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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.

• linuxftw 4y ago
  • evgen 4y ago
    Regardless of whether or not that statement is true the head of state has absolutely nothing to do with it.
    • fit2rule 4y ago
  • codeduck 4y ago
    The Monarch is not responsible for that. That blame rests squarely on the Government and Parliament.
  • dang 4y ago
    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 https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    • borski 4y ago
      I would just like to say that 'thwack' is a fantastic word and we should all strive to use it more often. :)
    • lovich 4y ago
      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 4y ago
        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 4y ago
          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
• blibble 4y ago
  > 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 4y ago
    this was a stupid comment I shouldnt have posted. Edited out the old text.
    • cormacrelf 4y ago
      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 4y ago
      I hate to say it but that is one of the dumbest things I've ever read.
    • highwaylights 4y ago
      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 4y ago
    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.
• nemo44x 4y ago
  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 4y ago
• ip26 4y ago
  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.
  • sph 4y ago
    You don't choose the royal life, the royal life chooses you.
    • Silverback_VII 4y ago
      You don't choose the peasant life, the peasant life chooses you.
    • incone123 4y ago
      You can marry in, which amounts to choosing the royal life. (Maybe not you specifically, but people have married in)
  • chousuke 4y ago
    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 4y ago
    Anyone who would seek out a monarchy would almost certainly be a sociopath. That's why it must be a birthright.
    • confidantlake 4y ago
      There is a third way, it could be decided by chance.
• Starlevel001 4y ago
  • chrisstu 4y ago
    Really, I thought she removed the titles. Where is the story about her regranting them?
  • Maursault 4y ago
    > 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.
  • dang 4y ago
    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=32502544, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32287960 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 https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
• munk-a 4y ago
  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 4y ago
    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 4y ago
      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.
  • clairity 4y ago
  • dleslie 4y ago
    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-lowest-level-poll-results-suggest-1.5802174 https://bc.ctvnews.ca/canadian-support-for-monarchy-hits-low... 1: https://www.statista.com/statistics/863893/support-for-the-monarchy-in-britain-by-age/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/863893/support-for-the-m...
• antifa 4y ago
  > 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"...
  • gremlinsinc 4y ago
    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.
  • ngcc_hk 4y ago
    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.
  • nmz 4y ago
    It would be impossible to, there is a sea of reasons whether justified or not. You can check twitter and see.
    • BitwiseFool 4y ago
      >"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.
      • deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
• Pulcinella 4y ago
  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.
  • msoad 4y ago
    Beautifully put!
  • byset 4y ago
    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 4y ago
      > 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_Kingdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_United_Kin...
      • worik 4y ago
        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 4y ago
      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.
• gnulinux 4y ago
  > 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.
  • Angostura 4y ago
    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 4y ago
      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 4y ago
        The Crown Estate is explicitly not the property of the monarch.
        • gnulinux 4y ago
          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.
• tacostakohashi 4y ago
  • worik 4y ago
    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 4y ago
      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 4y ago
        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.
• bell-cot 4y ago
  > ...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.
  • xpe 4y ago
    I would frame the above comment as this question: If the form of government is chosen first and the people that fill the roles are chosen later, which government(s) are statistically more likely to serve their people and to what degree?
• akudha 4y ago
  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 4y ago
    When retirement was invented (rather recently) people tended to die shortly afterward IIRC. Not having anything to do can be even worse than working.
• Tangurena2 4y ago
  This is not an auspicious start for Liz Truss' term of office - she was the last official to meet with Queen Elizabeth.
• codpiece 4y ago
  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.
• snambi 4y ago
  Why do you need a queen in 21st century? Can't the Brits abolish royalty, how they abolished slavery?
  • noodleman 4y ago
    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.
  • rcarr 4y ago
    I used to be a staunch republican but I’m not so sure where I stand now. Look at what happened in America with Trump. The US came somewhat close to having a total takeover of the government by one party/individual e.g. a dictatorship. In the UK, our Armed Forces actually pledge alliance to the monarch, not the government. And the monarch is meant to stay out of all politics. In theory, if a prime minister/government decided to go rogue and try to become a dictatorship, the monarch is a last line of defence that can stand in the way and restore order. Of course one could argue that the monarch is in fact the dictator you’re trying to stop, or that there’s nothing to stop a monarch of bad moral character from becoming a dictator. Both systems have their strengths and weaknesses. But I no longer look as poorly at Constitutional Democracies as I once did or Republics as richly. With a Republic you’re basically playing the “wisdom of numbers” card, and hoping that through the various votes, from party elections through to national elections, a person of decent enough moral character is elected into the highest position of power. With the British system, you’re putting faith that the strict rules, customs and ceremonies that dictate the education and behaviour of the Royal Family translate into monarchs that have the moral character to deal with the position. With Liz that worked out extraordinarily well. If it had been someone like Prince Andrew, probably not so much. When seen through this lens, the pomp and ceremonies stop looking archaic and quaint and start to make a bit more sense. It’s why there’s such a massive divide between the Meghan/Harry camp and the Royal Family. Meghan and Harry see the strict protocols as constricting the individual and they’re completely right. However, that’s the whole point, the member of the royal family is meant to be constrained and molded into the function they’re meant to perform in service of the people as the individual instinct runs the greatest risk of turning the monarch into a dictator. I would say this is the defining factor between US and UK culture and why there has always been a bit of confusion and misunderstanding of each other, going right back to the war of independence; America values that individual dream more than anything else whereas the Brits distrust it because of its potential dark side to tyranny. Brits gloss over the mental health issues (stiff upper lip) that accompany giving up your individual dreams in favour of slotting neatly into your allocated function in the class system and the Americans gloss over that chasing dreams can sometimes end up being purely self serving. Based on current trends, the UK (and the world) is trending more towards the US way of things, driven primarily by technology and the internet. 30 years ago, if you wanted to watch anything on TV tonight your only option would have been coverage of the Queen’s death, which is mandated to run on all channels. This would have formed a pretty formidable “group mourning mentality” or “collective consciousness”. Today that is diluted somewhat by the fact that you can stream whatever you want whenever you want; the group no longer holds as much power over the individual. It’s this ideological and psychological component that I actually think is an argument in favour of Republics or at least reforming the monarchy to enforce retirement at a certain age. Is it really fair to expect someone to dedicate their entire life in service of the people? Elizabeth did it from 25 to 96. She was literally performing duties 48 hours before her death. It’s an almost superhuman level of public service, like Frodo carrying the ring, and we shouldn’t really be asking anyone to do it for their entire lives. Even Sam had to carry it the final distance through Mordor. The woman deserved a rest. But then she loved doing it which is what made her such a great queen.
• jollybean 4y ago
  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.