You might wish to change “myself” to “me” as that’s the correct form of the pronoun concerned. And drop a couple of natty remarks, too. Show 'er that although she’s living a sinecured life, you think she’s a nice gal anyway.
she would need insurance to drive on the public road, and you can’t get insured with a valid driving licence.
I remember reading several years ago that she was driving her own car in the country (with someone else along) and had a little car trouble. It was necessary to go to a nearby farm house to get assistance. It was strange enough to make the newspapers. The startled farmer and his wife were interviewed.
But would the insurance necessarily be in the same name as the owner?
I do usually value succint correspondence. No doubt a person in a position of such responsibility as the Public Information Officer does so too. I would recommend a letter that includes only points (3) and (4) of the five stated above. That is, after all, what we really want to know, isn’t it?
Mountbatten is no more made up than any other surname. It is the Anglicized version of Battenberg, which is German in origin. Phillip’s family chose the Alglicized version during World War I. (Berg means mountain.) He and Elizabeth II are both decendents of Queen Victoria.
Mountbatten is no shabby name in itself.
Except without one, those damned unaccommodating immigration officers are not going to accept that she is who she says she is and so are not going to accept she doesn’t need one.
To whom does she pay taxes then? It’s all a bit more complicated than you think.
Since the Queen’s income is earned in her private capacity, there’s no contradiction about her paying taxes to the state embodied by her public capacity. In various regards, they are two separate legal personalities, just as with the difference between Crown land and the Queen’s personal estates.
That’s my point.
I know, just illustrating it.
Expire as in need to go to the DMV and pay $22 (or whatever) to renew (and take a written test). 
We usually don’t take driving tests here. (I had one when I was 15 but that was to get a learner’s permit, not a license - it also varies by state)
Sandy Hook
As has been pointed out we do need a TV licence and as a matter of fact even blind persons have to have one altho’ I do believe it only costs £5.
Hell man, it used to be that we had to have a radio licence.
Their cake’s quite nice as well.
Of course I meant Battenberg :smack:
I just called the number.
The switchboard operator placed me on hold. There is, apparently, only one line into the Public Information Office. Somewhat disappointingly there was no music to amuse me while I waited. I was rather hoping for a tape loop comprising If I Ruled the World, Killer Queen, Snoopy v. the Red Baron (by the Royal Guardsmen) and something by Prince.
When I was put through the only information I gathered was that the Queen is not governed by (an) Act of Parliament. No surprises there. Anyway, the girl I spoke with asked me to put my questions in writing so we’ll just have to wait and see.
Just give her a link to this thread.
Well OK but if her answers are unsatisfactory we’ll have to Pit her.
Wouldn’t matter. All insurance policies will have a clause requiring all drivers of the vehicle to hold a valid drivers’ licence for the cover not to be voided.
I suspect they’ll just pull out this, this or this from their bottom drawer.
The precise legal point is that no Act of Parliament applies to the monarch, unless the text of the Act specifically says so. The relevant legislation doesn’t.
Ditto. And as she won’t need insurance, what other people’s insurance policies may or may not say is completely irrelevant.
That she sometimes drives herself on public roads is reasonably well-known. It is said that she regularly does so between London and Windsor.
It should also be noted that, although she doesn’t need a passport, she does need to obtain permission from Parliament to leave the country. Which is why her speech at the State Opening of Parliament always contains details of her planned foreign trips.
No. You’re both confusing the issue.
This is what was then the Lord Chancellor’s Department had to say on the subject in 2001 in notes they submitted to the House of Lords.
What often confuses people is the idea that feudal tenures were abolished in 1660, when in fact all that was abolished then were the practical effects of those tenures. The effect of that and of all subsequent legislation is that those who hold land by freehold hold it as if they owned it absolutely. So any theoretical ownership by the Crown is just that, theoretical. It is no more than a legal fiction. Contrast this with the case in Scotland, where feudal tenures were abolished outright. But only in 2000.
The Crown Estates are not owned by the Queen ‘like you own a house’. Well not in the sense you mean, as, in theory, the Crowns owns everyone’s house anyway (see above). The distinction is rather that those were lands that were not granted to tenants in capite but instead retained by the Crown; if they were granted to tenants, they were - and are - leased using lesser forms of tenure. It was not until the twentieth century that a clear distinction was established between the ‘Crown Estates’ and ‘Government Property’.
But the Crown Estates are not her private property either. But, then again, it is generally agreed that she does hold private property, namely Balmoral and Sandringham. The issue arose in 1936 when George VI had, in effect, to buy out the Duke of Windsor’s claim to the latter two estates.
To me, this really summarizes this whole thread. I am looking at this as an American, from an American point of view, so please correct me if things are different in England.
But the way I see it, a license is NOT a permit which the State doles out to people it likes in an arbitrary manner. Rather, it is a certification that the person has met certain requirements, and is therefore entitled to do the thing which the license allows. For example, a TV license certifies that you’ve paid the fee to help support the BBC.
So too here. If a license was arbitrary, it would indeed be silly for the Queen to give one to herself. But isn’t a driver’s license a certification that the person has shown a minimum degree of driving competence? Why would the Queen be exempt from that? Somewhere in England there exists an office (DVLA?) whose purpose, assigned to them by the Queen Herself, is to certify people as drivers, and to issue them licenses for same. I see no logical reason why that would not apply to her.
(I admit there may be technical reasons to exempt her. Some poster mentioned that no law applies to the Monarch unless the law explicitly says so. So if the law about driver’s licenses omitted that, then I guess she’d be technically exempt. My point is that there’s no logical exemption, even according to the logic that “The Queen is the State.”