Type of site:
business / academic / charity / gov’t / journalistic / political / religious / campaign / blog / forum / education
Evaluation of this source:
· fact 1 opinion
· objective 1 persuasive
· level of bias
· assumptions
· up-to-date?
· reliable?
It is an article which consists of facts. It is objective and poorly biased, however there are some strong assumptions. It is up-o-date and is considered as a reliable source of information for my project.
Main points:
Economically, there seems to be no need for a monarch. Many people say that monarchy is the reason why loads of tourists visit England, but according to Visit England, none of the royal residences are in the list of top 20 tourist attractions. England’s most visited historic attraction remains the Tower of London, which is no longer run by Crown. If there weren’t monarchy anymore the country would have gained a fortune from having Buckingham Palace and other residences fully open to fee-paying tourists. “The fact that the Queen is largely "irrelevant to the political process", as Republic points out, actually seems to be more of a positive than a negative - our Head of State represents the UK, not the ephemeral, often unpopular politics of the UK. She is, quite literally, the face of the nation.” says the author of the article.
Even though the most common arguments for eliminating the monarchy are not even economic or political – they are ideological. With an unelected Head of State British democracy is incomplete. The nation feel particularly fair that one family has privilege and millions of taxpayers’ pounds thrust upon them, while being totally unaccountable to the outside world. Especially as the rest of the republicans are struggling through the worst recession in living memory, it seems illogical that people refuse the opportunity to decide which person represents the nation themselves.
On the other hand, ultimately to this the importance to this is fully overplayed. The world’s democratically elected leaders must be held at least partially responsible for the global downturn in standards of living. More democracy doesn’t necessarily mean more prosperity. In fact, even without a monarchy the results must not give truly democratic outcome (depending on your preferred definition of democracy), since around 35% of
eligible voters refuse to have their say, even at General Elections.
Strangely, there seem to be few strong arguments on either side of this debate. The reason why is that actually abolishing democracy wouldn’t really make much difference because even though vacated royal residences certainly would attract the tourists, many of them would have visited London anyway just to see the famous landmarks. According to Republic, the main problem with having a monarchy is that it grants "unchecked power to the central government". But if the central government can’t even place a tax on pasties without facing major public backlash, we might not have to worry too much about that.
Perhaps the most important factor in the debate is actually the simplest one; the public feels good about the monarchy. It may well be the case that the Queen has brainwashed the entire nation - the Royal Family probably spends a lot of money on PR - but she is certainly a more revered leader than any of the current political elite. Following the lives of the royals offers a unique brand of escapism that cannot easily be replicated - it is akin to watching a real-life fairytale, or perhaps a very posh version of EastEnders. So do we really need the monarchy? Not really, but that's probably the wrong question. Whatever the reasons may be, we do like the monarchy, and that should be enough for now.
