Re:MI5 'secretly collected phone data' for decade
by coldtea on Friday November 06, 2015 @01:40PM
(#10521112)
Not in the least.
First, because making money isn't a final justification for everything, and especially keeping an antiquated and anti-democratic institution around.
Second, because a country can still make money showing off palaces, changes of the guards, its royal past and the like without maintaining a royal class. Heck, maybe even more money, e.g. by expropriating their castles and estates as state property and making them into luxury hotels and such.
In fact this whole "we're making money off of them" only counts their annual expenses, and balances it by some touristy influx and purchases (that it also assumes would go totally amiss without the royals). That ignores all the land property they occupy which amounts to tens of billions -- (£7.3 billion for the Crown Estate alone), and which could be state property in a democracy.
Finally, there all these "blue blooded" that get a "royal pathway" to politics in the House of Lords and such -- further pushing their agendas and interests into the whole of politics...
First, because making money isn't a final justification for everything, and especially keeping an antiquated and anti-democratic institution around.
Second, because a country can still make money showing off palaces, changes of the guards, its royal past and the like without maintaining a royal class. Heck, maybe even more money, e.g. by expropriating their castles and estates as state property and making them into luxury hotels and such.
In fact this whole "we're making money off of them" only counts their annual expenses, and balances it by some touristy influx and purchases (that it also assumes would go totally amiss without the royals). That ignores all the land property they occupy which amounts to tens of billions -- (£7.3 billion for the Crown Estate alone), and which could be state property in a democracy.
Finally, there all these "blue blooded" that get a "royal pathway" to politics in the House of Lords and such -- further pushing their agendas and interests into the whole of politics...