On the latest episode of his show Last Week Tonight, John Oliver takes a close look at the British royal family and takes apart the arguments given by those who think that the institution should continue. He also exposes the evasiveness and lack of responsibility taken by them for the horrors, including slavery, committed in their name over the centuries that enriched them and the UK so immensely. He walks us through the gruesome history of how the monarchy acquired their lands and wealth and then passed it down to their descendants. To add insult to injury, they also are exempt from paying most inheritance taxes, so that these layabouts can live a life of luxury on money that they have not worked for.
Mano Singham
Just another Freethought Blogs site
Greed, perhaps.
But I’m not seeing savagery in the current British monarchy.
John Morales @ # 1: But I’m not seeing savagery in the current British monarchy.
You haven’t seen Prince Andrew’s private video collection, either.
That’s what I wrote, Pierce: “I’m not seeing savagery in the current British monarchy.”
PS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synecdoche
There was a recent BBC TV documentary on Queen Anne, in which the presenter, Lucy Worsley, complained that Anne had been unfairly portrayed as weak and lacking in initiative. But as the main “achievements” to her name appeared to be expanding the monarchy’s investment in the Atlantic slave trade, and bribing Scottish parliamentarians to vote the Scottish Parliament into extinction as part of the 1707 Act of Union, her reputation might have been better served by leaving her in decent obscurity!
These people are so keen on bloodsports they take their small children along with them when they go hunting and shooting. If you’re “not seeing savagery” the only conclusion one can draw is that you’re
(a) blind, wilfully or otherwise,
(b) stupid
(c) both.
… and fishing. Don’t forget fishing!
John Morales @ 6
Fortunately, Britain currently has neither mermaids or selkies or it would be a grisly scene.
John Morales@6,
How would you like to be dragged underwater by a hook through your mouth and drowned?
Exactly, KG.
—
Perhaps Mano could have been a bit more explicit that he was referring to hunting and fishing in this piece. I admit I thought it was supposed to be about savagery to people, but there you go.
To clarify, I was referring to the savagery against people that is part of the historical record of the monarchy, including the slave trade and the massacres and other brutalities during colonial times. I was not talking about personal acts of savagery by the current crop of layabouts. The monarchy benefitted from all those atrocities and thus is complicit in them. Oliver points out that even to this date, the representatives of the monarchy refuse to provide unequivocal apologies for their past complicity that enabled them to live the luxurious lives they do now.
🙂 Thanks, Mano. I know.
I actually did watch the clip (illegally, of course, since I’m in Oz).
It is a good piece overall, I quite like John Oliver.
Perhaps I should not have named you when indulging in my sarcasm.
@ 10 Mano Singham
@ 11 John Morales
earlier…
@ 1 John Morales
This ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, and non-binary peeps, is absolutely textbook trolling. Here we have Morales admitting their opening comment was completely disingenuous all along. And of course they later went on to pretend sonofrojblake’s comment # 5 was claiming the whole OP was about animal cruelty knowing that to be false and calling it “sarcasm”.
This has been Morales’ shtick for about a decade -- say something stupid predicated on pretending to misunderstand in order to start an argument, and then pretend to misunderstand the responses… for fun. It’s incredibly tedious.
Morales, could you perhaps try to contribute, for the first time in your life, something worthwhile to places you frequent so people actually value your contributions instead of wishing you’d stop being a dickhead and fuck off; or alternatively take up a different hobby that’s less annoying -- have you considered train spotting? Stamp collecting? There must be other ways you could fill your twilight years other than being a tedious fuckwit on the internet? Macramé?
Silentbob, ah, off-topic and personal as is your wont.
Nope. It was 100% genuinely expressive of my sentiment.
I still think the (current instantiation) of the monarchy (British) is greedy, but not savage.
A case of “pearls before swine”.
Speaking of savagery, I was reminded of the small and local kind I read about a while back:
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/may/08/picnic-protesters-duke-of-somerset-woods-right-to-roam-totnes
Not only do the toffs keep unearned public lands in their own hands, they also breed and release tens of millions of pheasants into the wild, purely for the fun of shooting living things to death.
Holms @14: now I’m embarrassed to share a surname with those persons. 😎
(For the record, I’m related, by adoption, to a rather rough lot who escaped the Irish potato famine; and I have no interest in the lifestyles of rentiers and the infamous.)