| comments. That's not allowed here.
|
| If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email
| hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that
| you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
|
| I don't lightly ban an 11-year-old account, but we've
| warned you many times, and you've done little but post
| flamewar comments lately, including nationalistic and
| religious flamewar.
| ralusek wrote:
| Brexit is a decline? You like unaccountable, increasingly
| authoritarian superstates? You like being dramatically
| disproportionally responsible for footing the bill for other
| members?
|
| If it's because you like the idea of a unified Europe, you
| don't need the EU to have allies and cooperate. You can still
| vacation in Spain.
| MrMan wrote:
| the world is a closed system. the illusion of independence
| is just a lie. Brexit marks the transition of the UK from
| arguably the most important state in the EU, to a 2nd and
| then 3rd world country. It is the suicide of a nation due
| to spite, ignorance, hate, greed, stupidity. Europe needs
| to be unified. the entire globe needs to be unified. small
| countries trying to go it alone will be wiped out or
| impoverished or both.
| dang wrote:
| We've banned this account for repeatedly posting flamebait
| and unsubstantive comments. That's not allowed here.
|
| If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email
| hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that
| you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
|
| (Since someone is now about to accuse me of stealth Brexit
| sideage--no, this is just about the tiny business of
| moderating an internet forum, and that is all.)
|
| I don't lightly ban a 7-year-old account, but (a) we've
| warned you many times:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22976700 (April 2020)
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20912638 (Sept 2019)
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20477028 (July 2019)
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19765448 (April 2019)
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17865589 (Aug 2018)
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17623237 (July 2018)
|
| ... and (b) you've broken the site guidelines repeatedly
| lately.
| wawjgreen wrote:
| I have been told, the Westerners pride themselves in the
| right of "freedom of speech" and they can say things
| other people in "totali...states" cannot. However,
| Twitter banned Peterson and Trump ...and now this on HN.
|
| So my question for anyone who would like to answer, incl.
| HN admin is: what constitutes free speech? Is it gonna be
| "I don't care what color it is as long as it is blue?".
|
| Was Orwell right?
|
| I understand that guidelines are in place to keep the
| forum civilized and matching its intent and content. But
| who decides whether the guidelines are oppressive and
| unfair? Was Peterson's ban fair? What do you think?
|
| I have not violated any guidelines here. My language is
| civil, and my content relevant to the HN mod's recent ban
| of a certain account.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| "Free Speech" in the west is the concept that the
| government cannot use its power to silence your opinions
| or expression.
|
| It has been co-opted fairly recently -by some- to mean
| that no one can silence you anywhere. This is a new
| interpretation, and unrelated to the USA constitutional
| right to free speech.
|
| This has never been the case. If you say something
| offensive to me in my house, I can rightfully remove you.
| You can continue to say the thing somewhere else, just
| not in a private house.
|
| Hacker News -in this instance- is a private house. If
| they allowed unlimited free speech, they would have to
| allow personal attacks, spam, off-topic submissions,
| etc... Part of the value of HN is that the speech IS NOT
| free.
|
| You and I can come here and trust that the conversations
| will meet a standard, banning people who flagrantly abuse
| that standard is also a form of free speech.
|
| edit: after seeing your edit, it looks like this is a
| disingenuous question intended to start a flamewar. If
| that isn't your intention, you should be careful about
| how you phrase things.
| wawjgreen wrote:
| Thank you for your reply. I understand:
|
| << You and I can come here and trust that the
| conversations will meet a standard, banning people who
| flagrantly abuse that standard is also a form of free
| speech. >>
|
| Discussions that are worth having are frequently those
| that may cause disagreement. I didn't see any personal
| attack, irrelevance, or spam in the comment of that Brit
| who was banned by HN. True, it was rant-ish, but it is
| what makes HN interesting, as well. Differences of
| opinion should not be considered a violation of a certain
| standard you alluded to. Right?
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| I'm not dang, so I can only speculate, but I would argue
| that the original comment is very close to a personal
| attack, and the comment was not made in good faith.
|
| Likewise, I would caution you about your own phrasing,
| particularly << So, there--the enlightened, FREE Western
| man or woman or "it", please tell me, is your freedom of
| speech an illusion and only applicable to Moslems? >>
|
| You have had your question answered thoroughly, but you
| have escalated to examples that have already been
| explained (in one sentence: private companies can choose
| what to publish (Hebdo) and what not to publish (HN,
| Twitter) without government interference), and chosen a
| phrasing that is generally acknowledged to be insulting
| to non-gender conforming individuals.
|
| This isn't a debate in intellectual good faith.
| mindcrime wrote:
| _I have not violated any guidelines here. My language is
| civil, and my content relevant to the HN mod 's recent
| ban of a certain account._
|
| This is meta navel-gazing and is generally not considered
| on-topic or useful here. That's probably the main reason
| for the downvotes.
|
| To try to answer the question though, since we're already
| here:
|
| There are two (at least two) definitions of "free speech"
| in the US. The "strict" one related to the Constitutional
| principle enshrined in the 1st Amendment which basically
| means that the government can't make certain speech
| illegal and then put you in jail or otherwise punish you
| for what you say. For better or worse, the courts have
| generally ruled that there are limits to that though,
| hence the old saw about "yelling fire in a crowded
| theatre".
|
| Beyond that, some people look at free speech in a
| colloquial sense as meaning something like "I can say
| anything I want, anywhere I want, anytime I want, and
| nobody can interfere in any way with my doing so". This
| would mean, for example, that a private web-forum like HN
| banning an account could be seen as a violation of "free
| speech". This is not even close to a universally accepted
| definition, but at this point I guess we could say it's
| close to being "widely adopted" at worst.
|
| I think _most_ Americans though, accept that as an
| individual no one of us has standing to compel another
| individual, or private organization, to assist in
| transmitting, propagating, relaying, or distributing our
| speech. So HN banning an account may be distasteful to
| some people, but it 's not a violation of the principle
| of "Free Speech".
|
| YMMV.
| munk-a wrote:
| If you're talking about American free speech your speech
| is protected from government censorship, not private
| censorship on a private platform. HN admins really do try
| to avoid putting their fingers on the scale when it comes
| to legitimate disagreements but that comment was dead'd
| for being flamebait and lacking substance - it added
| nothing of value to the discussion and veered far off
| topic (much like your comment and my reply do, but
| thankfully we're in a dead branch of a comment thread so
| this won't pollute most user's views).
|
| HN exists (partially) to surface interesting news and
| foster discussions of that news - flamebait is never
| interesting and it doesn't lead to interesting
| discussions. We of the internet discovered, during the
| usenet days, that reducing a conversation to a shouting
| match is boring - so to promote a more healthy dialog HN
| specifically removes inflammatory comments unless they
| bring an interesting topic to light (and even then it's
| just nicer to communicate in a polite manner) - as this
| is the goal for this private forum it's completely within
| its right to restrict discussions that go against that
| goal and restrict users that repeatedly violate that
| goal. The internet is a large place and there are plenty
| of other forums that cater to other forms of expression -
| the first amendment exists primarily to make it illegal
| for the government to say such places can't exist - it
| doesn't obligate all places to act in such a manner nor
| mandate the existence of such places.
| wawjgreen wrote:
| Thank you for your reply.
|
| << not private censorship on a private platform >> then
| what is the point of claiming one lives in a "FREE" land?
| Most convos will be handled by private firms. This means,
| despite your constitutional right, you truly cannot say
| whatever you want (even when it is not offensive--as the
| Jordan Peterson case on Twitter shows).
|
| << a shouting match is boring >>
|
| Are you sure about that? I think data is useful, in every
| way. One can, for instance, see, what topics cause most
| of the shouting matches (they will get tired anyway, so
| why ban them?).
| em-bee wrote:
| shouting matches prevent an engaged discussion. on the
| current topic we can either discuss what the death of the
| queen means to us, or we can yell at each other for
| having the wrong opinions. but we can't do both. it won't
| work, and it doesn't provide any useful data because the
| shouting matches bury the other discussions which would
| actually be interesting. it's not possible to ignore them
| if there is no way to signal that those comments are not
| welcome. that's what downvotes are for.
|
| people who do nothing but shout their arguments without
| engaging in good natured discussion are therefore equally
| not welcome. as a community we need the ability to stop
| those people from derailing our discussions.
|
| the problem with flaimbait is that it is that it
| motivates people who like to shout. in a perfect
| community where noone engages in shouting matches,
| flaimbait would be unable to start any fights. it would
| therefore be harmless and ignored. but rarely is a
| community perfect, and so it is helpful to remind people
| to not do that.
|
| to know why this particular comment was flaimbait it may
| be necessary to learn more about the topic and what kind
| of responses it draws out. understanding this is the job
| of the moderators. and while the moderators aren't
| perfect either, they are doing a god job so far, and
| instead of rejecting particular moderation actions it
| would be better to find different, less controversial
| ways to approach the topic in question, which in this
| case surely did happen. the topic brought up by the
| banned account has been discussed on this site multiple
| times in a more civilized form.
|
| right here we have an example of an engaged civilized
| discussion. this is as it should be, however it is off
| topic, so people would still be in their right to
| downvote all of the comments in this subthread, including
| mine. we can and should have this discussion, but not
| here where the topic is the death of the british queen
| and not freedom of speech.
| em-bee wrote:
| in contrast to the american idea of free speech which
| limits what the government can censor, germany has a
| concept of the freedom of opinion which among other
| things limits the right of companies to censor opinions
| they disagree with. the blocking of trump for example
| raised some eyebrows. the kind of moderation done on
| hackernews would be just fine in germany too though.
| wawjgreen wrote:
| << the kind of moderation done on hackernews would be
| just fine >>
|
| I think HN is fine as well, and the HN rules are in place
| to keep the place worthy of visit and read-- HOWEVER,
| that said, the Western world should not brag about
| freedom of speech then. Your speech is not free.
| em-bee wrote:
| the following is a response to
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32771479 which is
| dead, so i am writing here instead, since it fits.
|
| _The problem is, the mods at Twitter may have a
| disagreement with a user and ban them arbitrarily, like
| they did with Peterson. Pretty soon, you will not be able
| to read anything except what appeals to the Twitter mods.
| Your thinking will be forced and re-defined and you won
| 't be able to say what you think, because of the
| repercussions.
|
| [...]
|
| In a world where you can only say what you are allowed to
| say, people will stop thinking and everybody will say
| similar things. I hardly call that "freedom" and "pursuit
| of happiness"._
|
| i agree with your general sentiment, which is why i
| pointed out the difference of how germany treats its
| freedom of opinion. a few years ago a new law was enacted
| that requires the swift removal of online hate speech and
| one of the first people blocked because that law was
| someone making anti-muslim comments. so no, there is no
| allowed hate speech there.
|
| the difficulty is to figure out what is to be considered
| hate speech and what isn't. some of that we may have to
| learn through trial and error.
|
| the new law is controversial because it forces companies
| to act on mere notification without a court order. which,
| while considered normal in the US, is not how germans
| like to do things.
| dang wrote:
| This is entirely offtopic. If you have a question you
| want to ask us, the site guidelines explain what to do:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
|
| The answer to your question is that HN is just a specific
| type of web forum a specific set of rules. It's not an
| anything-goes place and never has been, and it's hardly
| the "western world".
|
| Who decides whether the guidelines are fair? well, that
| has to be someone's job and it happens to be my job, so
| for now it's I who decide.
|
| Since you've broken them badly in all kinds of places
| recently:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32671575
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32660805
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32659189
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32648075
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32646308
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32628649
|
| (and that's just a few examples), I've banned your
| account. Please don't create accounts to break HN's rules
| with.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| "Free speech" only applies to what the government can do.
|
| Private entities are allowed to do whatever they want
| with their platform regarding speech. Twitter, HN, etc.
| are not obligated to give everyone a megaphone.
|
| There's no way you don't know this already. It comes up
| every week.
| wawjgreen wrote:
| fit2rule wrote:
| It is disappointing how your good intentions result in
| oppressed communication.
| dang wrote:
| The idea is to oppress tedious communication so curious
| communication can flourish. It's impossible to have both.
|
| I realize there's a critique of gardeners which argues
| that nobody should ever pull weeds, or even label any
| plant a weed--but I think most people come here for the
| flowers, and for that there needs to be a shit-ton of
| weed-pulling.
| worik wrote:
| > and for that there needs to be a shit-ton of weed-
| pulling
|
| Grateful am I. But mate, you do sound like you need a
| holiday!
| dang wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32773032
| ralusek wrote:
| I contribute to this forum in good faith, I strongly
| disagree with this ban.
| dang wrote:
| That may be, but you still have to follow the rules. You
| broke them here, have broken them elsewhere, we've warned
| you many times, and I've just told you how to get
| unbanned if you want to.
| dfraser992 wrote:
| An upvote for you (if I could). I'm American but have lived
| in the UK for near 20 years. My great-whatever grandfather
| signed the Declaration of Independence so I'm hardly a
| royalist... So WTF am I doing living in the UK??? (the NHS
| etc...)
|
| My general sense is that of respect for the Queen as a
| symbol. She did it right and wasn't a useless numpty like ...
| oh... all of the rest of them. Primarily nothing but B list
| celebrities. William and Kate seem fine enough, Harry and
| Meghan are .. irrelevant except to the nonces who have no
| actual lives, and let's not discuss Andrew...
|
| Hopefully Charles will use the "soft power" he supposedly has
| to corral the professional sociopaths destroying this country
| (e.g. wind and solar power, given his supposed environmental
| leanings) but I don't know.... it very well may be all
| downhill from now. England (and by extension all of the UK)
| is destined to become a failed state.
|
| Which is why I am looking hard at moving to Scotland (soon to
| be independent!) or even the EU to get the F out of here
| ASAP. It really is a transitional point.
| alistairSH wrote:
| _Which is why I am looking hard at moving to Scotland (soon
| to be independent!)_
|
| Has there been any real progress towards another referendum
| on independence? I know SNP still has the lion's share of
| seats in Scottish parliament, but what else? As a Scottish
| ex-pat of sorts (born UAE, to Scottish parents, but raised
| and educated in the US), I have nostalgic notions of moving
| to Scotland. Then I remember its dark much of the year and
| rains a fair bit. Heck, it even snowed in June the last
| summer I visited (yes, that was up Glenshee, but still).
| faverin wrote:
| No one seriously thinks Scotland will leave soon. The
| energy is moving to a new settlement of the four nations.
| That will come in the next ten years. We're fine.
| Edinburgh got loads of tech energy. Glasgow's a massive
| city with loads of opportunity. We have a large financial
| sector that needs geeks. Come. We need you. Lived here
| thirty years now. No regrets. Weather is improving with
| climate change (ducks).
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| FiberBundle wrote:
| It seems as if you judge the past too positively. The 70s and
| 80s were also perceived as pretty dark at the time and
| anything but stable. The sentiment at the time was quite
| similar to the way you describe the present. You had
| stagnation in the 70s similar to what is happening today and
| a general view that the welfare system was losing its
| viability. The Cold War also became more serious again in the
| 80s and the geopolitical threats were comparable to today's.
| fullsend wrote:
| I love the example of ancient texts that decry how the
| youth don't listen to their elders any more and the lords
| are getting stingier with the taxes every season. It's a
| universal feeling.
| bigfudge wrote:
| Then mourn the social democratic consensus that built that
| prosperity, rather than the symbol of empire and privilege
| that it replaced?
| blibble wrote:
| during her lifetime the British Empire went from its zenith
| to its end
|
| leaving a trade bloc (Brexit) is hardly notable by comparison
| scott_w wrote:
| It is when you see Brexit as part of that end.
| blibble wrote:
| the Empire ended in 1997 with the handover of Hong Kong
|
| before the EU existed
| zxexz wrote:
| Do you mean the eurozone? The EU as we know it today came
| into existence (Maastricht treaty). The eurozone was
| 1999.
| ploika wrote:
| The EEC became the EU in 1993.
| 4ad wrote:
| The EU was founded in 1993, and traces its roots back to
| EEC (1957) and ECSC (1951).
| blibble wrote:
| it is quite clear in the Maastrict treaty that the EU was
| a newly established entity that absorbed the obligations
| and responsibilities of the former entities
|
| (in the same way the United States absorbed the
| obligations and responsibilities of Great Britain in the
| 13 colonies)
|
| (regardless, I got my dates wrong, I was thinking of
| Nice...)
| mato wrote:
| The EU is not a 'trade bloc' (sic).
|
| In the grand scheme of things, Brexit and its consequences
| were much alike to what I imagine would happen were $STATE
| to leave the USA.
| kurupt213 wrote:
| To be fair, deals Churchill made with Roosevelt during Lend
| Lease ushered in the end. She inherited that situation from
| her dad.
| rikthevik wrote:
| My understanding is that the late 70s and early 80s in
| England was a hopeless place. As evidence I submit Alan
| Moore's introduction to V for Vendetta and Ghost Town by the
| Specials.
|
| - https://slendertroll.tumblr.com/post/66114152363 -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_Town_(Specials_song)
|
| "Naivete can also be detected in my supposition that it would
| take something as melodramatic as a near-miss nuclear
| conflict to nudge England toward fascism. Although in
| fairness to myself and David, there were no better or more
| accurate predictions of our country's future available in
| comic form at that time. The simple fact that much of the
| historical background of the story proceeds from a predicted
| Conservative defeat in the 1982 General Election should tell
| you how reliable we were in our role as Cassandras. It's 1988
| now. Margaret Thatcher is entering her third term of office
| and talking confidently of an unbroken Conservative
| leadership well into the next century. My youngest daughter
| is seven and the tabloid press are circulating the idea of
| concentration camps for persons with AIDS. The new riot
| police wear black visors, as do their horses, and their vans
| have rotating video cameras mounted on top. The government
| has expressed a desire to eradicate homosexuality, even as an
| abstract concept, and one can only speculate as to which
| minority will be the next legislated against. I'm thinking of
| taking my family and getting out of this country soon,
| sometime over the next couple of years. It's cold and it's
| mean-spirited and I don't like it here anymore."
| youngtaff wrote:
| youngtaff wrote:
| ploppyploppy wrote:
| I feel similar. I am pro-monarchy but I'm not usually attached
| in this manner.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Royalty is interesting.
|
| I think it's a very understandably human urge to hold up
| someone for emulation. The only odd thing about a noble class
| in that sense is that we decide the job of "role model and
| leader" should be hereditary.
|
| But I think it's a very understandably human reaction to feel
| sorrow when someone who millions of people have invested so
| much energy into making the best person that can be is still
| mortal.
| nemo44x wrote:
| > The only odd thing about a noble class in that sense is
| that we decide the job of "role model and leader" should be
| hereditary.
|
| I don't think it's odd at all, in fact it's pretty normal
| when you look at a long stretch of history. I'd wager that
| heredity based monarchy is probably the most common form of
| regime.
| properclass wrote:
| hereditary democracy isn't uncommon
| youngtaff wrote:
| Hereditary monarchies (and such like) are incompatible
| with democracy IMV
| iso1631 wrote:
| There are many unelected people in the UK with far more
| power over the government than the monarch through
| "donations" to the government
| [deleted]
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Interesting! So I'd never really thought about this
| dimension before, but yes: at least among monarchies,
| hereditary monarchy is the most common form.
|
| Whether it's the most common form of government is unclear.
| In modern times, democracy is most common. I think what was
| most common historically might be a complicated question
| and changes in terms of how it's asked (in terms of
| distinct governments, total territory controlled, or total
| population loyal to?).
| nemo44x wrote:
| Today yes. But until the 19th century, heredity based
| monarchy was the most common form of government
| historically.
|
| Monarchy is still the most common form of organization as
| well. For instance, every corporation is a monarchy with
| a board that acts as the king/queens court and executives
| that represent the remaining nobility. Same with Military
| arrangements. It's probably a reason that these forms of
| organization tend to dominate others, like collectives,
| etc. Strong leadership from the top will always be
| optimal. Of course, weak leadership from the top is
| fatal.
|
| I'll add:
|
| Consider there are 3 forms of organization:
|
| Rule by 1, Rule by some, and Rule by many. These can be
| broken into 6 implementations, 2 for each form.
| Monarch/Tyrant, Aristocracy/Oligarchy,
| Democracy/Populism. There's interesting relationships
| between these 6 and what some historians believe are
| natural transitions from 1 to another: Monarch->Aristocra
| cy->Democracy->Oligarchy->Populist->Tyrant
| shadowgovt wrote:
| I like to expand the though "strong leadership from the
| top will always be optimal" with what it's optimizing
| _for._ It has benefits for speed and specificity; as long
| as the chains of communication are open and clear, what
| the group should be doing is easy to understand. That 's
| much muddier in a distributed leadership system.
|
| And, of course, that centralization carries good and ill.
| At different points in time, it can be detrimental to
| centralize authority so. But even countries like the
| United States, which generally pride themselves on
| decentralized democratic rule, have various emergency
| powers abilities for wartime consolidation of authority
| behind the Executive (and President specifically).
|
| Apart from that note, I agree with everything here.
| JAlexoid wrote:
| > every corporation is a monarchy
|
| No... Not at all. Not that many large cap
| corporations(large capital organizations, not Mom and Pop
| Inc) have one exclusive owner. None of the publicly
| traded corporations are monarchies at all.
| sophacles wrote:
| Plenty of publicly traded companies have a single
| shareholder with 51 or more % of the votes, for various
| reasons. (this doesn't necessarily means owns 51% of the
| shares, just that they control 51% of the votes - e.g.
| special stock classes with more votes per share, or via
| holding proxies, etc)
| nemo44x wrote:
| Sure they are, CEOs are the King/Queens. They have full
| control on decisions and do as they please more or less.
| If they don't perform then they are replaced with a new
| monarch. Monarchs can be challenged and deposed and often
| were. A monarch that was not doing a good job was often
| in defense of themselves from rivals.
| bee_rider wrote:
| A monarch is the leader of a state. If we remove the "of
| a state" part from the definition, we just have a fancy
| sounding synonym for "leader." So in some sense a CEO
| could be called a monarch if we did that, but so could...
| whatever, a sports team's coach.
| nemo44x wrote:
| Yeah sort of my point in that it's a common form of
| organization. Point being we feel like democracy is the
| best but nearly every other organization is closer to
| monarchy. Monarchy's are extremely effective
| organizational structures when the monarch is extremely
| competent.
| JAlexoid wrote:
| Replace the word CEO with President, Prime Minister,
| Branch Manager, Head of Labor Union - and it'll make as
| much sense.
|
| As a person making this claim, you are failing miserably
| to make a case that CEO is a monarch. (Mostly because you
| don't know what it means to be CEO or a monarch)
| nemo44x wrote:
| > Replace the word CEO with President, Prime Minister,
| Branch Manager, Head of Labor Union - and it'll make as
| much sense.
|
| They all have massive limits on their powers as compared
| to a CEO. They work with parliaments, etc. They can be
| vetoed easily.
|
| I'll grant it isn't a perfect analogy. A CEO doesn't have
| unlimited power granted by god and has to answer to a
| board and therefore shareholders. But in essence, the
| idea of having a singular ultimate decision maker/leader
| rather than having a small group vote on decisions or
| have the entire company vote makes it a de-facto
| monarchy.
| supernova87a wrote:
| I find this super interesting, and I have a hunch it has to do
| with how much the Queen/monarchy has been revealed as human to
| us through media, movies, entire Netflix shows, etc.
|
| I mean, the Queen could just as well have been a made up figure
| to you or me, given the vanishing possibility she would affect
| any of our lives directly. Yet after watching those stories
| about her life, the monarchy, it manipulates your neurons to
| actually have a person to mourn. Funny, isn't it? And the
| length of her life certainly gave enough material to feel some
| story.
|
| I imagine that before QE2, much state/people mourning of the
| sovereign was just symbolic, and though perhaps somewhat
| heartfelt (I daresay, but more for loss of the symbol), not
| deep. For all their quirks and personality problems revealed to
| us on TV, it actually caused them to mean more to us.
| andywood wrote:
| IMO this is a normal way to feel about it. I'm american and
| while I'm not shedding tears, I do feel the significance. I'd
| have immense respect for her even if it were only for
| fulfilling one large role, honorably and consistently, for an
| entire human lifespan. How many politicians have? And I think
| she had a hard, hard job. Imagine having to live up to the
| expectations of a great Queen of England for that long without
| a meltdown or scandal.
|
| It's quite a different context, however I felt sort of similar
| about John McCain, mostly for what he endured as a POW, and
| what he nevertheless went on to accomplish in politics.
| [deleted]
| kabes wrote:
| I also don't know why I feel that, but I wonder if it's not for
| a more selfish reason. As in: "I'm getting old and the things I
| knew disappear"
| purim wrote:
| bpye wrote:
| I was very quietly watching BBC News whilst in a meeting. The
| news was announced just a couple minutes in, I didn't expect to
| particularly care, but, apparently I do...
| danudey wrote:
| I can't think of much else that has been the case as long as
| Queen Elizabeth II being the monarch. There are more than a few
| pensioners out there who weren't even born when she ascended
| the throne; I daresay that very few people under 75 years of
| age remember a time when she wasn't queen before today.
|
| As a Canadian, the idea that she's gone is... strange? Every
| single time I've ever held a coin (in Canada), she's been on
| it. Every dime, every cent, every ten dollar bill. I have a
| difficult time with visual memory, but I know what those images
| look like because I've seen them a hundred thousand times.
|
| Now it's going to be someone else? It makes sense, but it
| doesn't feel right.
| NoraCodes wrote:
| meanwhile, Irish Twitter and TikTok have been absolutely ablaze
| with celebration...
| MrRiddle wrote:
| dang wrote:
| We've banned this account for posting flamewar comments.
| That's not allowed here, and you've been doing it
| repeatedly (e.g.
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32110385).
|
| If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email
| hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that
| you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
| [deleted]
| talideon wrote:
| That's more a matter of what circles you're in. Most people
| I've encountered have been much more moderate, separating the
| human being, who deserves to be mourned, from the
| institution.
| sph wrote:
| Twitter is an echo chamber of edginess and not indicative of
| the average person in the real world.
|
| It's like wondering what 4chan thinks of this.
| JAlexoid wrote:
| Average person don't care...
|
| All kinds of republicans(anti-monarchists, not American
| republicans) are content.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| >" Twitter is an echo chamber of edginess and not
| indicative of the average person in the real world."
|
| For now, at least. I think we are all underestimating just
| how much Twitter impacts public perception. Not just on
| topics, but how people feel, act, and interact with others.
| Twitter seems to have a cancerous negativity it inflicts on
| its users.
| JAlexoid wrote:
| Now you know why people say "good old days". Even though you're
| living in the best days and the future will be even better.
|
| Your emotions is a result of imparted and perceived.
| readme wrote:
| as an American this also makes me sad, the Queen is one of the
| leaders of the free world and in her passing, the world has
| lost a great leader
| Emma_Goldman wrote:
| The phrase 'free world' is ironically apt. It was developed
| in the Cold War to refer to the US-led anti-communist bloc,
| precisely because 'free' is equivocal enough to cover despots
| ruling over capitalist economies. Of course, a Queen by
| definition is not an emblem of free government.
| enjoy-your-stay wrote:
| I'm surprised to say I feel the same. I'm Scottish and never
| really had much affection for the royal family, but I also feel
| quite sad and that it's the end of an era.
|
| She was the last of the best, we'll see what comes next.
| throwawayacc2 wrote:
| I share your feeling. I was struck by a deep sense of sadness
| as well. Maybe it's silly, I don't know, I sort of felt she was
| the grandma of the nation. It was a nice feeling knowing she's
| there and a sad one knowing she no longer is.
|
| One thing is for sure. She did leave a mark. Winston God damn
| Churchill was her first time minister! When I will be old and
| have grandchildren, I will tell my grandchildren how I became a
| British citizen. And when they'll ask me when, I'll tell them
| during the reign of The Queen. And they will know who I mean.
|
| God rest her soul.
| theirishrover wrote:
| I was born on a Dublin street where the Royal drums the beat
| And the loving English feet they went all over us And every
| single night when me da' would came home tight He'd invite
| the neighbors out with this chorus
|
| Come out ye black and tans, come out and fight me like a man
| Show your wife how you won medals down in Flanders Tell her
| how the IRA made you run like hell away From the green and
| lovely lanes of Killashandra
|
| Come tell us how you slew them old Arabs two by two Like the
| Zulus they had spears, bows and arrows How brave you faced
| one with your 16-pounder gun And you frightened them natives
| to their marrow
|
| Come out ye black and tans, come out and fight me like a man
| Show your wife how you won medals down in Flanders Tell her
| how the IRA made you run like hell away From the green and
| lovely lanes of Killashandra
|
| Come let us hear you tell how you slandered great Parnell
| When you fought them well and truly persecuted Where are the
| sneers and jeers that you loudly let us hear When our leaders
| of sixteen were executed?
|
| Come out ye black and tans, come out and fight me like a man
| Show your wife how you won medals down in Flanders Tell her
| how the IRA made you run like hell away From the green and
| lovely lanes of Killashandra
|
| Come out ye black and tans, come out and fight me like a man
| Show your wife how you won medals down in Flanders Tell her
| how the IRA made you run like hell away From the green and
| lovely lanes of Killashandra
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| The most useful Twitter comment I saw today described the
| Queen as "iconic".
|
| And I realised that's exactly what she was. She was iconic in
| the religious sense - an embodied icon of a nationalist
| religion.
|
| This suddenly made a lot of things about the current state of
| the UK much clearer.
|
| There is no practical sense in which she was genuinely
| "grandma of the nation." That personification goes one way
| only - from the population to what psychologists would call a
| parental projection.
|
| _Objectively_ she paid almost no attention to her subjects,
| except for a tiny number who were socially or financially
| notable.
|
| She may have been witty and personable socially - as reported
| by many people - and perhaps the most interesting thing about
| her as an individual is that she trained as a mechanic during
| the war, taking delight in a job that women didn't usually
| do, and continued that interest through her life.
|
| But I find the crypto-religious elements of the UK's
| (actually mostly just England's) relationship with her very
| unsettling.
|
| And I genuinely believe she could have done far more for the
| people of the UK than she did. Especially recently.
|
| Monarchy is a strange thing. When I flew to Bali on a Thai
| airline in the 90s a fair few pages of the inflight magazine
| were full of carefully manicured praise for the talents of
| the reigning monarch.
|
| It seemed bizarre and alien. But over time I realised the UK
| has a similar relationship with its monarchy.
|
| And where Heads of State are nominally expected to work for
| the Greater Good, it seems to be _assumed_ that monarchs do
| the same, mostly by modelling social ease and extreme
| privilege.
|
| This is all quite odd. I'm sure there are reasons for it -
| possibly evolutionary - and I suspect they're not obvious.
| gizajob wrote:
| She's iconic, unbelievably so due to the duration of her
| reign and all the changes she's overseen. But...Charles III
| and then William and Louis will become as iconic. Although
| she's filled the job magnificently, Elizabeth was Elizabeth
| at the end of the day, but the British King/Queen is
| immortal.
| valarauko wrote:
| I suspect she was iconic in a way we will not see again.
| It's likely that the British monarchy will not survive in
| its current form to Louis, perhaps not even to William.
| When QEII ascended, she was one of a scant handful of
| European monarchs that survived to the middle of the 20th
| century, and the public perception of the institution has
| steadily eroded over the years. If anything, QEII's
| longevity held some of that erosion back, but Charles and
| William will not.
| jesuscript wrote:
| I think one of the things that made her brand strong was
| that she was a solo queen in almost all pictures. Her
| husband was rarely in any. Along with the fact that she
| was in every iconic event and next to every iconic
| person.
|
| https://images.app.goo.gl/5MwVGn7kpMzqaH996
|
| https://www.alamy.com/queen-elizabeth-ii-and-prince-
| philip-v...
|
| ----------
|
| Aside from the visual branding, her family had tons of
| relationship issues. For someone trying to maintain the
| literal image of the crown, it took a bit to keep it
| together and have a picture perfect ending.
| gizajob wrote:
| Why is it likely? I've a feeling William will be as
| fondly regarded as his grandmother. Charles not so much,
| but he might not be in his post for very many years. Also
| don't overlook the fact that the British Empire and
| Commonwealth have basically fallen apart under QEII's
| watch, but that's still not likely to mean that the
| country gets rid of the monarchy. Nobody in the country
| is of the mind that having President Boris as head of
| state is a better idea than having King William. Not even
| the Scots.
| valarauko wrote:
| The British Empire and Commonwealth may have fallen
| during her watch, but she wasn't the cause - Empire and
| its relics were increasingly relics of a different age
| and not something she or anyone could have averted.
|
| My impression is that William benefited from just not
| being Charles, and some of the sheen rubbing off from his
| mother. Both of those things only go so far, and as he
| moves more and more into public responsibilities, he has
| more and more chances to bungle up. From the high of the
| early 2010s, the only way for him to trend was down, and
| its inevitable. William is, what, 40? Charles wasn't
| quite reviled when he was 40 too - he grew into that
| role.
|
| Even if the monarchy isn't abolished outright before
| Louis or a sibling ascends, it's very possible that the
| United Kingdom in its current state may not. The unified
| crowns of England and Scotland may exist in title only,
| if that.
| theirishrover wrote:
| I was born on a Dublin street where the Royal drums the beat
| And the loving English feet they went all over us And every
| single night when me da' would came home tight He'd invite the
| neighbors out with this chorus
|
| Come out ye black and tans, come out and fight me like a man
| Show your wife how you won medals down in Flanders Tell her how
| the IRA made you run like hell away From the green and lovely
| lanes of Killashandra
|
| Come tell us how you slew them old Arabs two by two Like the
| Zulus they had spears, bows and arrows How brave you faced one
| with your 16-pounder gun And you frightened them natives to
| their marrow
|
| Come out ye black and tans, come out and fight me like a man
| Show your wife how you won medals down in Flanders Tell her how
| the IRA made you run like hell away From the green and lovely
| lanes of Killashandra
|
| Come let us hear you tell how you slandered great Parnell When
| you fought them well and truly persecuted Where are the sneers
| and jeers that you loudly let us hear When our leaders of
| sixteen were executed?
|
| Come out ye black and tans, come out and fight me like a man
| Show your wife how you won medals down in Flanders Tell her how
| the IRA made you run like hell away From the green and lovely
| lanes of Killashandra
|
| Come out ye black and tans, come out and fight me like a man
| Show your wife how you won medals down in Flanders Tell her how
| the IRA made you run like hell away From the green and lovely
| lanes of Killashandra
| Guy2020 wrote:
| dang wrote:
| All: please don't post flamebait, including ranting against
| monarchy or railing against "the nobility" like it's 1770. Such
| reflexive comments are not on topic here. We want _curious_
| conversation. Please review
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
|
| This story is on topic because it's a major historical event and
| history has always been on topic here. If it doesn't produce an
| intellectually curious response in you, you're welcome to find
| something else that does--there are plenty of other things to
| read--but in that case please refrain from posting.
|
| Positive-empty comments aren't substantive either, but as pg
| pointed out way back when HN was getting started
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html), those are
| benign. The comments we need to avoid are the malignant ones.
|
| Edit: by positive-empty I just meant comments like these:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32770030
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32769786
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32769037
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32769019
|
| I'm not telling you guys to be royalists! I'm just asking you not
| to post crap comments, which this thread was filled with when I
| first saw it. We don't care what you're for or against, we just
| care about people using HN as intended.
|
| Edit 2: I think the problem is that this comment has outlived its
| usefulness at the top of the thread because the bottom of the
| barrel comments have mostly been moderated away, whether by user
| flags or by us. I'm going to unpin this and mark it offtopic now.
| Please don't post any more bottom-of-barrel comments!--and if you
| see some, please flag them.
| braingenious wrote:
| > please don't post flamebait, including ranting against
| monarchy or railing against "the nobility" like it's 1770.
|
| I am kind of curious about what this means exactly. Is _any_
| criticism of the monarchy off limits? Is the purpose of this
| thread for people to air their positive thoughts about this
| lady?
|
| For example, I find non-British people that are genuinely sad
| about her passing to be pretty bizarre. It's a fascinating
| event to look at how we tend to form parasocial relationships
| with carefully curated depictions of people.
|
| It's even _more bizarre_ when we make _actual rules_ to enforce
| orthodoxy and stifle criticism of parasocial relationships with
| carefully curated depictions of people.
|
| This insistence on an arbitrary standard of decorum and the
| compulsion to play out a socially-prescribed bit of theater is
| pretty odd. Queen Elizabeth was paradoxically both not powerful
| enough to warrant lumping her in with British failings and at
| the same time so powerful that we are compelled to speak highly
| of her.
| k__ wrote:
| I saw a few posts from people from former colonies who
| weren't so fond of her or her family.
| [deleted]
| avgcorrection wrote:
| 800 comments like "why is monarchy still a thing in 2022?"
| would be tedious and redundant. Now we have 700 comments of
| "didn't really care that much until right now but I just
| broke down in tears", which is merely boring.
| Rapzid wrote:
| Heh, this is the most interesting comment/observation to
| me... Banal positivity in favor of the crown is in, but
| banal criticism is out..
| purim wrote:
| dang wrote:
| There are plenty of critical comments. The sort we want to
| avoid is shallow negativity, because it's the opposite of
| curiosity.
|
| Another way to look at this is that we want reflective
| comments rather than reflexive ones*. Reflex means
| predictable and predictable means tedious. Tedium is really
| what we're trying to avoid on HN--not criticisms of
| monarchy. I'd have thought that was painfully obvious, but
| I realize it's neither so obvious nor so painful to people
| who don't deal with it full time.
|
| * https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&
| sor...
| beders wrote:
| Very well said, have my upvote.
|
| There are unwritten social contracts in play here - which get
| weaker with time.
|
| Criticizing the oppression of colonies (under the eyes of the
| crown) is only allowed - sometime later.
| dang wrote:
| My post (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32769925) was
| not for or against monarchy, or about monarchy at all. It was
| about tedious, low-quality internet comments. I'm against
| them.
|
| (Edit: that first sentence is really a template
| instantiation. When I post like this, it's never for or
| against <T>. It's always just about internet comments. People
| who are against <T> (or for it) often react like we're for
| <T> (or against it), but this is an illusion. It could
| quickly be cured by grokking the template, since at that
| level all these posts are entirely the same.)
|
| It may not make so much sense now, but this thread was
| filling with the worst sort of dumb flamebait when it got
| started. That it isn't so now is because I've spent the last
| 3 hours refreshing the page and meticulously moderating it.
| If some of my comments are a little dyspeptic, that's because
| dealing with tedious comments is tedious, and I sort of pep
| myself up by letting loose a bit. Not the finest of practices
| but esprit de corps is also a need.
| hitekker wrote:
| Your comments in this thread only seem dyspeptic because
| they're antiseptic. Thank you for cleaning up the viral
| vitriol.
| braingenious wrote:
| Thanks for clarifying!
| dev_tty01 wrote:
| Thank you.
| bobnamob wrote:
| As always, thanks for keeping HN interesting Dan
| jmull wrote:
| Hey, I'll respond at a general high-level...
|
| You use words like "odd" and "bizarre" to describe many
| people's reactions to the QE's passing...
|
| I humbly suggest that it's it is simply that _you_ don 't
| understand a certain perspective here. That's totally fine --
| completely fine -- because there's no reason to expect we all
| could or should share the same perspective on this.
|
| I humbly also suggest that, while there are certainly many
| criticism that could (and should, probably) be leveled in
| good reason against monarchies in general, and perhaps this
| monarchy in particular, today is maybe not the right day to
| do it.
|
| Today a lady who was very meaningful to many people has
| passed. Why not let them grieve?
|
| Imagine someone important to you died today. They surely
| weren't perfect, but is today the day to harp on their
| negatives? The monarchy has been around for centuries. If
| your criticisms have any merit, they will still have impact a
| few days from now.
|
| Anyway, whether you're lucky enough that no one important to
| you has died (yet) or because you don't have that
| sensitivity, let me assure you: today isn't the day to pursue
| your criticisms of those that have passed today. Hang on to
| it for now andtell everyone about it later. If it's really
| something worthwhile, it will have legs later, too.
| confidantlake wrote:
| Likely 99% of the people here have zero personal
| relationship with her. Those that do, are preparing for her
| funeral, not posting here. It is a worthwhile question to
| ask why so many people have this feeling for a person they
| have never met. Now is when most of the eyes are on this
| issue. Saying it is "too soon" is just trying to delay
| criticism of the monarchy to when people have lost interest
| and have moved on to other news.
| yodsanklai wrote:
| > I find non-British people that are genuinely sad about her
| passing to be pretty bizarre.
|
| My French grandmother was born the same year as the Queen and
| liked her because she got to follow her long and exceptional
| life. I can understand why people get attached to such famous
| figures.
| curiousfiddler wrote:
| Extremely well put. I am from one of the countries that was
| absolutely slaughtered by the so called great britain, and I
| have as much desire to share my opinion and views, as the
| folks who are mourning the loss.
| lucozade wrote:
| And if you have something to contribute then contribute it.
| But if it is just to say "boo queen" then don't be
| surprised if it receives a poor reception.
| habnds wrote:
| is it a malignant comment to point out that the royalty is a
| malignant influence on the United Kingdom?
| dang wrote:
| The point I made was not really about monarchy, but about
| comment quality on HN. Low-information, high-indignation
| comments--such as repetition of well-worn political points--
| is the classic low-quality case that we're most hoping to
| avoid here. Especially because they tend to evoke even worse
| from others.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| habnds wrote:
| if you has said something like "we're not interested in
| this thread turning into another opportunity to litigate
| the pro's and cons of the monarchy" I would agree with you.
|
| But specifically saying not to comment negatively while
| allowing positive comments on what is clearly a hotly
| contested issue is ridiculous.
| dang wrote:
| I was talking about _empty_ positive comments like
| "RIP". (or, in a different context, "thanks" or
| "congratulations" - see
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html)
|
| Perhaps I should take bit out as it obviously wasn't
| clear enough.
| glcheetham wrote:
| Why is it malignant? Monarchy is the foundation of the whole
| system. It goes from the top all the way from the bottom.
| That's like saying blood is a malignant influence on the
| body.
| dang wrote:
| Please don't take HN threads further into predictable,
| generic flamewar. It's tedious, and therefore off topic.
| The site guidelines ask commenters in several different
| ways not to do this.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| habnds wrote:
| this strikes me as a malignant comment for sure
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| 650REDHAIR wrote:
| His heavy-handedness is everywhere on HN. I'm curious if it
| helps or hurts engagement and return visits.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| HN would be a complete shit show without dang. What you
| call "heavy handedness" is what I call the most
| appropriate, fair minded guidance to keep threads from
| turning into flamewars.
|
| I've been warned by dang before, and when I was, after I
| took a minute to cool down from what I was responding to, I
| realized he was exactly correct. I'd encourage y'all to do
| the same - the parent's comment that there is "a
| requirement that we do not speak ill of that monarchy" is a
| gross, and honestly annoyingly incorrect,
| mischaracterization of what dang said.
| [deleted]
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Engagement and return visits aren't the primary goals of
| this community. Indeed, "As a rule, a community site that
| becomes popular will decline in quality"
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html)
|
| The site's goal is to encourage deeply interesting content,
| in terms of both posts and comments.
| tsol wrote:
| There are many places where you can get light moderation
| and get to say what you want. Reddit comes to mind. HN is
| different largely because of that moderation; it's a
| feature not a bug.
| permo-w wrote:
| this seems like quite a contradictory position to take.
| royalty is undemocratic, but you lost respect for them when
| they chose not to use their unearned power to interfere with
| the actions of democratically elected officials?
|
| are there not better reasons to not respect the monarchy?
| charles_f wrote:
| There is a difference between criticizing monarchy in a
| civilized manner and flamebating. A civilized discussion is
| 90% of the value of hn compared to, say, reddit.
|
| > this ever more fascist government from undermining
| fundamental aspects of our supposed democracy.
|
| This, for example, is flamebating
| seydor wrote:
| He says not to "rant against monarcy". Criticism of elizabeth
| is fair game I think, although still early for that. We ll
| see a lot of criticism of her and monarchy in general in the
| next months.
|
| Personally i can see why brits may have feelings for her, but
| i dont consider her remarkable. Her legacy is basically that
| she lived in 96 of the most impactful years in human history
| and oversaw (from a distance) the end of the british empire.
| None of that was her making, she merely stood there as a
| prop. Her greatest achievement was that she led a
| conservative life, married only once, never participated in
| anything progressive, meshing well with the anachronistic
| rituals of monarchy.
| marricks wrote:
| > please don't post flamebait, including ranting against
| monarchy or railing against "the nobility" like it's 1770
|
| > Positive-empty comments aren't substantive either, but as pg
| pointed out way back when HN was getting started
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html), those are
| benign
|
| Pro status-quo bias. Monarchy isn't as relevant as it used to
| be but trusting the judgment and leadership of the elite is as
| relevant as ever and allowing positive-empty comments just
| reinforces that belief here. I guess that's just the sort of
| bias HN is ok with.
| istjohn wrote:
| The monarchy is still politically relevant in the UK[1]. But
| it seems dang prefers to have pages of saccharine platitudes
| than allow any discussion of the desirability of monarchy in
| the modern world or any critical discussion of the Queen's
| legacy. Curiosity is only encouraged if it doesn't put wealth
| and power under it's microscope. Then it becomes tedious.
|
| As I wrote here three years ago[1]:
|
| > Indignation isn't shallow or boring, it's the driving force
| behind social progress. Indeed, lack of indignation indicates
| either the inability to imagine a better world or perhaps the
| natural satisfaction with the status quo of someone who finds
| themself sitting on the upper rungs of society as currently
| structured. The latter no doubt describes many of us here.
|
| Indignation isn't the arch-enemy of intellectual curiosity;
| apathy and bovine conformity are. This status-quo bias is
| what you would expect of a forum run for the benefit of a
| Silicon Valley for-profit institution, but it's still
| disappointing.
|
| 1. https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2013/jan/14/secret-papers-
| roy...
|
| 2. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21831016
| happytoexplain wrote:
| >saccharine platitudes
|
| This is a very common criticism when one happens to
| disagree with the target of some positivity. Sometimes it's
| a reasonable criticism, but usually it's an
| oversimplification we allow ourselves to indulge in.
| Positivity can have intrinsic value even in the absence of
| some accompanying objective substance.
|
| On the other hand, and similarly to my first point, I agree
| that indignation too is not inherently value-less. However,
| there are miles between useful indignation and snarky
| tangents.
| xg15 wrote:
| I don't see how the GP was arguing that any kind of
| positivity would be bad. The problem is more having
| different standards for positive and negative comments on
| the matter and apparently forbidding any kind of
| criticism. That doesn't seem very much in the spirit of
| free speech of this site.
|
| That being said, an important person died I can
| understand that it's generally not good style to start
| with the negative comments right away.
| jdgoesmarching wrote:
| But this isn't a criticism of "saccharine platitudes," it
| is specifically criticizing a policy that considers such
| platitudes as benign while censoring negative comments of
| equal intellectual value. You can't claim a high horse of
| "intellectual curiosity" when this thread is full of
| positivity fluff. If that remains, so too should the low-
| effort indignation.
|
| Obviously dang is free to moderate as he sees fit, but
| this attempt to rationalize bias as some philosophical
| ideal of fair high-quality moderation is worth
| criticizing. This all stems from the insistence that HN
| remain "politically neutral," which is a mythical concept
| for comfortable people who want to be insulated from
| conversation that threatens their comfortable lives.
| Politically neutral is always politically defensive of
| the status quo, and moderation to that effect always ends
| up with threads like these that end up skewed in favor of
| the position deemed to be politically "neutral."
| youngtaff wrote:
| This!
|
| It might be an interesting historical event for people who
| don't live in the UK
|
| But some of us have to live with this... a family that have
| got immensely rich from being head of state, a family that
| have interfered in laws to their advantage, a family that
| we have no choice over whether they continue to be the head
| of state
| confidantlake wrote:
| How dare you criticize the monarchy! That is not allowed
| here! It is anti curious!
| marricks wrote:
| > This status-quo bias is what you would expect of a forum
| run for the benefit of a Silicon Valley for-profit
| institution
|
| I wanted to reach a broader audience with my phrasing so I
| didn't call that point out, but I completely agree.
| happytoexplain wrote:
| Positivity does not need to be empty, nor does disallowing a
| certain amount of negativity imply an encouragement of
| emptiness.
| dang wrote:
| I just meant that if people post things like "RIP" or "That's
| sad", it's void of information and therefore unsubstantive,
| but doesn't contribute to destroying the site. I just meant
| to repeat the point pg was making 15 years ago about "empty
| comments", and I'm sure the queen was the last thing he had
| in mind (https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html).
|
| I was not making a case for royalism! just a case against
| tedious internet battles, and boy is monarchism one of those.
| (I mean, " _Good riddance. The world is rid of a horrible
| person who has done horrible things_ " - ? Good grief. At
| least give us something amusing.) (that was a random example
| I just ran across)
|
| More at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32771818 if
| anyone cares.
| Emma_Goldman wrote:
| I realise she has just died and it's unbecoming to do anything
| but laud the person, but this is just moral obsequiousness.
|
| She claims fealty by right of blood, reigned as the crown of an
| extraordinarily cruel empire, and frequently interceded in the
| democratic government of Britain to protect her private
| interests.
| origin_path wrote:
| Given that most empires in history were pretty darn cruel, you
| might have to justify the idea that the British Empire was
| _extraordinarily_ cruel, especially given that the Queen only
| reigned in its last years and that many of the former members
| of the Empire chose to stay on as part of the Commonwealth.
| Also the British Empire is unique (AFAIK?) in having wound
| itself up more or less peacefully at the end, rather than
| needing to be destroyed by a massive rebellion or war - the
| usual way empires usually die (well, except for the pesky
| Americas of course... but that was a bit before Liz 's time!)
| toyg wrote:
| _> former members of the Empire chose to stay on as part of
| the Commonwealth_
|
| Being in the Commonwealth doesn't mean "staying on" the
| British Empire - it just means belonging to a very, very
| loose trade block on which Britain temporarily exercised an
| outsized influence. Recent developments (like the inability
| of subsequent UK governments to replace Commonwealth
| leadership) have shown that even that influence has now gone.
| At this point the Commonwealth is little more than an
| administrative construct for trade-related issues.
| samstave wrote:
| origin_path wrote:
| The Queen was not responsible for the acts of her children
| once they became adults, whatever they may be, no more than
| any mother is. As for comments about what she was like in
| private, who can really say?
|
| But perhaps more to the point - does it matter? The Queen
| was The Queen and not Elizabeth Windsor because of the
| exceptionally strict and rigorous separation she kept
| between her private life and her public role. She had a
| very long life, yet rarely if ever did it become known what
| her personal or political views actually were. Undoubtably
| she had help in this from an establishment that tacitly
| agreed to uphold these conventions, but ultimately it was
| down to her. The Queen was, in some very real sense, not an
| individual with a personality and all the complexities
| individuals bring but an abstraction, a constitutional
| icon, that was created and maintained by a woman named
| Elizabeth Windsor through sheer force of will.
|
| This is easier to see when you contrast it with King
| Charles III of course, whose personal views and personal
| life is well documented. A big question mark is whether he
| will now adopt the conventions that his mother sustained
| and become that abstraction, or whether he will be a
| monarch of opinions.
|
| W.R.T. the Empire, this is probably not the thread for it,
| but it slowly became the Commonwealth over the period of
| Elizabeth's reign and it did so in a unique and largely
| peaceful manner. She was born just after World War 1, into
| a world that had been torn apart by war between empires.
| She died in a world where empires had long ago ceased to
| exist. Where there were exceptions to that peaceful
| transition, it wasn't because the Queen sent in her army to
| capture or recapture territory as it was for most of
| history. That's the reason she was _the_ Queen and not
| merely _a_ Queen: it 's that legacy of peaceful transition
| that left her the notional reigning monarch over large
| parts of the world, even decades after the British Empire
| had ceased to exist. Even if that's a mere historical
| convention and not political reality, what other empires
| had such good relations with its old territories like that?
| Not many, and the Queen deserves a lot of credit for that
| outcome.
| dang wrote:
| I'm sure an account named Emma_Goldman comes by these
| sentiments honestly, but please don't take HN threads into
| generic ideological flamewar. We want _curious_ conversation
| here, not tedious talking-point battle.
|
| You mostly do a pretty good job of avoiding that, for which
| we're grateful, but on the other hand, (a) we have had to warn
| you about this before, and (b) this subthread is a classic
| generic flamewar tangent--just what we want to avoid on HN.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
|
| We detached this subthread from
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32769470.
| dijit wrote:
| > reigned as the crown of an extraordinarily cruel empire
|
| Queen Elizabeth presided over its dismantlement. No famines
| occurred during her reign and no rebellions violently
| suppressed.
|
| The Empire was cruel, but it's unfair to wash her with the
| cloth of empire.
| drieddust wrote:
| If that's your measuring stick then Adolf should get the
| credit for creating the right condition.
|
| European colonial power would have never left if they hadn't
| got into war of attrition with Hitlar.
|
| British left their biggest colony India only when Indian
| soldiers revolted and they were too weak to crush it post
| WW2. It was simply not possible to rule after this incident.
| oceanplexian wrote:
| She was a good person, and has my respect but she was also a
| symbol of a deeply flawed system of governance.
|
| There are lots of notable figures that have died recently
| (Gorbachev alone may have saved the world as we know it),
| that don't get the same, almost pathological level of
| admiration. It's not normal to break down crying because a
| person you never met died at age 97.. that's hundreds of
| years of indoctrination, social, and religious manipulation
| at work.
| Emma_Goldman wrote:
| That was not my intended emphasis, but I think you could make
| a good case for it anyway. It involved the dispossession and
| genocide of native peoples in North America and Australasia.
| It was built on slave plantations in the Caribbean, and led
| to state-engineered famines in India. The total human toll is
| enormous.
|
| Yes, the Queen took the throne at the twilight of the British
| Empire. But it was in the midst of the Malayan emergency, the
| Mau Mau uprising, the Suez crisis was on the horizon, and
| South Africa had just launched the apartheid regime. Those
| were all, in different ways, attempts to stamp out democratic
| independence. Britain didn't relinquish its sub-Saharan
| African and Caribbean territories until the 1960s. You cannot
| cleanly separate the Queen from the empire which she crowned.
| JAlexoid wrote:
| Have you heard of The Troubles?
| dijit wrote:
| Civil unrest is going to happen when you rule for 70 years.
|
| When you say "extraordinarily cruel" then maybe you refer
| to the 2,100,000 to 3,800,000 Bengals you starved to death
|
| The murder of 13 people (the inciting incident of the
| troubles) by the British army is not exactly comparable;
| even taking into consideration the total losses during that
| time of 3,500~, hardly comparable at all.
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1943
| JAlexoid wrote:
| The Troubles - was literally a rebellion violently
| suppressed... for 3 decades.
|
| Let alone all of the Unionists are staunch monarchists
| and were tightly linked to government institutions.
|
| I wasn't comparing anything to anything. You think that
| comparing The Troubles to bengal Famine, somehow excuses
| you from writing an obvious false sentence.
|
| PS: Civil Unrest isn't Civil Unrest, when the army is
| literally shooting.
| dijit wrote:
| I just don't see it as "extraordinarily cruel" when
| comparing to other cruelty committed. I see it as quite
| significantly reduced.
|
| I'm not saying she was perfect, but describing her reign
| as extraordinarily cruel is a real stretch.
|
| I really don't want to talk about the troubles but if I'm
| going to be a dick I will mention that the IRA
| intentionally targeted civilians, I don't think the
| military at that time are as black as they're painted.
| It's all villains I'm afraid.
| JAlexoid wrote:
| >I really don't want to talk about the troubles but
|
| The "I'm not a racist, but" speech.
|
| You're also missing a few words in your rant here.
| dijit wrote:
| Shallow dismissals and insinuations I'm a racist(?) are
| not compelling arguments I'm afraid.
|
| Also, three paragraphs do not a rant make. Nice try
| though.
| toyg wrote:
| In British minds, Ireland is not "empire" as much as a
| backyard they feel naturally entitled to.
| jamiek88 wrote:
| That's unfair to the vast majority of Brit's.
|
| Scots, welsh, the entire north of England, the working
| class all don't feel that way.
|
| If fact there's probably only a small percentage of
| traditional elites who feel that way.
| whoooooo123 wrote:
| As a posh guy from the south, I assure you that we don't
| feel "entitled" to Ireland either.
| [deleted]
| whoooooo123 wrote:
| Elizabeth II was the most decolonial monarch in history. Almost
| all our colonies gained their independence during her reign,
| and insofar as the empire was "extraordinary cruel", almost all
| of that cruelty occurred before her reign.
|
| By all means let's have a reasoned discussion about the legacy
| of the empire, but this is not the place.
| samstave wrote:
| drieddust wrote:
| She and her family is responsible for a lot of atrocities
| around the world. Yet a lot of people here are eulogizing as if
| she was a saint who taught art of living to the people.
|
| To me this is a demonstration of power of conditioning and
| media management.
| oceanplexian wrote:
| My family is Argentine. The Queen's son personally boarded a
| war ship to travel 7000km away to kill Argentines because
| they dared assert sovereignty against another country in a
| completely separate hemisphere of the Earth. The idea that
| the days of empire building are behind us is false.
| simonh wrote:
| Argentina itself is a creation of Spanish Imperialism, and
| British control of the islands dates to that same era,
| before Argentina became a nation. I don't see how either
| one can be claimed to be more or less creations of
| Imperialism than the other.
|
| The fact is the British foreign office had been trying to
| find ways to offload the islands on Argentina for ages. The
| British government felt they were an expensive nuisance
| that were an obstacle to better relations in the region.
| The Galtieri regime only invaded because they needed a
| boost in popularity. Negotiation is one thing, but military
| occupation quite another.
|
| There is (or could have been) a legitimate discussion to be
| had about the history of control of the islands. Sure. But
| those who resort to pre-emptive military force, when facing
| no threat to themselves, have no business complaining when
| the resulting conflict goes against them. Suez is a good
| example of us learning that lesson the hard way.
| msla wrote:
| An Argentine dictatorship was trying to build its empire by
| conquering a bunch of people who voted to remain British.
|
| That they can paint that as British Imperialism blows my
| mind.
| [deleted]
| rcarr wrote:
| My understanding was that the Falklands voted to remain in
| the UK and the UK fought to defend that democratic wish. If
| this is wrong please inform me so I can update my
| knowledge. If it's correct though, I don't see how fighting
| to defend a democratic mandate is a bad thing? Aren't we
| all cheering on Ukraine for exactly this right now?
| oceanplexian wrote:
| Yes, all of the British voted to remain. None of the
| Argentine, or other South Americans were legally allowed
| to cast a ballot. I guess that's the UK's idea of a
| democracy.
| rcarr wrote:
| I wasn't aware of this, so there were Argentinians and
| others who were permanently living on the island who
| weren't allowed to vote? Surely this is not the case
| today? I would definitely have to read more from all
| sides to get a better picture of the entire event from
| all perspectives.
| simonh wrote:
| Can you describe what they did, personally, that makes them
| responsible for atrocities? Yes I know she was head of state,
| but she had no significant executive or legislative power. I
| don't see how she's responsible in a practical sense for such
| things any more than any British citizen.
| dmonitor wrote:
| https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2013/jan/14/secret-papers-
| roy...
| brigandish wrote:
| Posting bare links is rarely helpful.
|
| > In one instance the Queen completely vetoed the
| Military Actions Against Iraq Bill in 1999, a private
| member's bill that sought to transfer the power to
| authorise military strikes against Iraq from the monarch
| to parliament.
|
| A wise move indeed, if Blair's record is to be taken into
| account.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| > reigned as the crown of an extraordinarily cruel empire
|
| What are the empires you're comparing it against? To call it
| "extraordinary" makes the claim that its level of cruelty is
| substantially greater than the "ordinary" cruelty of other
| examples. Were the Russian, Japanese, Ottoman, and other 19th
| and early 20th century empires substantially _less_ cruel than
| the British empire?
|
| Not to mention, as other commenters point out Elizabeth was
| coronated during a period of decolonization, with India
| departing the empire less than a decade earlier and most of its
| colonies in Africa and Asia following suit over the next couple
| decades.
| vinay_ys wrote:
| In the last 200 years, definitely for sure.
| tus666 wrote:
| > His Majesty the King said
|
| Interesting there is no transition period or ceremony - he is
| just King.
| frutiger wrote:
| That's the origin of the phrase "the King is dead, long live
| the King".
| yrgulation wrote:
| Regardless of what you think about the monarchy she was exemplary
| throughout her reign! May she rest in peace.
| selimnairb wrote:
| As an American watching with dismay over the past five years or
| so, I can see some virtue in having a non-partisan head of state
| (realizing that that does not mean the Royal Family is beyond
| ideology). Not sure how that would work in our republic, but I
| feel like it would help with national unity during divisive
| political times.
| abanksy wrote:
| Let's have a black banner please
| mirciulica wrote:
| Long live The King!
| [deleted]
| type_Ben_struct wrote:
| "I declare before you all, that my whole life, whether it be long
| or short, shall be devoted to your service"
|
| Rest in peace.
| andrepd wrote:
| secondcoming wrote:
| What was she supposed to do, stay at home and play minecraft?
| dang wrote:
| It looks like you've mostly been using HN for political-
| ideological battle lately, and we ban that sort of account,
| so please don't do that.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| type_Ben_struct wrote:
| She was hardly partying in Ibiza every weekend. She spent her
| life serving her country.
| tssva wrote:
| None of those things are in conflict with her statement.
| tannhaeuser wrote:
| Not a Brit, but my respect for the queen has always been
| tremendous, representing the British monarchy and being a public
| figure for all my life and seemingly forever, such that her death
| seems unreal, reminding us that she was a human being and nice
| old lady after all. I was even hesitant to turn on the news. RIP.
| [deleted]
| kypro wrote:
| As a Brit I'm not a huge fan of the royal family on principle,
| but Queen Elizabeth has been such an excellent head of state for
| us you really can't fault her.
|
| People like to make out her life was easy and that it's not fair
| that she inherited such a privileged position, but I think the
| exact opposite. Her life seemed like living hell to me. Every day
| for the last 70 years she's had to serve this largely ungrateful
| country, and she did so without complaint. Even in her 90s she
| took her duties extremely seriously, and I respect the hell out
| of her for that.
|
| It was only a couple of days ago she invited our new PM to
| Balmoral Castle to form a government. She was clearly looking
| weak and it's been no secret that she's been struggling to fulfil
| her duties as Queen for a while, but even just two days before
| her death at the age of 96 she put on the performance that was
| expected of her. And she did this practically every day of her
| life.
|
| RIP. I doubt anyone will ever live up to her legacy. Despite all
| the problems I have with the royal family, I couldn't feel more
| pride that she was our Queen.
| munk-a wrote:
| As a Canadian (and we tend to be staunchy more anti-monarch
| over here) I agree whole heartedly. Her reign was pretty much
| entirely inoffensive, she tried to use her powers to promote
| good things while staying out of the running of any of the
| commonwealth governments.
|
| I think being a monarch as prominent as Queen Elizabeth is a
| hard job mostly because there is very little you can do right
| and a whole lot you could do wrong. She avoided doing much
| wrong for her reign and I think she was an ideal monarch for
| the modern democratic age.
| 5440 wrote:
| I couldn't disagree with you more. I live in BC (and ONT),
| and all of us that migrated from the UK are much more pro-
| monarchy than most brits back in the homeland.
| danudey wrote:
| I assume he means natural-born Canadians rather than
| naturalized Canadians.
|
| That said, I think his statement is not quite accurate.
| Very few people are aware of (or think about) the monarchy
| at all, and of the ones that are, very few of them actually
| care one way or the other about it. Of _those_ , I'm sure
| most agree that the monarchy is pointless, but unlike in
| the UK we don't spend a whole lot of money on it so in
| reality no one really cares much except on principle.
| dleslie wrote:
| Support for the monarchy among all Canadians[0] isn't very
| different than support for the monarchy among the youngest
| Brits[1].
|
| Which makes sense, to me. The Canadian experience of the
| world wars and subsequent decades was decidedly different
| than the British experience, and the role that Elizabeth
| played, though meaningful, wasn't as important to our
| cultural identity. But now that those wars are generations
| past, and both nations have enjoyed relative peace and
| comfort for some decades, the sentiments toward the monarchy
| are beginning to align.
|
| 0: https://bc.ctvnews.ca/canadian-support-for-monarchy-hits-
| low...
|
| 1: https://www.statista.com/statistics/863893/support-for-
| the-m...
| clairity wrote:
| blibble wrote:
| > Even in her 90s she took her duties extremely seriously, and
| I respect the hell out of her for that.
|
| she was still working (appointing ministers) on Tuesday
|
| God Save the Queen
| Akronymus wrote:
| this was a stupid comment I shouldnt have posted. Edited out
| the old text.
| cormacrelf wrote:
| Absolute hogwash. If it was a strain it was because
| swearing in ministers is real work, a lot of it, and she is
| 96 years old.
| chrisstu wrote:
| I hate to say it but that is one of the dumbest things I've
| ever read.
| highwaylights wrote:
| Hardly, she's had to smile at a procession of increasingly
| less capable prime ministers for decades. She was well used
| to this.
|
| Not getting a real day off for 73 years probably had more
| to do with it. Or, you know, just being 96.
| iso1631 wrote:
| Literally accepted Boris Johnson's resignation and offered
| the job to Liz Truss 2 days ago.
|
| She was holding on to get rid of him.
| antifa wrote:
| > Every day for the last 70 years she's had to serve this
| largely ungrateful country
|
| This doesn't really address why anyone is "ungrateful"...
| ngcc_hk wrote:
| UK I knew of is grateful. She is much loved.
|
| Btw, whilst Hong Kong has fallen and hence I do not expect
| much there the Hong Kong people like her very much. Called
| her the "Bossy Granny" and even with a sony on 1997 naming
| her as the righteous friend that help Hong Kong to trade well
| by being on the coin, always young and bring prosperity.
|
| Miss her we will. God bless the Queen. RIP.
| gremlinsinc wrote:
| seems, if she was really good at her job and service...
| they'd be more grateful and less ungrateful. I mean, a truly
| great king or queen would live in a normal cottage home,
| without servants other than maybe a bodyguard or two.
|
| All that pomp just makes one pompous.
| nmz wrote:
| It would be impossible to, there is a sea of reasons whether
| justified or not. You can check twitter and see.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| >"You can check twitter and see."
|
| I have, and now more than ever I am convinced Twitter
| brings out the worst in people. That platform is a
| carcinogen of the mind.
| nemo44x wrote:
| She was remarkable in so many ways and I in no way envy the
| life she had to live. The sense of duty she had, the poise and
| character she had - it's just so much it's hard to believe she
| did it all as well as she did with nary a crack when there was
| certainly unlimited opportunities for them.
|
| If there is a Kingdom of God, I'm guessing God himself may be
| asking her for a tip or 2 right about now.
| Maursault wrote:
| Starlevel001 wrote:
| chrisstu wrote:
| Really, I thought she removed the titles. Where is the story
| about her regranting them?
| dang wrote:
| We've banned this account for posting flamewar comments.
| That's not allowed here, and you've been doing it repeatedly
| (e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32502544,
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32287960).
|
| If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email
| hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll
| follow the rules in the future. They're here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
| Maursault wrote:
| > She intervened to regrant titles to her paedophile son.
|
| Just curious as to when Prince Andrew's titles were forfeit.
| I vaguely recall he resigned from public roles, but I don't
| remember anything about his titles being taken away. Anyway,
| if true, that is shameful. Any decent, self-respecting parent
| under similar circumstances would have at the very least
| abandoned the child to a convent, if not an orphanage.
| linuxftw wrote:
| evgen wrote:
| Regardless of whether or not that statement is true the head
| of state has absolutely nothing to do with it.
| fit2rule wrote:
| codeduck wrote:
| The Monarch is not responsible for that. That blame rests
| squarely on the Government and Parliament.
| dang wrote:
| Please don't post flamewar comments to HN. We ban accounts
| that do that--I've banned a thwack of them in this thread
| already, and we've had to ask you about this more than once
| before. Fortunately I didn't see other cases of that in your
| recent history. Please stick to posting within the site
| guidelines and things will be fine.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| borski wrote:
| I would just like to say that 'thwack' is a fantastic word
| and we should all strive to use it more often. :)
| lovich wrote:
| Not for nothing, but isn't the post they were responding to
| equally flame bait? If you're of the opinion that she had
| serious faults, claiming without evidence that she was
| unfaultable is just provoking a fight
| codeduck wrote:
| claiming she had serious faults is fine. Blaming her and
| the monarchy for the execrable state of the modern United
| Kingdom is not. She was the monarch, but Parliament had
| primacy de jure during her reign. The sad state of
| affairs in our country is despite her, not because of
| her.
|
| She had flaws, but far fewer than the various ships of
| fools inflicted on us by our electoral system over the
| past decades
| lovich wrote:
| Yea but the original comment wasn't nuanced like that. It
| was just a declaration of opinion which seems like
| flamebait to me. I was more bringing it up because only
| blocking one side of a flamebait war ends up looking like
| tacit approval of the other side, which then incenses
| people into even further flamewars
| ip26 wrote:
| I do not approve of concepts like a ruling family, and favor
| mobility- but I have slowly come to appreciate the value of
| being groomed for a responsibility your entire life. I am not
| sure such dedicated & devout public servants come about
| naturally.
| bell-cot wrote:
| In the context of the modern British crown, the "ruling" is
| far more ceremonial than substantive. Similar for most other
| surviving European royal families.
| pedrocr wrote:
| The idea that the UK monarchy is largely ceremonial and
| just a boon for tourism is an incredibly prevalent idea but
| apparently just good PR. We've learned the monarchy has
| extensively interfered with the UK's parliament legislative
| process and done so covertly:
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/feb/08/royals-
| vette...
| k__ wrote:
| I had the impression royality is a bigger deal in the UK
| than in the rest of the world.
| foldr wrote:
| "The rest of the world" is casting pretty wide net. Was
| the Queen a more hands-on monarch than Salman bin
| Abdulaziz Al Saud?
| k__ wrote:
| Right.
|
| I meant, in constitutional monarchies.
| sph wrote:
| You don't choose the royal life, the royal life chooses you.
| Silverback_VII wrote:
| You don't choose the peasant life, the peasant life chooses
| you.
| incone123 wrote:
| You can marry in, which amounts to choosing the royal life.
| (Maybe not you specifically, but people have married in)
| chousuke wrote:
| I think with that wording it's easy to slip into thinking
| that a person's lineage has anything to do with their
| suitability to be educated for a specific role or how well
| they may perform in that role.
|
| Nothing arises "naturally"; It's the education and access to
| vast support resources that creates exceptional people, and
| if you want more of those, you should want to ensure that the
| greatest number of people have access to enough resources
| that anyone can have a chance to make the most of their
| inborn advantages (whatever they may be) regardless of the
| circumstances of their birth.
| spoonjim wrote:
| Anyone who would seek out a monarchy would almost certainly
| be a sociopath. That's why it must be a birthright.
| confidantlake wrote:
| There is a third way, it could be decided by chance.
| astrange wrote:
| Sortition would be a better approach - elect a list of
| people who are all "good enough" and then choose randomly
| from them.
|
| Constitutional monarchs do have their uses; it's good
| that someone can fire the head of government, especially
| if the people can invest in the head of state instead.
|
| The US should have one picked from the top 10 Spotify
| chart. Even if half of them are Canadian.
| nick__m wrote:
| I don't know why random selection is considered the gold
| standard for jury, yet most peoples look at you like
| you're some kind of deranged fool if you seriously
| propose "randomocracy" as a form of governance.
| [deleted]
| Tangurena2 wrote:
| This is not an auspicious start for Liz Truss' term of office -
| she was the last official to meet with Queen Elizabeth.
| jollybean wrote:
| It's a life of 'Duty' not a life of 'Arbitrary Wealth'.
|
| It's not exactly poverty, but the 'classist' arguments, to the
| extent they are rooted in 'wealth distribution' are ridiculous
| and naive with respect to Constitutional Monarchies.
|
| The 'Head of State' gets a nice home, oh well, it's a drop in
| the bucket.
|
| That's fundamentally different than some fat oligarch.
|
| BTW Charles will be a fine King. He's nerdy and awkward and
| everyone loved the beloved Dianna because she was pretty and
| breezy, which is fine, but I don't believe that
| 'Instagrammable' qualities are those that fill the role.
| codpiece wrote:
| Well said. I'm an American and have little attachment to
| royalty, but have the deepest respect for Queen Elizabeth's
| dedication to duty. How someone could endure performing day in
| and day out for so long is truly admirable.
| tacostakohashi wrote:
| > As a Brit I'm not a huge fan of the royal family on
| principle, but Queen Elizabeth has been such an excellent head
| of state for us you really can't fault her.
|
| This makes about as much sense as "I'm not a racist, but...".
|
| It's amazing how many people talk about Elizabeth as some kind
| of special exception to the general rule of a hereditary
| monarchy, class system and nobility being ridiculous.
| worik wrote:
| I can turn that on its head: I am no fan of the Windsors, or
| "Saxe-Coburg and Gotha" as it used to be.
|
| But I think an hereditary head of state is a Good Idea.
| Democracy is very important. One of the greatest dangers to
| democracy is majoritarianism. If every stage of the state is
| chosen by "50% + 1" then it will become a tyranny. (I am not
| a history scholar, but I believe the USA has plenty of
| examples of the pitfalls of voting "50% + 1" for every part
| of the state)
|
| The role of a monarch in a statutory monarchy (one where the
| law applies to the monarch) is to protect the interests of
| the minorities.
|
| It is sad that this has partly devolved in England to
| protecting the rights of aristocratic land holders. That is
| the risk. But the tyranny of the majority is a terrifying
| thing.
|
| Ask a black person, a Jew, a queer person...
|
| For all the many faults of her family, and however much I
| disliked and dislike her and hers, she was Queen for all her
| subjects, not slicing and dicing to get an electoral
| advantage, but _everybody_.
| tpush wrote:
| There is like zero evidence that a hereditary ruling class
| is especially suited for and/or actually has done
| protecting the minority from majoritarian tyranny. I have
| no idea how one can hold this position in earnest.
| noodleman wrote:
| Agreed, I'd even argue that the opposite statement is
| true. The divide between the top and bottom is wider than
| ever in the UK.
|
| People grow up in insular little bubbles. Everyone thinks
| they are the bottom rung on the social ladder. They think
| _" if I'm doing fine then everyone else must be doing
| much better!"_ and hand wave away uncomfortable truths.
| That kind of classism is at the core of British society.
|
| Ironically, I don't think it is always malice, but
| naivety and rigidity. The monarchy and the nationalist
| sentiments they have spent decades cultivating have
| become part of peoples' identity, and it's hard to reason
| people into changing their identity.
| notahacker wrote:
| There one type of tyranny the role of a hereditary
| constitutional monarch with purely symbolic powers
| protects against is the tyranny of a [hereditary] monarch
| with significant or unlimited power...
|
| (As well as the constitutional role of the monarch being
| designed to protect the British public from monarchs, the
| continued existence of crown-wearing, palace-dwelling
| hereditary heads of state probably has a little bit of
| actual positive influence overseas by reminding some
| hereditary rulers with actual power that keeping fancy
| titles and wealth is entirely compatible with allow
| people to elect representatives to do mundane stuff like
| passing legislation and running the country)
|
| There's certainly no basis for assuming that protecting
| minorities has ever been part of the role of the British
| monarchy though. On the contrary, last time we had a
| monarch with a deep personal interest in protecting a
| particular minority (James II, Catholics) we got rid of
| him.
| jemmyw wrote:
| I'm not sure that you're correct. In those examples you
| state, eventually the majority was on side. It seems that
| the majority is more often "live and let live" than a
| minority who seek power to suppress.
|
| There's also the issue of plurality: 50% + 1 might vote one
| way but they represent a plurality of views. Perhaps if we
| voted on every policy then it would be worse? Seems hard to
| justify.
| snambi wrote:
| Why do you need a queen in 21st century?
|
| Can't the Brits abolish royalty, how they abolished slavery?
| noodleman wrote:
| _Why do you need a queen in 21st century?_
|
| Frankly, we don't.
|
| _Can 't the Brits abolish royalty, how they abolished
| slavery?_
|
| We could. We won't, not yet.
|
| I say this as a Brit in favour of an elected head of state.
| It's probably best we get out of the Brexit quagmire first,
| before we set off another political crisis that splits the
| country in two.
| gnulinux wrote:
| > People like to make out her life was easy and that it's not
| fair that she inherited such a privileged position, but I think
| the exact opposite. Her life seemed like living hell to me.
| Every day for the last 70 years she's had to serve this largely
| ungrateful country, and she did so without complaint. Even in
| her 90s she took her duties extremely seriously, and I respect
| the hell out of her for that.
|
| She wasn't doing it from the kindness of her heart. This was
| her job, she was obscenely rich off of taxpayer money and she
| could retire any second she wanted to. You make it sound like
| she was sentenced to sign paperwork for her entire life, when
| the reality is she consciously chose to do so every day and in
| exchange she and her family was granted an immense wealth. It's
| not even remotely something that would warrant complaint. I'm
| not saying this to be snarky, just pointing out that although
| maybe parts of her job was boring, stressful, and unfulfilling,
| this is what she signed up for. And her "compensation" was
| unimaginable amount of money and power in the form of
| interpersonal relations.
| clpm4j wrote:
| She didn't really "sign up" for it though. She was born into
| it in 1926. It's not like 2022 where she could've said "yeah,
| not for me, I'm moving to Santa Barbara". I don't see how she
| had any choice but to do what she did, and by all accounts
| she did it well.
| Uehreka wrote:
| > It's not like 2022 where she could've said "yeah, not for
| me, I'm moving to Santa Barbara"
|
| That's true, back then she'd have to move to the Bahamas: h
| ttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallis_Simpson#Second_World_Wa
| ...
| pvg wrote:
| _It 's not like 2022 where she could've said "yeah, not for
| me, I'm moving to Santa Barbara"._
|
| Plenty of monarchs have done just that including her very
| own uncle.
| highwaylights wrote:
| Which begs the question of why they're all moving to
| Santa Barbara. It must be lovely.
| pvg wrote:
| It is lovely but does not beg the question.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Maybe they like Welsh experimental rock music?
| ecnahc515 wrote:
| And he wasn't treated very well by his family as a result
| either. So you're kinda choosing between your family and
| leaving. Not saying you should always pick family, but
| for a young 20 something year old girl, that can be quite
| the ultimatum.
| pvg wrote:
| Most people end up doing something or other their family
| disapproves of - it's not some unusual hardship of adult
| life that outright prevents you from doing things. In his
| case, being both a doofus and a bit of a Nazi cut off the
| possibility of future family reconciliation. I suppose
| there's a line even in royal families.
| gnulinux wrote:
| What do you mean? Edward VIII abdicated in order to marry
| Wallis Simpson. Not to mention countless other people born
| into royal families not only in European kingdoms, but also
| kingdoms throughout the world. Yes they were (in varying
| degrees) pressured to respect the line of succession but if
| Elizabeth II wanted to retire 10 years ago she would be
| able to.
| bawolff wrote:
| > What do you mean? Edward VIII abdicated in order to
| marry Wallis Simpson
|
| Which was a giant diplomatic incident. It wasn't without
| consequence.
| fastball wrote:
| Everyone was actually more worried about Edward VIII
| _not_ abdicating.
| idontpost wrote:
| Was it though? What real consequence for anyone not named
| Windsor was there?
|
| I've never heard of one.
| epolanski wrote:
| Edward was among other things the most popular man on the
| planet, the first real global modern celebrity.
|
| His actions among others weakened British image in the
| world. He was also a nazi sympatizer.
| cies wrote:
| I respect /u/dang's request not to go in monarchy bashing,
| but as a result I see lots of "praise her reign" on top.
|
| > she consciously chose to do so every day and in exchange
| she and her family was granted an immense wealth
|
| This! Saying that wealth and status is a burden for XYZ
| always elicits a "but they can give it all up in a singe day
| if they want to" response from me.
| dang wrote:
| It's my fault for not being clearer, but it was so obvious
| to me that my point had nothing to do with monarchy, and
| only with lame internet flamewars, that I never thought of
| being taken it this way.
|
| If I were moderating myself I would now point out that the
| burden is on the commenter to disambiguate intent: https://
| hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so....
|
| I couldn't care less which side you guys are on re
| monarchs! If you want to make thoughtful critique, go for
| it. Just remember that the bar for that is rather high when
| it comes to a topic so filled with bombast as this one.
|
| The idea that we'd be trying to preserve the royalist
| status quo and the elegance of railway travel is just so
| silly that I can't believe I have to say that. Clearly it
| was my mistake, though--that was no splash-free dive.
| confidantlake wrote:
| Yeah it seems pretty one sided to me. If you are going to
| put in a request to not "bash" the monarchy, then you
| should have a similar request not to "praise" it.
| morelisp wrote:
| If someone says bashing the powerful is malignant but
| praising the powerful is benign, you have a pretty good
| idea of how they sit in relation to the (horribly
| insecure) powerful.
| dang wrote:
| That was not what I requested.
|
| Penance:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32772419
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32772274
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32772067
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32771874
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32771818
| davrosthedalek wrote:
| Can they though? I mean, yes, they can give away the wealth
| and status, but the burden, mainly being constantly the
| focus of the public eye, would that really go away? Don't
| get me wrong, I am not a fan of dictatorships or
| monarchies. But if you compare how she handled it, compared
| how to others did in similar situations, she handled it
| well.
| gnulinux wrote:
| Ok I'm sorry if this is considered "monarch bashing", I
| don't see how that's the case. I just pointed out that she
| did this voluntarily (as evidenced by countless other
| people who were born into royal families and chose to skip
| the line of succession).
| cies wrote:
| I did not mean to say you were bashing. (Believe me I
| love bashing monarchy, also when others do it).
|
| I found your point valid. Where other al say she was had
| no choice and did well under circumstances. I rather saw
| her end the monarchy all together, or at least step out
| of it herself.
| percevalve wrote:
| I think the point here is that her wealth being mostly
| private (or enough of it being private not being a
| specialist in those matters), the way she carried her duty
| was even more remarkable. You could easily imagine somebody
| inheriting similar wealth and not behaving nearly as well
| as she did for her country. I do not think it is about
| being pro or against monarchy here.
| youngtaff wrote:
| I think the distinction between public and private wealth
| is sophistry
|
| That 'private' wealth was acquired because she was head
| of state
| percevalve wrote:
| I do think the distinction actually exists for the
| British Monarchy... A quick Googling would give you
| something like that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financ
| es_of_the_British_royal_...
| youngtaff wrote:
| Legally their may be a distinction but the monarch's
| wealth was ultimately taken from the people and
| maintained via favourable tax laws - there's no
| inheritance tax on a monarchs estate, she didn't pay
| income tax etc.
| jahewson wrote:
| If you think that Queen Victoria, head of the largest
| empire the world has ever seen and who purchased
| Balmoral, got rich by skimping on taxes, then I'd
| recommend taking some time to read a book or two.
| delecti wrote:
| I don't think their comment was arguing that at all, and
| in fact it seems like an indefensibly uncharitable
| interpretation.
|
| > ultimately taken from the people and maintained via
| favourable tax laws
|
| _Taken_ from the people and _maintained_ via favorable
| tax laws. UK inheritance tax is 40% (over the threshold,
| which is so low as to be meaningless next to the royal
| estate). With 5 royal deaths since Victoria, Charles III
| would have less than 8% of what he actually does if that
| 40% were taken each time (which is obviously vastly
| oversimplifying to make a point).
| [deleted]
| chrisstu wrote:
| You think she enjoyed the trappings of wealth? I never had
| that impression. And no, she didn't "sign up for it", she
| became Queen as a result of birth. Yes, she could have
| abdicated but the fact that she chose duty is to her credit.
| She was not faultless, but it's difficult to imagine another
| monarch doing a better job. I say all this as an anti-
| monarchist. I don't want one, but if we have to have one, she
| was the best.
| gnulinux wrote:
| > Yes, she could have abdicated
|
| If you can quit a job but you choose not to do so, in what
| sense did you not "sign up for it"? Her own uncle Edward
| VIII abdicated so he can marry Wallis Simpson without
| controversy. This has nothing to with anti-monarchism, I'm
| just pointing out that she was the queen only through her
| own free will.
| 3836293648 wrote:
| Wasn't he the guy who was pressured into abdicating for
| being a Nazi?
| foldr wrote:
| No, that has nothing to do with why he was pressured to
| abdicate. Really he was pressured not to marry Wallis
| Simpson, not pressured to abdicate.
| alistairSH wrote:
| No, he was pressured not to marry an American divorcee
| (with two living ex-husbands). That led to his abdication
| - doing otherwise would have led to a constitutional
| crisis. He was rumored to be a Nazi sympathizer, but that
| wasn't the direct cause of his abdication.
| antod wrote:
| Not directly, but for that reason it was a massive relief
| for the govt when he did abdicate and they could "exile"
| him and his wife and their Nazi sympathies somewhere far
| away.
|
| Basically he never wanted to be King, and seemed totally
| unsuitable for it anyway.
| foldr wrote:
| Edward VIII abdicated at the end of 1936, almost three
| years before the start of the second world war. At that
| time being a Nazi sympathizer was still perfectly
| respectable in much of British high society. I think
| possibly you are getting the timeline slightly mixed up.
| greiskul wrote:
| > without controversy
|
| Wasn't this actually a huge controversy at the time?
| gnulinux wrote:
| He was pressured not to marry Wallis Simpson. If he
| married her it would have been a constitutional crisis,
| so in order to prevent _that_ controversy, he abdicated
| and married Wallis Simpson. He could have chosen to be
| the king and not marry her; or he could have married her
| anyway and embrace the huge controversy. This is why I
| said "he abdicated in order to marry Wallis Simpson
| without controversy".
| tbihl wrote:
| >If you can quit a job but you choose not to do so, in
| what sense did you not "sign up for it"?
|
| >she became Queen as a result of birth.
|
| It is true that failing to live up to her responsibility
| was a path she could have chosen. She did not, and that
| is greatly to her credit. Choosing not to abandon your
| responsibility is a far cry from "signing up for it."
| notahacker wrote:
| There's a _massive_ difference between signing up for
| your dream job and being handed a responsibility with the
| right to abdicate it if you don 't mind causing a
| constitutional crisis and _still_ being stuck with the
| media obsessing over you.
|
| Technically, I can take drastic action to negate things I
| received as an accident of birth if I don't mind getting
| flak for doing it, but it makes no sense at all to claim
| that on that basis my parents, physical appearance or
| manhood were all stuff I signed up for of my own free
| will.
| wilsonnb3 wrote:
| > she chose duty
|
| I would like to choose the duty of being fabulously wealthy
| and literally immune to criminal or civil prosecution, too.
| aaronbrethorst wrote:
| Smart billionaire monarchs don't flaunt their wealth lest
| the peasants realize what a raw deal they have and revolt.
| davrosthedalek wrote:
| She was "obscenely rich" whether she did her job or not. She
| did it anyway.
| highwaylights wrote:
| This. Her personal wealth would already have been
| astronomical even without the Crown Estate.
|
| She could have retired 40 years ago and never worked
| another day in her life if she'd wanted to. Charles would
| still have been King and her family would have been no
| worse off.
| [deleted]
| caned wrote:
| That she was obscenely rich makes it all the more
| noteworthy that she lived a dutiful life. Need more
| examples of that.
| nmz wrote:
| I'm pretty sure she didn't do it for the money but from some
| sense of moral duty. Don't forget, she took reign right after
| one of the worst wars in history.
| irrational wrote:
| Was it moral duty or was it wanting to have her name at the
| top of the list of longest reigning monarchs? It's
| interesting that she died not too long after hitting that
| mark, almost as if she was just holding on to get there and
| then let herself die.
| shakow wrote:
| > It's interesting that she died not too long after
| hitting that mark
|
| She didn't, Louis XIV is still up there.
| shever73 wrote:
| 7 years after hitting that mark. I think the death of her
| husband last year has more to do with it than "yay, I got
| to the top of the list so now I can die".
| helloworld11 wrote:
| For one thing, the Queen was rich for a list of complex
| reasons that largely have to do with hereditary properties
| and assets stretching back centuries. It's not as cut and
| dried as "taxpayer expense". Yes, the monarchy as an
| institution benefits from certain public resources, just as
| do all institutions in all major countries, but it doesn't do
| so to any obscene degree compared to a vast range of other
| public projects and organizations that waste enormously while
| being much better funded. Any major head of state also
| benefits enormously from taxpayer money in all sorts of ways
| and lives daily in the lap of luxury with enormous resources
| spent on his or her security, personal living "needs" and any
| trips they make. Despite this, I see little complaint about
| that much larger source of taxpayer money being spent.
|
| There seems to be a reflexive, emotional and partly
| irrational hatred of the UK monarchy spending heavily and
| having assets and money, along with certain public benefits
| (which by the way are carefully circumscribed) by people who
| barely bat an eye at the fact that the absolute largest
| sources of resource and tax spending on a vast range of
| immensely expensive but often wasteful and even pointless
| things are perfectly modern government institutions that have
| nothing to do with monarchs. It's an absurd sort of
| blindness.
|
| What the UK government spent on the idiocy of the Iraq War
| alone far exceeds all public funds given to the Monarchy in
| decades, but hey, let's complain about Elizabeth and the
| castles that have been in her family for centuries.
| [deleted]
| Veen wrote:
| > You make it sound like she was sentenced to sign paperwork
| for her entire life, when the reality is she consciously
| chose to do so every day
|
| They are not popular concepts these days, but the ideas
| you're grasping for are duty and service. She did her duty
| and she served her people.
|
| Also, the Royal Family is not in receipt of taxpayer money.
| The Sovereign Grant is funded from income generated by the
| Crown Estate.
| wasmitnetzen wrote:
| The Crown Estate is owned by the government, so it could be
| used to reduce taxes or increase spending if it weren't
| used to support the Royal Family. So indirectly, the money
| comes out of taxpayers' pockets.
| highwaylights wrote:
| Yes and no. The assets still have much the same value
| without a monarch but the opportunities to monetise them
| would be significantly reduced.
| _alxk wrote:
| I never bought this argument. France got rid of their
| royal family but the royal palaces and their art still
| attract millions of tourists each year.
|
| Tourists would still want to see Buckingham Palace and
| visit the royal gallery even without a sitting royal
| family.
| trashtester wrote:
| My understand is that the Crown Estate is owned by the
| Crown, personified by the Monarch. Also, it's NOT used to
| fund the Monarch directly, instead all profits from the
| Estate go to the Treasury, which in turn pays a
| percentage of that back to the Monarch, for the purpose
| of running the Monarchy.
|
| I'm not sure if it is in any way clearly defined what
| should happen to the Estate should Britain choose to
| become a Republic, but I suppose the actual result would
| be that it would be taken over completely by the
| government.
|
| But _formally_ it is still considered property of the
| Monarch.
| pmyteh wrote:
| It's the property of the Crown, which is legally a
| corporation sole with the monarch as the sole 'member' of
| the corporation. It means, for example, that Charles gets
| Buckingham Palace and the crown jewels automatically by
| operation of law on becoming king, rather than via
| Elizabeth's will. A similar arrangement applies to
| Anglican vicars who have the freehold of their church -
| it's owned by 'The Vicar of Bray' rather than by Rev
| Smith.
|
| It's generally understood by constitutional scholars that
| the Crown is essentially governmental rather than private
| and the Crown Estate would go with the government rather
| than the royal family if the assets were split up on the
| creation of a republic.
|
| The Queen also had _extensive_ private wealth, including
| Balmoral Castle which (unlike the royal places) was hers
| personally rather than as monarch. IIRC it was bought
| privately by either Victoria or Albert rather than via
| the Crown Estate. This mattered after the abdication of
| Edward VIII, where the property of the Crown passed to
| George VI as the new king, but the _private_ possessions
| of Edward stayed with him. I think Balmoral and
| Sandringham had to be bought off him so they would stay
| as royal residences. Presumably most of that private
| wealth will be bequeathed to Charles, though we won 't
| find out: the Queen's will is, uniquely, private by
| statute.
| selimnairb wrote:
| This sounds eerily like college football in the US. "It
| brings in money that funds other sports and university
| facilities so we can't get rid of it."
| _alxk wrote:
| The Crown Estate is not the private property of the Windsor
| family though. It is more akin to the wealth of a parallel
| state. One could speculate that in the event of the
| abolition of the monarchy the Crown Estate would be taken
| over by the government (at the very least not become
| Windsor family private property), in effect making it the
| taxpayers' property.
|
| I think it's totally fair to feel that they have a life of
| immense luxury and privilege off of wealth that belongs to
| the people, while so many people in this country are
| wondering if they'll have heating this winter.
| [deleted]
| highwaylights wrote:
| Again this is something I assume that must have been very
| frustrating too. She couldn't just say "that's not right"
| and intervene because that's not within her remit in a
| democratic system.
|
| I can't begin to imagine how many times she must have had
| to bite her tongue over the last 73 years.
| _alxk wrote:
| No, they actively lobbied over the years of her reign to
| preserve their economic benefits. They enjoyed this
| luxury and made attempts at preserving and expending it.
| Elizabeth was not a passive victim of her birth
| circumstances.
| noodleman wrote:
| >Elizabeth was not a passive victim of her birth
| circumstances.
|
| It's so strange that this even needs to be said out loud.
| It's not edgy to say that someone born into her position
| has benefitted from it. For a place that claims to be a
| meritocracy, the UK has some strangely dissonant beliefs.
| wenc wrote:
| The Royal Family in the UK is unusual in that it generates
| more money in tourism for the UK than they take in. Probably
| due to so many people being interested in the British royal
| family.
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/explainers-57559653
| Angostura wrote:
| The wealth is private. She wasn't granted immense wealth for
| doing paperwork. She did the "paperwork" through a sense of
| duty.
| Bubble_Pop_22 wrote:
| It's literally called the Crown estate.
|
| In the Top10 in every ranking with regards to real estate
| asset management.
|
| Also all the planes and trains and cars. Top notch brand of
| each for the last 70 years were provided by the State.
| highwaylights wrote:
| The Crown Estate is explicitly _not_ the property of the
| monarch.
| gnulinux wrote:
| This is simply semantics. She was clearly given tons of
| property, real estate, airplanes, vehicles and means to
| access goods&services only because she was the queen;
| including the very estate she passed away in: Balmoral
| Castle.
|
| She was rich _because_ she was part of the royal family;
| it 's not the case that she was part of the royal family
| and then independent of that had private wealth. There
| was never a possibility of her being poor as long as she
| was the queen.
| goosedragons wrote:
| Balmoral Castle is owned by the family, not the Crown
| unlike other residences like Buckingham Palace. She was
| head of state. It's not uncommon for heads of state to
| have houses, cars, planes etc. for their use as part of
| the job provided by the government. Even for ceremonial
| ones. Should she have entertained other world leaders in
| a one room flat?
| confidantlake wrote:
| I think that is the problem. An undemocratically elected
| monarch should not be entertaining world leaders period.
| Veen wrote:
| Balmoral isn't part of the Crown Estate. It is the
| Queen's (now the King's) private property.
| jesuscript wrote:
| Is that what the Royalist vs Anti(?) crap is about? I
| couldn't understand it because I just assumed it's
| symbolic, but I suppose if immense sums of tax payer
| money is going towards it, then an argument can be made
| for _why again?_
|
| American politics would have driven the Monarchy out if
| it dared not stay neutral. She took a stance on Climate
| Change, which the Right in America would have made quite
| a big deal about.
|
| Kind of shows how different Britain must be culturally to
| have both sides accept the need for the tradition.
| bell-cot wrote:
| > ...I'm not a huge fan of the royal family on principle, but
| Queen Elizabeth has been such an excellent head of state for
| us...
|
| This is a _vastly_ underappreciated aspect of government, and
| of human social institutions in general. The principles-on-
| paper version of something can be mediocre, or just plain
| horrid. But if the actual people running things are
| sufficiently capable and caring, the on-paper failings doesn 't
| much matter.
|
| Flip-side, even a perfect-on-paper system, implemented with
| incompetent & uncaring people in charge, will be crap at best.
| akudha wrote:
| Agree with what you say. But your job, however hard it might
| be, is more palatable when you have people at your call and
| when you're insanely rich. Contrast this with the lady at CVS
| near my home - she is at least in her 70s, looks frail and
| tired all the time. It is sad that she has to work at her age.
|
| Money doesn't solve all problems. It sure makes them less
| horrible though.
|
| All that said, the queen was an impressive human. 70 years is a
| long time. I'd be bored in 3 years and quit
| astrange wrote:
| When retirement was invented (rather recently) people tended
| to die shortly afterward IIRC. Not having anything to do can
| be even worse than working.
| Pulcinella wrote:
| She could have abolished the monarchy and quit at any time.
| Monarchies are inherently undemocratic and she was the head of
| that undemocratic class system for decades while people
| suffered under the British empire.
|
| I don't doubt your sincerity, but these feelings in you and
| others were intentionally cultivated by decades of propaganda.
| There is no such thing as a rightful king or queen, and
| certainly no such thing as someone who rules by divine right.
| barrysteve wrote:
| It's the head of a faith. It isn't going anywhere, even if
| every government, military and economic reason for it to
| exist, vanished.
|
| Ruling by divine right is common and hasn't gone anywhere.
| Divine rulership hasn't had a real problem to fight in a long
| time, so we leave the governing up to parliament. Not an
| absolute parliament, mind you.
| msoad wrote:
| Beautifully put!
| byset wrote:
| The queen (or king) can abdicate but would not have the power
| to abolish the British monarchy. That's a constitutional
| change and would presumably take a Parliamentary act.
| riffic wrote:
| > a constitutional change
|
| Just in case anyone didn't know, the UK _does not have_ a
| singular written constitution like you may find elsewhere.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_United_Ki
| n...
| worik wrote:
| Which makes constitutional change much easier.
|
| IANAL but I think an act of parliament, ironically signed
| by the monarch, would suffice to abolish the monarchy in
| England.
| bee_rider wrote:
| If she wanted to abolish the monarchy, she could have
| spurred that change pretty easily I think.
|
| A hell of a way to end the Monarchy would have been to use
| the royal prerogative to install an anti-brexit Prime
| Minister a couple years ago (against convention, but that's
| the point). Presumably that'd be enough to get them to
| abolish the Monarchy. And it would have been an fitting end
| to the Monarchy, a legacy of the previous era, to have the
| Queen, who held it for the current era, expend it's last
| bit of power to stay in the EU, which might be one of the
| top players in the next era.
|
| Well that's how it'd be written if it was a movie at least.
| highwaylights wrote:
| I think it's incredibly naive to suggest that she could have
| abolished the monarchy just like that.
|
| What about the legal system in the UK/Canada/Australia that
| have it in constitution that she as a veto to the passing of
| new laws as a balance.
|
| Could the system be made not to require the monarchy anymore?
| Sure, it's purely ceremonial and has been for her entire
| reign, but to say that the monarch can make that decision at
| whim on behalf of 15 countries is just not true.
| pmyteh wrote:
| One of the interesting quirks of losing the empire is that
| there are a lot of precedents for 'Westminster model'
| countries becoming republics. The straightforward way is to
| give the reserve powers of the monarch to a mostly-
| ceremonial President on the Irish or Israeli model, and
| vest the rest formally in the government (which
| coincidentally also makes them subject to more
| parliamentary oversight). In the case of Canada/Australia
| etc. the Governors-General are already performing such a
| ceremonial presidency in reality. All that's needed is a
| process for electing new ones; fairly straightforward.
|
| You're right that it would require international
| cooperation, though: the British parliament doesn't
| legislate for the other Commonwealth Realms any more.
| worik wrote:
| Cromwell found it really quite straight forward to abolish
| the monarchy. The bit afterwards he did not do so well.
| notahacker wrote:
| On the contrary, whilst he managed to abolish a monarch,
| he failed to abolish the institution of the monarchy so
| spectacularly that people kept offering the crown to him
| until he died, at which point the original line of
| succession was restored without any effective
| objections...
| Silverback_VII wrote:
| I would say that expecting a queen or king to remove his own
| power and influence by abolishing the monarchy is not very
| reasonable. If then it's the job of the people.
| bigfudge wrote:
| I had never considered before what the right course of action
| for the Queen (and now Charles) would have been, but this is
| it.
|
| That said, I do think it's an unrealistic ask of someone
| who's entire life and all those around her are dedicated to
| reinforcing her (absurd) status.
|
| Those I really fault are the BBC who report her term heading
| this fundamentally antidemocratic institution so
| uncritically. Monarchy in the UK has majority support, but it
| is much more evenly split that you would imagine from our
| media.
|
| Radio 4's correspondent was on just now fondly telling tales
| of how the Queen had intervened by "raising an eyebrow" to
| save a favoured army regiment. If true this should be a
| national scandal in a constitutional monarchy. That it is
| reported with so little awareness of the media's role in
| entrenching privilege is unforgivable.
| xkr wrote:
| > Monarchies are inherently undemocratic
|
| UK is in top-20 countries by democracy index.[1] It is
| classified as 'full democracy' (as opposed to 'flawed
| democracy', for example in the US).
|
| [1] https://www.eiu.com/n/campaigns/democracy-index-2021/
|
| UPD pdf version of the linked report:
| https://www.docdroid.net/xCeDvHc/eiu-democracy-
| index-2021-pd...
| worik wrote:
| I am not sure about official rankings. But "freedom" in the
| English tradition is quite flawed.
|
| The dominant paradigm is "if it is not permitted it is
| forbidden".
|
| Those of us in the colonies went a long way to get away
| from that.
| billyruffian wrote:
| > The dominant paradigm is "if it is not permitted it is
| forbidden".
|
| Oh gosh. It's the exact opposite. The a principle of
| Common Law is 'everything which is not forbidden is
| allowed' (the US for example has done reasonably well on
| that principle).
| Veen wrote:
| That is the opposite of the truth. The common law
| position is usually: "If it's not forbidden it's
| permitted". You're confusing common law with civil law
| used in most of Europe
| worik wrote:
| I am talking about culture.
| billyruffian wrote:
| In what way? From mini skirts to punk rock to gay
| liberation to extinction rebellion to pro- and anti-
| brexit protests, we seem to be comfortable with
| challenge. Citation required.
| oblib wrote:
| I've never really understood how we can still have monarchies but
| I do believe Elizabeth was probably one the better ones that have
| sat on those thrones.
|
| A few years ago I looked into how much power she had and I was
| shocked. I was also shocked by how much that monarchy owns.
| User23 wrote:
| It depends on what you mean by "owns" too. My understanding is
| that legally the monarch (or is it the Crown, I know there is
| some kind of distinction) is the landlord of last resort for
| all of his or her holdings. In the case of the British monarch,
| that includes not just the isles, but the Commonwealth realms
| as well. Any property taxes in those realms are technically
| feudal rents.
|
| And yeah the British monarch's theoretical legal power is
| immense. For one thing the UK armed forces swear loyalty
| personally to the monarch, not to the government! The monarch
| could go to war with Parliament again and the military would be
| upholding their oath!
|
| The late Queen was a woman of impeccable public ethics though.
| In some sense it's more admirable for a person who is not bound
| by the law to choose to follow it scrupulously, which she did.
| kurupt213 wrote:
| You were shocked that most of the UK's Democratic institutions
| exist at her pleasure?
| knorker wrote:
| WFHRenaissance wrote:
| Really finding out whose reactionary vs revolutionary today at
| work.
| jl6 wrote:
| RIP. An incredible life.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| She learned to be a mechanic in WWII so she could do something
| tangible to support the war effort.
| xtracto wrote:
| I remember clearly the time when Princess Diana died (1997). For
| me, it was THE moment when I understood the impact of the
| Internet. I was randomly browsing the web during the night in
| Mexico, and suddenly I started to see websites (I think Yahoo and
| MSN at that time) showing the news. I went to sleep without
| giving it too much attention.
|
| Next day, all the news in my country were mentioning the death as
| breaking news. My mind was blown over how I knew about this very
| important event the night before Mexico TV broke the news.
|
| May the Queen rest in Peace.
| elliekelly wrote:
| I had a similar experience. I saw news of her death online and
| assumed it was some sort of hoax. When I woke up the next
| morning and saw it on the (TV) news I had this weird "Holy
| shit! The internet was _right_!?" moment. It was very surreal.
| Up until that point I hadn't even considered that the internet
| could be used for much beyond screwing around and chat rooms
| let alone that it could be a platform for breaking news!
| axiolite wrote:
| > My mind was blown over how I knew about this very important
| event the night before Mexico TV broke the news.
|
| I've had the opposite experience. It's clear that real-time
| news is detrimental, and it's better for reporting to wait a
| bit for facts to come in and analysis to be done.
|
| Early reporting is vague, light on facts, disjointed, facts are
| hedged, etc. It's really quite worthless.
| ChildOfChaos wrote:
| Hoping for a bank holiday although unlikely
| rpmisms wrote:
| The word "Majesty" holds meaning that few people today
| contemplate. Her life was lived in complete service to her
| people, and was inextricably linked to the nation she ruled.
| That's a relic of a bygone era, and I think we lost something on
| the way.
| pigeons wrote:
| I don't understand why all criticism is being considered
| flamebait. Yes some of it is flamebait, but the worship is some
| pretty juicy bait too.
| dang wrote:
| Not all criticism. I posted
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32769925 because the
| thread was filling quickly with bottom-of-the-barrel stuff at
| the time. Once those comments were no longer so prominent,
| people thought I was asking them to say nice things about the
| monarchy. It took me a while to realize what was causing the
| misunderstanding, and once I did I demoted that comment. It was
| basically a victim of its own success.
| imranq wrote:
| As someone who has no idea what this monarchy means or what
| powers it has in the UK government, I was wondering if there was
| a good resource to learn more?
| _ph_ wrote:
| Her watch has ended.
|
| Not being a citizen of the commonwealth, I have no political beef
| in this, I can only admire her for holding her office for a
| longer time than most here (including me) have lived. Being the
| formal head of once a colonial empire turning into a commonwealth
| with these days most of the member nations rightfully going their
| own way, she was an important participant in the history of
| hundreds of millions of people.
|
| Her role was one of constance over a long time in which the world
| changed a lot. She was a truck driver in WW2 and became queen not
| too long after that considering she was queen till today. Now an
| era ends and a new one begins.
| mmastrac wrote:
| For those of us in the colonies, this is complicated. For better
| or worse, HRH QEII brought an element of stability to our
| government.
|
| I believe that she could have handed off power to her son sooner,
| but I understand that she was probably torn on that. She's
| probably the best monarch we could have hoped for, and any future
| monarch won't be able to live up to her standard.
| sgt wrote:
| Can we have a black ribbon on HN?
| bergenty wrote:
| Long live the king.
| etothepii wrote:
| God save the king.
| g42gregory wrote:
| I really feel that Charles should at least consider passing on
| the Crown to his son William. William and Kate are immensely
| popular. It would be a good thing for Great Britain, British
| people as well as for the Royal Family. Charles and Camilla are
| the opposite in terms of respect and popularity to William and
| Kate, as far as I understand. If Charles does that, he would
| write himself into the annals of British history. I am not from
| GB, so I may be misreading the situation.
| madamelic wrote:
| Not to mention the actual cost.
|
| I believe it is in the tens of billions when a monarch dies
| (changes of money, ceremonies, etc). Dude is in his 70s.
|
| Save your country a bit of money unless you want to foot the
| bill for maybe 10 years of being King.
| Jabbles wrote:
| > I believe it is in the tens of billions when a monarch dies
| (changes of money, ceremonies, etc).
|
| That doesn't sound right by an order of magnitude. The main
| "cost" would be the extra bank holiday, but that is difficult
| to quantify.
| bambataa wrote:
| I find this an interesting idea. Normally the response is "the
| whole point of a hereditary monarchy is that you don't get to
| choose" and obviously Charles has been champing at the bit for
| years.
|
| However, there is also the historical idea of the monarch
| needing to be a good one and keep up their end of the bargain.
| Interesting times ahead!
| aeneasmackenzie wrote:
| Edward 8 had to abdicate to marry outside of the church of
| England, and Charles is already married outside of the church
| of England. His abdication wouldn't be weird.
| forrestthewoods wrote:
| It would be better if he abolished the crown and disbanded the
| monarchy. He would write himself in the annals of human
| history.
| maptime wrote:
| William has a very young family, pushing him into becoming the
| monarch would be incredibly detrimental to their lives as a
| family. The queen was very against abdication in any form
| g42gregory wrote:
| Very true. But I think what is also true, is that he is there
| to serve his country. And if his country needs him, he could
| make that decision. I have a feeling that Kate will support
| that.
| OscarCunningham wrote:
| It wouldn't leave any safety margin though. The line of
| succession after William is a disaster.
| zokier wrote:
| > The line of succession after William is a disaster.
|
| Isn't it without a doubt that Prince George is next in line?
| It would take quite a lot to displace him.
| shapefrog wrote:
| There is never a doubt about the line of succession, it is
| William, then his 3 children (aged 9, 7, 4).
|
| If there are any disasters, making a 9 year old next in
| line to the throne voluntarily sounds like it.
| OscarCunningham wrote:
| When the new monarch is too young the next suitable person
| in the line of succession is appointed Regent. But
| William's kids are too young, Harry doesn't want it, his
| kids are also too young, and Andrew is a pervert.
|
| So it would go all the way to Beatrice at number nine on
| the list. Most people don't even know who she is, so I
| think they'd probably call it quits.
| [deleted]
| lostlogin wrote:
| It's almost as though there could be a better system, one where
| ability could be judged and debated and voted on.
| charles_f wrote:
| It's already the case though.
| lostlogin wrote:
| With a government that can legally be toppled by a
| monarchy? Not my ideal.
| xdennis wrote:
| The queen of Britain is not elected.
|
| Many monarchies have been elective[1], and in some, the
| monarch is often picked from the same family. Even that is
| a better system than "first-born child".
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elective_monarchy
| gadflyinyoureye wrote:
| First of all, let's give a round of applause to Charles. Few
| thought he would be king. Many assumed Liz was holding on just to
| spite him. You did it, Chucky!
|
| Second, now is a good time to figure out if Reptoids can hold
| their shape when dead. I've never seen a definitive answer in the
| literature.
| AngeloAnolin wrote:
| With the transfer of the crown to King (Prince) Charles, is there
| an explainer article that provides a comprehensive information on
| who is deemed the next in line in multiple scenarios (i.e. assume
| next in line dies, the heir/heiress are incapable, challenging
| someone's ascension to the throne, etc).
|
| This would make for a good read and understanding of how the
| royalty works.
|
| On the topic, I think what Queen Elizabeth has done despite of
| the challenges within her sovereignty is being a living example
| on how to rule and govern, without negatively interfering with
| how the affairs and progress of the state needs to be carried
| out.
| jbotz wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Succession_to_the_British_thro...
| cwillu wrote:
| Reminder that the rules of chess now swap the roles and movement
| of the king and queen.
| k__ wrote:
| Do you think this will break the Commonwealth?
| techno_king wrote:
| zeruch wrote:
| I've always been an anti-monarchist/posh class in terms of the
| sense of entitlement and inherited perks while "in government",
| but I also feel as a _leader_ QE2 was an unusually astute
| 'Monarch' (in quotes as she was a very different monarch, both in
| actual power and in tone from say a Sultan Bolkiah, the KSD, or
| Sultan bin Tarik) and that there is now a bit of an informal
| power vacuum in the UK, which will have network effects beyond
| their borders.
| dirtyid wrote:
| RIP. I don't look forward to her being replaced by Charles on my
| money.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| Don't worry too much about for money. From what I know, the
| royal family brings in far more in taxes on merch / tv coverage
| rights / other revenues than it takes to sustain them. They
| also have a considerable estate which is likely profitable.
| kraftman wrote:
| I think he means literally on the bank notes and coins.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| Uh oh I didn't think of that. Who has cash on hand these
| days?
| [deleted]
| 22SAS wrote:
| RIP, your majesty! The end of an era, from volunteering in WW-II,
| to seeing the empire break, and the world getting crazier now.
| mabbo wrote:
| Queen of Canada for 44% of its existence[0]. My father remembers
| her coronation when he was a little kid- he's 75 now.
|
| Meanwhile my daughter is 6 months old and will likely live to see
| a half a dozen monarchs.
|
| [0]https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=%28June+2%2C+1953+to+no..
| .
| NaturalPhallacy wrote:
| The Queen ruled since my dad was born, a fixture of my life if
| not an influential one here in the colonies. Her dying feels so
| strange. Like if the moon just went away one day.
| 12ian34 wrote:
| It's good that she was able to go with her family by her side in
| a place she loved. There will be lots of mourning in the UK. I'm
| anti-monarchy but she's clearly left quite the legacy, and people
| that have met her have only great things to say about her manner
| and attitude.
| Accacin wrote:
| I'm also anti-monarchy, but if we _had_ to have one, I 'm glad
| it was her :) I've never met or didn't know her, but she came
| across as a good person and it's odd to know that she's gone.
| fezfight wrote:
| dang wrote:
| Please don't take HN threads on generic flamewar tangents. It's
| not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
|
| We detached this subthread from
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32769091.
| fezfight wrote:
| Dang, does this post 'gratifies one's intellectual
| curiosity.'? Should it be on HN? I don't believe so. The only
| intellectually interesting thing about the monarchy is how we
| let them persist now all the fake divinity is gone. Which is
| what my comment is intended to spur conversation about. So
| claim what you like, it's your site, but I believe you're
| wrong.
| dang wrote:
| It's a major historical event. History is on topic here and
| always has been.
|
| Readers who do not have an intellectually curious response
| are welcome not to post. There are plenty of other things
| to read.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| fezfight wrote:
| I genuinely believe the interesting aspect of Elizabeth's
| death is the focus it can (if we allow it) put on the
| inherent injustice of monarchies. But OK, you don't.
| Fine, its your site. The temp ban/rate limit was kinda
| low key uncalled for. I was civil.
| dang wrote:
| We rate limit accounts when they post too many low-
| quality comments and/or get involved in flamewars. You've
| posted quite a few low-quality comments lately, not just
| in this thread. I'm sorry if it came across the wrong
| way, but this is standard HN moderation, and one of the
| few software tools we have to try to dampen the decline
| of this place.
|
| If you want to build up a track record of posting better-
| quality comments for a while and then ping us at
| hn@ycombinator.com, we'll be happy to take a look and
| hopefully remove the rate limit; we do that all the time.
| fezfight wrote:
| Not low quality: succinct.
|
| And no, I'm not going to debase myself and beg you to
| remove something you implemented out of pettiness. It's
| your error, and it's unfortunate (for me) that you wield
| your power like this.
|
| So I'm out then.
| henryfjordan wrote:
| Some of the comments you've been taking action on have had
| some foul language but this one is just an opinion.
|
| There are some that argue the monarchy constitutes a human
| rights abuse both against the people she took tax money from
| and against her own family which was forced to participate in
| the pageantry.
|
| Calling those opinions "flamewar tangents" is incredibly
| dismissive.
| dang wrote:
| If by foul language you mean profanity, we don't care about
| that.
|
| The GP comment was definitely a flamewar tangent:
| 'flamewar' because it's a classic political battle, and
| 'tangent' because it touches the original topic at one
| point and then veers away from it.
|
| Tangents can be fine if they're unpredictable, but generic
| tangents are predictable and those are the worst sort of
| thread on HN. They're so predictable that they're the
| opposite of the curious conversation we want here.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| henryfjordan wrote:
| I think in the future it might be better to say "This
| comment is not up to HN's editorial standards to produce
| curious conversation" rather than asserting that it is
| "flamebait tangent". Using such strong language is a type
| of flamebait in itself (and the number of comments
| criticizing the moderation of this thread should be
| evidence that others agree).
| dang wrote:
| I take your point but I think it's more important to
| avoid bureaucratese.
|
| The number of comments criticizing moderation in this
| thread is not because I used the word flamebait. I've
| used that word thousands of times on HN. Rather, it's a
| function of my screwing up with
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32769925. That
| happens sometimes--usually when I mis-pre-assess people's
| feelings.
| happytoexplain wrote:
| "Foul language" is a very rough measure. The parent's
| thought could have been communicated with less sarcasm
| ("Sad that ... ?") and bitterness ("doesn't deserve").
|
| Edit: Further, some topics, no matter how carefully
| broached, are just a bad value proposition. They may have a
| bad ratio between their intrinsic value (importance,
| relevance, etc) and how likely they are to spawn a low-
| quality thread (and how low that quality is likely to be).
| henryfjordan wrote:
| So OP was out of line by calling it "sad" but to call his
| opinions "flamewar tangents" is totally different?
|
| Edit to match yours: If this convo is so fraught, Dang
| should delete the whole thread.
| dang wrote:
| "Delete the whole" is not how threads work on HN. The way
| that threads work on HN, assuming that they're on topic,
| is that people should post intellectually curious
| comments and avoid posting unsubstantive or predictable
| ones.
| fezfight wrote:
| Thanks, by the way.
| pvg wrote:
| Both 'opinions' or 'facts' can easily be flamewar
| tangents - the form and context count for a lot. There's
| lots of moderator commentary on this.
| happytoexplain wrote:
| Indeed - the implication that a statement merely
| containing anything factual or backed by evidence makes
| the whole thing uncriticizable ("but it's true") is maybe
| _the_ most common fallacy made in defense of provocative
| statements.
| evgen wrote:
| Well, I would guess that at the very least she would be able to
| spell throne.
| dang wrote:
| Please don't respond to a bad comment by breaking the site
| guidelines yourself. That only makes everything worse.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| rcarmo wrote:
| Even as a (still) EU citizen, I'm saddened by the news.
|
| One has to remember she took upon her shoulders a lot (essentialy
| from WWII to everything we've all gone through in recent memory,
| plus a lot of responsibility we can only guess at), and yet, by
| all accounts[1], was an amazing human being.
|
| [1] https://twitter.com/davidmackau/status/1567894552744271872
| mzs wrote:
| Britain's plan for when Queen Elizabeth II dies: POLITICO has
| obtained documents laying out Operation LONDON BRIDGE in granular
| detail
|
| https://www.politico.eu/article/queen-elizabeth-death-plan-b...
| ars wrote:
| There can't be very many people alive who have been to a state
| funeral of this magnitude, let alone actually planned one.
|
| Is there another monarch alive with this many subjects?
| bombcar wrote:
| Technically the Pope is a monarch and every Catholic a
| subject but it doesn't quite play out the same way.
| kadoban wrote:
| I'd be surprised if there wasn't. Does QE get credit for
| former colonies like Canada though? If so that might help.
|
| If you start counting what we'd usually call dictators, there
| definitely are bigger ones. The monarch/dictator line gets a
| little blurry and subjective/political I believe.
| [deleted]
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| Elizabeth was the Queen of England, the Queen of Canada,
| the Queen of Australia, etc., etc., it's the definition of
| being a Commonwealth Realm. So, at the time of her death,
| she had about 150 million subjects.
|
| Given that all the countries with more population than that
| have a constitution and not a sovereign, it's safe to say
| yesterday she was the most prolific monarch alive.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| > Commonwealth Realm
|
| Might be worth pointing out that not all Commonwealth
| countries are part of the Commonwealth Realm.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonwealth_realm
| barry-cotter wrote:
| > Elizabeth was the Queen of England, the Queen of
| Canada, the Queen of Australia, etc., etc., it's the
| definition of being a Commonwealth Realm.
|
| India has been a republic since 1947 and is a member of
| the Commonwealth.
| diveandfight wrote:
| The emperor of Japan has 125+ mil subjects.
|
| States that recognize the British monarch as head of state:
| 67 mil (UK) + 38 mil (Canada) + 26 mil (Australia) + 5 mil
| (New Zealand) + others less than mil people = 136+ mil
|
| So pretty close, but this appears to be a correct statement.
| divbzero wrote:
| Is there another monarch in history with this many subjects
| in a single reign?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_heade.
| ..
| that_guy_iain wrote:
| I don't think there is another Royal family of the same
| prestidge. There are other royal families in Europe but you
| don't hear much about them.
| that_guy_iain wrote:
| Operation Unicorn will happen because she died in Scotland
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_London_Bridge#Operat...
| sycren wrote:
| Due to her passing away in Scotland, I believe there is a
| different Operation in play, Operation Unicorn -
| https://www.thenational.scot/news/21224640.operation-unicorn...
| zaarn wrote:
| Operation London Bridge still runs, Unicorn is a sub-plan
| that runs on top of London Bridge for this case.
| whoooooo123 wrote:
| I'm pretty sure "unicorn running across London bridge" is
| not a mental image I'd ever pictured before today, but
| thanks.
| [deleted]
| Guy2020 wrote:
| notorandit wrote:
| I feel sad for all the U.K. people. Twice. Once for the death and
| once for whoever will come next on the throne. I am sorry for
| you!
| sdfjkl wrote:
| Imagine being groomed to do this job from birth, with no real way
| to opt out[1]. You wanted to breed horses, become a blacksmith or
| start a business? Get that nonsense out of your head, you're a
| princess!
|
| Then, when you're 25, your daddy dies aged only 56 and after a
| rather brief period of mourning you get pushed into taking his
| job in a pompous ceremony. Now you're going to be doing this
| until you die. No retirement! I bet there were times where
| Lilibet just wanted to go to her room and cry.
|
| I wouldn't have wanted her job for all the wealth and power that
| came with it.
|
| [1] Well, you could make a big scandal about marrying an American
| divorcee, but that didn't go down too well for the last guy.
| scaramanga wrote:
| Monarchs all over Europe bowed out of this bullshit after WW2,
| so it can definitely be done. The UK monarchs rebranded
| themselves as "the royal family", at considerable effort and
| expense, so that they could carry on "enjoying" their
| lifestyle. Whatever enjoyment might mean in this context, in
| terms of the personal enjoument of one woman, who knows, and
| I'm not sure why I'd care either.
| yessirwhatever wrote:
| Fuck her and fuck all royalty. I couldn't give a shit...
| dang wrote:
| We've banned this account for repeatedly posting flamebait and
| unsubstantive comments. That's not allowed here.
|
| If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email
| hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll
| follow the rules in the future. They're here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
| mrlonglong wrote:
| King Charles should consider stepping down in favour of William.
| We need someone fresh to take on the upcoming difficult times
| ahead for the disintegrating UK.
| antonymy wrote:
| William's children are too young to fulfill their role as
| immediate heirs. It's probably best to let Charles reign as
| long as possible until his grandchildren reach their majority.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| controversial97 wrote:
| If I remember correctly, the plan is that UK TV channels cancel
| all entertainment programs for the next ten days, so I look
| forward to more people going outside for the end of summer.
| petercooper wrote:
| Even so, it's a different era now. When Diana died, the TV and
| radio were certainly very different for a good week thereafter.
| Nowadays, even if most TV and radio changes its schedule,
| there's Netflix, YouTube, Disney+, BBC iPlayer, 'catch up'
| services and all the rest, so you could very easily not be
| exposed to the national mood in the same way.
| astrange wrote:
| shawabawa3 wrote:
| There's no way that's true. Maybe one of the BBC channels
| mmikeff wrote:
| This is the first time we've had the TV on watching something
| whilst it is actually being broadcast though airwaves for
| months.
| [deleted]
| netsharc wrote:
| To be glib about it, probably Netflix can tell us in the future
| how much viewership in the UK went up.
| balentio wrote:
| danity wrote:
| I greatly admired her dignity, strength, and no-nonsense approach
| over the years. RIP.
| P0l83q4p1Hw3Ul wrote:
| I'd consider her equal in relevance to Kim Kardashian.
|
| For some quality entertainment, read through the comments
| pretending they're talking about Kim Kardashian.
|
| "I've never considered myself a ['celebrity worshipper'] but... I
| just burst into tears unexpectedly [upon hearing of Kim's
| death]."
| bot41 wrote:
| I'll need to thread lightly before I get banned by Dang for not
| loving the british queen!
|
| If we observed monkeys and saw that one was showered with gifts
| and jewellery their whole lives because they were offspring of
| two other particular monkeys.. we would chuckle at that. Not for
| being the strongest, tallest, biggest, smartest or best at
| something. Just for existing.
| [deleted]
| pygar wrote:
| I think her longevity has inadvertently feminised the role
| forever.
|
| A balding, white boomer living off of unearned wealth and whose
| face is on the back of our coins that some have to sing "god save
| the king" to might just to too much. Especially after about 50
| years of media portrays of kings as somewhere between oafishly
| licentious and sadistically cruel.
|
| A lot has changed during the Queens rein, women are now
| significant players in society and I'm not sure how the majority
| will react to "King Charles III". I'm not sure how men will react
| either come to think of it.
|
| A lot of what holds monarchy together is a belief in God, and
| that the monarch rules by divine right. We have probably become
| too egalitarian for that now. Watching the coronation will be
| interesting, which traditionally uses a lot of Christian
| religious imagery to justify itself. I wonder if they will adapt
| it for a new multiracial, multireligious Britain.
|
| The Queen had some advantages, being a woman, initially portrayed
| as beautiful and regal and then grandmotherly (the awkward middle
| aged 1980s period is usually ignored) as well as being part of
| the "we won World War II" club made her immune to criticism.
|
| I think for a glimpse of the future British monarchy, we should
| look at the Scandinavian royal families. Basically invisible.
| anshumankmr wrote:
| Rest in Peace
| COGlory wrote:
| m00dy wrote:
| one liz in one liz out
| theirishrover wrote:
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=S7woEXovruc
| [deleted]
| theirishrover wrote:
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=S7woEXovruc
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=S7woEXovruc
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=S7woEXovruc
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=S7woEXovruc
| BonoboIO wrote:
| I feel sad for the british empire, she was like the figure that
| represented the whole Great Britain. I think it's the start of a
| Long way down.
|
| Brexit is a disaster, Prince Charles is not really a charming
| person, Scotland wants to leave Great Britain and join the EU,
| Northern Ireland is split as ever.
|
| God save the king.
| petesergeant wrote:
| > Scotland wants to leave Great Britain
|
| I'm not sure that's geologically feasible
| [deleted]
| oynqr wrote:
| Anything is with enough nukes.
| dijit wrote:
| dupe (many more comments here):
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32768854
| dang wrote:
| That thread was posted slightly later, so we've merged the
| comments hither. Thanks!
| zinekeller wrote:
| It should be merged, that has way too many comments to be left
| as-is.
| Bubble_Pop_22 wrote:
| Will Putin go to the Funeral? This person has entertained
| relations with the Soviet Union first and then Russia for
| 70years.
|
| Allies against the Nazism . It's peak tension between the West
| and Russia now but maybe a impromptu occasion to finally get to
| Peace
| already wrote:
| RIP. You had an inspiring life!
| bitcharmer wrote:
| dang wrote:
| Flamebait will get you banned here. No more of this please.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| bitcharmer wrote:
| seydor wrote:
| could this influence some of the last remaining royalties around
| the world? I don't think charles or his son will ever be well
| respected. Elizabeth was faithful to her role, very conservative,
| oversaw the end of the british empire, probably the last
| recognized monarch worldwide. Without her, the royalties of saudi
| arabia are somewhat without peers , which may delegitimize them
| in the eyes of their citizens.
| kensai wrote:
| Canada has lost its queen as well. And not only Canada.
| 01100011 wrote:
| Twitter seems to be having trouble with the load.
| hk1337 wrote:
| Twitter is taking a moment of silence.
| annyeonghada wrote:
| May it last forever.
| Orthanc wrote:
| So say we all.
| forrestthewoods wrote:
| pedrosorio wrote:
| Based on the data, that's unclear (18-24 year olds only) at
| best: https://www.statista.com/statistics/863893/support-for-
| the-m...
| forrestthewoods wrote:
| Public support for monarchies is independent of whether
| they're actually good or bad. I think everything about them
| is gross and revolting. Other people think otherwise.
|
| Thankfully democratic countries aren't creating new
| monarchies. Nor should they.
| zo1 wrote:
| I don't think this thread is the one you should be using to
| proclaim your revulsion at monarchies.
| theirishrover wrote:
| I was born on a Dublin street where the Royal drums the beat And
| the loving English feet they went all over us And every single
| night when me da' would came home tight He'd invite the neighbors
| out with this chorus
|
| Come out ye black and tans, come out and fight me like a man Show
| your wife how you won medals down in Flanders Tell her how the
| IRA made you run like hell away From the green and lovely lanes
| of Killashandra
|
| Come tell us how you slew them old Arabs two by two Like the
| Zulus they had spears, bows and arrows How brave you faced one
| with your 16-pounder gun And you frightened them natives to their
| marrow
|
| Come out ye black and tans, come out and fight me like a man Show
| your wife how you won medals down in Flanders Tell her how the
| IRA made you run like hell away From the green and lovely lanes
| of Killashandra
|
| Come let us hear you tell how you slandered great Parnell When
| you fought them well and truly persecuted Where are the sneers
| and jeers that you loudly let us hear When our leaders of sixteen
| were executed?
|
| Come out ye black and tans, come out and fight me like a man Show
| your wife how you won medals down in Flanders Tell her how the
| IRA made you run like hell away From the green and lovely lanes
| of Killashandra
|
| Come out ye black and tans, come out and fight me like a man Show
| your wife how you won medals down in Flanders Tell her how the
| IRA made you run like hell away From the green and lovely lanes
| of Killashandra
| talideon wrote:
| Get a grip.
| faxmeyourcode wrote:
| Born in April, 1926, it's crazy how much the world has changed in
| her lifetime. May she rest in peace.
| yreg wrote:
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| When she was born, the British Empire ruled over a quarter of
| the world's population.
| drexlspivey wrote:
| It's even higher now, the commonwealth countries have a
| population of 2.5 billion (almost 1/3)
| mdasen wrote:
| The UK monarch doesn't rule over most Commonwealth
| countries. The monarch only rules over the 15 Commonwealth
| Realms. For example, India and Pakistan are now republics
| and the monarch doesn't have a role in their governments.
| Canada, by contrast, is a monarchy and Commonwealth Realm.
|
| The Commonwealth of Nations an association of countries,
| but the Commonwealth of Nations does not control the
| government of any member country (even ceremonially). India
| and Pakistan are members of the Commonwealth of Nations,
| but are not Commonwealth Realms.
| blibble wrote:
| the monarch doesn't rule over the UK, they reign
|
| a small but crucial distinction
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Iunno, the King of England can barge in whenever he wants
| and start telling me what to do. That worries me.
| ajvs wrote:
| No longer "ruling" over them though.
| [deleted]
| CSMastermind wrote:
| Arguably the largest change in humanity in a ~100 year span?
| Especially if we go back to 1922. Mass communication, mass
| travel, etc. were all non existent.
|
| Like the first radio stations had just started broadcasting
| when she was born, now we're all discussing her passing on a
| communications network that connects the entire globe. Possibly
| some of us while on flights from one side of the world to the
| other.
| wistlo wrote:
| I would argue for 1870-1970. Flush toilets, motors and light
| bulbs, communication networks ( phones in houses, radio ) did
| not exist before 1870, but were rapidly being deployed in the
| decade or two before the Queen's birth in 1922..
|
| A book by Robert J. Gordon from 2015, "The Rise and Fall of
| American Growth," goes through this in great and fascinating
| detail. The life of an everyday American in 1870, starting
| off with the chamber pot and ending with an early bedtime by
| candlelight, was hard to even imagine by 1940. As he lays it
| out , life in that year would be familiar to us: toilets and
| plumbing, mass media via radio & hardcopy webpage (i.e.
| newspapers), worldwide communication from home (telephone),
| refrigeration, etc.
| mariodiana wrote:
| I tend to agree with you, if only for that fact that in the
| span of a single lifetime an individual, as a child, could
| have stood and watched man fly for the first time, and then
| as an adult see man land on the Moon.
| Terretta wrote:
| My grandmother (1900 - 2000, ish), considered "email"
| (instant letters) and individual people's ability to
| "publish" on the web for the world to create and consume
| what any individual thought, as radical and important.
|
| She considered company websites as fancy brochures, but
| thought individual access to almost free global publishing
| was astonishing.
| mymythisisthis wrote:
| I'd say the time from 1830's to about 1930's was the era of
| greatest change.
|
| The introduction of trains in the early 1800s literally
| changed the DNA of England. As people started to regularly
| traveled 100's of miles away from their villages.
|
| The transatlantic cable was carrying millions of messages
| by the late 1880s.
|
| American history tends to be written in a bubble. Some
| people in the U.S.A. were using chamber pots in the 1870s,
| by the 1870s London had a sewer system.
|
| Too often the U.S.A. plays up a fantasy pioneer past. While
| in the U.S.A. people tend of talk of the 1860s as a time of
| pioneers and wagons, in large Western European cities
| Maxwell's Equations were being discussed in mathematics
| departments.
| lostlogin wrote:
| A timespan anecdote I like: Bertrand Russell watched man land
| on the moon on tv. He also had his grandfather tell him about
| meeting with Napoleon.
| tgflynn wrote:
| > Arguably the largest change in humanity in a ~100 year
| span?
|
| I don't think so. My grandmother was born in 1900 and died in
| 2003. Cars, airplanes, electricity, radio, TV, computers,
| space ships, etc..., all were invented or became commonplace
| in her lifetime. Queen Elizabeth was born between the birth
| years of my parents, who didn't remember the "horse and buggy
| days".
| kgeist wrote:
| My Russian great-great-grandmother was born in 1898 and
| died in 1998. She witnessed tsarist Russia, communist
| Russia and democratic Russia. That was quite an experience.
| I always was kind of jealous because she could compare the
| regimes first-hand.
| BbzzbB wrote:
| That's quite a way to put it. Someone living through 1908
| - 2008 would've also witnessed the start of Putin's
| autocratic Russia as he manoeuvred to keep power despite
| ending his second term.
| Terretta wrote:
| Agree with you. The world today is not much different from
| the world my grandmother left behind, born ~1900 died
| ~2000.
|
| Arguably it's not particularly different now than, say,
| 1995 - 2000, which is the half decade of web search indexes
| (AltaVisa = 1995) and banner ads (1998 = DoubleClick IPO).
|
| Travel, media, appliances, transportation, Internet,
| perhaps even music and fashion, haven't as _fundamentally_
| changed since then.
| nerdix wrote:
| I would say that massive adoption of smart phones and
| social media have been pretty big.
|
| It may not be as big of a leap as no computers ->
| personal computers or no internet -> internet but I
| wouldn't say that the world is "not much different" than
| 2000.
|
| Social media in particular has the potential to be
| extremely disrupting to society. There are things which
| seem possible that would have been unthinkable in 2000
| like the fall of American democracy. And that sort of
| societal shift requires more than just the internet. It
| requires a hyper-online society which is enabled by
| smartphones and social media.
| tgflynn wrote:
| What surprises me is how little technological progress
| appears to have occurred in the last decade (ie.
| 2010-2020). I think you'd be hard pressed to name a
| decade in the past 50 or even 100 years where the
| technology available to the masses has advanced so
| little. Note that I'm excluding things that are still
| mostly at the research stage, like deep learning,
| advanced language models, etc., since I don't think those
| have had much effect on people's lives yet.
| aembleton wrote:
| 1970s maybe.
| tgflynn wrote:
| Not at all, that was the decade personal/home computers
| first become available. It's also when Steve Jobs founded
| Apple.
| rr888 wrote:
| Dont underestimate recent changes. Your grandma never saw a
| smartphone, modern electric car, online food ordering,
| Netflix nor went on a Tinder hoookup. :)
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| > Mass communication, mass travel, etc. were all non existent
|
| Telegraphy had allowed current news to rapidly flow around
| the globe for decades.
| ThinkingGuy wrote:
| True, but the information still had to be conveyed from the
| nearest telegraph office to your home (the 19th century
| "last mile problem")
| OJFord wrote:
| Had a morning and afternoon post though. For telegrams
| specifically at least I believe you could pick them up by
| dropping in on the off-chance too?
| Scoundreller wrote:
| I don't think the monarchs ever worried much about how
| much underlying work was required for things to happen
| for them.
|
| That kind of improvement benefits poor people.
|
| It's like the opposite of tariffs or sanctions: the
| people at the top are unaffected.
| themadturk wrote:
| Weren't there also multiple daily editions of The Times
| and other newspapers?
| conductr wrote:
| Meanwhile;
|
| > A mix of June and 19th, Juneteenth has become a day to
| commemorate the end of slavery in America. Despite the
| fact that President Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation
| Proclamation was issued more than two years earlier on
| January 1, 1863, a lack of Union troops in the rebel
| state of Texas made the order difficult to enforce.
|
| > Some historians blame the lapse in time on poor
| communication in that era, while others believe Texan
| slave-owners purposely withheld the information.
|
| https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/abolition-of-
| sla...
| zokier wrote:
| Maybe more importantly, broadcast radio had started few
| years earlier (1919-1920ish)
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| zokier wrote:
| > Arguably the largest change in humanity in a ~100 year
| span?
|
| 1870-1970 (or about that range) probably would be bigger
| change. That would cover time from before commercial light
| bulbs to commercial computers[1] and man on the moon.
| Societally it would include WW1 and the series of Russian
| revolutions leading to wave of other revolutions in
| Europe[2], and major advances in Womens' suffrage[3] among
| other things.
|
| [1] e.g. PDP-8 and S/360
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutions_of_1917%E2%80%9
| 319...
|
| [3] "The Representation of the People Act 1918 saw British
| women over 30 gain the vote. Dutch women won the vote in
| 1919, and American women on August 26, 1920, with the passage
| of the 19th Amendment"
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women%27s_suffrage
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| I would argue that the biggest change came to her parents'
| generation more or less.
|
| They were born without electricity, and everything it
| brought, and without cars or planes, and they lived to have
| pretty much all modern comfort and watch a man on the Moon on
| TV.
| anm89 wrote:
| This really is hard to comprehend. We live in more or less a
| completely different reality then when she was born.
| pmontra wrote:
| > 1929
|
| Actually 1926 but yes, a lot of history in those nearly 100
| years.
| Calavar wrote:
| Winston Churchill was her first prime minister.
| weego wrote:
| She navigated the changing world, role and importance of the
| crown across her reign with a lot of intelligence and grace.
| lostlogin wrote:
| A less charitable take could say that she oversaw the decline
| of the crown and collapse of the empire.
| nly wrote:
| ...and of Britain generally.
| andrepd wrote:
| It's always vague statements like that, or something to the
| effect of "she witnessed some pretty important events", or
| "she lived for very long". What did she do exactly, of note,
| in these 75 years? I still don't know.
| jmfldn wrote:
| I am a republican i.e. very anti-monarchist but it is a historic
| moment and I feel sad for some reason. The end of an era. A
| constant throughout the postwar period in this country. Someone
| my gran loved too and looked up to, so I feel pretty sad as a
| Brit.
| nprateem wrote:
| Yep. A good time to end it all on as much of a high as they're
| likely to get.
| nly wrote:
| Charles should abdicate to the young and more relatable
| William and Kate.
| zinckiwi wrote:
| Commonwealth citizen and feel much the same. She had my
| respect, but takes all of it with her...
| bxhsiiaag wrote:
| From one of the commonwealth countries, I don't feel sad and
| I am not sure how to feel about such news from anyone from
| the British royal family from that time, they surely must
| have had an effect on how the world turned out or maybe they
| didn't (I don't know much about British history and its inner
| workings). This family was responsible for a lot of pain and
| suffering world wide, or maybe these members of this family
| were responsible to put an end to the pain and suffering
| around the world as the world moved on. In any case, my
| condolences to the ones greiving.
| petre wrote:
| It's a pity she died. I'm a republican as well. Not British but
| I'll probably have a hard time getting used to Charles being
| king after he took Bin Laden's cash.
| irthomasthomas wrote:
| Queen Elizabeth shepherded Britain through one of the longest
| periods of peace, and stability in our history. I hope King
| Charles will continue that tradition.
|
| I always remember this letter she wrote in a old copy of Burke's
| Peerage, on why she was banning the use of foreign titles.
|
| "As chaste women ought not to cast their eyes on any other than
| their own husbands, so neither ought subjects to cast their eyes
| upon any other prince than him whom God hath set over them. I
| would not have my sheep branded with another man's mark; I would
| not have them follow the whistle of a strange shepherd." -Queen
| Elizabeth II 1926 - 2022
|
| God save the Queen. And protect us all from strange shepherds.
| divbzero wrote:
| Queen Elizabeth II's first official photograph from 70 years ago:
|
| https://www.thesun.co.uk/fabulous/18050875/queen-first-offic...
|
| Queen Elizabeth II's last official photograph from 2 days ago:
|
| https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11185023/The-Queen-...
| lampshades wrote:
| 911 days after COVID was declared a pandemic.
| schroeding wrote:
| :(
|
| It's mind-boggling to me to think about how long 70 years of
| reign actually is. How many world leaders she has seen come and
| go. How much the world changed since then.
| SllX wrote:
| There was a fairly mind-boggling bit in there too about the age
| gap of the Prime Ministers which served her.
|
| Winston Churchill born in 1874 and Liz Truss born in 1975 were
| her first and last Prime Ministers.
| distrill wrote:
| kortex wrote:
| She reigned for about 1/3rd of the time America has existed.
| Incredible.
| artwr wrote:
| Closer to a fourth, but still impressive.
| cygx wrote:
| About 30%, actually: The US constitution came into effect
| in 1789, the Queen took the throne in 1952.
|
| (2022 - 1952) / (2022 - 1789) = 0.30
|
| You're right if one starts counting from the declaration of
| independence, however, yielding 28.5%.
| artwr wrote:
| I was indeed counting from the declaration of
| independence and was trying to round to the nearest
| natural fractions, but you are technically correct, which
| is the best kind of correct.
| SllX wrote:
| Nope, you were closer to correct. The Constitution isn't
| the founding of America: the Union formed first under the
| Articles of Confederation but our first act as a Union
| separate from the UK was the Declaration of Independence.
| cygx wrote:
| Thanks for the correction, I retract my objection. We
| could also start counting from when the Articles of
| Confederation came into effect (1781), which lies
| approximately between 1/3 and 1/4 ;)
| SllX wrote:
| Maybe, but I think effectively it really was the
| Declaration of Independence. It would take some time for
| independence to be effectually achieved, but consider a
| counter-timeline where we lost the war: the Declaration
| would be a minor footnote at best in British history
| (which it pretty much is) and also _not_ the start of the
| history of the Union. It's because we won that the United
| States of America is a meaningful idea to anyone.
|
| The Articles of Confederation wouldn't even be a
| footnote, just a dusty document in someone's library,
| maybe, and the Constitution would never have been
| written.
| Ruarl wrote:
| This isn't quite correct. I'm no geologist, but I believe
| America has been around for quite a few million years. Or are
| you one of the lizard-people hypothesis types?
| anthk wrote:
| That's the land, not the US.
| Flankk wrote:
| type0 wrote:
| US of A, pardon for being a stickler
| evgen wrote:
| She was just a year and a bit short of passing Louis XIV for
| longest reigning monarch. Almost made it...
| tromp wrote:
| Closer to 2 years, as Louis reigned for 72 years and 110 days
| [1].
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_longest-
| reigning_monar...
| Waterluvian wrote:
| My Canadian money is about to get weird.
| cgrealy wrote:
| It's probably worthless now. Give it to me, I'll dispose of it
| responsibly :D
| phkahler wrote:
| Bloom County. Comic strip. Back in the 1980's did a whole series
| after William was born poking fun at the royals. I collected a
| whole shoebox of comics including most of that series. Long since
| put it in the trash, but I have never seen any of those strips
| again. Oh but google:
| https://www.google.com/search?q=bloom+county+prince+william
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| Please read Charles' book "Harmony: a new way of looking at the
| world." Like it or not, we have a philosopher king.
| already wrote:
| RIP. You had an inspiring life!
| gpmcadam wrote:
| God save the Queen
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| btheshoe wrote:
| I wonder what the odds are on the monarchy being abolished
| within, say, the next few decades.
| dpbriggs wrote:
| God save the King.
| pknerd wrote:
| How many American Presidents came into power during her tenure?
| evgen wrote:
| At her coronation Eisenhower was president and she saw 13 US
| presidents while queen (and there was an additional three
| between her birth and when she became the queen.) Victoria
| actually saw more presidents come to power in her lifetime
| since there was a greater tendency for one-term presidents
| earlier in US history.
| [deleted]
| samhickmann wrote:
| So, when I post something that helps entrepreneurs I got banned
| (because apparently it's to "salesy"), but it's ok to post that a
| Queen has died? WTF HN? This news is everywhere. This is NOT on
| topic.
| mkmk wrote:
| RIP. Perhaps the last reigning Queen of England the world will
| ever see.
| ianburrell wrote:
| Are you expecting end of monarchy? There was recent rule change
| for succession to not depend on gender that makes it more
| likely there will be a queen in future. For example, Prince
| Charlotte is now third in line instead of fourth after her
| younger brother with the old rules.
| madamelic wrote:
| If global warming as predicted, it's very likely.
|
| The succession is all men:
|
| Charles (10 - 20 years of reign puts us in the 2030s)
|
| William (30 - 50 years puts us between 2060 - 2080)
|
| George (30 - 50 years puts us between 2120 - 2140)
|
| The next possible female monarch is if George dies for some
| reason (passing onto Charlotte) or if George has a daughter
| first which would mean she'd take the throne well into the
| 2100s.
| 988747 wrote:
| George is already nine years old, I doubt he will be alive
| in 2120, let alone 2140 (that would require him to live
| till 127 years of age). You have to rethink your math here.
| If we assume he'll die at 100, that brings us to 2113.
| bloak wrote:
| > Prince Charlotte is now third in line instead of fourth
|
| Yes, but I don't think the gender-neutral titles are official
| quite yet!
| [deleted]
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| I was born in the UK, in 1963. Because of my step-father's love
| of first-wave UK punk, the first thing I did on hearing this news
| was to play the Sex Pistol's "God Save the Queen".
|
| It is remarkable how much the Queen's standing has improved
| during the time since that song (1977). My (UK) family are (as
| far as I know) staunch republicans, but the last couple of
| decades have seen all of us soften our disgust with the monarchy
| as Elizabeth represented it. We might still want the whole
| concept destroyed, but there is nothing close to the vehemence of
| Johnny Rotten (Lydon)'s lyrics from that song.
|
| Nevertheless, that is how a bunch of people felt in 1977, and as
| our memories become even more gilded and rose goggled now that
| she has died, it may be worth remembering those feelings too:
|
| _God save the queen / The fascist regime / They made you a moron
| / A potential H bomb / God save the queen / She's not a human
| being / and There's no future / And England's dreaming_
|
| These days, I think even us staunch republicans/anti-monarchists
| would begrudgingly admit that "She could have been worse" and
| that she actually was a human being.
|
| Maybe Charles will have the guts to end it all, but it doesn't
| seem likely.
| bambax wrote:
| > _We might still want the whole concept destroyed_
|
| Be very careful what you wish for. As a French, living under
| the rule of an elected monarch who changes often, but doesn't
| answer to anyone during their reign, there is something
| extraordinary to see the British PM bow to the Queen, and do
| that (I think?) every week.
| ikurei wrote:
| I'm curious about this; I don't live in a republic.
|
| The PM bows to the Queen, but that doesn't mean they have to
| listen to the people more than they do in France, no?
|
| Doesn't the French Prime Minister answer to the President?
| How is that worse than having a monarch? Are they often from
| the same party, thus rendering this answering to the
| president less powerful? (I know the current PM and President
| are, not sure if that's the common case.)
|
| My impression is that just by being less involved in
| politics, and generally (not 100%) staying away of corruption
| and other sorts of scandals (unlike others, looking at you
| Juan Carlos I) for a few decades, the figure of the Queen can
| be less jarring or seems more trustworthy than a President
| usually would.
|
| To be honest, I live in a monarchy, and if I could choose
| we'd transition to a republic... but I've never felt like it
| would make a huge difference in the quality of our government
| or our electoral politics, so I just don't really care.
| scaramanga wrote:
| In japan, everyone bows to everyone. Not sure what the
| point is.
|
| The queen can still secretly prevent legislation from ever
| being heard in parliament, so...
|
| The point is that a president is a) elected and b) works
| openly.
| wwilim wrote:
| The French President just gets a nice office and a limo for
| a few years, he doesn't inherit hundreds of years of
| imperial money and retain strange godlike reverence for
| life.
| randomsearch wrote:
| It's really important not to make the false dichotomy of
| English Monarch vs French Republic. Not saying that's
| happening here, but in these debates generally speaking
| it's important to realise that France is exceptional and
| not representative when considering alternatives to
| England's monarchy. A US or French style president is not
| the only or even the obvious alternative to an unelected
| head of state.
| bambax wrote:
| > _Doesn 't the French Prime Minister answer to the
| President?_
|
| In theory, no, French PM answers only to Parliament. Only
| Parliament can dismiss them, not the President.
|
| In practice, and in normal times, this isn't true at all.
| When the President tells the PM that their time is up, they
| immediately resign. (One tried to resist in the 70s and was
| immediately voted out by Parliament.) This makes the French
| PM effectively powerless. They simply implement the will of
| the President. The equivalent to the British PM is the
| French President, _not_ the French PM.
|
| Now there are non normal times where Parliament and the
| President are on opposite sides. When that happens
| (1986-1988; 1993-1995; 1997-2002), the PM is effectively in
| charge of most things, but even in those cases the
| President still has more powers than an typical
| constitutional monarch.
|
| But my point wasn't about power but about humility. I think
| it's good and desirable that the ruler has to bow to
| someone else, and that that person, in turn, has no power
| whatsoever.
| ertian wrote:
| I've been thinking about this for a while. Watching a swing
| towards autocracy around the world, it strikes me that
| republics seem somehow more vulnerable. The existence of a
| monarch, even as a functionally ceremonial role, creates a
| sort of conceptual top spot--and fills it. You _can't_ rise
| to the level of the head of state in a monarchy, that
| position is taken and can only be gained by inheritance.
|
| At the same time, if the monarch (in a system like that of
| Britain) actually started using and abusing their theoretical
| powers, they'd quickly have the whole of the country turn
| against them. And they have a lot to lose if that happens!
|
| In a presidential system, the President is both the
| theoretical and _actual_ head of state. They 're already in
| the top spot, and the only thing preventing them from staying
| there is convention or laws which are subject to change, and
| enforcement of which is largely under the President's
| control.
|
| A more ceremonial President might work as well, but the thing
| is, an elected head of state has less to lose by abusing his
| powers, and far more to lose by properly following convention
| and thus stepping down.
| scaramanga wrote:
| And then the monarch secretly interferes with legislation,
| while being exempt from FOIA. And gets involved in coups,
| and has an army which swears loyalty to them, and not the
| democracy.
|
| https://theconversation.com/the-queens-gambit-new-
| evidence-s...
| https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2018/05/09/could-
| army-c...
|
| But don't worry, as long as people live in a fantasy world
| where they believe they are just ceremonial figureheads and
| a benign presence, their position at the top will never be
| challenged. And at any moment when it does, peoples
| emotions/grief will be exploited to maintain the
| institutions by using north korea style propaganda
| campaigns and security operations:
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/mar/16/what-
| happens... https://www.theguardian.com/uk-
| news/2021/sep/03/security-ope...
| mabil wrote:
| > We might still want the whole concept destroyed
|
| I am not well versed about republic vs. monarchy apart from my
| limited experience, which might be more than many people, but
| not as valuable as someone that have studied that and can pitch
| in. Coming from BR, have lived in AU, NZ, and UK, and traveled
| a lot, I would take monarchy over a republic any day,
| extrapolating on that, and just looking at the current state of
| affairs of republic countries vs the ones coming from monarchy,
| which ones look in a better state, and makes you want to move
| to, live in and raise your family?
|
| And mad props to UK for keeping --relatively to others-- really
| well so far.
|
| Thank you and Rest in Peace.
| scaramanga wrote:
| The UK is in a shocking state of decline, so not sure what
| metrics you are using there?
|
| Widespread unemployment, hunger, life expectancies in
| decline, 1,000 people are dying a month from the botched
| "response" to covid. Hundreds of thousands in early graves
| due to same covid response, and before that already over a
| hundred thousand in early graves as a result of austerity.
| The political system seems to have completely collapsed and
| be unable to respond to crises or meet even the most basic
| survival needs of its population.
|
| I wouldn't lay this on the feet of the monarchy, cos the
| elected officials seem to be the main cause of it.
|
| But which republics are you looking at? Because I live in
| one, and I can't imagine moving back to the UK any time soon.
| Again, I don't think that's because it's a republic, it just
| happens to have a basically functioning political an economic
| system that hasn't (yet) failed.
| jbjbjbjb wrote:
| I think you're overstating the decline. But yes too much
| democracy in Brexit and a badly designed democracy with the
| first past the post system. Widespread apathy to politics
| doesn't help either.
| movedx wrote:
| Well said.
|
| Look at the HDI: https://hdr.undp.org/data-center/human-
| development-index#/in...
|
| Look at the top ten countries. How many are a constitutional
| monarchy? Which of them would you rather live in? :-)
| scaramanga wrote:
| None of them are constitutional monarchies in quite the
| same way the UK is? The UK has a uniquely intact monarchic
| system.. But then, the UK is an outlier in many things when
| compared with similarly wealthy countries.
| volkse wrote:
| The preservation of traditional institutions (like
| monarchy) does not have a direct influence on HDI. Both
| high HDI scores and the fact that traditional institutions
| (no matter how expensive) are preserved has to do with long
| sustained periods of political stability, physical security
| and as a result, economic prosperity.
| fsloth wrote:
| I think monarchy is irrelevant for HDI and the correlation
| is more about long term political stability rather than
| better politics. My country (Finland) could have been a
| monarchy but ended up not being so. I can't imagine what
| could be better with a monarch.
| green_on_black wrote:
| Presumably, a life-long monarch would enhance political
| stability.
| pavlov wrote:
| In Finland, already one of the most politically stable
| countries in the world?
|
| There's no discernible difference on this count between
| Finland and its Nordic peers that are constitutional
| monarchies.
| epolanski wrote:
| Fun fact but english monarchy is an asset rather than a cost
| for britain, there's massive business and tourism around it.
| Seeing castles where real nobles live is different to empty
| castle-museums.
|
| Also the royal family pays taxes and lease lots of stuff to
| the government at no cost.
| tuoret wrote:
| I put on the song as soon as I heard the news and it took
| Spotify something like 15 seconds to load it. There's a very
| stressed server out there right now.
| [deleted]
| Beltalowda wrote:
| This is interesting especially with the whole thing surrounding
| Prince Andrew. You might expect a huge backlash against the
| royal family as an institution, and there has been some of
| that, but mostly: it's been relatively mild (against the royal
| family that is, not prince Andrew).
|
| In the 90s (the only era I can remember) things were quite
| different too: there was the whole hubub about Camilla who was
| (IMO unfairly) extensively vilified in the media, had private
| telephone conversations with Charles were leaked. I'm not sure
| that would happen today; or if it did, it would get
| considerably less attention. Then there was the whole bruhaha
| about Andrew and Fergie, and let's not even start about Diana.
|
| Maybe today Kim Kardashian or whatnot have taken the place for
| the "gossip inclined". Or maybe I just don't pay as much
| attention to these things as I did back in the day. But it
| seems like reporting is completely different.
|
| As for punk: that's basically intended to offend innit? I'm not
| sure if you can really tell the general mood of the country
| from punk.
| nemo44x wrote:
| It's called "getting old". :)
|
| I think even John Lydon has respect for the Queen nowadays. [1]
|
| [1] https://www.loudersound.com/news/john-lydon-on-sex-
| pistols-g...
| dang wrote:
| I was wondering if he would appear here, and yes, that isn't
| surprising. England was his great theme and the anger in
| those songs had a lot to do with injured love ("I thought it
| was the UK").
| worik wrote:
| > I think even John Lydon has respect for the Queen nowadays.
|
| The person. Not the institution.
|
| I have the opposite POV
| colechristensen wrote:
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| They are in an odd spot of having extreme de jure power
| (Charles could disband parliament tomorrow) while having a
| completely unknown de facto power (would they listen? It
| didn't work out too well for another Charles).
| Beltalowda wrote:
| King Baudouin of Belgium tried to exercise his power in the
| 90s by refusing to sign the abortion law, citing his
| catholic faith.
|
| The law got signed in to effect anyway. The "trick" was
| that parliament can sign laws in to effect if the king is
| incapacitated. They declared him incapacitated, signed the
| law, and declared him "capable" again the next day. Whether
| that was truly legal and in accordance to the letter of the
| law was a matter of some debate (in my reading of the text,
| it's not), but I expect things will go in a similar fashion
| for the British monarchy if Charles really tries to use his
| "hard power" (rather than "soft power"/influence) in any
| way.
| pluijzer wrote:
| Keep in mind that king Baudouin requested himself for a
| solution where he would not have to sign the law without
| I obstructing the democratic process. So it is not fully
| true that they went against the will of the king.
| bambax wrote:
| It would be quite funny if he tried. I don't think he has
| it in him though.
| wyldfire wrote:
| It seems as if in Elizabeth's life (if "The Crown" has any
| bearing on real life events) she was able to wield some
| amount of de facto power either due to her
| reputation/prestige personally or from her role as monarch.
|
| > Charles could disband parliament tomorrow
|
| Elizabeth had some amount of real world power perhaps via
| the potential threat of this.
| barrenko wrote:
| So basically a kick-ass PM (product manager).
| simonh wrote:
| I would say influence rather than power.
| msabalau wrote:
| Given that Dang has decided that exploring the negative
| aspects of monarchy are "ranting" and "malignant", it is hard
| to imagine how you could get an comprehensive assessment of
| the institution on HN. A curious person can probably find
| that sort of information elsewhere.
| dang wrote:
| No, I said that about shallow-indignant internet comments,
| aka flamebait, which are what we don't want here.
| Thoughtful critique is a different matter--though the bar
| for "thoughtful" on this topic has to be pretty high,
| because it's so full of bombast and an internet forum is
| the worst genre for that.
|
| I don't care about monarchism or anti-monarchism, nor would
| I ever take a position about anything like that in a
| moderation comment. The moderation comments are always
| about the same thing--avoiding tedious repetition
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32771818). The irony
| is how tediously repetitive they are!
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| The queen says "tut tut" to the prime minister when the prime
| minister does something bad. That is not a role that you can
| underestimate. The queen reminds the prime minister that
| there is someone above them, and someone that they answer to.
| In comparison, a lot of US presidents seem like they need a
| few "tut tuts."
| jamiek88 wrote:
| US presidents answer to the people.
|
| It's completely different.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| Does Joe Biden agree?
|
| Does Donald Trump agree?
|
| I would wager that neither man feels particularly
| accountable to the unwashed masses that both of them
| openly disdained.
|
| Edit: Does George Bush agree?
| hydrolox wrote:
| Well, Trump didn't get re-elected and it doesn't seem
| like Biden will either. So they "answer" every 4 years.
| jonny_eh wrote:
| Especially if they feel that they can use violence to
| overrule the will of the people.
| tcmart14 wrote:
| In theory. But theory and practice are different things.
| bambax wrote:
| Yeah it's different, and worse IMHO. "The people" is an
| abstraction, like "God" or "Nature". The Queen is a real
| person that you have to go meet in her house, and bow to.
| garren wrote:
| It's completely different, that's without a doubt.
| Whether or not a US President "answer[s] to the poeple"
| is debatable. W Bush taking the country to Iraq again,
| against a significant majority of the people comes to
| mind.
| dustincoates wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_opinion_in_the_Uni
| ted...
|
| Support for the Iraq War at the time of invasion was
| either close to or a majority.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| Throughout history, the people have tried to say "tut
| tut" to the president, and the response is usually large
| amounts of police violence.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| Like all American politicians the POTUS does ultimately
| answer to the people, but only in an indirect fashion.
| Directly, the POTUS answers to the States because the
| States are the ones who elect him.
| NoGravitas wrote:
| And isn't _that_ going to be a shitshow in 2024?
| simonh wrote:
| They answer to the people eventually, but while in office
| they wield powers unknown in our (British) system since
| the time of George III. And I mean that quite literally.
| The US president is essentially an elected British King
| circa 1789. They literally copied the constitutional role
| of the king point by point with a few minor alterations.
| The power to convene and dissolve parlia...er...congress,
| executive decrees are royal decrees, the veto on
| legislation, command of the armed forces, the power to
| pardon convicts, proroguation. Not exactly cutting edge
| constitutional innovation I'm afraid. We've moved on, but
| in some ways the US still stuck in the 18th Century.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| You have an overly expansive view of presidential powers.
|
| The Congress does not answer to the president. It is an
| independent institution. It does not convene and dissolve
| by presidential request.
|
| Executive orders can be over-ruled by either of the other
| two branches of government
|
| Veto power can be over-ruled by the congress.
|
| Until recently, presidents needed congressional approval
| to make war. Now we skip that part and just don't call it
| a war.
| JAlexoid wrote:
| They make a lot of money off "the little things"... Like
| owning large swathes of Westminster(land and revenue
| generating properties)
|
| You can be assured that Royal Family Inc will fight tooth and
| nail to keep their privileges intact.
| rhplus wrote:
| > "the opaque procedure of Queen's consent has been exercised
| far more extensively than was previously believed"
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/feb/08/royals-
| vette...
| daedalus_f wrote:
| The article does a good job conflating the parliamentary
| process of Queen's consent and lobbying of the government
| by the Royal family. You may think both are bad/outdated, I
| do, but there's a lot of journalistic spin going on here.
|
| Right at the bottom of the article there is a quote:
| "Consent is always granted by the monarch where requested
| by government. Any assertion that the sovereign has blocked
| legislation is simply incorrect."
|
| The journalist never provides any evidence to the contrary.
| scaramanga wrote:
| Because it could not exist, because it is secret.
|
| Also, the government has to request it. Another problem
| the UK has is: massively corrupt governments.
| waqf wrote:
| But the quote does not address the question of whether
| the government felt that the sovereign were threatening
| to block legislation, if it were not modified in
| accordance with the Royal Family's wishes
| (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pyqnu6ywhR4).
| scaramanga wrote:
| Or whether the monarch was threatening to oust the
| government, using the army which is loyal to the monarch.
| DontchaKnowit wrote:
| I listened to "the queen is dead" by the smith's immediately
| hazeii wrote:
| Not so black and white, but I still thing the Sex Pistols GSTQ
| is a great song (also Anti-Nowhere Leagues 's "So F*king
| What!", much more FTW). Never a fan of the Diana bandwagon
| either.
|
| Yet, likewise to me the Queen always earned the respect shown
| her. Colouring the establishment by the actions of some is just
| too black and white thinking for me.
| Normille wrote:
| >the Sex Pistols GSTQ is a great song (also Anti-Nowhere
| Leagues 's "So F*king What!"..
|
| Don't forget New Model Army's '51st State'
| citilife wrote:
| Not to dive into politics particularly; but there are
| advantages and disadvantages to every form of government. What
| are the particular disadvantages your family dislikes? Is it
| the principal of it or something in particular?
|
| One clear advantage of monarchs that I can see, are that they
| have an incentive to grow and expand their tax base. That
| typically means long-term planning (but doesn't ensure it,
| which is a disadvantage the UK parliamentary system seems to
| mitigate).
| nh23423fefe wrote:
| Cherry picking one dimension and making a supposition, isnt a
| clear advantage.
| kibwen wrote:
| Here's an analogy: in a democracy, first-past-the-post voting
| is, in a vacuum, about the worst voting system that exists.
| But the reason that it was adopted in so many places is
| because it has one advantage: its sheer, utter, bone-headed
| simplicity. In a context where most constituents are
| illiterate and unfamiliar with the notion of democratic
| government, it behooves you to pick the simplest solution
| that can possibly work, even if it leads to worse results
| than more complex systems.
|
| Hereditary absolute monarchy is the same thing, but for
| selecting heads of state. Who's in charge? The guy with the
| biggest army. What powers does he have? All of them. Who
| succeeds him when he dies? His firstborn. It's dead simple to
| implement, which made it an attractive solution in times
| before any semblance of mass communication. But in practice
| it means the quality of your head of state is totally
| detached from their actual talent at serving as head of
| state: the first guy in line was just good at leading an
| army, and the rest of his descendants are just randos who won
| the birth lottery. It's not a good solution _unless_ you 're
| willing to make loads of sacrifices in order to have the
| simplest system possible.
|
| (And yes, of course, the UK is not currently an absolute
| monarchy, but you appeared to be asking in a general sense.)
| bee_rider wrote:
| Succession struggles were like their own whole genre of
| political strife until the modern era. Multiple parties can
| have claims of varying legitimacy -- first born might gain
| some advantage in being near to the previous leader,
| inheriting the royal rolodex and hopefully some
| powerful/motivated allies who want to keep the status quo,
| but it isn't a sure thing.
|
| Sure, now that the top position is entirely symbolic in the
| vast majority of monarchies, nobody fights over it. But the
| if the UK Monarch was in any sense "in charge" of anything,
| we'd surely see the US propping up Harry and Meghan as the
| true legitimate heirs and we might even let them borrow a
| couple carriers to "persuade" Parliament of the fact. Or
| whatever.
| scaramanga wrote:
| They supported a coup that ousted a democratically elected
| government. It even included a plan to install a military
| junta.
|
| They are given a lot of money.
|
| They can (and regularly do) veto legislation if it would harm
| their (vast) business empire.
|
| They are not elected.
|
| The burden of proof is on you to say why this is a good
| institution.
| scaramanga wrote:
| Also, it's slightly bizarre that you think parliament has
| been "pro-economic-growth", but that hasn't been the case
| since the collapse of the post war consensus in 1979, when
| it simply became pro profit-growth.
| greenthrow wrote:
| mymythisisthis wrote:
| Similar sentiments from me.
|
| I think there is something to be said for, lack of a better
| word, the continuity of history. 70 years with the same
| monarch. A system of monarchy, for over a 1000 years.
|
| It is a symbolic role, but symbols are powerful.
| scaramanga wrote:
| Not to mention wall-to-wall propaganda in any coverage that
| mentions them across the complete political spectrum of
| media.
|
| Arsenic-laced baby-food would be tolerated, if not vaguely
| enjoyed, if it received that kind of positive coverage.
|
| Mainstream UK press are regularly making North-Korea style
| calls for people who personally dislike the royals to be
| excluded from the media, eve when they are making even-handed
| reportage about them, just on the off-chance that their
| subconscious biases might seep through in to their work (or
| something? lol):
| https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10267447/Amol-
| Rajan...
|
| Edit: to indicate irony..
| Victerius wrote:
| God save the King.
| matthews2 wrote:
| Saying that will take a bit of getting used to!
| rishabhd wrote:
| End, of an era. RIP.
| major505 wrote:
| I'm not even brit and I`m sad to see her go. She inspired people
| in the best and the worst, and I wish other leaders took their
| job as serious as her.
|
| In a fast changing world she was a constant, always doing her
| best. It's like a small Light Beacon in the world had been turned
| off.
| christogreeff wrote:
| RIP :(
| andrewstuart wrote:
| Queen Elizabeth served in the armed forces during World War 2 as
| a truck mechanic.
|
| That's something that has always struck me as indicative of her
| character.
| racktash wrote:
| This is probably the only death of a public figure that has
| really hit me hard. The Queen was a constant all of my life, all
| of my parents' lives and, indeed, a good deal of my grandparents'
| lives. The comfort she could bring to many is not to be
| underestimated in my view. When Covid-19 was kicking off in the
| UK, and our lives were changing in ways we couldn't predict, I
| remember being immensely comforted by her speech.
| bennyp101 wrote:
| Indeed, it felt like a safe, reassuring voice in a sea of
| panic. A voice that had been heard for decades and for me at
| least, represented that "keep calm and carry on" mentality. RIP
| ath0 wrote:
| Her speech early in the Covid-19 era was one for the ages[1]:
| Short, personal, reflective of history yet with a clear call-
| to-action for her country. I'm not British and also found it
| exceptional.
|
| [1] https://www.reuters.com/article/health-coronavirus-
| britain-q...
| sph wrote:
| "It reminds me of the very first broadcast I made, in 1940,
| helped by my sister. We, as children, spoke from here at
| Windsor to children who had been evacuated from their homes
| and sent away for their own safety."
|
| This is the broadcast she was referring to:
| https://youtu.be/VJI9LPFQth4
| JAlexoid wrote:
| Her speech was almost perfectly engineered.
| mywittyname wrote:
| This is the end of an era. I doubt any monarch can truly follow
| her legacy.
| johnchristopher wrote:
| I don't think so. From what I read and see I think the world is
| about to change or die trying in the next 30 years.
|
| This monarch and the following one will also witness great
| changes and they may play some role in it.
| dym_sh wrote:
| Guthur wrote:
| And the last meaningful act was to swear in Truss, not how I'd
| like to bookend my legacy :)
| antonymy wrote:
| Wikipedia wasted no time updating King Charles' page.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles,_King_of_the_United_Ki...
| madamelic wrote:
| Yep. This morning there was a debate on QE2's page about the
| wording for Elizabeth's death section and they already had a
| draft written for when it was officially announced. This event
| was really well telegraphed hours ahead (BBC in all black,
| cancelling their afternoon programming, everything straight
| from Operation London Bridge started at 8 or 9 ET)
| UncleSlacky wrote:
| I think he's said that he's going to style himself "King George
| VII" as he didn't approve of Charles II.
| linker3000 wrote:
| Nope, Charles III it is:
|
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-59135132
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