Subject:
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Re: Should Prince Charles abdicate?
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Thu, 17 Feb 2005 23:35:24 GMT
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Viewed:
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835 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Mark Bellis wrote about prospective King Chuck.
As one of the Queen's subjects, I probably ought to take this all more seriously
but:
> Q1. People from the rest of the world seem to like our Queen, and as such she is
> an asset for UK tourism. However, do they really care whether Prince Charles
> will succeed her?
Yes people (and I) do care some. This is why there are currently record numbers
of Australians signing up to the republican movement here
> Q2. Is it the duty of the monarch (or for that matter President!) to give a
> moral lead to the nation, or should they reflect the state of the nation?
Yes I expect our leaders to set an example of moral behaviour. Its hard,
perhaps naive, to really expect that they always will.
> Q3. If the answer to Q2 is to give a moral lead, is the breakdown of Prince
> Charles' marriage and his unfaithfulness to Diana indicative of his level of
> commitment to the country, and should he therefore abdicate on moral grounds?
Sexual indiscretion is a minus, capacity to make a difference to the big picture
is a plus, but they seem to me to be completely different orders of magnitude.
The world outside the US would gladly take Bill Clinton, for all his problems
with his pants, over George Bush Jr. That said, I am not aware of Chuck having
any great credentials for big picture stuff. But no, I don't see we should lose
a bright light just because of his marriage silliness.
> Q4, If not on moral grounds then should he follow Edward VIII in the 1930s, who
> abdicated because the constitution said that he could not otherwise marry Wallis
> Simpson, also a divorcee?
Ditto. (No) Throwing away a perfectly good monarch because he wants to marry a
Catholic divorcee just seems like a terrible waste.
> Q5. Is the excuse of potentially calling Camilla "Princess Consort" rather than
> "Queen" sufficient to permit Charles to take the throne?
Can't understand the relevance, but I am not a UK constitutional law expert, and
I would leave that to them.
> Q6. Given Charles' record, should he abdicate on the grounds that he could not
> fulfil the role of "Supreme head of the Church of England" (the Anglican church
> in the UK), which requires the person to give a moral lead to the nation?
I am not an Anglican and have enough issues with the creation of the Anglican
Church in the first place to be bothered about who fills the job of 'Supreme
head' (now there's a job title). There seems to be something ironic about
insisting on exemplary moral and marriage performance for the prospective king
and head of this church, after the moral and marriage performance of the king
who created it (http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/catherine_of_aragon.htm)
But as to all the to-ing and fro-ing about who the people want to be their king,
I thought that the very point of a monarchy was that it was not an elected
position. There is a rigorous system for working out who follows who. Its
supposed to bring stability and order to complement the inherent instability of
elected government. Isn't it? I appreciate that poor monarchs have played
silly buggers with succession from time to time, but if we're all agreed that
Elizabeth II has been such a fabulous queen (and I have yet to hear anyone with
a specific and worthy gripe about her conduct as queen), is there a reason that
the British public is not prepared to trust her to have dealt with her
succession properly?
Surely there are other issues of greater moment in the UK.
Richard
Still baldly going...
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Message has 2 Replies:
Message is in Reply To:
 | | Should Prince Charles abdicate?
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| In the UK, Prince Charles, the heir to the throne, has recently announced that he will marry Camilla Parker-Bowles. This follows his divorce from Princess Diana and hers from her husband. They were seeing each other before either of them got (...) (20 years ago, 17-Feb-05, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
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