Monarch or Elected President

Quoted from Maringer

Elected President.

Get rid of the House of Lords for an elected upper house. Develop a full, written constitution. Introduce a proper PR voting system in both Houses of Parliament. Have increased devolution of power to all regions (not just the different countries of the UK).

Keep the Royals on for bits of pomp and circumstance and for foreigners to ogle. Remove some of their tax perks so they aren't treated differently to the rest of the landed gentry. They own vast swathes of the country already, so they'll manage to pay their way.

You would be happy with a Donald Trump character then?

As for the monies spent on the Royals, I hope you don't mind me complaining about the billions spent by that lying, murdering twit Blair on an illegal war, or the billions thrown away by that frigging clown Brown by selling off the UK's gold at its lowest level, or the millions spent on illegal immigrants who have contributed intercourse all to this country but will be kept in 4 start hotels, probably never get a job for the rest of their lives so will be on benefits till the day they die, will have direct access to free health care where the rest of us are damn lucky to get through to a doctor on the phone let alone actually see one.

I agree about the House of Lords, they can fwck off.

Quoted from LH

As expected the uniforms, drill and precision of the forces was absolutely spot on and I could only see one fainter at Wellington arch. All of this could of course be done for an elected head of state.

Do you think the same number of people would turn out for an elected Head of State seeing as the past couple of decades or so the Prime Ministers we have had have all ended up being hated . You would probably only need half a dozen traffic wardens.

Quoted from arryarryarry

You would be happy with a Donald Trump character then?

As for the monies spent on the Royals, I hope you don't mind me complaining about the billions spent by that lying, murdering twit Blair on an illegal war, or the billions thrown away by that frigging clown Brown by selling off the UK's gold at its lowest level, or the millions spent on illegal immigrants who have contributed intercourse all to this country but will be kept in 4 start hotels, probably never get a job for the rest of their lives so will be on benefits till the day they die, will have direct access to free health care where the rest of us are damn lucky to get through to a doctor on the phone let alone actually see one.

I agree about the House of Lords, they can fwck off.

Different kind of President to what we would have.

Also, it's nice to see people still having a go at the Labour party after 12 years of the Tories. It's not like the Tories have been economically prudent is it? I'll raise you all the wasted cash we spunked during covid. Just the pathetic track and trace to mention one. There are plenty of other examples.

Quoted from ginnywings

Well said that man, though he will probably now mysteriously die in an "accident".

https://www.theguardian.com/po.....-labours-clive-lewis

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/sep/16/mourning-republicans-system-privilege

He is a bit of a knob, complains about the Royal Family and is a confirmed republican but remains in a Party led by a Lord

Why doesn't grow a pair and form his own Republican Party and then see how he does?

Quoted from arryarryarry

You would be happy with a Donald Trump character then?

As for the monies spent on the Royals, I hope you don't mind me complaining about the billions spent by that lying, murdering twit Blair on an illegal war, or the billions thrown away by that frigging clown Brown by selling off the UK's gold at its lowest level, or the millions spent on illegal immigrants who have contributed intercourse all to this country but will be kept in 4 start hotels, probably never get a job for the rest of their lives so will be on benefits till the day they die, will have direct access to free health care where the rest of us are damn lucky to get through to a doctor on the phone let alone actually see one.

I agree about the House of Lords, they can fwck off.

Wowsers…

Guess the last twelve years don’t exist, the 12m shovelled in to the pocket of a victim of sexual abuse, the tax evasion and theft of precious jewels from around the world…and they’re just some obvious ones.

Remove the palaces and the fancy hats and the royal family would feature on a channel 5 poverty porn programme…incest, crime, dodgy goings on, benefits, divorce, murder…like a flipping family from shameless…

Quoted from arryarryarry

Do you think the same number of people would turn out for an elected Head of State seeing as the past couple of decades or so the Prime Ministers we have had have all ended up being hated . You would probably only need half a dozen traffic wardens.

How many prime ministers have had funerals on anything like that scale since the war? 2. Not every one would get one but only those whose terms were of exceptional significance. Charles need a serious turnaround to be as popular as Elizabeth was and will still get the pageantry seen today when he goes.

Quoted from ginnywings

Different kind of President to what we would have.

Also, it's nice to see people still having a go at the Labour party after 12 years of the Tories. It's not like the Tories have been economically prudent is it? I'll raise you all the wasted cash we spunked during covid. Just the pathetic track and trace to mention one. There are plenty of other examples.

I'm no fan of the Tories, Boris was a complete knob and as frigging useless as May and Cameron and that complete male private Major, who obviously would rather shag the bottom off Edwina Currie that run the country properly.

Quoted from Limerick Mariner

Actually, the Cameron Clegg coalition was the most democratic since the 1930s - 60% of the vote and the only post-war government with more than 50% of the popular vote. On social liberalism, they did some very good things. On the economy, the Tories well and truly fecked the Liberals and the lower paid, the Liberals paid for it, and we've been paying for it since and especially now with the years of underinvestment in the NHS other public services, transport and by the privatised-monopolies. If the Liberals had gone with Labour, the government would have had 52% of the popular vote.

Apart from the fact that 0% of the population voted for a Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition government. It was an agreement cooked up behind the scenes after a general election, that neither Tory nor Lib Dem voters voted for.

Quoted from davmariner

Apart from the fact that 0% of the population voted for a Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition government. It was an agreement cooked up behind the scenes after a general election, that neither Tory nor Lib Dem voters voted for.

Ooh, don’t forget the £10bn spûnked by May to get a couple of Northern Irish votes.  I think it’s called bribery in the democratic world.

Quoted from arryarryarry

You would be happy with a Donald Trump character then?

As for the monies spent on the Royals, I hope you don't mind me complaining about the billions spent by that lying, murdering twit Blair on an illegal war, or the billions thrown away by that frigging clown Brown by selling off the UK's gold at its lowest level, or the millions spent on illegal immigrants who have contributed intercourse all to this country but will be kept in 4 start hotels, probably never get a job for the rest of their lives so will be on benefits till the day they die, will have direct access to free health care where the rest of us are damn lucky to get through to a doctor on the phone let alone actually see one.

I agree about the House of Lords, they can fwck off.

Wowsers. That's an odd response.

I'm thinking of an Irish-style Presidency where the President is just an apolitical figure with little actual power. The US President is effectively an elected King for the length of his term which isn't perhaps surprising when you consider that the US founding fathers weren't actually anti-monarchy, they were anti-paying taxes which were being levied at a high rate by the UK government at the time, I seem to recall reading. Despite the President=King dynamic in the US, they have an elected higher house (the Senate) which has real authority and can stop the President having too much power. Remember, Obama couldn't do half of what he wanted due to obstructionism by the Senate and Trump wasn't able to do as much wrecking as he planned either. Trump's longer-term legacy is packing the courts with political appointees who are going to be doing the wrecking for the Republicans for decades to come. Or until the next Civil War. Whichever comes first.

There are various other options for heads of state - it doesn't have to be a President who is King in all but name.

Not sure why you're still going on about Blair and Iraq as the Tories were in full lock-step behind him so we were going to war one way or another. IDS was one of the first UK politicians to call for an invasion of Iraq and that was back at the end of 2001! It doesn't mitigate the fact that Blair took us into that pointless war, but I'm always amazed how people who use it as a stick to bash Blair and co with completely ignore the fact that the Tories would have without a doubt have done the same. The 'Brown sold the gold' argument is such a tedious and poorly thought-out one that I'm amazed it is still being quoted as relevant. The bullion was sitting there doing nothing and achieving nothing (because it is gold which does noting and achieves nothing), so we sold it and invested the money elsewhere. The decision to announce we would sell in advance was a poor one as it forced the value down further, but the fact that the value subsequently rebounded was just chance.

If Wikipedia is correct, the Tory press claim it 'cost' the UK between £2 billion and £7 billion. This would assume, of course, that the money invested elsewhere from the sales had no return at all. I'd guess it didn't. The money is equivalent to between £3 billion and £10 billion in 2021 values, incidentally.

Now, let's compare that to the £5 billion expected to be lost to fraud from the Covid Business loans fiasco. How about the £37 billion of money allocated to Test and Trace which didn't work effectively, in part, because the government decided to set up a new system from scratch bunging billions to the private sector, instead of building on existing test capacity and public health expertise? What about the £14 billion spent on often useless PPE through the unlawful 'VIP lane' where many Tory MPs and ministers got their mates on the gravy train and told them to fill their boots? I do hope you're having a good rant about these mind-boggling numbers in 20 years time.

As for immigration, you do know that asylum seekers quite literally aren't allowed to work for at least a year after they make their asylum claim? Pre-pandemic, it was taking between 1 and 3 years for people to receive the first decision on their claims and, of course, they can also appeal if the initial claim is rejected so that's many waiting for years before they could even begin to contribute. Some can receive a limited work permit if they have been waiting over a year, but they can only work in a limited number of professions. Some more information:

https://www.unhcr.org/uk/asylum-in-the-uk.html

Not sure what whacky stuff you've been reading which makes you think that most immigrants are being put up in luxurious hotels, but it's complete bullshit.

As you'll see from the UNHCR link, in mid-2021, there were about 135,000 refugees in the UK. Undoubtedly, a lot more illegal immigrants (probably half a million or thereabouts) but they don't get anything from the government and I'd imagine most are working in the black economy. Wouldn't it be good if we could get these people on the books and into the light.

The reason the NHS is failing isn't because of immigrants, illegal or otherwise, it's because we've had a Tory government in charge for over a decade which has quite deliberately underfunded the service:



The above image was from a report from 2015 which factored in spending plans to 2020. The pandemic obviously led to an increase in spending in the shorter term (and the Tories' mates like it very much, thanks), but we've got no longer-term plan for anything. Social care is collapsing due to lack of funding or any coherent plan how to deal with the problems they are facing. The service provided NHS is collapsing due to in part to the lack of social care which means patients can't be discharged from hospitals, plus an every-increasing shortage of staff, crumbling infrastructure and vast waiting lists caused by a combination of underfunding and the pandemic. Not to mention the fact that the Covid pandemic itself really still isn't over, despite what people want to pretend (more people died of Covid in August 2022 than they did in August 2021, for example) so the winter months will be even worse. The ability of the Ambulance service to even get close to their targets has pretty much collapsed even during the summer months so heaven help us this winter, especially when the next Covid variant takes over alongside the flu season with the vulnerable becoming increasingly ill due to fuel poverty.

The country is a shitshow at the moment, but not for any of the reasons you seem to think. Which is frankly remarkable.