The Royal Family

[chrisp65]

1 hour ago, Panto_Villan said:

You wouldn’t invent the Welsh language or Brutalist architecture if it didn’t already exist, yet we go out of our way to preserve those things. Shakespeare is pretty outdated writing by today’s standards too, but history and heritage has inherent value.

C’mon then, I’ll bite.

You didn’t go out of your way to preserve the Welsh language, I don’t know if that’s trolling or ignorance, it doesn’t really matter either way. You went out of your way to crush it. But because of direct violent action that lead to people going to prison, the law was changed.

Perhaps you’re on to something here, perhaps something violent and illegal needs to happen to make progress.

[El Zen]

In related (by blood, literally, the inbred ****s) news, we have a royal engagement announcement in Norway. 

Princess Martha, a psychic and a faith healer, is to marry an American shaman. 

Should be great for tourism, no doubt. Less so for the quality of journalism over the next few months. 

[sparrow1988]

41 minutes ago, El Zen said:

In related (by blood, literally, the inbred ****s) news, we have a royal engagement announcement in Norway. 

Princess Martha, a psychic and a faith healer, is to marry an American shaman. 

Should be great for tourism, no doubt. Less so for the quality of journalism over the next few months. 

What do you expect them to do? Marry a commoner like Kate Middleton and risk contaminating the blood line with peasantry?

[Panto_Villan]

1 hour ago, chrisp65 said:

C’mon then, I’ll bite.

You didn’t go out of your way to preserve the Welsh language, I don’t know if that’s trolling or ignorance, it doesn’t really matter either way. You went out of your way to crush it. But because of direct violent action that lead to people going to prison, the law was changed.

Perhaps you’re on to something here, perhaps something violent and illegal needs to happen to make progress.

The exchequer pays out public money and legislation is in place to support a language that is objectively pointless if you're look at it from a viewpoint of pure utility. That viewpoint would of course be missing the point of why language and culture should be preserved, which is why I used it to illustrate that looking at things from the viewpoint of pure utility is a bad idea. Personally, I'm perfectly happy with my taxpayer money being spent on supporting the Welsh language just as I am it supporting museums I'll never visit, etc.

Funny that you're foaming at the mouth as soon as there's some percieved slight about your culture though, given how keen you are to fling insults at people daring to enjoy an aspect of their own culture.

[chrisp65]

12 minutes ago, Panto_Villan said:

The exchequer pays out public money and legislation is in place to support a language that is objectively pointless if you're look at it from a viewpoint of pure utility. That viewpoint would of course be missing the point of why language and culture should be preserved, which is why I used it to illustrate that looking at things from the viewpoint of pure utility is a bad idea. Personally, I'm perfectly happy with my taxpayer money being spent on supporting the Welsh language just as I am it supporting museums I'll never visit, etc.

Funny that you're foaming at the mouth as soon as there's some percieved slight about your culture though, given how keen you are to fling insults at people daring to enjoy an aspect of their own culture.

 

It wasn’t the insult, it was the apparent ignorance of the situation. But I’m more up to speed on where you’re coming from now.

Interesting you wouldn’t see the monarchy as being my culture that I’m entitled to a view on?

All good though, I think we’ve both learnt quite a lot.

[Panto_Villan]

53 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

It wasn’t the insult, it was the apparent ignorance of the situation. But I’m more up to speed on where you’re coming from now.

Interesting you wouldn’t see the monarchy as being my culture that I’m entitled to a view on?

All good though, I think we’ve both learnt quite a lot.

It's entirely up to you whether you consider the Queen part of your culture or not, I'm not here to gatekeep either way.

It was purely the way you used the word "you" in your previous message made it sound like you very much viewed your culture as seperate from British culture. Sounds like that was just due to a mutual misunderstanding though, in which case no harm done.

Edited June 7, 2022 by Panto_Villan

[bickster]

1 hour ago, Panto_Villan said:

in place to support a language that is objectively pointless if you're look at it from a viewpoint of pure utility

One side of my family were native Welsh speakers, quite frankly this is pure ignorance. It's not a language that ever died out. There have always been parts of Wales that were majority Welsh speaking and the only reason usage died out was because the English suppressed the language for years, made it illegal, beat people and imprisoned people for using it. Wales' own cultural genocide at the hands of the English. That tax money now gets used to help the language re-establish it's self is only correct.

 

[Panto_Villan]

Just now, bickster said:

One side of my family were native Welsh speakers, quite frankly this is pure ignorance. It's not a language that ever died out. There have always been parts of Wales that were majority Welsh speaking and the only reason usage died out was because the English suppressed the language for years, made it illegal, beat people and imprisoned people for using it. Wales' own cultural genocide at the hands of the English. That tax money now gets used to help the language re-establish it's self is only correct.

No, I know. And I'm just going to answer this in a little more detail because I don't want to derail the conversation further and I guess it's easy to misunderstand my point if you take it out of the context it was made in. The intention isn't to imply the Welsh language is pointless or whitewash the history surrounding it. It was purely to illustrate that you can't consider a piece of culture in a vaccuum, because then you omit the history and heritage tied up in it.

The fact of the matter is that almost every Welsh person can speak English precisely because the language was suppressed. If you were to look at the current situation purely from a perspective of utility (i.e. can people communicate with one another) then Welsh is completely surplus to requirements because everyone in Wales speaks English now. But that's a very simplistic reading of the situation. There's a lot of history and culture tied up in a language and that's why public money is spent on preserving Welsh, which is totally fine by me.

The overall point is that the same is true for the monarchy. If you created a new monarchy out of thin air it would be very different from the current monarchy even if the structure and role was the same. It wouldn't have the positive associations and history that many people in this country have for the monarchy, and indeed nor would it have the negative historical associations (i.e. the british empire) too. So while you wouldn't want to create a new monarchy from scratch today, that doesn't necessarily mean the existing one should be abolished.

[bickster]

2 minutes ago, Panto_Villan said:

No, I know. And I'm just going to answer this in a little more detail because I don't want to derail the conversation further and I guess it's easy to misunderstand my point if you take it out of the context it was made in. The intention isn't to imply the Welsh language is pointless or whitewash the history surrounding it. It was purely to illustrate that you can't consider a piece of culture in a vaccuum, because then you omit the history and heritage tied up in it.

The fact of the matter is that almost every Welsh person can speak English precisely because the language was suppressed. If you were to look at the current situation purely from a perspective of utility (i.e. can people communicate with one another) then Welsh is completely surplus to requirements because everyone in Wales speaks English now. But that's a very simplistic reading of the situation. There's a lot of history and culture tied up in a language and that's why public money is spent on preserving Welsh, which is totally fine by me.

The overall point is that the same is true for the monarchy. If you created a new monarchy out of thin air it would be very different from the current monarchy even if the structure and role was the same. It wouldn't have the positive associations and history that many people in this country have for the monarchy, and indeed nor would it have the negative historical associations (i.e. the british empire) too. So while you wouldn't want to create a new monarchy from scratch today, that doesn't necessarily mean the existing one should be abolished.

It's only 'objectively pointless' from the view of an outsider looking in. Just because everyone in Wales can speak English, doesn't mean they should have to, only an outsider would think that.

[Panto_Villan]

1 minute ago, bickster said:

It's only 'objectively pointless' from the view of an outsider looking in. Just because everyone in Wales can speak English, doesn't mean they should have to, only an outsider would think that.

Yes, that's the point I was making. Welsh isn't pointless, it simply looks that way if you strip it of its context. It's therefore a good illustration of why you shouldn't try to strip things of their context.

I'm aware I'm now repeating myself and the subject was already pretty tangential from the original topic, so I'm just going to leave things there.

[MakemineVanilla]

20 minutes ago, Panto_Villan said:

Yes, that's the point I was making. Welsh isn't pointless, it simply looks that way if you strip it of its context. It's therefore a good illustration of why you shouldn't try to strip things of their context.

I'm aware I'm now repeating myself and the subject was already pretty tangential from the original topic, so I'm just going to leave things there.

"You wouldn’t invent the Welsh language or Brutalist architecture if it didn’t already exist, yet we go out of our way to preserve those things. Shakespeare is pretty outdated writing by today’s standards too, but history and heritage has inherent value."

I don't think you expressed yourself well and you probably should have qualified it, to make it clear.

It read like you were trolling Chris, which made it very funny.

Having a monarch does seem like an anachronism but modern American history doesn't offer much to recommend the benefits of a republic.

Apparently, the citizens feel the need to arm themselves to prevent it from turning into a tyranny.

Benjamin Franklin was never very confident that it would work.

 

[Xann]

DON'T PROD

THE

[mjmooney]

51 minutes ago, MakemineVanilla said:

Having a monarch does seem like an anachronism but modern American history doesn't offer much to recommend the benefits of a republic.

The USA has many problems, but they are not a result of being a republic rather than a monarchy. 

[Rds1983]

This thread gets weirder by the day. I can only imagine where it will have gone to by Sunday morning. 

[Rds1983]

My 4 year old came home from school with this today. 

[YouUnastanFren]

17 minutes ago, Rds1983 said:

My 4 year old came home from school with this today. 

That is creepy as ****. Replace the queen with Kim Jong Un and it's obvious propaganda that we all laugh at

[tonyh29]

25 minutes ago, Rds1983 said:

My 4 year old came home from school with this today. 

Good on them , I hope more schools did this 

[chrisp65]

3 minutes ago, tonyh29 said:

Good on them , I hope more schools did this 

Nadhim Zahawi has spent a few million getting a book printed that will be distributed free to all schools next September.

[Rds1983]

46 minutes ago, YouUnastanFren said:

That is creepy as ****. Replace the queen with Kim Jong Un and it's obvious propaganda that we all laugh at

I had a quick scan and it's about 70 pages and 10,000 words long. No child is reading it by themselves. 

[markavfc40]

Regardless of what you think of the Queen/Royal family at a time when we have thousands of children going to school hungry that are not entitled to a free school meal I can't help but think rather than pissing money up the wall on books about the Queen it could be better used to feed those hungry children. Tory ideological choices for you.