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
Imagine having a king and thinking you are a democracy 🤣
Im not sure there is a true democracy on the planet. If there is its some tribe we dont know about
Is this my first AI guillotine?
It’s sad because I don’t see anything dramatically improving in the UK any time soon. It feels as though the people at the top are consistently able to manipulate public opinion against their own best interests.
That’s more of a global than UK problem.
Just like checks notes the rest of the West, and their collective vassels, globally.
Oh, in my personal experience living in several countries in Europe including the UK, the British elites are pretty much the best in Europe at manipulating the local plebes.
Probably helps that culturally the English (and less so for other nations) have this strain of “know your place” and “look up to your betters” that’s not there or at least nowhere as strong in countries which had actual bottom-up revolutions were they overthrew their installed elites.
Just look at the reaction to the Snowden Revelations in the US and UK - in the former there was an outrage and at least some of it was walked back, in the latter the government just made a law that retroactivelly made the whole thing legal and the press quickly shut up about it and never mentioned it again.
And don’t get me started at the insane levels of Royal Arse Kissing of even supposedly liberal newspapers like The Guardian.
Britain is definitelly “world class” at both sheep herding and being sheep.
At least take the hat and sell it
I’m sure Reform will fix it all, once they’re in power.
I mean, that guy Farage does have a great track record of solid decision-making!
He tells it like it is!
It’s cool, the fucker flies around the world on an aeroplane whilst demanding we save the environment.
He’s also one of the single largest tax Dodgers in the UK, so when he talks about “the working man” he’s talking specifically about the very people he steals from.
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
I’m not British, but it really is bizarre seeing this old geezer actually dressed up in this stuff. It’d almost be comical if it wasn’t for the fact that he’s dead fucking serious.
How heavy is the Imperial State Crown? The Imperial State Crown measures weighs a hefty 1.06kg (2.3lbs) but it is much lighter than the St Edward’s Crown - the headpiece King Charles wore for the moment of his crowning at the Coronation.
This Crown weighs 2.23kg (4.9lbs) and is decorated with 444 precious and semi-precious stones.
Same publication said he may have been sore from wearing the coronation crown. Poor thing. Surely peat mining can’t be nearly as demanding!
But the headline says five billion pounds. So which is it, 5 pounds of 5 billion?
/sOh boy! Two chuckles and a giggle in three days! Thanks!
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!
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.
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.
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 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.
So Chuck used his outfit to comment on moment. Mumzie used to do that too.
The outfit is effectively picked out for him. Him choosing what to wear could mean he was giving an opinion on the speech.
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.
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
Fuck off cuck
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.
Speaking of his work clothes - any comments on the texture of his boots?
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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Good sir I said wear the cost of living, I don’t know what you’re on about!
To be fair, the crown’s only “worth” is as a collectable.
It’s not equivalent to, say, 750,000,000 kg of Nutella. E.g £5 billion of Nutella. You can’t just sell it and distribute the Nutella, it has to be manufactured for £billions worth of work.
The crown has no utility. Its gems don’t do anything productive, relative to their value. It can’t pay engineers and farmers and such wages to make Nutella, because what are they gonna do with 1/10,000th of a crown?
Practically, if the UK govt sold all royal stuff, what would happen is some ultra-rich would buy it, and… sit on it, at the expense of other collectables they’d have bought instead. That doesn’t improve much.
It’s also worth noting that the crown jewels do serve a beneficial public service in that they form part of the monetary guarantee for UK currency - the same role as the gold reserves. While not nearly as important after the broad adoption of fiat currency over the gold standard it’s still an important aspect of a nation’s monetary sovereignty. Tacky as fuck yes, but they’re not just tacky as fuck. And definitely far more useful for the country than the actual monarch wearing them.
“You’re just going to sit on all those diamonds?”
Better than sitting on all that nutella
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.
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At the height of derangement.
He’s just looking down
