And I watched a video yesterday that perfectly encapsulated everything that is wrong with Britain. The whole thing. A lifetime of systemic failure, of grotesque inequality, of ruling-class contempt disguised as concern, all of it distilled into a single glittering, nauseating image.
There he was. King Charles III. Dressed in his finest robes, the Imperial State Crown on his head (this is a solid gold construction studded with 2,868 diamonds, 17 sapphires, 11 emeralds, 269 pearls, and four rubies). The Sovereign’s Sceptre with Cross contains the largest clear-cut diamond in the world, weighing in at 530 carats…was present but not in the shot. The crown jewels are estimated to be worth up to $8 billion in total. And this man, wearing a hat that could solve homelessness in London, who holds a stick that could fund the NHS for a year, draped in robes worth more than most people will earn in a thousand lifetimes, was telling the British people to ‘weather the storm’ of the cost of living crisis.
Crosspost from https://lemmygrad.ml/post/11612563
But selling the crown would drive the price of crowns down so low (supply and demand, you know) and you’d never actually get 8 billion. Best you’d get is… maybe one roundabout and a nice tree.
Second audible chuckle of the week! Thank you!
I’m actually wondering how much of that figure is tied to the actual materials and workmanship, and how much is because they are The Crown Jewels.
He actually said the phrase “ensure a fair deal for working people”. Who thought it was a good idea to put that in the speech knowing he was going to be fully dressed in the spoils of exploitation? You’d think they’d at least temper it with the comparative term “fairer” if the more sensitive wardrobe option was truly off the table.
The Prime Minister.
The King’s Speech is effectively when the Prime Minister sticks his hand up the King’s ass and uses the King as a puppet to speak to his or her political goals for that session of Parliament.
Glad some one said it.
I get why people are outraged but really this is someone else talking in a situation he is expected to be in with pomp and circumstance.
I am no fan of kings, but seeing footage of him walking around the town square in just a suit and tie shaking hands with people on the street sure is a sharp contrast to America’s current King.
Maybe his standard of Fairness for the plebes isn’t the same as for their betters, and thus he was being totally honest in his desired for a “fair” deal for the working people.
Is this my first AI guillotine?
Seems pretty easy to avoid that blade
Some people need a really close shave.
Wild that they still dress up like that. Read the fucking room.
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I think those robes, the crown, the Sceptre, they were all the Crown’s stuff - aka the Firm, the organization that is the English monarchy - and not his. They existed before him, they will exist after him, and his wearing them lays little claim of ownership past “work clothes” than a pilot can claim to own the plane he’s flying.
Yes, it’s a bad look. The guy at the bank denying loans wears a fancy suit. The lawyers in America fighting to deny healthcare wear amazing suits.
Would you have him sell the crown he doesn’t effectively own to throw money at a problem? Never go to the Louvre, or they’ll toss you out for yelling about how they should sell the art to pay for the French homeless.
In all this you forget: if the pilot sells his plane, if the Louvre sells some pricy paintings, if the Crown’s representative sells the work clothes he’s issued, who’s buying it? That guy, those people buying them, they’ve truly amassed a personal fortune to be able to buy something like that. It’s not work for them; it’s obscene decadence and greed.
THOSE are your villains. Taxation is how we get them to pay their share from here on in, like we did in the '40s through the '70s. And I think the max tax rate above 1mil gross takings every year should be a 101% tax rate: you’re paying everything you took and just a little bit more. Maybe take less. Maybe launch fewer rockets and buy a few less elections and pay to fix hunger and healthcare and all that instead.
I think those robes, the crown, the Sceptre, they were all the Crown’s stuff - aka the Firm, the organization that is the English monarchy - and not his. They existed before him, they will exist after him, and his wearing them lays little claim of ownership past “work clothes” than a pilot can claim to own the plane he’s flying.
The Sovereign runs the Firm and so could sell the trappings of royalty.
if the Crown’s representative sells the work clothes he’s issued, who’s buying it? That guy, those people buying them, they’ve truly amassed a personal fortune to be able to buy something like that. It’s not work for them; it’s obscene decadence and greed.
THOSE are your villains.
Those are also our villains. It’s not an either-or. The capitalist class and the vestigial feudal class run the United Kingdom, at the expense of the working class.
Taxation is how we get them to pay their share from here on in, like we did in the '40s through the '70s.
The capitalist class & nobility gave the working class temporary concessions out of fear of revolution, and they have since clawed those concessions back. They’re not going to pay more taxes without a threat, never mind relinquish power.
Bro he could have said that instead. He went out there in his expensive “work clothes” to tell people that he sees they are suffering and that they should deal with it. Instead of telling the governement to tax the people causing this problem, to rebalance the wealth of this nation a bit, he tells the people to suck it up.
Of course people are angry with him and the image he presents.
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Speaking of his work clothes - any comments on the texture of his boots?
Once he became king he does indeed own those things. Wild to suggest otherwise
Also I’m not going to explain how a publicly owned art museum is different than the crown of a monarch. Art was created and acquired by the state. To make that crown wealth was extracted on the back of slaves and colonies for generations
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Imagine having a king and thinking you are a democracy 🤣
To be fair, he didn’t pay for the crown jewels himself, so its not like he had the money to buy them – rather, they were stolen.
So fucking sad.
sad and enraging
A lot of apologia itt.
Yes, Lemmy is famously full of royalists and capitalists, and it has nothing to do with how your idea of selling a gold hat to solve homelessness is unrealistic.
I love the mental image though of Chuck fencing mummy’s crown and taking all the rough. sleepers from the arches for a slap up meal
How would the hat solve homeless? You would need to find an 8 billion dollar buyer, probably from overseas, to buy that hat, then use so the cash to find programs and housing construction. It would say best, help people for a year before the money ran out. Then what? Key selling assets to foreign countries?
The crown is made with valuables looted from foreign countries so those get returned. The real solution to a housing crisis is to sieze the royal assets and redistribute them to agencies that aid with housing placement. I’m sure you could turn the palaces and castles into massive apartments.
That would literally destroy the value of crown of you broke it up and returned the jewels. Turning the castles into apartments would solve 0.0001% of the homeless problem.
The crown’s value was made with blood and conquest. Returning the gems to the nations they were pillaged from doesn’t make up for the suffering that happened when they were acquired but it’s literally stolen property. There’s no obligation to reward thieves when you return what was stolen to the rightful owners.
And so what if their castles and palaces only house 0.0001% of the population? The UK has population of around 69.5 million, you’d be housing 6950 people in buildings that currently house one family.
It’s about numbers though, it doesn’t do anyone to solve the problem. And it would most likely make the problem worse and it scares the wealth to flee because they are next.
It’s not about numbers, it’s about people. You are correct, booting the royals out of their palaces and turning it into housing would not solve the entirety of the UK’s homeless problem, and while I’m guess you made up the percentage, housing for 6950 people currently unhoused or insecure living conditions is a better use of the buildings, which already exist. The royals also have multigenerational wealth that isn’t tied to stolen items you could transfer to agencies that serve the unhoused, build new developments. Even if didn’t use this moment to overthrow the entire capitalist system (which is unlikely) that wealth could be used to help the impoverished take steps within that system to get affordable housing.
And yes, wether symbolic monarchists holding on to the spoils of the previous centuries or the post-industrial/digital revolution corporatists that have risen in the last couple, the wealthy should be afraid that at some point the bulk of society is going to come kicking down the doors of their palaces, mansions, penthouses, and maybe even engage in a bit of piracy when they flee to their super yachts to reappropriate their estates for distribution to the masses. The world doesn’t need kings and billionaires.
Very well said! Bravo/brava!
It’s never worked in the past. When it gets to this point it’s the end of the country at we know it.
Redistributing mansions and boats won’t fix the homeless program either.
All or nothing thinking results in self-sabotage before an attempt is made. There’s no single “do this, solve a housing crisis” magic button, even a well laid plan is going to run into unforeseen problems.
Yeah, abolishing the vestiges of the monarchy would be the end of the country as you’ve known it. But it’s not like England is a monolith that’s been the same thing for centuries. The country people lived in after WW2 was not the country they lived in before WW2. Same for the post Victorian era, same for when they lost the colonies, same for when the Magna Carta was written, same for when William conquered. Societies change. We’ve got similar problems in the States. We’re not the country we were when the Constitution was first written, nor the country that split over slavery, nor the industrial titan of WW2 and the post war boom, nor the wealth gap growth of the Regan era. Were the inheritors of those legacies but we can either do nothing and let the conservatives hold us back, or worse, let the regressives cherry pick the worst moments in history and try to recreate them, or push for progress even at the expense of disrupting what is comfortably familiar and tolerable.
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