Active discussions

Meet the Other Phone. Only the apps you allow.

Meet the Other Phone.
Only the apps you allow.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Talk
AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

AIBU to think the current Queen has been a mediocre to poor Monarch?

346 replies

ComposHat · 21/05/2012 16:21

Anyone else think all the praise lavished on her is undue? We are all told that she has done a 'good job' but has she really? The servile media, including the supposedly balanced BBC won't broker any attempts to criticise her in any way. We are simply told that she has been 'beyond reproach.'

I'd argue that she's been a dull and unimaginative Monarch, clinging to hidebound tradition and fighting to preserve arcane privileges like a Royal Yacht (actually a mini cruise liner) and resisting paying tax on her income. At crucial moments in her reign she's dallied and shown weak leadership.

On her watch the monarchy has at best stagnated and at worst slipped into an inexorable decline and has begun to feel like an anachronism.

I'll venture that history will not judge her as kindly as all these fawning contemporary commentators do. Her reign will be seen as the point at which the rot set in.

OP posts:
sue52 · 22/05/2012 09:46

Presidents might not come cheaper but they can be voted out.

We have been lucky with the Queen, but for Wallis Simpson we might have been stuck with her Nazi sympathiser uncle.

The Queen didn't pay inheritance tax on her mother's estate, hardly fair IMO.

Whatnamethistime · 22/05/2012 09:51

If we had a president, we would just be subjected to who can spend the most on PR people, shudders at the thought.

sue52 · 22/05/2012 09:55

I think the royal family have PR people too.

Mambonumberfour · 22/05/2012 09:57

I know they do, but they are who they are, warts and all, presidential elections like the states, urgh, whats that film where he gets elected just on his name??

Then of course how often would they change and we would have to protect them and their families forever?? and give them a lifetime pension and so on and so forth.

sue52 · 22/05/2012 10:05

It seems to work very well in other countries. After 60 years with a dutiful monarch we cannot expect anyone else to match up. Prince Charles has shown himself as a vain, self centered, interfering man who is not up to the job. Time for a change and public debate on what we do want.

worldgonecrazy · 22/05/2012 11:17

I like Prince Charles and think he will make a good king. He is certainly very in touch with the people and with the needs of the Land. The Duchy do a lot of good work supporting young people and promoting care of the planet and nature. Of course he has faults, he is only a human being after all, but I believe his good points far outweight any negatives.

cory · 22/05/2012 11:21

exoticfruits Tue 22-May-12 09:40:03
"She has put her job first. I have been on a feminist thread where women are supposed to want careers with power and money, if you have jobs at the top they have to come first. She has put duty first-it is bound to have an effect on personal relationships."

I would argue that in a constitutional family, where the job is not political but is about a family representing the nation, the nation's perception of the relationships within that family (and handling the generation that are born to take over one day) is very much part of the job; it's how you represent the firm as it were. And as a monarch you are in part responsible for the next monarch; that goes with the whole inheritance principle.

cory · 22/05/2012 11:22

typo "in a constitutional monarchy". of course Blush

sashh · 22/05/2012 13:20

Don't forget she has lived her entire life surrounded by the press and having to behave in public, she has never been able to go out clubbing till 3 am and come home covered in vomit or snog a random man should she so wish

Actually I think she did go out on V E day, but I don't think she got chance again.

sereneswan · 22/05/2012 15:06

YABU. What do you want her to do? Interfere with everything like Charles does (and for which everyone criticises him)? And I hardly think implying that the BBC's lack of criticism is because they are servile monarchists is logical considering how left-leaning they are over everything else.

She costs you about the same as a choccy bar per year. What would you rather have? A 'interesting' and 'imaginative' monarch would surely just equate to an arrogant loon trying to impose their wacky ideas on everything. If you want that vote for an interesting and imaginative political party. It's not the monarch's job description IMO. The other alternative of course it to have a president or similar elected ceremonial figurehead who would inevitably be drawn from the political classes and use it as an op for personal and/or political grandstanding. Now that would be fun.

CheerfulYank · 22/05/2012 15:07

I like her! :)

But I am American so what do I know?

exoticfruits · 22/05/2012 16:19

She is a product of her time, cory- she did what she was expected to do in the 1950's- as did most people. It was a different world and can't be compared to today.

cory · 22/05/2012 17:15

exotic, judging from comments made by several elderly people who were around at the time (my MIL for one), her relationship to her children wasn't considered normal even then. The royal family went to a lot of effort to sell themselves as "a normal family" in the 50s/early 60s, but they never seemed to get it right according to MIL.

And the whole Charles-Diana marriage farce was a misjudgment of what the nation really thought about marriage at that time: I was an adult at the time and I can't think of anyone beyond the royal family and their entourage who would have thought marrying an ignorant young girl to cover up your real love interest was the way to go.

exoticfruits · 22/05/2012 17:33

Of course they were not 'normal' in a general way. They were normal in an aristocratic way with nanny's and sending your DCs away to school.
By the time that Charles got married they ought to have realised that modern women are not going to put up with being used for breeding purposes while the husband has a mistress.
They do have to move with the times and they didn't.

exoticfruits · 22/05/2012 17:34

Sorry apostrophes seem to have a life of their own!

Original poster
ComposHat · 22/05/2012 18:15

She costs you about the same as a choccy bar per year. What would you rather have?

The real cost is far greater, that is just the civil list payment, it doesn't cover things like policing.

Chocolate or queen? Make mine a ritter sport.

OP posts:
sue52 · 22/05/2012 18:16

I'd rather have a chocolate bar. And she escaped paying £20 million inheritance tax on her Mother's estate.

MarysBeard · 22/05/2012 18:18

I think she has been an excellent Queen.

Though I'd quite like President Obama. But not Cameron or Blair. Ugh.

cory · 22/05/2012 18:29

"They do have to move with the times and they didn't."

That is precisely what I meant. But I don't think that precludes the fact that the Queen has done good work in other areas, particularly in winning goodwill for the country during the years of the break-up of the empire. And I think she has been able to perform that role precisely because she is apolitical and understands that. Governments come and go, it is useful to have somebody who represents the country in a longer perspective.

LifeHope11 · 22/05/2012 20:19

Although I am very much a republican I actually have a fair amount of respect for the Queen. Although I do not agree with ardent monarchists that everything has done is above reproach or that she 'works hard' in the way that most of us understand hard work, I think that she deserves some credit for taking on this role that she never sought & carrying it out for a lifetime.

It is the institution of monarchy that I despise, everything it stands for and underpins -inherited privilege, snobbery, the class system, lack of true democracy. It should end with the current Queen and we should get to choose who we want to represent us. To threats of 'President Blair' there is only one response - 'King Charles lll' - whom we will be stuck with for the rest of his life.

TheUnMember · 22/05/2012 20:22

See, 'King Charles III' doesn't fill me with joy. But at the same time it doesn't make me want to hang, draw and quarter myself like 'President Cameron' does.

LifeHope11 · 22/05/2012 20:29

Hi UnMember......as I say we are stuck with Charles for life whereas 'President Cameron' IF he should be elected can be voted out again if he does a lousy job (as can any other presidential incumbent). That's the difference between democracy and what we have at the moment.

IloveJudgeJudy · 22/05/2012 21:16

I'm a bit like LifeHope. I'm a republican, but do have some respect for the present Queen. However, when they say she's done so many hundred engagements, they're maybe 4 per day, then they have the whole of July and August off at Balmoral, don't they? They have no worries about whether they can afford anything and are removed from the lives of most people.

Also agree totally about the awful class system we have in this country. The monarchy does perpetuate this.

I am not looking forward to when Charles becomes King. Don't want that at all. Don't agree with all the hangers-on, either.

worldgonecrazy · 23/05/2012 10:00

Presidents might not come cheaper but they can be voted out.

Erm ...... may I politely point out the major voting discrepancies during the final Presidential election of George Bush Jr. in that bastion of democracy, the United States of America

seeker · 23/05/2012 10:13

Why can't the prime minister be Head of state? Why do we need a Queen/President at all?