So she doesn’tg take advantage of the title, except to take advantage of it?
And wouldn’t ‘being Jamie Lee Curtis’ get her a good table?
I think the “get a restaurant table” is a conventional “laugh it off/humblebrag” way of handling references to a title, not just her own idea.
A bit like “Oh, this old thing” when someone comments on a Dior/whoever dress.
“Wow! You’re Tony Curtis’s daughter?? We’d be pleased to seat you. Follow me…”
Brings to mind the reporter doing a man-in-the-street interview about the noise from Heathrow, and the guy he stopped was Henry Winkler… which it seems he didn’t recognize.
Speaking of hereditary peers:
But note the odd deal Labour and the Conservatives have struck to remove the remaining hereditary peers from the House of Lords: Some of them (Conservatives) will get life peerages, which will entitle them to stay in the House for the rest of their lives as life rather than hereditary peers.
This relates to the concept of “working peers” - that the party leaderships put up precisely to get their business through, rather than just to turn up as and when it suits the individual. Presumably the hereditaries who are being kept on are those who have proved useful to the party leaderships and are believed to be equally useful for the future.
Do peers get paid for their work in the upper house?
As I recall, the senate in Canada (equivalent upper house) is all appointed and quickly became a repository for used politicans and bagmen to get a cushy extra income. Eventually followed by scandals about senators who barely bothered to show up for all the money they were getting, resulting in minimum attendance rules.
Does Britain have attendance rules for peers? It seems from the article it suggests that the hereditaries, some at least, seem(ed) to just show up randomly for special occasions or for votes on issues that bothered them rather than seeing it as a duty that goes with the title.
AFAIK, Lords get a daily fee for turning up, even if that’s only for lunch. No salary as such, though occasional raised eyebrows over padded expenses.
The weird thing now is that with the weird British custom of Royals, Peers and everyone else a “commoner” that now means some Dukes, earls and whatnot could be classed as commoners! (Other nations also have nobility, gentility, etc)
Yes, but all they have to do is show up once per session.
They’re still peers. Being a peer and being a member of the House of Lords are different and have been since at least 1707.
Two nitpicks on this. One is that a peer (i.e., a holder of a peerage) who doesn’t sit in the House of Lords is still a peer, not a commoner. This was already true (since 1999) for the hereditary peers who were not elected to the House. It was also true in the past for the Scottish and Northern Irish peers who did not sit in the House but were still peers.
The other nitpick is that “Royal” is not a separate status from commoners and peers. The King’s close relatives have peerages and are, by virtue of those, peers rather than commoners; but they don’t have a distinct status of “Royal”, at least not in law (media coverage is different, of course). They don’t sit in the House of Lords, though, because their peerages are hereditary.
Andrew is a complicated case. Technically he still holds his peerage (since, as we discussed above, it would take an Act of Parliament to revoke it). But he agreed not to use it, and the King, exercising his powers over the order of precedence, removed him from that order. So an argument can be made that Andrew legally still is a peer although this peerage is without any consequence (even less than is ordinarily true for peerages).
Ah, still weird.
So, if a peer does not sit in the House of Lords, can he stand for election to the House of Commons?
Also, if the Powers That Be offered you a peerage, could you say, “I don’t want a seat in the House of Lords, but I want the title to be hereditary”?
A hereditary peer can run for a seat in the House, a life peer must give up their peerage.
DO they even give hereditary peerages any more?
IIRC the point ot the House of Commons was that they were not peers. You can’t have your peerage cake and eat it too.
Doesn’t the traditional method of the sovereign altering the succession involve an axe?
Historically, yes, that’s why Irish peerages continued to be given out even after the union with Ireland.
Today, no, hereditary titles aren’t given out at all (except in the royal family and maybe not even there any more) and peerages are only given for the purpose of inserting the recipient into the House of Lords.
A life peer (or, for as long as they still exist, an elected hereditary peer) has to resign from the House of Lords but doesn’t have to (and cannot*) give up the peerage itself. Before 2014, even this was impossible and a temporal seat in the House of Lords was permanent.
*Hereditary peers can disclaim their peerages entirely for the remainder of their lives, but only within the first year after inheritance.
Only within the royal family. The last one to be created was, I think, the Duke of Sussex, for Harry, but he doesn’t use the title anymore. The last one that is still used was probably the Duke of Cambridge, for William, which will revert to the Crown and be extinguished when William succeeds his father on the throne.