The Smiley Smile Message Board

I didn't want to rag on letsmakeit31's thread on the main board, so I've started this one. What are your views on the Monachy? I am so anti Royal. It's not so much that I hate them personally, it's more I am against everything they stand for. Why should my taxes pay to keep this lot living in the lap of luxury? They no longer serve any real purpose, nobody voted them into power (England is supposed to be a Democratic country) and yet they still Lord it over us. Also is the myth that American's love them true or not? Thoughts please.

Right on. I would appreciate them more if they made better contributions to the nation than joining the army or shaking hands with pensioners every so often. I guess I'm not against the concept of a constitutional monarchy, but they are just there, not contributing. They should either take a more active role in politics (which leads to a whole other argument wrt the fact no-one voted for them) or we should get rid of them.

That said, we're never, ever, ever, going to get rid of them. Unless someone stages a freakin' coup and murders the lot of them.

String em all up !

Sadly they do. Many of us don't get enough mind-numbing entertainment from American Idol, WWE wrestling, and our own idiot president so we have to turn our attention to the Brits wasting money on a wedding that probably 2 people in America have any real connection to.

Actually, the only thing that makes me incredibly happy about this wedding is that Michelle and Barack Obama were not invited.

I'm indifferent to be honest.

Regarding today's event's, as has been pointed out on letsmakeit's thread a heck of a lot of London traders will be grateful for today's festivities - their business will have gone through the roof. Yes, it's an expensive day but businesses of all kinds will be having a very good trading weekend.

And I'm betting that not many detractors will have chosen to work today instead of enjoying the Bank Holiday (tho' some of us have no choice).

Given a choice between the Royals or the Olympics, I'd have to go for the Royals. How the Olympics can sideline so much public and lotto cash etc is, to me, an insult. I couldn't give two hoots about sporting events but give me a good party any day!   :D

the only royal family i care about is the captain and tenille

The Royal Wedding...I don't know why anyone gives a damn. I couldn't give two shits. Personally, I'm sick and tired of all these overfed, overstimulated, overdressed, overblown celebrities and politicians thinking we give a sh*t about their personal lives and drama and weddings and everything else. It's already ridiculous that UK citizens basically bankrolled this wedding with their taxes. It's by no means "newsworthy", it's a WEDDING. Let them get married and more power to them. But we don't need to know about it. There are far more pressing issues in the world today, like poverty, the protests in the Middle East, the "War On Terror"...this is LOW on the totem pole of importance. Mindless entertainment to keep the masses mindless so they never RISE up against the elite.

I'd love to know what Noam Chomsky thinks of this Royal Wedding and its impact on people today.

Testify.

Firstly, the Queen has a very active role in politics - she meets every week with the Prime Minister when he briefs her on matters of state (and she, often as not, passes comment that he would be well advised to heed: she's seen them come and go for nearly 60 years). More than this, every single bill passed by parliament requires the Royal Assent. Granted, this is usually only a courtesy action but if she so wished, the Queen could send back a bill she didn't like unsigned with a note saying, in essence, "try again". Now, that would be a most interesting day.

Secondly, make a contribution ? Does the word "tourism" mean anything to you ? Thousands of overseas visitors came to London today just to see the processions: they all needed somewhere to sleep and somewhere to eat. And even without the spur of a royal wedding, our monarchy's history, going back over 1000 years, pulls in tourists from all over the world year in, year out.

Thirdly, they do good PR (Andrew and Edward excepted) and let's be honest, although Philip's got a bad habit of saying exactly what he thinks, he's good light relief.

And finally, despite you you may read, we do actually rather like them. The streets today weren't exactly deserted, were they ?  Back in 2002, there were doubts voiced as to whether the GBP were that fussed about the Queen's 50 years on the throne, and that the turnout would be embarrassing. Remember the gig Brian did at Buck House ? 14,000 in the stands, 1,000,000 in the Mall. On the actual day itself, one and a half million people crowded the mall to pay their respects. I rather doubt 2.7% of the US population would turn out for George Washington or Abe Lincoln themselves. They're part of our history, going back to the 800s or so. We keep them because, the odd episode of toe-sucking aside, it works.

Yes, there are too many of them. If you asked me, the Civil List would extend no further than the monarch and the immediate family - spouse, children and their families. I have no idea what Prince Michael of Kent does for his stipend except a very good impersonation of George V, and frankly that's not sufficient.

That said, what we pay to maintain the royal family wouldn't be saved should they suddenly vanish overnight, it would simply be diverted to the Treasury: at least with the Queen, etc., you know where it's going. The financial saving would be minimal, and possibly negated by the decline in tourism.

One further point - some of the criticism has come from a country where it's entirely possible that the next president could be either a moose-hunting hockey mom who genuinely thinks that living next door to Russia qualifes her to speak on foreign policy without consulting Wikipedia first or a man with hair so utterly laughable that no sentient human being on this planet could ever take him seriously.

Three more words: George. W. Bush.

Hey come on, no low blows like that.  :lol

Myself, I could care less about the wedding. Sort of bugged that they made such a fuss over it on TV when there's so much more important stuff going on in the world. I saw a guy with a sign on his minivan that said Judgement Day is coming May 21st, so it would be nice if CNN would show some expert advice on sin absolution and how to properly find your loved ones in Purgatory.

Right on. This whole world is falling apart and absolute idiot Americans are focused on this stupid wedding. In Britain, fine, watch what you want, pay for what you want, support what you want. Here, we have started at least 3 known wars (and instigated countless others) in the last 10 years. We have a currency system that is designed to destroy itself. We have nuclear radiation pouring in from Fukushima onto our crops and into our water (it may be a minute amount, but there is no letup in the near or far future of this fallout). Our national debt is $14,000,000,000,000.00 and rising fast. We spend more on defense than Russia, China, Britain combined. Our president is MIA: He's is off campaigning, playing golf, taping Oprah shows, and avoiding the press as usual. And yet a lot of us are content to drool over this wedding which isn't even taking place in our country!

Our next president is sure to be an elitist idiot just like Bush and Obama. And as long as we have American Idol, a Royal Wedding, and Fox News we are very content to keep voting them in.

We were discussing this at work the other day and someone mentioned the tourism aspect. While I agree with that arguement to a point, may I point out it's not like anybody on their holidays can just take a trip to London and visit the Queen or be entertained by Prince William and Harry for the day now is it? If the Royals were to disappear tomorrow, there would still be all these national monuments of historical value to pull the punters in. The Royals take far more than they put back in. As far as making decisions over running the country, David Cameron is perfectly capable of fucking things up all by himself - he doesn't really need the Queen to sign off of on every Bill put forth by Parliament, this is merely a tradition that harks back to days of olde when Britian really was governed by a Monachy.
           
True any savings from cutting off the Royals would just go to MP's lining their pockets some more, cramming more foreigners into our country or funding some war somewhere rather than actually putting it to good use.......

So people that are from America don't have a right to complain about the 'Royal' wedding because of the people that have been President, may run for President or who are President-even though we may have not voted for them, or plan to vote for them.  That's intelligent.

I don't think David Cameron or any MP's wedding would pull in the TV punters anytime soon  ???

As for the historical monuments, when was the last time you saw 1 million people hit the streetst o look at the sheer beauty of Bucks Palace or Westminster Abbey? They won't pull the punters in themselves...

The Royal Family is probably the last great institution we have left - there's no leading industry to speak of anymore in this country, our contemporary music is dire and our national football teams are crap. If there's one good reason to crack open a beer and have a street party it's a Royal celebration.

Why should people from America be complaining about a wedding that doesn't concern them anyway? If you don't like it don't watch it, simples...

That is the sort of thing I would honestly like to see more of. I doubt her role in those consultations is very active as it stands presently, seeing as parties tend to carry on as they please.

Prince Charles? Good PR?

And we do love them. Which is infuriating, as they should really work harder to earn it!

There were half a million folk in front of the Palace alone, tens of thousands more lining the streets as the cars and coaches carried folk to/from the ceremony. The national monuments couldn't pull that sort of traffic on a single day. Okay, they couldn't pull a wedding off every day but plenty of hoteliers, restaurants, souvenir shop etc etc etc will be happy with the business the royals brought in in one day.  And let's not forget that the prime attraction of many of London's historical monuments is their royal association. Without the royals, there'd've been no Buck House, Tower of London, no Royal parks etc etc etc.

Just pointing out that your recently democratically elected/potential heads of state make our Royal family look pretty good in pretty well any way you care to mention.  ;D

And yes, as for all the colonial (and indeed domestic) whining about the wedding - don't watch it. I know it's kinda hard to avoid in the mass media, but there are 93 gazillion TV channels out there. Utter crap like Teen Mom, Dancing with the Stars, X Factor and Albanian Idol are all over the tube, net and papers 24/7, but I elect to ignore them.

I really wouldn't want to be King - OK, the free accomodation is pretty neat, the wages are good and the perks none too shabby, but can you imagine spending decades meeting and being polite to people you really don't want to meet and going places you really don't want to go while appearing interested all the time, and all the while being pilloried in the media for being something you never asked to be whilst hoping against hope that none of your extended family doesn't make too much of a complete arse of themselves in public. Again.  I couldn't do it. Seriously, we think the Wilsons were dysfunctional but compared with the current and past Royal family, they're strictly minor league.

I managed to avoid all the wedding crap on TV yesterday quite nicely. The drunken dickwads shouting and screaming in the streets in the wee small hours of the morning was something else entirely.  ;D

So you don't like the Royals then?  ::)

My point was if the Queen and her tribe are of no use to the country, the next major figure for the British Isles is the Prime Minister. Do you really think he's that big a draw for tourism, trade, investment in this country? No he's not. The Royals however appear to be an incredible hook for this country to the rest of the world - I think if you could be bothered to do the maths I think you would find they probably put more money in than they take away, this is without mentioning their charity work etc.

If the Royals are so irrelevant, are a hangover from a by gone age - why did 2 billion people tune into watch it yesterday? Why is everybody still speaking about it - hmmmmm......

Because the media is turning a vast number of the world's population into celebrity obsessed brain dead idiots, so they don't think too hard or at all about what is really going down on planet Earth. I defy the average person to explain just how their lives are enriched by two people they don't even know getting married?

Well, last I could tell the Royal Family is part of Planet Earth. I enjoyed what I saw of it and also dismayed at what happened in the southeast US. Both are part of the things that happen during our lives. Two billion people watched the wedding, so it must mean something to those people. This is one those things that happen, that if not interested, then it is very easy to change the channel and watch something else.

BTW, on the subject of cost, the Royal family currently cost each person in the UK the princely sum (see what I did there ?) of 70p - about $1.15 - per annum. I'd call that a bargain.

The colonials get them for free, of course.  ;D