So how would you keep money out of it? How exactly do you propose to prevent the myriad of corruption problems that plague directly-elected Presidencies?

Or do you merely contend that anything that isn't a monarchy must, by dint of being not a monarchy, be better than a monarchy?

Hmm.. we rather have to deal in the now as oppose to how things were though. Right now, the choice of president would be

a) A posh man in a grey suit who has little world experience outside the political bubble
b) A posh man in a grey suit who has little world experience outside the political bubble
or
c) A posh man in a grey suit who has little world experience outside the political bubble

In principle, that's a better choice than 'no choice at all'. In reality, it's actually not better in any way that matters. Note - I'm not actually arguing for the monarchy. I'm merely pointing out the choices of what we can have instead are currently all pretty unpalatable too.

I'd pretty much agree with the above post - if we have a president, give the job to Dennis Skinner.

Jon

Right, several things here:

- The Monarchy are all self-serving morons. Just look at the many dodgy goings-on concerning the Duke of York and the Prince of Wales. The latter is known to interfere in the democratic processes of both national and local governments to serve his own interests.

- A self-serving moron of a President could veto some of those unpopular measures you mention, the Crown can not.

- We can vote an unpopular President out of office. A president can even go to prison for fraud etc (a la MPs expenses). How do you get rid of an unpopular, meddling, self-serving King/Queen?

But the thing is, we don't. Tony Blair should be being tried on multiple counts of war crimes for example (far more serious than anything the PoW (who I'll grant you is a staggering buffoon) has done) and yet nothing happens. For all the ideological arguments presented, the simple fact is that these occurences just don't happen.

What - as opposed to the interference in the democratic processes by large corporations and millionaires funding political candidates and the media toruring the truth to get their man elected?



The Crown can veto anything it wants and frequently does. Every government minister works for, is paid by and acts for the Crown. So when the PM vetoes something, the Crown has vetoed it.



Well, there was this one guy...

So a self-serving moron with power is better than one without power? Okaaaay. Not so sure I agree with that.


Ladies and gentleman, I give you Silvio Berlusconi. A man regularly faced with a staggering amount of evidence that he has done things which are patently illegal, yet never served a day in jail in his life. Or.. let's say.. Richard Nixon, again, shown beyond any reasonable doubt to have been party to illegal acts, yet again never saw a night behind bars.
I think assuming a president is subject to the same legal strictures as the people who elect him/her is naive, in the main. OK, it does happen - Yulia Tymoshenko springs immediately to mind - but even then the people who have put her in jail, well, I'm not sure they're actually any better for the Ukrainian people than she was.


The French way. However the currently British monarch is, according to all reports, not generally unpopular and, although certainly privileged beyond necessity, I don't really see a lot of evidence that she's self-serving. It seems to me much more that the office she holds accumulates privilege and wealth almost organically rather than her going out in an effort to get it. She doesn't need to be self-serving, she gets it all anyway. That's wrong, but it seems to be the way things currently are.

Jon

There's another key difference - corporations etc are subject to legal controls, the Crown is not. Corporations are answerable to Parliament, under current convention the Crown is not. There is legislation in progress to curb lobbying, there is nothing in the pipeline to control the excesses of the Monarchy.


I could go into the constitutional differences here regarding the privileges of Parliament versus those of the Crown and the Crown itself versus people acting on its behalf, but instead I'll substitute Crown for "Monarch".


If you're referring to Cromwell that would never happen in this day and age, sadly.

HAHAHAHAHAHA.

oh. Sorry.

There's no guarantee they would be a self-serving moron - I was just employing the colourful language used before. And anyway, like I said, even if they were, not only can we vote them out, they could even go to prison.

Just because the Italians give their President legal immunity, there's no reason we have to - and it's not a protection that's generally afforded in the UK anyway. There's nothing to say the force of law would not apply to an elected President.

Charles is known to mess around with the governance of this Country, Andrew is known to take the piss with public money (publicly funded trips abroad with no official role or justification for doing so). There is currently no mechanism of accountability, democratic or otherwise for the Monarchy, so they get away with it. And just why should the Queen, Charles etc be awarded huge chunks of land throughout the country?

Laugh away - you'll never see Charles get hauled before a Parliamentary committee News Corp style. You'll never see the Queen be subject to a High Court decision, etc etc.

All the people who will end up in gaol due to Leveson are small fish. Sacrificial. If any of the big fish do get convicted of anything (which, personally, I doubt) they will get suspended sentences. None of the men who ran the companies who nearly destroyed the British economy will be prosecuted for their recklessness, even though it will bring hardship to (at best) hundreds of thousands of people. Corporations have been let off billion pound tax bills but you try being late with your return. The board of P&O were found guilty of the corporate manslaughter of 187 people in the aftermath of the sinking of the Herald of Free Enterprise, yet no board member ever saw the inside of a cell.

Corporations are subject to the laws they feel like obeying. Anything else, they ignore with impunity.

Jon