Kiwi Fruit:
I imagine he was referring to Catherine and Meghan.
Obviously Charlotte is one of them since she’s fourth in line. No idea who the other one is. I guess Beatrice since she’s 8th? 
I’m not sure how loved Beatrice is, but if you don’t love Charlotte, you’re a monster. She’s cute as a bug anyway.
Feigning less ignorance though, Jasmine, Kate and Megan aren’t princesses, they are Duchesses - of Cambridge and Sussex respectively. Kate is also the Countess of Strathearn and Lady Carrickfergus, so that’s a mouthful. She is a Royal Highness though, so that’s nice.
Huh, I just looked it up and they kind of are princesses. Princesses by marriage, so they don’t have an official Princess title, but they are allowed to use their husband’s title. So Kate isn’t Princess Catherine, but she is Her Royal Highness Princess William - although I don’t know it that would be followed by Duke or Duchess of Cambridge. Kind of confusing.
I also looked up Meghan and she too is a Countess. Countess of Dumbarton and more importantly, the Baroness Kilkeel -which is a completely awesome name, but makes you sound like an evil villain. If I were Meghan, I would only be known as Baroness Kilkeel and I would wear a stole made out of puppy fur.
It’s not that simple to just say, “Well, Liz is gone, so we’ll be a republic now.”
The possibly easy question is, “we should be a republic.”
Then comes the hard question, which scuppered the republican option in the referendum: “What would we replace the monarchy with?”
As far as I can tell, from previous threads here that have discussed it and some outside reading, the republicans in Australia were wedded to the idea that a republic means a strong president, similar to in the US, and that a parliamentary republic, like Ireland or Germany, just wasn’t a real republic. That would be a major change to the Australian political system, not just a switch from a monarchy to a parliamentary republic. When the referendum proposed making Australia a parliamentary republic, republicans, monarchists, and status quo-types all voted against it, for differing reasons.
Constitutional amendments are hard to get passed in Australia. First, a proposed amendment has to pass both houses of the Commonwealth Parliament, with an absolute majority in both house. Then it goes to a referendum, which requires a double majority: a proposed amendment needs to be approved by the voters in at least four of the six states, and by an overall majority of the voters.
Unless you have a proposed replacement that gets a lot of popular support, Australia stays a monarchy under King Charles III.
It seems to me that a parliamentary monarchy and a strong presidential system are the most stable and effective systems of democracy. A completely symbolic president doesn’t seem useful because they aren’t in position long enough to provide the stability and moral guidance required of a leader, and being elected probably reduces their being seen as a neutral symbol of the state. And a merely weak president (such as one that can only preside over the assembling of a government and intervene in constitutional emergencies) will try to use their power to increase it.
I certainly hope so. I think the continued existence of the monarchy is entirely cynical. It’s reliable tourist bait that some in the UK are disinclined to give up. But it should have been dispensed with generations ago. Will that happen? I would imagine not in the next few decades. I’d like to think that William will be the last king.
How much tax money is being spent to support the monarchy? … it seems to be a quite complicated subject and really the better question is how much does it cost the tax payers for the Royal family to be tax exempt …
The Queen has her own money, and I’m not talking about Coming to America “Look, he has his own money”, this is money she inherited tax-free from her father and mother for example, plus wisely spending the income from these Duchies she owns … no one knows how much but best guess seems to be right around a half billion dollars (1/3 a billion pounds) …
Will the monarchy be abolished? … just putting them on the tax rolls wouldn’t do it, they’d still be a very wealthy family … the BIG difference between the UK and some other counties that did abolish their monarchies is Them the UK People truly love and admire their rightful sovereign, a thing neither the tazrs of Russia nor the absolute monarchs of France had … Canada is damn proud to have ERII’s face on all their money, good luck outlawing calling her Queen there …
Also, to some degree all aristocratic titles are based on having a monarch, the powers and privilege of these stations derive from the powers and privilege of the monarch … getting rid of the Queen gets rid of all the earls, barons, lords and so forth … today these folks derive their powers and privilege from their wealth, the title is all but meaningless … so forcing them to get rid of the title is a solution looking for a problem to solve …
This is barring any mistakes of course … but I think it’s more likely parliament will make that mistake and force a royal intervention … them Royals have very good reasons to play the game by the rules set before them …
Canada will not break with the monarchy, no. Absent some incredible upheaval like world war of the collapse of the country, it’s not happening.
Breaking with the monarchy is not a simple thing; in Canada it’s a massive change to the Constitution, a document to which large scale amendments are slightly harder than, say, safely flying astronauts to Neptune. such a Constitutional change is absolutely, totally impossible right now, as Canada’s rival provinces and factions would never agree on enough to even get a first draft done. I’d say that even if Elizabeth II dies tomorrow and Charles is a comically bad king the likelihood of Canada performing such a Constitutional feat isn’t one in a thousand in the next 82 years.
I will disagree with watchwolf49; Canadians are, generally speaking, NOT especially proud of the monarchy. Most Canadians have no particular opinion about the monarchy at all, in fact. I would venture to guess that a shocking percentage of Canadians probably don’t understand that the Queen is, in fact, our nation’s head of state. There are die hard royalists and die hard republicans, but the former are just senior citizens who actually descend from Britain and the latter are a fringe movement with an amateurish web site and about as many members as you could fit into a Boston Pizza. This general apathy about the whole thing results in it never changing, as there is no particular reason why it should.
Yep - hence Princess Michael of Kent, who, to the best of my knowledge, is the only princess by marriage in the royal family who uses that form of address.
Charles seems to be of the opinion that once his is king, he will cut out a lot of the royal family - namely his siblings and their children - from royal duties. And you are seeing that a little by choice - Edward’s kids aren’t prince and princess, although they are entitled to the title, and titles for Anne’s kids were in the Queen’s gift, but Anne apparently didn’t want that.
The current royal family includes the Queens paternal cousins and her niece and nephew. The queen’s cousins are fairly elderly (and their children haven’t been part of the family - except perhaps Lady Helen Taylor, whose company the queen seems to enjoy), and you seldom see Princess Margaret’s son (although Lady Sarah Chatto seems to be another whose company the queen enjoys).
First off, one period is enough. You don’t ned an ellipsis.
Second, the true answer is “none”. The Royals actually support the UK, not the other way around. The Crown lands are privately-held, massive and valuable - and are not taxed. However, the Royal Family makes a gift every year, which happens to be substantially more than the tax amount would come to. End the Monarchy, and unless you can somehow push through a massive confiscation at the same time, you’d just end up with a unpleasant budget hole to go with the dmimnished tourism.
Welcome to watchwolf’s posting style. He’s been doing it for years, it’s been commented on many times, and it seems to just be his schtick.
More important, (unlessCGP Grey got it wrong) the rents from the royal properties go to the government. The rents are something like five times the cost of supporting the royals.
By definition, “Crown lands” are not privately held.
You’re a couple of hundred years late.
So, if the government simply continued to take the rent from the lands and stopped supporting the royals, it could see a 20% increase in its net rent income?
Yes. Though I think these anachronistic holdings only stick around in the state’s hands because of sentimental association with the monarchy. If the monarchy went, I’d expect the Crown Estate to be sold off eventually.
The idea that it pays for the monarchy isn’t really true, but is a common enough myth that it actually resulted in the current funding system, where the annual “Sovereign Grant” is based on the revenues from the estate. But there’s no inherent reason why the funding couldn’t be based on some other state revenues, or just an arbitrary figure altogether (as it was before 2011).
There’s a difference between Crown Lands and The Crown Estate. Crown Lands are like national parks in the U.S. The Crown Estate is still technically (or hypothetically - or magically) owned by the reigning monarch.
I’m guessing a divorce would be messy.
Well, quite. Inertia will probably mean that there is always something more important to require the attention of government and parliament.
But not personally. It’s owned by her in her capacity as sovereign. If she ceased to be sovereign, she would cease to own the crown estate, which would pass to the new sovereign (as happened in 1937).
Of course, if the monarchy were to be abolished, the new sovereign would be an entity, not a person - e.g. the Republic. So the Crown estate would be come the property of the Republic.
The Queen also has a private estate, which is considerable. If she ceased to be monarch, she would still own this (as, again, happened in 1937). Of the royal residences, Sandringham House and Balmoral Castle are privately owned. The private estate also includes a considerable amount of commercial property, plus cash and investments. But it does not include the royal palaces (Buckingham Palace, Windsor Castle,etc), the royal art collection, the crown jewels, etc.
Has that been definitely established, or is it an interpretation of laws that haven’t been tested on exactly this subject?