England Should Not Remain A Monarchy

Resolution not negated! “The British monarch simply doesn't have enough power to engage in "abuse" of it, and therefore, a "bad" monarch poses no threat.” The monarch still has a veto power to stop laws from being created, which could lead to conflict if a bad King or Queen decides that she will not allow good acts to be officially made law. Although it is rare and (obviously) not a very safe or responsible act, this power could still be used if the right person decided to use it. “In one instance the Queen completely vetoed the Military Actions Against Iraq Bill in 1999” “The guidance also warns civil servants that obtaining consent can cause delays to legislation and reveals that even amendments may need to be run past the royals for further consent.” (1) Also, the monarch has still a huge amount of money and resources from public funds that it may use for whatever purpose she/he might want. The monarchy spends a huge amount of money on things that aren’t necessary, and this could get worse with a bad ruler. My argument stands: the monarch has a very small amount of power, but he has enough to complicate our lives, so why keep an unelected, undemocratic ruler who can to potentially give us a hard time and is not that politically valuable? “the monarchy costs each individual Briton less than $5 per year, which is completely negligible -- especially considering the immense symbolic significance that the monarchy has. For the cause of maintaining Britain's most long-lived secular institution, $5 is easily worth it.” Even though the individual cost per person may be small, the huge amount of money that is used on royal expenditure is incredible. The point still stands that instead of using the millions of pounds that the monarch has used on cars or houses or jewellery, all of that money could instead be used for the public. To fund hospitals, pay workers, repairs, etc. Republic’s estimate of the cost of monarchy 2013-14 was almost £300m, enough to pay several thousand workers.. or one monarch. (2) Below is a list of incredible costs that could be used for the better: “The Queen's "head of state expenditure" - official expenditure relating to her duties as head of state - is met from public funds. The total spend in 2000-01 was £35m, a figure which excludes the cost of security from the police and army, and of soldiers on ceremonial duty” “The most controversial part of the expenditure is the Civil List, the money provided on a 10-year cycle for the running of the Queen's household. The spend has been fixed at £7.9m per year until 2011...£15.3m spent on funding the occupied royal palaces (listed above)... (3) Travel costs incurred by the Prince of Wales, who has recently begun to take over official duties previously undertaken by his mother, included a £434,000 visit to India with the Duchess of Cornwall, and a charter flight to attend the funeral of Nelson Mandela which cost £246,160. (4) “William & Kate's wedding generated $165 million (from accommodation travel, nightlife, etc), and the birth of Baby Cambridge was directly responsible for a $383 million boost in consumer spending.” Just to be clear, “Baby Cambridge is SET to boost consumer spending even more, according to Britain's Center for Retail Research, to the tune of $383 million”. These are rare occurrences, that bring a sudden boost to the economy, but it is still too rare compared to the yearly £300m that the monarchy spends, and would soon be overwhelmed by the royal expenditure. The expenditure alone would almost double that of the profits from these events in just three years. Constant tourism (i.e landmarks, museums) has most of the tourist income in the long run. “Overseas visitors spent £21.01 billion in the UK in 2013” (5), 2013’s profit had a huge number compared to the revenue of the wedding AND the birth of the baby had combined. It completely dwarfs the revenue collected from the predicted income of a baby birth and a wedding, which came suddenly and will not repeat for a few years, while 2013's (or the yearly) profit is more or less constant. This goes back to my original point that the monarchy itself is not vital to tourism, or even the most important part. I did not exactly concede point 3. Although it is true that some people find the monarchy symbolic, I said that this argument is not strong enough. Rationalism is better than appeals to emotion in order to prove something. Symbolism (in the way we use it here) in itself is not enough reason, because that would be using an appeal to emotion to say the monarchy should not go. (1)http://www.theguardian.com... (2)https://republic.org.uk... (3) http://www.theguardian.com... (4)http://www.independent.co.uk... (5)https://www.gov.uk...