Well, I hated the coronation…

[TheColourofspring]

I can see I am in the minority on here but I found yesterday to be distasteful on a gigantic scale. To watch the most privileged people travel in gold coaches & be decorated with diamonds and gold that is priceless in the face of millions of people struggling to eat/heat their homes just feels so wrong.

Our primary school has just opened a food bank. There are kids & families in crisis- children coming into school hungry & smelly as families can’t afford to wash clothes (I am not joking) - living in Dickensian conditions. Some of the teaching staff use the foodbank.

Yesterday was a display of obscene wealth. The royals didn’t even pay for it- we did. How can we find money for that absolute nonsense yet we can’t find money for large swathes of the population to feed themselves.

While Charles was sitting there in his gold costume holding these priceless items, plenty of families weren’t eating. It made me really angry.

I am tired of all the arguments for a royal family- how somehow these displays are quaint. Yesterday was an obscene display of wealth, inherited privilege and everything that’s wrong with this country. Seems a conversation about the royals is long overdue.

😂😂😂

More like 15-20 years max.

@TheColourofspring well I can’t see a good case there. It doesn’t explain how getting rid of the Royal family will end global organisations making billions and not paying a penny of tax in the UK. In fact given that many of those organisations were created in republican countries, it’s quite frankly ridiculous to argue that ending the Royal family will resolve it.

Also, it talks about democracy, but the King has no power.

This

"OP I agree with you, I'm a nurse and it definitely sticks in the throat that obscene amounts of money can be spent on this but not to give us a pay increase."

I'm a Nurse who has just had a payrise. The difference is that I'm in Scotland, fortunately our incompetent Govt did negotiate with our Unions and agreed to it.

The Tory incompetent Govt hasn't chosen to that. That's nothing to do with the Royal Family, and would likely have happened were we to be a Republic.

You're allowing yourself to be distracted from the actual problem.

Hahaha. He went. With 2 A levels grade B and C and 5 O levels. Would he have got in had he had to follow the normal application process - no.

🤣 Quite.

😂😂😂

I really enjoyed it. I loved the ritual. I think many have lost the connection to ritual and that makes us that much poorer.

Having a head of state is expensive. Do you think the White House should be sold? Airforce one? The Beast?

its unlikely the net position of getting rid of the monarchy would improve the lot of poor children much.

my DH is a policeman. He has to deal with kids with nothing every shift, kids where there’s no food in the house, no beds. Quite often there’s neglectful parents in the house (I know not in every case). But the answer to child poverty doesn’t lie with selling the Crown Jewels, it lies with education, work opportunities, limiting reliance on the welfare state. With greater consequences and powers regarding child neglect. It lies with capping inflation of energy prices. Better training and powers of social workers. There needs to be less reliance on the welfare state, working needs to pay.

This

Well what about your excess money OP?! There are people to whom you have far more - at what stage of excess is it obscene you don't pass it on to the destitute of society? Is it a spare £1?? A spare £500?! A spare £3000?! A spare million?!
Wealth of nations will never be evenly distributed, it would never work as a society. Resenting others for what they have is a waste of emotional energy.
The coronation brought tourism and money into the country. Our traditions are our history.

He has no power. So what is he for? What function does he really serve if getting rid of them has no impact?

I don’t understand why you watched it? Did you think it’d be a jeans and t shirt affair? I can guarantee that if you removed the monarchy there would still be food banks and people would still be struggling. It’s naive to think these things would disappear if the RF did too. The people in government might benefit financially with their backhanders and self interest but we wouldn’t.

TBF, there were some protests yesterday, people were arrested for protesting. I'm not saying that the majority of people aren't quietly going along with it, but it's not the case that everyone is.

There was also a massive anti-monarchy march in Cardiff, which I think is very interesting given Charles was Prince of Wales for such a long time. I know he did some really unpopular things in Cornwall, I imagine it's similar in Wales.

I'm not saying there shouldn't be more happening, but there were people expressing their discontent yesterday, and probably would have been more if the fear of arrest wasn't so high!

As I said further up the thread, more affordable childcare, more affordable housing and a better health system. Those are the things that would dramatically improve our country. Getting rid of the Royal family is not going to get us any of those things.

I think it really does matter who and how we decide head of state. Even if we choose a figurehead without power surely they should represent the best of our country, be someone to feel proud of?

The symbolism of an inherited monarchy just feels so out of touch. It signals that we support historic entitlement to wealth. That's wrong.

If we believe it matters who your parents were that's very fundamental to our national philosophy. Not one I can support.

However right now the government is the bigger problem.

@Dibblydoodahdah how can we have affordable housing though when half the country is owned by aristocrats? People invested in keeping the peasants poor

@RepublicanBecca do you understand the difference between a head of State and a head of Government?

Exactly. Today’s teenagers having a negative attitude towards the coronation doesn’t necessarily mean the royal family is doomed. Teenagers grow up and might change their opinions. Quite a few people grow more conservative as they grow older anyway.

I know enough though I am no expert on the history of Wales to understand why you personally are a Republican. You have a personal loathing influenced by the injustices served to the Welsh people by the English over many centuries including the attempted erasure of the Welsh language.

You may also have some guilt because of your success due to social mobility. Social mobility is seen as a very good thing but it can bring a whole host of complex feelings especially if you are the only person out of your cohort of friends from childhood that has escaped poverty and especially if your family remain living in difficult financial circumstances.

I’m sure you will agree with my first paragraph but will question the second, possibly because it’s something you have never contemplated.

The only other strong republican I have spoken to recently is an acquaintance who has unfortunately outed themselves as a massive misogynist. To say I am disappointed is an understatement.

On a personal level I remain neutral, the thing that gets my blood pressure to dangerous levels is the treatment of women. I would just say op if you feel so strongly you join any kind of organisation be very aware of how they treat women members. From experience and talking to others in many political movements of all colours, misogyny is alive and kicking it’s just better hidden in the more left leaning groups.

The problem isn't people being richer than you, the problem is that the rich are never subjected to the same extremities of tax and law etc that normal people are. I don't care what they bring to the economy, a couple of tourists who were already there isn't going to trickle down to the rest of the country or those who did overtime.

I've made food bank referrals for people on salaries in the upper £20k range.

In the SE, rents are so high that on £30k you can still be entitled to UC, and even then the rent element is nowhere near the full rent. When someone's on an income low enough to qualify for UC, a sudden unexpected expense, eg expensive car repair, having to replace an expensive appliance, can easily tip their finances into penury and leave them needing to use food banks.

I did a benefit check for a couple earning £42k between them the other week and they were entitled to UC. Not much, admittedly, but £42k doesn't go far when you've got kids and rent to pay.

Good grief. Are you writing of all South American countries? Way to go

Have you actually been to many? I've been to 4 or 5 can't remember off the top of my head. I recommend Chile personally. They are the most content and happiest people, the safest country to visit, one of the most prosperous with little corruption.

I'm with you OP. It was unpleasant and made me long for us to have a republic for the first time.

Just like the USA? Where there is no poverty and the President and family live plain and frugal lives without having their every whim catered to? Yeah, right.

You’re very naive if you think there’s any model of government which won’t have the rich/poor divide, with those at the top always being amongst the very richest. Denmark, a country with one of the lowest rates of poverty in the world, also happens to be a constitutional monarchy, btw.

The previous discussion mentioned Trump.

As to your post - you still don’t seem to have grasped that POTUS is both head of government and state and that is not what we would have here.

I don’t know why people keep talking about the inauguration when the presidential political campaigns run in billions. The US political system is famously corrupt and ludicrously expensive.

@ThinkAboutItTomorrow I agree with you. However, one of the biggest problems the government has is that people feel the system doesn't work for them and their votes doesn't matter. One way to address this would be to revamp the whole thing.

At the moment there just doesn't seem much difference between the political parties - the country seems to have stagnated. Young people are poorer than their parents and the main parties don't seem to be addressing this at all.