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Exactly. I'm glad we agreeThat was my point all along. I wanted to understand why you had made a claim about which you had no information that was irrelevant in the first place.
He neglects to mention his ability to speak Finnish in his profile.That is fine, since I didn't claim that he was interpreting from Finnish. I only claimed that you do not know if he was interpreting from English (which is still the case, since he lists several other languages that he could have been interpreting from).
Because that isn't his job. He works for the BBC whose main output is in English. So his job is to translate from English into BSL.You aren't looking at a person randomly chosen from the world's population, or even from the world's BSL interpreters. The person in question is the BBC's interpreter who was tasked with interpreting a song in Finnish into BSL. If the BBC has even one such interpreter who understands Finnish, it is most likely they would give the job to that person.
And given that less than 0.1% of the world's population speak Finnish, it is statistically improbable that he is one of them.
I think it's reasonable to assume that a BBC BSL signer doesn't speak Finnish.Why is it reasonable to assume that someone whose job it is to interpret between languages doesn't speak one specific language?
In the sense that the Finish original was translated into English and the bloke was doing BSL based on that.But how can you or your church buddy know that's what he's doing just from watching it?
Apparently that dude is signing an English translation of the song.In what sense is it an English translation?
Apparently it’s about leaving work on Friday, feeling a bit silly at the pub and then loosening up after a few drinks. Or somethingThe Rebecca Black of Finland?
You whoever seem to believe in "opposite day" That a leader who governors with the will of the people is a tyrant. And that a leader who has inherited his title without any input of the people he rules is in fact more democratic than someone you would have to vote for.The reason you think that is because, instead of reading what I have said several times by now, you continue to erroneously interpret my statements as applying to the monarch as an individual rather than the government as a whole. I am not sure what else I can do to progress the conversation if what I have already said is not being read or understood.
So instead of me asking when Prince Charles wins an election, let me know when the UK has a head of the monarchy which was elected by the people.Referring to the same individual with different words is not a fundamentally different response.
Bro, I own a dictionary. Let me know when Prince Charles wins the elections.Once again, you are focusing on the monarch (an individual) and not the monarchy (a system of government). You are not listening to what I am saying, and instead replacing the subject of my posts with something else.
I was perfectly content to discuss England's dragon problem but you had to take a far more farcical turn, that a monarchy is more democratic than a democracy, which I was happy to oblige for a time.You continue to use those words as though they are contradictory. They are not. We are not comparing a monarchy to a democracy, but two different forms of democracy, and until you acknowledge that it makes perfect sense that you would not understand what I am saying.
It is obvious that a monarch cannot be democratic.Good thing that's not what I said, then. But you know that.
you seem to be making the claim that constitutional monarchies are very democratic because they always have impotent executivesThat is not what I'm saying at all. I'm saying that, all else being equal, a constitutional monarchy with a democratic culture tends to be more stable and more democratic than a system with an elected president and a democratic culture. I have also made the point that this is far less important than many other factors.
I do not eat disgusting ultraprocessed vegetable material reformed to look, taste, and feel like meat. Ew.It seems strange to avoid such a broad category of foods based on the general principle of production. Personally, I prefer to try specific products and decide if I like them.
I'll stick with real food myself.What do you mean by "real food"? Do you only pick wild fruits and hunt game to avoid the human influence of artificial selection? Or is making our food supply more efficient only okay as long as we don't understand what we're doing too well?
i realize i am of course doing major mental gymnastics here (probably because i just don't understand politics on your level), but do you think it's possible that these constitutional monarchies all function along similar lines because they share a common cultural and developmental heritage? like maybe the fact that they are all european is not a complete coincidence? i could be wrong, but it just seems like they're all pretty closely related to one another in space and time, so maybe we should be cautious about overgeneralizing from what is clearly not any kind of random sample.I'm not sure what point you think you're making. Like, yes, political culture is a very important part of any political system that relies heavily on convention? Did that need to be pointed out?
It seems to me that the UK has had the good fortune of having a reasonable monarchy made up of reasonble people. This is not the same thing as having a well designed government. The test of how well a government is designed is what happens when unreasonable people gain control.The UK is not the only democratic constitutional monarchy. There are six monarchies in the EU alone, and several more elsewhere in Europe. With the exception of the absolute monarchy of the Vatican, they all function along similar principles of limited power granted to the sovereign, whether through legislation or convention. It takes some mental gymnastics to suppose that they have all simply been fortunate for the past century or two.
If any of these appointed members does something the public finds egregious we can threaten the elected members of the government to remove them or we'll vote them out. One only needs to look at the Trump presidency to see this system in action.It takes 4 years to vote the POTUS out, during which time they can continue running the country with relatively few checks and balances. Meanwhile, if the King of the United Kingdom decided to try anything fishy today, you can bet that Parliament would be discussing how to put a stop to it tomorrow. Direct election is not the only possible means of accountability, nor is it a particularly efficient one.
If the head of state was not accountable to the people in this country then our world would be very different today and probably not in a good way.That is because the head of state of the US has executive authority, whereas that of the UK does not (in practice). That has been my main point all along.
Do you mean ceremonial roles or actual decisions? I only mean that question half rhetorically. I can't actually find an article detailing any time that Queen Elizabeth intervened in government.Dissolution of Parliament is a royal prerogative. When the Prime Minister decides it is time to hold an election, he or she advises the monarch of such, and the monarch dissolves the current Parliament so that a new one may be elected. I'm not saying this couldn't be done any other way, but it is the way it is done right now, so simply removing the monarch's power to dissolve Parliament would prevent the system from functioning.
It's not a question of why it hasn't been fixed. I disagree that there is a problem to be fixed at all. The system merely works differently from the American system, and relies more on convention.Of course not. If there is a problem to be solved, then we should solve the problem. My objection is to you claiming that we should solve a problem that doesn't exist.I understand why it hasn't been fixed. It takes expenditure of political capitol to change such things.
This is an interesting idea. Is there some UK doctrine where this is stated explicitly or is this something that we hope they'll do in the event of a crisis?This is my personal viewpoint, as someone who grew up in a country where Elizabeth II was head of state (but not the UK). Many others in the UK and elsewhere in the Commonwealth will have differing opinions, I'm sure.
Also, I have to say, if we're calling a president, who is elected, less democratic than a monarch who isn't then we're doing great violence to the English language.We are not talking about the same thing. You are talking about the monarch, I am talking about the monarchy. You are talking about an individual, I am talking about how the government functions as a whole. And yes, I do believe that a constitutional monarchy functions more democratically than an executive presidency.
