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Who owns Parliament?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- aftbit 4y agoSuper interesting article but nearly unreadable font for me.
- fennecfoxen 4y agoIt might be nice for Parliament to own their own building but England more generally has a real problem where normal humans have a hard time owning the property their homes are built on, with all sorts of fun fun fun fun fun ground-rent renewal politics. Reforming those is more impactful and urgent.
- simonh 4y agoGood news. Ground rent is going to be banned from the end of this month on new leases. It'll take a while for it to be eliminated completely but it's firmly on the way out. https://www.gov.uk/government/news/future-homebuyers-to-be-freed-from-expensive-ground-rent-bills-on-30-june https://www.gov.uk/government/news/future-homebuyers-to-be-f...
- dane-pgp 4y agoExcept the government has only done the bare minimum for leasehold reform, and has seemingly abandoned the more ambitious plans it had promised for this session of parliament[0]. As for the Leasehold Reform (Ground Rent) Act 2022, it's worth reading the small print: "Certain types of leases are also excepted by the LRGRA 2022 such as business leases, statutory lease extensions of houses and flats, community housing leases and home finance plan leases. The LRGRA 2022 will not apply to leases granted under contracts entered into prior to the commencement of the Act, unless in accordance with an option or right of first refusal."[1] [0] https://nationalleaseholdcampaign.org/leasehold-reform-broken-promises/ https://nationalleaseholdcampaign.org/leasehold-reform-broke... [1] https://www.keystonelaw.com/keynotes/the-end-of-residential-ground-rents-comes-into-force-on-30-june-2022 https://www.keystonelaw.com/keynotes/the-end-of-residential-...
- kcartlidge 4y agoHere in the UK we're one day into a two day extra 'bank holiday' for the Queen's jubilee (70 years). Seems a good time to remind people of great sites like these, places that take the time to gather the evidence that reveals the truth behind royalty - descendants of thieves and murderers still profiting off the proceeds of their ancestral crimes, with their only 'qualification' being an accident of birth. We've never been a democracy. And we never will be as long as we have an aristocracy and a royalty with priviledges and titles both unearned and undeserved.
- bsedlm 4y agoI'd argue that while the current generation of nobles may in fact have done nothing much to earn them, they do have ancestors that fought bitterly, and in some cases quite sleazily, to earn and keep their privilege. the idea that "all men are equal" is not really true in Europe. And it's only supposedly true in America
- Mikeb85 4y agoThere are some republics in Europe that did indeed overthrow their royalty/aristocracy...
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- Angostura 4y agoWe’re a constitutional monarchy AND a democracy. The monarch is the disabled root account of the nation. The government is the sudoers
- plonk 4y agoSounds like the system would be simpler if we removed root and gave capabilities to the sudoers instead. Edit: why does the disabled root account allocate so much RAM?
- bengale 4y agoPresident Boris. Sounds fantastic. Perhaps not though, yeah?
- kergonath 4y agoIn a lot of countries, it would be much better than "prime minister Boris". Look at the president roles in Italy and Germany, for example. Not all countries in the world are the US.
- bengale 4y agoWe already have a non political head of state. I’m not sure I see any benefit in us switch to a system like Italy or Germany.
- kergonath 4y agoI am not British, so I have no skin in the game. But the issue in general is not the fact that there is a head of state with a mostly-ceremonial role, it’s all the baggage that comes with the monarchy (detailed by others in this thread).
- bengale 4y agoI find the general feeling here is that the system isn't perfect, but none are really and what we have has worked for a long time and there isn't much desire to change it. We'd just be switching for the baggage of an elected head of state and I'm not sure there is any stomach here for another issue that divides so deeply after going through the Brexit campaign/process.
- JackFr 4y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Clinton_(funk_musician) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Clinton_(funk_musician) Duh.
- LanceH 4y agoI checked the article on the extreme off chance...
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- lifeisstillgood 4y agoIn the UK we generally ignore this problem because we "know" that the Queen will not bring about a constitutional crisis because she realises that presented with a choice between the duly elected Prime Minster of the day and The Queen, all of us democratic citizens will of course choose the elected politician ... no wait ... err hang on ... The British constitution is complicated.
- spacedcowboy 4y agoI dunno. We chopped the head off the last one who pushed too far. That sort of lesson tends to have some permanency as it echoes down the ages.
- thinkingemote 4y agoAlso, parliament learned lessons about the mess it gets into when there's nothing above them. Cromwell was even worse than the king before.
- pessimizer 4y agoFrance had their Cromwell moment, too, but they didn't revert everything afterwards. Turns out it requires a lot of furious, dangerous energy to destroy entrenched genetically-based status quos hundreds of years old. You can choose to come out of it as citizens rather than subjects.
- spacedcowboy 4y agoYou're aware that Brits aren't subjects, right ? That they're all citizens barring some really obscure corner-cases...
- leto_ii 4y agoI'm actually disappointed, going by the title I thought this would show which politician was bought by which special interest group :))
- neilwilson 4y agoThe Crown owns parliament because it is in England. Nobody except the Crown can hold land in England. You can only own an interest in land (Freehold being one of them). If the holder of any land dies intestate, then the land reverts to the Crown 'bona vacantia'. The same would happen if Parliament ever dissolved itself as an institution. Another little quirk of history.
- noja 4y ago> Nobody except the Crown can hold land in England. It sounds like someone made up another meaning of "own" and given it a different name ("hold") to making the "owning" less good. I can't imagine any situation where the Queen points at a piece of land and says "I'm having that" and people just accept it.
- EliRivers 4y agoIt sounds like someone made up another meaning of "own" In a lot of cases, "owning" is less good and using the word "own" to describe it is just misleading. Like how shareholders "own" a company. Funny kind of owning. "Owning" a field; it's not like you can take it home in the back of your car; it's not like owning a pair of shoes. The problem with words here isn't people making up another meaning of "own"; it's that "own" is used for a lot of cases where, frankly, people just don't "own" it.
- henrikschroder 4y ago> The Crown Estate Commissioners have done this under the terms of the Land Registration Act 2002, which allows the Crown to register an interest in otherwise unregistered land. This is wild to me. What do you mean "unregistered land" ? How the hell can you have been a nation for centuries and still have land that no-one owns? How can you be uncertain about who owns a piece of land? How can you have disputes? Every single square centimetre of Sweden is mapped, surveyed, registered, and owned. There exists one national, public database of who owns what, which means that for every single square centimetre, I can ask who owns it and get a definitive answer. No uncertainties. No secrets. No confusion.
- zinekeller 4y agoIn general, that's called the Torrens titles (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torrens_title https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torrens_title) after the MP of South Australia (which is now an Australian state) which implemented it. It's actually not that common, to highlight this in the US only Guam (which was then part of the Captaincy General of the Philippines) is the only US territory or state fully implementing Torrens titles, with some states partially implementing it and some (like the area in and around Chicago and the state of California) repealing it. Edit: I need to clarify that some states/countries have non-Torrens land registries (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_registration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_registration) or deeds registries (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deeds_registration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deeds_registration) but they only record what allegedly happened and ownership can be challenged in court, so these registries are not a guarantee of ownership (unlike in Torrens titles where the titles are indefeasible and the only possible lawsuits are about the circumstances of the transfer like if the original owner was defrauded).
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- bombcar 4y agoSweden is mapped that way because at some point they decided to do so, and any "unregistered land" became something - likely property of the Swedish government. The UK has a much more ... involved understanding of land, and since it only has to be registered when sold (IIRC) there are large plats of land where the owner is not registered (even though it may be known).
- olddustytrail 4y agoThe article never actually answers the question, because the monarch doesn't actually own the crown estate. It's an entirely different thing to the lands owned privately by the queen.
- FireBeyond 4y agoEven as a Scottish and then Australian "republican"... I thought that some of the conclusions in the article were just as confusing. "Since 1664 no monarch has set foot in the House of Commons" "And yet it appears that the Queen has quietly asserted her claim to own Parliament." Assuming validity of the claim for the purpose of discussion, these two things are not contradictory. The monarch could own Parliament and still recognize for symbolic or other purposes the tradition of not entering the House of Commons, entirely easily.
- nwah1 4y ago"You are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody." - Rousseau
- LAC-Tech 4y agoI'm constantly surprised that grown adults can believe modern "democracies" are actual democracies. How many election cycles do you need to go through before you realise a change of government is largely ceremonial, with only a few slight tweaks of policy? Much of the true power in a western democracy is not elected. Civil service, the judicial system, the media, big business. Being a prime minister can largely be seen as an apprenticeship before you can sit on a board of directors at a major corporation. Is this an emperors new clothes thing? A cultural taboo to point it out? Your man on the street can see it plain as day, but some how educated people who become very knowledgeable about the official structure of government seem the most invested in democratic LARPing. Am I the annoying guy pointing out that wrestling is fake when people are trying to enjoy the show?
- seoaeu 4y ago> Is this an emperors new clothes thing? A cultural taboo to point it out? If you believe in some broadly unpopular view, there's always the possibility that you're just wrong. In the US we saw substantial shifts in policies over the last three presidential administrations, shifts that had real-life impacts on countless people. And while I can't speak directly to the health of the UK's democracy, I suspect that you may be exaggerating the degree that the different parties agree with each-other. > Am I the annoying guy pointing out that wrestling is fake when people are trying to enjoy the show? Probably closer to the annoying guy who suggests giving up when your team is faced with a hard problem.
- function_seven 4y agoI promise I'm not going to argue about abortion, but it's the most obvious example I can see here. If the "ceremonial" change in government that happened in the US in 2016 had gone the other way, we would 100% guaranteed not see the Roe v. Wade ruling being overturned. It will be a judicial action that reverses this policy, but it required the election of Trump to happen. This is not a slight tweak. The count of the votes in that election resulted in real policy differences. Nothing ceremonial about it. This isn't kayfabe. Ask a UK fisherman how real the impact of the 2016 Brexit vote was. My the thinnest of margins, a non-binding referendum gave an elected government what they needed to make dramatic changes in policy. No tweaking here. Of course I won't pretend that all power rests in the hands of "The People." Yes, civil servants, judges, and media barons all have vast amounts of power to agitate for war, ban e-cigarettes, or legislate from the bench. But the people do have one lever, and I'm glad our culture considers poo-poohing it a taboo.
- philistine 4y agoIn Canada, who owns Parliament (Centre Block)? Public Services and Procurement Canada, the government arm responsible for the ownership of federal properties.