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It's been said, quite correctly, that the UK is a republic with a hereditary president, while the US is a monarchy with an elected king. I see plenty of misconc

It's been said, quite correctly, that the UK is a republic with a hereditary president, while the US is a monarchy with an elected king. I see plenty of misconceptions about the UK royal family in the comments, from them depending on taxes (they don't) to the importance of the monarch in the government. I don't really care whether the UK has a king of a president (except that the name change would be annoying) - but the country currently has much bigger issues, including the fact that it's slowly moving towards a single-party authoritarianism.

kingkawn 4y ago
Absurd to say that the royal family doesn’t subsist on taxation when literally every penny they’ve got is derived from it in the first place
skissane 4y ago
> I don't really care whether the UK has a king of a president (except that the name change would be annoying) - but the country currently has much bigger issues, including the fact that it's slowly moving towards a single-party authoritarianism. While there is currently a Tory government, Labour remain the favourites to win the next general election. That doesn't sound like a recipe for "single-party authoritarianism" to me.
- jowsie 4y ago
  Labour are regularly referred to as Tory-lite and with the way it's being run by Keith people feel it's just the Tory party but in red.
- BerislavLopac 4y ago
  That assumes fair and lawful elections, which is far from given. First, the election system itself, known and first-past-the-post, allows a party to win a seat with having a minimal majority in the ward. We don't have to look beyond the most recent election, in 2019, where the Tories won 365 out of 650 seats (56%) while only winning 43.6% of the voters. [0] A proportional voting system would make the ratio much more realistic [1], but I don't see that happening any time soon. (Ultimately, any government with the power to change the system would have been elected using that old system, so what change it?) Second, the Tories are doing everyithing they can to improve the chances to win as many seats as possible. For example, the recently introduced photo ID requirement - in the country that traditionally eschews any mandatory photo IDs - is heavily skewed towards Tory voters: many poor people can't pay the fees to get a passport and don't have a driving license; and while senior public transport passes are accepted, student IDs and transport passes are not; and so on. [0] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election/2019/results https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election/2019/results [1] https://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/how-the-2019-election-results-could-have-looked-with-proportional-representation/ https://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/how-the-2019-election-re...

kingkawn 4y ago

Absurd to say that the royal family doesn’t subsist on taxation when literally every penny they’ve got is derived from it in the first place

skissane 4y ago

> I don't really care whether the UK has a king of a president (except that the name change would be annoying) - but the country currently has much bigger issues, including the fact that it's slowly moving towards a single-party authoritarianism. While there is currently a Tory government, Labour remain the favourites to win the next general election. That doesn't sound like a recipe for "single-party authoritarianism" to me.

jowsie 4y ago
Labour are regularly referred to as Tory-lite and with the way it's being run by Keith people feel it's just the Tory party but in red.
BerislavLopac 4y ago
That assumes fair and lawful elections, which is far from given. First, the election system itself, known and first-past-the-post, allows a party to win a seat with having a minimal majority in the ward. We don't have to look beyond the most recent election, in 2019, where the Tories won 365 out of 650 seats (56%) while only winning 43.6% of the voters. [0] A proportional voting system would make the ratio much more realistic [1], but I don't see that happening any time soon. (Ultimately, any government with the power to change the system would have been elected using that old system, so what change it?) Second, the Tories are doing everyithing they can to improve the chances to win as many seats as possible. For example, the recently introduced photo ID requirement - in the country that traditionally eschews any mandatory photo IDs - is heavily skewed towards Tory voters: many poor people can't pay the fees to get a passport and don't have a driving license; and while senior public transport passes are accepted, student IDs and transport passes are not; and so on. [0] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election/2019/results https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election/2019/results [1] https://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/how-the-2019-election-results-could-have-looked-with-proportional-representation/ https://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/how-the-2019-election-re...