This country would undoubtedly have been far better off under the Levellers and the New Model Army

 

Sounds like the headliners at Reading '91....

 

Simon Cowell should be our first President.

 

Well, that sort of total idiocy would actually make a Monarchist out of even me..... :rolleyes:

Let's just compare that to Germany where the Kaiser's were replaced by a chancellor & head of state which saw the rise of a certain chancellor Adolf Hitler and a certain National Socialist German Workers Party take power and the rest is ahem ... history.

 

Oh, and no revolutions in France in the last hundred years .... well on a technicality you are correct. But my goodness there so easily could have been with the 1917 French Army Mutinees and 51 years later the unrest in Paris and northern France in May-June 1968 (very similar to what failed in China 1989), both of these two social unrests led to constitutional crisis that makes the Poll Tax riots look like a nice quiet childrens party. :lol:

 

And, has Germany had any problems with its system since 1945....? NO..... The conditions which led to Hitler's rise to power was a combination of the Depression and the totally and utterly punitive sanctions placed on Germany by the Versailles treaty (the reason why Germany was hit far harder by the Depression than any other European country), which were frankly just fukkin' vindictive on the part of France and Britain..... Frankly I would say that now in 2009, Germany has a far better system of Democracy than UK does..... But, you just carry on living in the past and refuse to forgive the one mistake Germany made, as opposed to the many the UK and France have in their history....

 

And, frankly, it's a damn shame the Paris '68 unrest didn't succeed..... I'm all for unrest, it's what's needed if you ask me...

 

Richard, neither you nor George Orwell will EVER convince me that a person should be granted a title or privelege based purely upon an accident of birth, or what favours they do for a sitting PM (ie, "Lord" Levy, "Lord" Mandelson, etc)... It goes against the grain of true Democracy where you should only be in a position of power, or have privelege if the PEOPLE will it...... I look at all these old fossils in the Lords and just find them laughable, laughable that this is so-called "British Democracy" in action in the 21st Century...... I'm frankly ashamed to be British when I see this total nonsense, this travesty of democracy which has no place in the new Millennium frankly. Perhaps if we were to have a more egalitarian monarchy like in Holland or Scandinavia in which privilege, sectarianism and class system are far more downplayed, then we could talk, but until that happens and the establishment is rid of the Sectarianism which is nothing more than a cancer infecting wider society, then I'm afraid, I am going to be 100% anti-Monarchist, because it's the monarchy which personifies this cancer, imo.....

 

The US has made mistakes, certainly, but their actual system of democracy, if used correctly, is far better and far more accountable than ours.... At least they actually have a Constitution and a Bill of Rights, even if some attempt to pervert them..... It's not the fault of the system, it's the fault of individuals who dont use the system to benefit the whole of society, as it SHOULD be used.....

^ And here's another thing for all you folks who think Monarchy is a wonderful thing.... World War One.... Basically fought in the name of Imperialism and the furthering of the ruling classes of France and Britain... The French and the Brits dont like the Germans getting a bit uppity and carving out their own Empire, concoct excuses and spurious reasons to get involved in a localised problem in the Balkans, where a young Serbian man assassinates one of Europe's ruling elites - the Archduke of Austria, and then all hell breaks loose, when other ruling elites get needlessly involved and choose to turn a local problem, which shouldn't extend beyond trying the man concerned with a crime in a court of law, into a massive one engulfing the whole of Europe.... All done purely with the aim of putting Germany in its place....

 

It's especially ridiculous when you look at the facts - the Kaiser and the King were both cousins..... ie, they belonged to the same elite family.... proving once and for all that the ruling elites will always have more in common with one another than they do with the people they rule over......

 

No Richard, I think all things considered, I really, really DO prefer the EU and European unity to having the sort of Feudal, Imperialistic nonsense resulting in stupid, unecessary wars fought over this or that patch of dirt in the middle of sodding nowhere (a bit like the fukkin' FALKLANDS actually, a similar neo-Imperialist piece of sh!t "war" fought by Maggie utilising the whole flag-waving, jingoistic "Britannia rules the waves/God Bless the Queen/The Empire Strikes Back" load of old John Bull... <_<) , which existed before the EEC/EU became a reality..... And if you dont, then you're frankly an idiot..... -_-