UKC

Having had no more contact with it than the obvious news coverage on 6 music I’ve just had a look through the pictures from yesterdays shenanigans on the bbc news website . My  First reaction was how silly Charley and caz look in their big hats but mostly surprised at the appearance of Nick Cave . Wtf ? I have no problem with his attendance I’m just surprised he was invited ? I can’t  really see Charlie blasting out the birthday party in his Aston  . Which has  got me thinking ….. if for some bizarre reason I had been invited would I have gone ?  As a staunch republican I like to think not but I suspect I wound have regretted it .

In reply to mike123:

If I'd gone, I'd have been arrested.

In reply to mike123:

I would have politely declined the invitation.

Edit: Apart from anything else, my blood was starting to boil yesterday after having been in the same room as a telly it was showing on for just 5 minutes, at the sight of such flagrant flaunting of wealth and privilege at the expense (both practically and symbolically) of a better society. Being immersed in it for several hours could well have seen me in the police van with Ciro.

In reply to mike123: yes.  I go to weddings, funerals etc. - this was similar 

In reply to mike123:

5 hours without a pee break!!! No way.

In reply to Graeme G:

I'm sure there were some pee bottles hidden under those fancy robes

In reply to Lankyman:

Some commentator noted emotion on Charlie's face at some point. Maybe he was just letting the Tena Man have it...

In reply to mike123:

Yeah, I bet the buffet was decent! Though I would struggle to sit still and proper for 5 hrs..

In reply to captain paranoia:

Ah, the Royal Wee?

In reply to Lankyman:

That's right. Those giant screens were put up in Abbey at one point so a certain king (who shall remain nameless) and a certain archbishop (ditto) could have a quick slash 

Sorry to burst the balloon 

In reply to Ciro:

Or had your head cut off by Penny Mordaunt...

In reply to mike123:

Cave might have been interesting once - but, nowadays, is just part of the boring and well-heeled Establishment. Who cares what he does?

In reply to mike123:

Nick Cave on "Why the f**k are you going to the King’s coronation?" :

https://www.theredhandfiles.com/why-are-you-going-to-kings-coronation/

Not entirely convincing imo.

In reply to john arran:

At least they re-use a fair bit of paraphernalia that's been knocking round for a few monarchs rather than making a whole new bunch of gubbins that gets worn once and then binned after the weekend

In reply to nufkin:

Shame the spectators didn’t get the memo - https://metro.co.uk/2023/05/07/royal-fans-leave-sea-of-rubbish-and-abandon-... 

In reply to nufkin:

Fair point. And what they didn't find a use for, presumably they put in for recycling or took to a charity shop.

In reply to mike123:

I'd have accepted the invitation, but would probably have buggered off climbing if the weather was good - my usual approach to many social events which when it doesn't seem too rude. Same as I would have watched it on TV if I hadn't been climbing. I'll catch up on iplayer when the weather breaks. Did a possible new route yesterday - still trying to think of an apt name for the day.

In reply to Andy Johnson:

I think it's quite a good answer.

I'd have gone. Curiousity and wind-up potential.

In reply to Robert Durran:

new hat day ?

chucked in the back of the van ?

chaz and cams big day out ?

myst be something on one of the threads on here 

In reply to mike123:

I watched it just so I could say that I've now seen two coronations on telly. High point by far was when he was given the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch. Also liked the bit where the female Bish said "Natharess" during her reading.

In reply to mike123:

Coronation arete?

Queen Camilla's Crack?

Viva la Republica?

Admittedly Not Exactly Everest?

In reply to mike123:

Pomped stupid.

In reply to Robert Durran:

Royal Robbings

In reply to john arran:

There are far more urgent and egregious problems facing us in achieving a just world. Corporate greed is actively making us poorer. Oil extractors are being subsidised to the time of trillions, making huge profits and returning them to shareholders rather than investing to move to renewables.

I really can't get worked up at all by the few million this cost.

Know who is your real enemy.

In reply to mike123:

The only speculation in our house is whether Charlie and Camila decided to have a quick shag with the crowns on, because you’d just have to, wouldn’t you? (And which position wouldn’t they fall off one or both of you?)

In reply to George Ormerod: I m now imagining that they were sharing a pair of AirPods like what the teenagers do and Charley had the bad touch by the blood hound gang waiting to go . I was about to post a you tube link but having watched it I changed my mind .

In reply to Graeme G:

Samuel Pepys took his seat shortly after 4a.m. at Charles II's coronation, which started at 1100!!

In reply to pasbury:

Agree, I'm what you might describe as very slightly anti monarchy, to be clear I like having a ceremonial monarchy... but I think they should be trimmed down to a much smaller lower key affair.

If I'd been invited, I would have gone, would have been a big day out in the abbey.

What concerns me the most is arresting people with anti royal t shirts. I understand and support  police intervening against people being rude noisy or causing public nuisance, but preventing people from silently wearing a "not my king" t shirt? This is the most worrying oppression of freedoms I've seen.

Freedom needs to be defended even if it's for people you don't support or agree with. The anti freedom actions  have tainted the coronation for me.

In reply to pasbury:

Yes, there are greater injustices in our society.

Yes, the damage our government continues to do greatly outweighs the damage a monarchy does.

Yes, I object to both as appropriate and relevant.

What I'm not comfortable with is the sight of wall-to-wall coverage of such damaging inequity, with democratric non-violent and even non-vocal dissent legislated out of existence.

And, while I share your opinion that one's ire should be targeted wisely, the implication that people should not even mention such matters, at a time when it is quite literally the only story in town right now, is more the tactic of the apologist than the person who would like to see positive change.

In reply to Andy Johnson:

thanks for posting that . I disagree with you , I think that’s enough for me and pretty much sums up how I feel / would have felt . What a surprise to find that cave is better at putting something into words than me .  “ I think I’ll wear a suit “ 

In reply to mike123: again , had I had a chance to meet the Queen and turned it down I think my mum would have been devastated. The whole “ pledge allegiance “ thing made me realise that if I ever get the chance to meet chaz ( very unlikely ) I would turn it down on the basis that I wouldn’t doff my cap to him . I don’t know for sure but I think my mum wouldn’t be bothered either way .

In reply to Forest Dump:

Royal buffets are notoriously meagre. So I've heard from an insider.

In reply to john arran:

I hear you.

Going a little deeper though I find myself, on balance, slightly in favour of our monarchy.

By pure luck the last three monarchs have been persons of good character with a genuine commitment to service. If Andrew had been the eldest sibling we'd be in a whole other situation right now.

I would object if the monarchy had any executive power but they don't. What I do object to is the real power vested in the house of lords and the massively more significant power worked by the landed classes. Reform here is urgently needed but can be separated from the issues around the monarchy.

There is some benefit in the continuity they have provided specifically since 1939. Things like the Prince's trust and the D of E endure regardless of parliament - both have benefited members of my family significantly.

The wealth needs to be understood as the product of colonial and domestic exploitation, and also be perceived as a public good at least in terms of access. Objects can be both gaudy baubles and things of beauty. I can see Charles being somewhat open to this.

I see the protests as performative and missing the point entirely but of course the right to do so must be defended fiercely in the face of real efforts by the conservative (and indeed previous Labour) administrations to limit our rights.

In reply to mike123:

Met him and Anne. plenty of food and drink( champagne). Interesting is the best way of describing it. My mum would have disowned me if I had not gone. ( it was business award and my employees also would have been disappointed if I had not gone.)

In reply to pasbury:

I agree with much of that, though I think the symbolism of an inherited monarchy itself is damaging in what I would hope would be as close to a meritocracy as we could implement. I would suggest that much of the continuity and other benefits you allude to could be achieved just as well with a good modern constitution, effectively denying Parliament the authority to make wholesale changes the public don't support. Regardless of any opinion on the monarchy this would be a great improvement, and very likely would also reduce the perception of monarchy benefitting from governmnet influence, at least in some ways. 

In reply to john arran:

What I'm more than uncomfortable with is the fact that those urgent and egregious problems mentioned are not being discussed by wall-to-wall coverage.

In reply to pasbury:

Over the 20th Century it's been 60/40 which I don't think are great odds, leaving aside the symbolism of a hereditary head-of-state:

Edward "The Caresser" VII: of the 50+ mistresses and a sex-offender by modern standards.

George V: boring but decent and knew what the job entailed. 

Edward VIII: Nazi sympathiser.

George VI: see George V.

Elizabeth II: the best of the lot at playing the role.

It's a good job, for his family at least, Charles survived the parachute training.

In reply to flaneur:

I'm as fed up as the next man about people banging on about WW2 but I reckon George VI and Elizabeth helped a great deal with the public mood during it.

In reply to flaneur:

......

Doesn't mean we'll get better presidents: Berlusconi, Sarkozy, Clinton, Bush jnr, Trump, Erdogan, Orban ... many human leaders are flawed.

In reply to ExiledScot:

Those presidents are politicians and a key part of the system of government of their respective countries.  If we were going to replace the monarchy with a president to serve as a symbolic and ceremonial head of state, that would be an entirely different kind of president. 

More like Ireland than the USA.  Or perhaps more to the point Barbados, where Dame Sandra Mason took office as president on 30 November 2021 to replace the Queen as ceremonial head of state when it became a republic.

Belize, Jamaica, maybe Australia and Canada - we'll probably be seeing other examples of the monarch being replaced as titular head of state before too long.

In reply to deepsoup:

And it wouldn't be beyond the wit of man to legally ensure that nobody standing for ceremonial president could have ever been a member of a political party nor donated to one. That would remove most political candidates at a stroke.

In reply to Robert Durran:

This one!

In reply to john arran:

What is the point of ceremonial president with no duty such as protecting the constitution?

If a president has a duty beyond ribbon cutting, somebody with some political nous, a democratic mandate* and subject to term limits would be more useful than a monarchy concerned for their heirs & successors and lacking a democratic mandate so defers to the PM.  

Assuming we have a PM responsible for democratic government, the president should be largely ceremonial and almost always defer to the PM. The rare or ideally non-existent exception being to protect the constitution such as preventing unlawful prorogation of parliament.

*see Ireland & Germany for examples of different types of democratic mandate for head of state

In reply to john arran:

I wouldn't like to see that personally, I think it would disqualify too many good candidates and I don't think a former politician would necessarily be a 'political candidate'.

It's a bit hard to imagine with the state of our politics at the moment, but maybe someone who was widely regarded as an honourable politician and respected even by members of the other parties.  Retired from party politics and trusted by the majority of us to leave their party affiliation at the door.  I must admit I'm struggling a bit for a recent example here - but that doesn't mean it will always be so.  In the meantime, perhaps look to Ireland for an example again and the current President, Michael D Higgins.

In reply to elsewhere:

That does sound like an excellent idea, and of course we desperately need a written constitution.  The current system of 'unwritten rules' depends on people (the Prime Minister especially) generally doing the decent thing, and we've seen all too well recently how that system fails when they don't give a flying er.. fig about anything but their own personal ambition.

In reply to deepsoup:

John Major? Gordon Brown?

In reply to Robert Durran:

Incredible that John 'Cones Hotline' Major is now seen as an respected Elder Statesman. What a mess UK politics is in.

In reply to Robert Durran:

I see what you're getting at, but no.  Too divisive, too much baggage, I don't think a former PM could achieve the kind of approval rating you'd ideally want.

The only former MPs I can think of offhand who might bridge that gap are dead now - Robin Cook, Paddy Ashdown, Betty Boothroyd maybe.

Or maybe someone from the upper house (especially after it's reformed into some sort of elected chamber, since we're playing fantasy 'design a functional democracy' here, which would make them a senator I suppose).  Of the current occupants of the House of Lords, Floella Benjamin would get my vote.

In reply to deepsoup:

The problem with allowing candidates with a political history is that it would be extremely hard to make sure that such candidates were the good sort you have in mind and not someone like Nigel Farrage. There would need to be rules in place to prevent such candidates, otherwise populist misinformation could too easily sweep them into power.

In reply to elsewhere

I agree that it would be a good idea if a key constitutional role of the largely ceremonial president were to be in defending the constitution from political malice, which is precisely why I think a history of political activism on any side should be ruled out. Far better to have a popular and widely liked personalty from the arts, sport, charity, etc.

In reply to Rob Parsons:

Yep.  And yet he seems an intellectual and moral colossus by the standards of the current Tories, at least since Johnson purged anyone with any apparent shred of moral fibre from the parliamentary party.

He was having an affair with Edwina Currie throughout the time he was pushing his moralising "Back to Basics" campaign.  The hypocrisy of it being a rather greater moral failing than the affair itself imo - both won libel cases that they would not have, had their affair been public knowledge at the time.  (His settled out of court, hers went to trial and she arguably perjured herself during the proceedings.)
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2002/oct/07/mondaymediasection.politicsan...

Speaking of adultery and heads of state, is Queen Camilla the first royal mistress to be elevated to the throne since Anne Boleyn?

In reply to Robert Durran:

I think an apt name would be Coronation Coronach!

In reply to john arran:

And yet he repeatedly failed to get himself elected as an MP.  Besides which the kind of president we're talking about here doesn't really have 'power' as such into which they might be swept.

Perhaps a presidential election should require a super-majority, or at least an actual majority of the vote to get them elected.  FPTP allows UK governments (especially Tory ones) to get big majorities with only a big minority of the popular vote.  So definitely not a FPTP vote for President then - how about a single transferable vote, with 'none of the above' always appearing on the ballot paper?

But first they have to get nominated.  Under something a bit like the Irish system you could say that a presidential candidate can't stand unless they're proposed by at least 40 MPs with no more than 35 of them from any one party.  (So even a bunch as venal as the current Tory government wouldn't be able to nominate Nadine Dorries, say, or something equally ridiculous because the candidate has to have support from the opposition benches too.)

So, as far as I have read...

Monarchy, no. Need a head of state who scrubs up well, but won't say anything remotely upsetting to anyone. Needs to be sorry, for everything,  since, umm whenever. 

Candidate for head of state. Rule one, fhey mustn't want to do it. Living Politicians, no. Dead politicians, oddly yes.

In reply to deepsoup:

I'd say that should be a fundamental requirement for any election. The UK is way behind the curve pretending it has genuinely democratic processes.

In reply to Rob Parsons:

Indeed.

See also Hunt, Jeremy. Rhyming slang to 'voice of reason'. It's all relative...

In reply to ExiledScot:

All humans are flawed so an effective system of government will have a mechanism of dealing with worst of them: usually by voting them out, often by limiting their time in the job. Neither options are available if you get a King Andrew. Anyone who thinks hereditary heads-of-state are less likely to be badly flawed hasn't thought further back than the last 2-3 Windsors.

As others have suggested, my preference would be for the German or Irish model with a largely ceremonial president to do the meeting, greeting and opening factories. Essentially an elected King or Queen. This has the additional advantage of being an evolution rather than a revolution of the current arrangement. First step: reform the House of Lords, getting rid of the remaining hereditary peers.

In reply to ExiledScot:

All of them are PMs (Berlusconi and Orban) or presidents who led or lead a government. None of them are the largely ceremonial (except for protection of constitution) type president. We have a PM for the leading the government (and therefore contentious) role.

Can anybody name a contentious president of the largely ceremonial kind?

Because they don't lead a government, they tend to be pretty non-contentious, and forgettable.

In reply to pasbury:

It has to be noted that the monarchy is part of what keeps all those institutions in power.

In reply to elsewhere:

You're totally right.

In reply to Ander:

Really? The post you've referred to reads as follows:

"There are far more urgent and egregious problems facing us in achieving a just world. Corporate greed is actively making us poorer. Oil extractors are being subsidised to the time of trillions, making huge profits and returning them to shareholders rather than investing to move to renewables."

If the Monarchy vanished tomorrow, in what way would the power of any of those institutions be affected?

In reply to elsewhere:

I'll suggest the Governor General of Australia (which is their equivalent of a President). In 1975, the then Governor General, Sir John Kerr, dismissed the incumbent Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, and replaced him by the Leader of the Opposition, Malcolm Fraser.

Nobody believed that such a thing could actually happen - until it did. Many Heads of State might have similar reserve powers.

In reply to Rob Parsons:

Eh?  The Governor General of Australia is explicitly appointed to serve as the representative of the British monarch.  In terms of republic -vs- monarchy, you really can't get much less like the 'equivalent of a president' than that!

In reply to Rob Parsons:

That's the only example I was aware of. It's the exception that proves the rule that mostly ceremonial heads of state are uncontentious and mostly forgettable.

The advantage of a written constitution is that as the head of state only has the powers they are supposed and everyone knows what the powers are which eliminate "Nobody believed that such a thing could actually happen".

In reply to deepsoup:

No. Kerr was the Head of State, and acted independently of the Monarch in 1975.

In reply to elsewhere:

Australia does have a written constitution, the Governor General's so-called 'reserve powers' are documented in that. But nobody seriously believed that they could or would ever be used.

The Australian constitutional position is unchanged since then, by the way.

In reply to Rob Parsons:

Queen Elizabeth II was the head of state of Australia in 1975, as her son is now.  That state being a long way from this one, the Governor General is appointed to fulfill most of the functions of the head of state on behalf of the monarch.  (Whether acting independently of the monarch or not.)

In reply to deepsoup:

The situation isn't that simple - see e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_head_of_state_dispute

However, what is not in dispute is who formally exercises 'Head of State' powers in Australia. That is the Governor-General, and not the Monarch.

In reply to Rob Parsons:

"In respect of the government of Australia, the monarch, currently King Charles III, who has reigned since 8 September 2022, is represented in Australia by the governor-general, in accordance with the Constitution."

Circling back around to the point, if you think it's appropriate to cite this person - who represents the monarch in a monarchy - as a specific example of a president of a republic, ok I give up.

In reply to Rob Parsons:

I think the Governor General and the PM are both in the position to sack each other, which could get interesting if the letters cross in the post!

In reply to elsewhere:

The Israeli one, Katsav, who was found guilty of- and imprisoned for- rape?

In reply to TobyA:

It's looking very rare for something contentious in execution of the official presidential role of the largely ceremonial kind. Although I expect investigation, conviction & imprisonment led to some constitutional difficulties.