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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 1st, 2023

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  • We dont know how much power they have, it’s illegal to know:

    | Due to secrecy laws, it is extremely hard to find documentary evidence of the queen’s exercise of influence. In the United Kingdom, government documents that “relate to” communications with the sovereign or the next two persons in line to the throne, as well as palace officials acting on their behalf, are subject to an absolute exemption from release under freedom of information or by government archives.

    • “relate to” is so broad and it means we have no idea what is going on.

    | But The Guardian has managed to expose a chink in this armour of secrecy. In the UK’s National Archives, it discovered documents from 1973 showing the queen’s personal solicitor lobbied public servants to change a proposed law so that it would not allow companies, or the public, to learn of the queen’s shareholdings in Britain. The gambit succeeded, and the draft bill was changed to suit the queen’s wishes. Perhaps these documents escaped the secrecy embargo because they involved communications with a private solicitor, rather than palace officials

    https://theconversation.com/the-queens-gambit-new-evidence-shows-how-her-majesty-wields-influence-on-legislation-154818





  • Australia already spends time and money maintaining the English monarch as the head of state. And it’s not a ceremonial position; the governor-general has reserve powers, such as the ability to remove office holders, like in 1975. It is only convention, not law that appoints and makes the GG act on the PMs ‘recommendations’ rather than the Monarch; the description of the office has not been rewritten. We can’t rely on convention to govern a country and need to have explicit laws that match our ideals of how a democracy should behave. It’s unexploded ordinance that should be cleaned up… let’s do that rather than spending our time and money changing all the pictures on the money, and the pronouns on all the legal documents each time a monarch croaks.












  • You don’t see many cats out and about in Bucharest. Best move to Greece (or Turkey, I hear). In Athens the city microchips and makes sure “stray” cats and dogs get veterinary care. Public parks are filled with cats so you can’t eat your lunch without making a few friends, and you can’t park a motorcycle without a cat parking itself on the seat. Even the hill the Acropolis is on is covered in cats.