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Forums - General - A question to those in the UK

phinch1 on 04 July 2009

Doesn't the queen pass laws?



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starcraft on 04 July 2009
SciFiBoy said:
starcraft said:
SciFiBoy said:
That Guy said:

Why does britian still have a royal family?

 

I thought you guys were all democratic and stuff now the Parliamentary System. What exactly does the Queen/Prince/etc. etc. do? Do they just sit there and collect public money? It seems like a drain on the economy to me.

a question i ask many of my countrymen and women, yet none of them have yet provided me with an answer that i deem acceptable.


the monarchy is antiquated, pointless, undemocratic and a waste of taxpayers money, i say were abolish the monarchy immediatley.

The Monarchy isn't a waste of taxpayers money at all.  Have you any idea the sort of trade benefits, charitable benefits and other various benefits brought to the UK each year by diplomatic missions from Royal family members?  They FAR outweigh the costs of running the royal house.

Thats before we even look at the benefits of having a united figurehead.

trade? trade is dealt with by the government isnt it? charity? charitys and run idependently and not for profit, dont see how theyre relevant to the monarchy, unless of course youre saying the monarchy have charitys that are funded by the state, which makes them not charitys but state initiatives. what other various benefits? diplomacy is again primarily done by the government, as it should be. as i mentioned, tourism is not her, so much as its the historic sites and stuff, wether she is there or not is unlikely to have any majour impact on tourism.

again, as ive said time and time agian, not a united figurehead, never been elected so you cant say that, till there is an election, she is not uniting anyone.

Trade is dealt with by the entire public and private sectors.  Prince Charles in particular is regularly sent as a diplomatic ambassador too establish trade partnerships and reduce trade barriers with other nations.



starcraft - Playing Games = FUN, Talking about Games = SERIOUS

SamuelRSmith on 04 July 2009
Soleron said:
SamuelRSmith said:
Soleron said:
I think the Royal family are a good thing. I think they make more money for Britain out of tourism and being ambassadors than we pay them. They have very few powers left, which is how it should be as they are unelected, but the Queen technically has the power to dissolve Parliament when the country is in a dire situation and we need that safety net just in case the government does something that endangers the country. Parliament is no longer a check on the PM's power and the Cabinet isn't either.

If future monarchs become any more involved in politics than the Queen is it should certainly be suspended.

This is the problem. It's not the Monarch, or the Lords, or Quangos that are the issues with our system, it's not even the Commons or the PM - it's the system itself. The constitution is weak, it's so easily changed. Now, of course, I'm not advocating a codified constitution, but we need to move some of the powers away from the Government and to (or back to) Parliament.

Yes.

 - We need to get rid of the Royal Prerogative. All of the current powers of the Monarch, ie - declare peace, war, dissolve Parliament, etc, need to be moved away from the Queen and given to Parliament. Because this simply gives the Prime Minister too much power. However....

Agreed, but this is the least important part of political reform and should only be done after everything else.

 - This will only be effective if we reduce the power of the Government over Parliament. Perhaps if we have a complete separation of powers, a la, the USA and have an elected Government separate from Parliament then the situation will be solved. However, this will never happen so other things should happen instead:

      - Something should be done to remove the power of the whips. Forcing MPs to vote against the will of their constituents and for the will of their party should be banned. This would also be doubled with weekly meetings between the MP and his/her Constituents to debate the issues currently going through the Parliament - to enhance the representative function, and to get the system to work as a democracy.

Agree, a lot. The existence of whips makes Parliament and indeed the existence of the Opposition irrelevent as the Government can guarantee they win all of the crucial votes.

     - This system should be changed to be geared towards more Independent MPs. Removing the power of the whips, again, would do this. Also, changing the structuring of the debates so that they're not focused around just the governing party and HMO, but also around the smaller parties and the independents - as to improve both the scrutiny and debating functions of the House.

Proportional representation, with primaries to choose parties' candidates.

Well, PR wouldn't help independents at all. I'm also against PR on the basis that is reduces accountability (you vote for a party, not a person). I'm more into the AMS system which they use for the Scottish Parliament - ie, a mixture of the both. 

     - The Lords need more power. I've already made my case in this thread as to what I believe the structure of the Lords should be, now I will go on to suggest a few powers they should have [...]

The Lords is mostly controlled by the current Government with zero democratic influence. The Lords as it is now should not be given those powers otherwise it's worse than the current system. If the Lords is made democratic, which is the only viable alternative, it  would be redundant as the Commons already is. My view is that we shouldn't have a Lords, and the power of the Commons to have no confidence in the Government and force an election is sufficient protection as long as Parliament is mostly independent of the Government. If you would plan to keep it, what would you do to reform the Lords?

I have already made a post in this thread about it, I'll C&P:

As for the structure, I'd go for 70% elected, 30% appointed. The 70% elected would be done on a purely PR system, and the terms would be longer than the Commons - Lords elections every 10 years, or so. The 30% would not be appointed by the Commons, but by an independent body who appoint solely on intellectual merits rather than for political gains. Appointed Lords will serve until they choose to retire, or if the appointment body deems that they are acting unprofessionally (never turning up, corruption, etc). 

Anyways, I won't say anymore, I don't want to turn this into a manifesto

If we were to go with a fully elected upper chamber, like the States, then we would have a situation where the upper chamber would slowly gain too much power and we could be in constant deadlocks - which isn't good for getting things done.