Posted on 06/01/2002 3:37:41 PM PDT by David Hunter
The outrage is understandable. The astonishment is absurd. Anyone who imagined that the Queen Mother's estate would be subject to the usual level of death duties was suffering from another aspect of the delusion that has infected this country since the old lady died. The monarchy is a package deal. When, at the end of the funeral, Garter King At Arms read out the styles and titles of the dear departed, he was marking the passing of someone who could not possibly subscribe to the same tax code as the rest of us.
The discovery that the Treasury is to be denied its proper share of the £50m fortune has ended the taboo that, for the past six weeks, has prevented a rational examination of the monarchy. The silence has, in part, resulted from the behaviour of republicans who - believing that the Windsors should be deserving of the same sympathy as any other bereaved family - treated the Queen Mother's death with far more respect than it received from those royalists who exploited it to revive interest in the Jubilee. It would be unreasonable to demand much sensitivity from people who applauded the vulgar extravagance of the obsequies. But they should not mistake good manners for capitulation.
The rational argument for a republic is built on four related truths. None of them is connected with the Queen Mother's character, but all of them were illustrated during the days that followed her death.
A monarchy is built on the idea of a hierarchical society with the sovereign at the apex of the social pyramid as the result of an accident of birth. Because it is based on the hereditary principle, it encourages the nation to look backward to its glorious past rather than face an uncertain future. It promotes values that a civilised country ought to deplore and it forces sensible people into doing and saying silly things.
Almost everything that happened between the death and the funeral was a demonstration of the belief that the Windsors are inherently superior. No doubt the Queen Mother was as admirable a woman as the newspapers claim. But the pipes and drums of the Scottish regiments are not paraded to mark the passing of every nice old lady. Some of the commentators actually spoke of a funeral fit for "the last Empress of India". The troops turned out because she was wife to a king. Walter Raleigh was wrong about death being the great leveller.
The Koh-i-Nor shone out of the crown that was carried on the last empress's coffin. That diamond was stolen during the Raj that so pillaged the subcontinent that invisible earnings from India kept the ailing British balance of payments in surplus for four generations. My complaint is not that we were encouraged to drool over the memory of an evil empire. For good or ill, that empire is a thing of the past. The compulsion to live in the shadow of imperial grandeur is the most debilitating of all the British psychological diseases.
Yet one newspaper claimed that the crowds on the streets proved that Rule Britannia had replaced Cool Britannia. Cool Britannia was always an infantile idea. But Rule Britannia is the most geriatric of political expectations. The newspapers that brought the people out on to the streets, briefly to relive the age when the sun never set on the empire, hoaxed as well as patronised their readers. They used the Queen Mother's death to evangelise for the values of a bygone age.
Part of that long-dead past was a monarchy that played at being soldiers and sailors. The dukes of Edinburgh and York, like the Prince of Wales, were once the real thing. But the only possible explanation for making minor royals dress up for the funeral as commodores and commandants is the notion that there is special virtue in the martial life. A monarchy encourages that sort of philistine nonsense. At Westminster Abbey, the Queen Mother's colonels were much in evidence. Her librarians were notable only because of their absence.
In the weeks that followed the Queen Mother's death, simple decency prevented criticism of either her conduct or character. It did not, however, justify the expression of blatant falsehoods. We were repeatedly told that a woman, previously famous for her financial extravagance and love of luxury, identified with the common people. Dissembling is an inherent aspect of monarchy. When sycophancy is impossible the monarchy is threatened. That was the lesson of the abdication crisis. For six weeks the royalists seized their chance to resuscitate deference. The tax break has made it possible to tell the truth about the monarchy.
Of course the tourists and the London crowds turned out to see the coffin go by. But emotions fade as quickly as they blossom. The parade has passed and now perhaps reason will prevail. The failure to pay death duties has allowed us to start explaining again where logic lies.
The Treasury is not controlled by the Crown it is controlled by the Chancellor of the Exchequer (Gordon Brown), the second most powerful figure in the elected government. The Crown has nothing to do with it.
Also gallup polls have shown that most British people are prepared to take tax increases, as long as the money is used for public services and it is spent transparently.
Just proves my point.
Just proves my point.
How can contributing more tax for the good of the whole country be selfish?
If people wished to get the 'most benefits from the public treasury', then they would want to pay less tax and have more money spent on their public services. That would eventually cause the economy to collapse over 'loose fiscal policy'.
Is it really. My maternal grandfather started off as a newsagent, over more than 50 years he built up his business and bought three more shops, which he rented out to other retailers. He worked very hard and only used to take one day off a year, as well as doing the paper rounds when the paperboys didn't turn up.
He died suddenly of a heart attack in 1997, under a Conservative government. The government took 40% of his estate in inheritance tax. Two years later his wife, who had inherited his estate, also died suddenly of a heart attack. Again the government took 40% of the estate. Hence only around 30% of the original estate was left to his daughters. Bizarrely when the Queen Mother, a woman with at least £50 million, dies, she doesn't pay a penny in inheritance tax. Please explain the justice here to me.
I doubt that the Royal family votes for Socialists. If the people continue to do so, they have no one to blame for extortionate taxation but themselves.
The Royal Family don't need to vote for Socialists because they are rolling in money. They always receive the best medical care available, get taken everywhere in chaffeur driven limousines etc, regardless of the cost.
New Labour is hardly Socialist in the traditional sense. It has moved to the right and in my opinion is now further right than the Liberal Democrats.
Rubbish. The poorest people in Britain are taxed disproportionately heavily. If you earn £8,000 per annum, as I have even though I have a PhD, you have to pay the same percentage income tax as someone earning £24,500.
Also most people in Britain are productive and don't spend any time on the dole. Therefore, the 'mob' is not large enough to vote in a government that will give them lots of benefits. Not that there are any politcal parties in Britain at the moment who believe in making the life of the unemployed/unemployable easier.
As I have often mentioned on threads dealing with the American War of Independence, taxation even during the period of Royal "absolutism" NEVER even approached the extortionate levels forced on us by our "freely elected" representatives.
One columnist (I think it was Joe Sobran) pointed out that medieval serfs paid less in feudal fees and taxes, as a proportion of his gross income, than does a modern citizen.
The Royal family may be exempt from the bulk of taxes. I do not regard this as the family shirking its "fair share" so much as the population at large being the victims of wholesale daylight robbery. This is not the fault of any living English monarch; HM does not impose taxes of her own will, but functions as a highly paid rubber stamp for Mr. Blair's party or whatever other scoundrels can obtain a Parliamentary majority. Consider this: assume that the English monarch became an activist Libertarian, revived the Royal prerogative, dismissed Parliament, and abolished Inland Revenue. How many minutes do you think would pass before the monarchy was officially dissolved by the Lower House?
I sincerely doubt that The Guardian has ever used that phrase in connection with the Soviet Union.
I know which "empire" I'd rather take my chances living in.
For the statists at The Guardian, it's another story.
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