' Wrote:It's a silly tradition. I'd love to mention an American one that would be similar, but sadly I can't really think of one:P
Ah lets see... movie stars, sports stars, Justin Bieber.... don't tell me America doesn't have it's own version of royalty. The only difference is, rather than the government paying their salaries forcibly with tax money, the populace willingly gives them millions of dollars thru movie tickets, CDs, trashy magazines, what have ya. Not to mention adulation.
As for the royal family, hey at least the UK has a real one. In Australia, Canada, etc. we have to settle for the "queen's representatives", ie. the governers general, which are ex-bureaucrats who do nothing all day but grow fat off tax payer dollars and cut a few ribbons.
' Wrote:Yet it's Parliament that has the real power of making laws and such thus Montezuma's post making sense.
And I hope that those who RP the Bretonian and Gallic monarchys remember that. Monty, I know you have a GRN so........practice what you preach!!! :)
Well, IIRC the Bretonian Monarchy is the same as the British one right now, and pretty much as pointless, given as the power would really reside with the Prime Minister and Parliament.
The Gallic Monarchy on the other hand is more absolute, in that the King has ultimate power over the entire nation, and it's armed forces, which given the war Gallia is about to unleash upon Sirius, may be very helpful.
' Wrote:Would someone explain to me what the big deal is with the Royal Family? All I've heard all day is Prince William getting engaged to his new fiancee. OK, congrats but ENOUGH!!! I suppose our own media isn't helping.
Also, why is it that England spends so much money on the Royal family when it has very little real power?
At the heart of this is our unwritten constitution and the Royal Family's place within it, actually we do have a written constitution but it's spread across multiple acts of parliament going back to the sixteenth century, there isn't really a need for it to be expressed in a single document like the American Constitution. There is also the place that the Monarchy sits in the collective DNA of the British people in the sense that it is separate from political life and provides a base platform which enables politics to vary from one extreme to another compared to say the US, for example in the sixties and seventies we voted avowedly socialist governments into power without the fear that the whole country would topple over into a permanent socialist hell, similarly in the eighties the avowedly right wing government of Margaret Thatcher didn't descend into a fascistic hell, the Monarchy was and still is the glue that holds the national psyche together although this is changing slowly as Britain becomes more multi cultural.
The impending wedding is a media and commercial event in most people's eyes but this has been the case forever, nothing new about that.
As to the money that is spent? depends on how you calculate value for taxpayers money, until recently the russian government spent a greater proportion of their country's assets subsidising the sale of vodka than we do on the Royal Family, the US government used to buy monkey wrenches for $500 each for the army, just depends on what you get back for the money you spend.