The Monarchy: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

foreign concerns the British

monarchy

the best thing that can happen to white actors, as literally everything else the

monarchy

has given the world royal weddings in the introduction of new royal babies and, of course, moments like this may have grown in a palace, but today Prince Charles was doing his best to get in touch with the mood on the streets, oh take that crazy pace, oh no, no, no, no, no, no, maybe not There is nothing more pathetic than the most famous adult song in the world, So Dig That Crazy, with a rhythm that I can very well.

Only to describe it as high energy, the monarchy is clearly in transition right now following the death of the queen, an event that sparked 10 days of public mornings with a massive queue of people queuing for hours to pay their respects, but while some were devastated, others had more complicated feelings the queen is like she can't tell me about the caring part and then tell me about the doctor yeah I'll clean it up it's a person who died like sad like okay and then they don't care about them yeah I understand that I had a similar reaction when Grande died in the Platoon.

I don't care because Big was pompous, good for nothing and let's be honest I voted for Trump, but I care a little because I know Carrie cares, look at her there in her

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devastated moments doing absolutely nothing but her ambivalence speaks to the fact That, to the extent that Americans may not realize that the monarchy is not a universally beloved institution and were very kind about it, others have been much less kind after the crisis. Following Queen's death, many sporting events observed a minute's silence, but some crowds, especially in Scotland and Ireland, took a different path and this song proved particularly popular overall.

Yes, this is in a box, which I know sounds insensitive, but I'd say of all the places they could. I've sung that she was in the box is actually quite generous and look, you can make that tasteless. You can also argue that it's a lot of fun. Two things can be true here, we even got into trouble when Sky TV in the UK cut a couple of fairly benign jokes we made the

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she died, who knows if this segment will be aired on TV there. In fact, in case they refuse, we have prepared an alternative program for them where this story is replaced by a 25-minute one.

Replaying this video of Winston Churchill going backwards down a Benny Hill-themed waterslide so they don't have anything to do with it, but in the UK the argument was that after the Queen's death it just wasn't the time. To criticize her or the monarchy in general would be rude, but two months have passed since then and Charles is now king and, although for many his mother's charm lay in her longevity, she was the only sovereign that most Britons had ever known. known and his tendency towards silence. She never really knew what she thought about anything. None of those things are true of her son, but she was a man whose face answers the question: What would happen if two cousins ​​had a son?

He will take the throne at the age of 73. He had to do it. to put it mildly and an incredibly complicated divorce and has been outspoken on a variety of topics, from architecture to the environment to his belief in homeopathic medicine, including support for a controversial cancer treatment involving 13 fruit juices at a time. day, coffee enemas and

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ly vitamin injections. He doesn't have his mother's inscrutability or enjoy her level of public affection as his accession to the throne comes as the UK faces a cost of living crisis, with one man even recently directly confronting Charles about this: We have to pay for his parade. wow foreigner, that baffled him oh his part, says it all, but that wasn't the only recent protest.

This week, a man threw several eggs at Charles on the street and when he was caught, he didn't really seem all that sorry given that. this was his arrest photo, he was released on bail with conditions including, and this is true, that he not be allowed to be within 500 meters of the king and that he not be allowed to possess any eggs in a public space , which really shows how far the power is. of the monarchy having fallen a few hundred years ago it would have been an instant beheading now the punishment is to be careful in the refrigerated aisle Charles is now king and will in fact have a formal coronation next May which will be broadcast on cameras around the world before everyone If that happens, we thought

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it might be worth looking at the British Monarchy specifically to ask what the point of this is, first in the UK and then in countries around the world where the Monarch still serves as a figurehead and let's start with the most basic.

The question of what the Royal Family does is something even they have struggled to define in the past, as evidenced by this clip of Prince Philip from 1968. Could you tell me what your job is in your mind? Well, I have one. You are self-employed, but you must surely have a clear idea of ​​the role you play in modern society. It is very difficult to answer. Wow, honestly it's surprising to see him initially laugh at it before considering the question and then facing some sort of existential crisis, but since that question it seemed to stump him, maybe we can help, unlike the US, we're the boss of government and the head of state are the same person, in the United Kingdom they are two very different roles because well, for centuries the British monarch had enormous political power. he was gradually stripped over the years to the point that the position is now largely symbolic.

The demoniac's primary role as head of state is to receive incoming and outgoing ambassadors and visiting heads of state and conduct foreign visits. Here is the queen meeting Narendra Modi. she has taken a carriage with Vladimir Putin and here she is with former president Trump, just two people delighted to be there, yes, you don't normally see such an unhappy couple while wearing fancy costumes, besides cats on Halloween, they also have responsibilities smaller. I also like visiting factories and opening things and also, and this is true, sending birthday cards to people when they turn 100. Basically, I think of the Royals as Mickey and Minnie at Disneyland, they don't run the attractions, but they are a mascot for the entire operation. and people like to take photos with them and the Defenders of the Royal Family will say that the ceremonial aspect of the monarchy is really the whole point;

In fact, the Royal Family's official website describes the role of the sovereign as a focus for unity of national identity and pride and giving a sense of stability and continuity, but that comes at a price, as you heard that man shout Before, Great Britain pays millions of pounds each year to support the royal family, although some will argue that it is actually money well spent, curiously the British State gives or the government gives to the royal family approximately 100 million pounds per year, it is called Sovereign Grant to pay for maintenance, but tourism generated by the royal family generates around 500 million a year, so that's five to one.

I would take the return on investment well. Defenders of the monarchy argue that any money the royal family costs is far outweighed by what they contribute; It's the exact same argument that thousands of men have made to their wives about investing in cryptocurrencies and they are doing very well right now, but a few things about that first the claim that they generate 500 million a year in tourism is highly disputed and not It's that that disappears if the royal family does it you can still visit a palace if no one lives inside it no one shows up at Versailles and says wait no one lives here, it's a difficult step for me and the idea that the monarchy only costs 100 million of pounds also has some important asterisks because while it is true that, as they say, the Sovereign Grant amounts to just over a pound per person in the United Kingdom it is by no means the only source of royal income.

The new king now has three main sources of wealth. Sovereign grant money. The UK treasury gives to the crown to carry out its royal duties. The private wealth of the family. duchy of Lancaster a private holding of land and assets the Monarch receives his annual profits the queen received $27 million

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year it is true the duchy of Lancaster is a huge portfolio of properties containing land that was incidentally confiscated by the monarchy in the 13th century, after which they continue to make personal profits to this day, so King Charles receives money from the government, money passed down through his family, and money from the Duchy of Lancaster, and none of that includes the Duchy of Lancaster.

Cornwall in the hands of whoever holds the title. from the Prince of Wales, used to be Charles, now it's Prince William, which is a separate billion-dollar real estate portfolio, almost the size of Chicago, by the way, including vacation rental office space in Seaside in London and a Suburban Supermarket Depot that alone generated 26 million. in extra income for the family last year, so the Royal Family's wealth, unlike their gene pool, is enormous and although in 1993, in response to public anger over their spending, both the Queen and Charles agreed pay voluntary income taxes, that arrangement is not necessarily permanent in the meantime. the two dukedoms are completely exempt from corporate taxes and Charles doesn't have to pay any inheritance tax on what the queen passed on to him, and when you take all that into account, it sure starts to look like they're costing a lot. much more than just a pound per person, so is it worth it?

Well, people may disagree. I think my position on the royal family is pretty well documented for me. They are like a human appendage. We have long since evolved and no longer need them and there is a compelling relationship. case for its surgical removal, but I admit I am in the minority when it comes to Brits, many feel exactly the same as this woman. I just think it's good that we have it and it makes us a little bit unusual, unique, yeah, I mean, it's good that we have it. It's a British thing, right? And I think a lot of people would like what we have, but it's good that we have it.

It's not what you say about a billionaire family taken advantage of and exempt from paying most taxes. what you say about a water dispenser in your fridge ask about it being a british thing that's not much of a justification you don't know what else is a british thing mushy peace if you've never had the pleasure imagine guacamole emotionally inaccessible they're like they're mashed potatoes are killed , but the fact is that 67% of people in the UK feel the monarchy should remain that way for now. She seems safe there, but that brings us to the second part of this story because abroad her role is a much more open question.

The king is now head of the Commonwealth of Nations, a loose alliance largely made up of former British colonies, 14 of which still have the British monarch as their titular Head of State despite being self-governing nations, these are those countries and The debates have been in full swing. for a while there were many questions about what the crown represents as we mentioned back in March William and Kate had to cancel the first stop of their Royal tour of the Caribbean due to overwhelming protests locally and in Australia following the death of the Queen The Australian Women's Football League held a moment of silence for her, but because by pure coincidence they were in the middle of a 10-day tribute to indigenous players, they chose not to do so for the rest of the morning, causing that this man would be scared.

Seriously what a shame I mean any sporting organization in this country would think there's any reason not to honor the queen it's a joke and why can't they have a minute's silence on indigenous week anyway. I'm serious, you know, indigenous people. They are Australian, they were subjects of Her Majesty the Queen and you can have your arguments about colonialism or whatever, but the Queen in this country and for the world was a conclusive asset that the entire history of colonialism cannot be ignored. like to say I have all the arguments about murder or whatever, but at the end of the day, Charles Manson was a family man, let's talk about that story that begins in Australia, where indigenous people suffered a lot under colonial rule, researchers have found evidence of, conservatively, almost 200 massacres of Aboriginal people. people at the hands of the British colonial and military police and hundreds more by settlers and when the Queen herself visited Australia in 1954, First Nations people were not counted as part of the population and children were still forcibly separated from their families to assimilate them with the whites.

In the homes so have their arguments about colonialism or whatever, it's largely what we should do, not overlook it and forcepeople to mourn a symbol of a painful past, and that's just Australia if they really want to talk about colonialism or whatever or litigate the extent to which the queen or the monarchy in general has been a global force for good , let's do it and start with the full extent to which the monarchy was intricately involved in the transatlantic slave trade after Britain invaded Jamaica in 1655, the Royal African Company was created. Created by Royal Charter under King Charles II, the RAC went on to transport more enslaved Africans to the Americas than any other institution that ever lined the pockets of Stuart monarchs, many of those trafficked were marked with the initials DUI as in the Duke of York, who ran the company and later became King James II, that's true, the direct ancestors of the current royal family were investors in the Royal African company and had their initials literally carved into their skin of the people and both the trade in enslaved people and the high-demand products they produced such as sugar and tobacco were used to enrich Britain, strengthen its Empire and, by extension, fill the royal coffers, and I understand that the people She shouldn't be held personally responsible for what her ancestors did, but trying to talk about the British role in the slave trade without talking about the monarchy is like trying to talk about Jeffrey Epstein without talking about the monarchy.

They are inextricably linked by very uncomfortable that they may find that fact, despite all that, no one in the royal family has ever apologized on behalf of the crown, instead they have tiptoed around guilt with passive voice statements like the Prince William saying that slavery was abhorrent or Prince Charles going to Ghana and saying this: the appalling atrocity of the slave trade and the unimaginable suffering it caused left an indelible stain. On the history of our world, while Britain can be proud to have led the way in abolishing this shameful trade, we have a shared responsibility, we have a shared responsibility to ensure that the abject horror of slavery is never forgotten, but Listen, you can't even mention how terrible the slave trade was without mentioning at the same time that Britain led the way in abolition.

The British love to talk about their role in abolition, but Charles left out a lot of things, including that, while yes, the British. abolished the slave trade in 1807, allowed plantation slavery to persist in the colonies for decades, meaning full abolition didn't come for another generation, but the bigger point here is that you can't have it both ways things, you can't take credit for abolition without taking blame for what led to it, if someone intentionally sets fire to a Quiznos and hours later puts out the fire, they couldn't post a photo of themselves holding a hose with a legend, so I did something. that's not the whole story, is it worth it too?

The effect of slavery is clearly not just in the past, the UK was paying for it in a very literal sense incredibly recently because when Britain finally abolished slavery in its colonies in the 1830s, it took out a loan of 20 million of pounds, but not to compensate the enslaved, rather it went to the enslavers who wanted compensation for the loss of income from their estates, which to be clear meant around 17 billion pounds in today's money and up to 2015 Surprisingly, the British state was still paying the debt, many first learned of this when a few years ago the British treasury tweeted here today's surprising hashtag, the fact that millions of you helped put an end to human trafficking. slaves through your taxes and I'm sorry but that's just not a good fact for Fridays the average person farts 10 to 20 times a day which is pretty good fish can cough now we're talking Surprisingly, I know times are tough, but you just helped pay the families of the dead enslavers, no, not at all. save that for Monday, and for anyone who thinks well that didn't happen under the modern monarchy, it's worth knowing that one of the most brutal atrocities carried out by the British actually occurred in the first eight years of Elizabeth's reign and when Charles was alive because in the 1950s, while Kenya was still a British colony, the Kakuyu people launched an armed rebellion who had lost land to white settlers and found themselves trapped in a formal racial hierarchy that placed the Europeans at the top and Africans at the bottom.

The British sent army reinforcements to quell the so-called Mao Mao uprising, thus describing the situation to the world at that time. The agitators urged some of the Africans to free their country from the white man. There is little reliable information about the terrorist organization. organization because few members even know from whom they receive orders, they obey blindly, savagely attack the defenseless, burn, loot, murder. Kenya is the battlefield of a conflict that cannot end until Mao Mao is dissolved forever. Okay how the worrying Kenya is not coming from the British taking over and stealing land but from the people whose land was stolen now there is more to this story surely but will you hear it coming from a voice that sounds like that?

I say never, never say, to crush the uprising, the British instituted a system of detention camps and 90,000 Kenyans were executed, tortured or mutilated during the crackdown and an estimated 160,000 were detained in appalling conditions for a long time. The British responded to protests about this with a mixture of denial and defensiveness; In fact, just look at this interview with a former British colonial officer who had been responsible for at least six such detention camps, when asked about reports that soldiers had put their boots on the necks of detainees, he had an increasingly intense exchange that culminated in the longest pause I've ever seen on television.

I'll warn you, however long you think this pause is going to be, it's going to be much longer. Did you have reasons to give you the order? Put your boot on the neck of these resisters, the ones that were howling. Can we stop talking for a moment? moment no because I would like you to answer that I will answer it when I have stopped talking for a moment um I'm sorry but well, do you have a problem with that question? No, it's um, it's a hypothetical question, no, it's not. It's very precise you asked me if I put my foot on someone's neck you didn't make the order given did you give the order to do that you're not going to answer the question I'm not looking at you with um right I have thoughts in mind about your role in the sick torture.

Here are some quick tips. Don't answer a simple question by taking a full 23 seconds to respond. Don't then make a vague threat like some kind of cartoon villain and then try not to look at yourself. malevolently in the interview with what I can only describe as war crime eyes and to be clear, we don't know what the queen knew, what she was informed about is very conveniently kept secret, but we do know what she did in your name. government her face was in the money in Kenya when the Kenyan captors sang her national anthem it was a hymn to her protection and we know that she not only kept a characteristic silence about those atrocities, you know, in that charming style that everyone loved, but which also awarded That Man an MBE, one of the country's highest honours, which is just appalling, unless MBE means messiest of all time, in which case yes, I suppose it might be appropriate and that's The point is, if you are the symbol of a country, you represent what it is. she does, and it is telling that even decades later, when the British finally agreed to pay some compensation to a fraction of those who suffered in Kenya, this woman was very clear about who she wanted to hear from: one of the few surviving Memorial fighters.

Independence in Kenya. Britain has apologized for some shortcomings, but Matenge did not receive compensation paid to other rebels. She is asking the queen for help before it is too late. Let Isabel bring what belongs to me. That's what I mean. There are no intermediaries in the middle. Let the compensation come directly. To me she should find a sensible person and send them here, yes that is completely understandable and in particular the point of sending a sensible person because when it comes to the royal family it is worth remembering that unless that stipulates otherwise, could end up being sent. someone like this oh take that crazy beat exactly and no one wants anyone the point is you can't say you're just a symbol and you have no responsibility for how the institutions you run behave take the Church of England from del which the Monarch is the leader in Canada, played a role in his system of residential schools for indigenous children who are forcibly separated from their families and sent to government-funded church-run boarding schools in an attempt to assimilate them.

In those cases, horrible abuses occurred. schools and, while they were largely run by the Catholic Church, the Church of England operated approximately three dozen of them, ceding control of the last in 1969, which is quite recent, earlier this year Charles visited Canada and met He proposed showing up in a garden. That paid tribute to the victims of those schools, but when it came time to show remorse for what had happened, that seemed off the table because just listening to an Indigenous leader who spoke briefly with Charles that day describe their entire exchange , you said um, I hope we were very mean to you.

I didn't have a chance to respond to be moved by Prince Wally in this country. You should apologize to the American people for the trauma we have suffered for 500 years. Wow, I hope. "We weren't that mean to you," he said before walking away, which I know feels bad to you, but honestly, you're pretty. Keep calm and now, if you'll excuse me, I'll go ahead and watch. I know that in the Commonwealth countries there is a variety of views on this, especially among the older generation, as incredibly even some who suffered under British rule may still feel a strong affection for the Queen personally, even if They didn't love what she stood for and some argue if the royal family is only ceremonial now where the real damage is, but ceremonial may still have the power to enrage and see us return to Australia because shortly before Queen Lydia Thorpe died, an indigenous Australian senator was taking an oath that required her to swear allegiance to the queen. something that she, understandably, had a little trouble with, so this is what she did, please recite her statement on the card you were given.

Sovereign Lydia thought solemnly and sincerely that I will be faithful when she transmits the True Religion to the colonizer of her Majesty her Queen. Elizabeth Senator Thorpe Senator thought she should recite the oath as it was printed on the card, yes, she was actually forced to read what was printed on the card word for word, so she did, but we give her credit because she then used a tone of voice that did a lot of heavy lifting for her. I have really thought about solemnly and sincerely affirming and declaring that I will be faithful and maintain true loyalty to her majesty Queen Elizabeth II, her hair and successes according to the law, okay, I hate that she was forced to do that, but I love the way he was able to make a promise to a posh old lady on the other side of the world, it sounds exactly as stupid as it is and it seems unlikely that, based on recent polls, Australia and the UK will abandon the monarchy anytime soon , but other Commonwealth countries are already preparing to do so last year.

Barbados removed the queen as head of state. Jamaica seeks to hold a referendum to do the same within the next three years; poll shows majority support and Antigua and Barbuda Grenada and Belize appear to be moving in the same direction and while the royal family has said these countries are free to leave if they wish, they also refuse to consider why They would want to do it in the first place. He continued to work hard to be perceived as a mere symbol while never taking responsibility for what that symbol excused while ignoring calls for true apologies and reparations for those who suffered tremendously for what was done in his name and look, you don't have to hate . the royal family personally, I mean Google Prince Philip or Prince Andrew's racism, everything and see where it lands, but you don't have to hate them, you don't even have to think that the institution shouldn't exist, but it's going to continue. .

It is fair to expect much more from them because right now they too often hide behind the convenient shield of courtesy and manners that the silence of others often demands.anyone who might criticize them or what they represent. Will this segment be shown on Sky TV in Britain, I honestly don't know, maybe not, but if they leave it out for being disrespectful, maybe they want to seriously think about why they and everyone else are working so hard not to offend a family whose name is etched into people's skin and who sit on a pile of stolen wealth and wear crowns adorned with treasures from other countries and if there is an answer to that I would love to hear it, although if history is any guide , I guess I'll get a cold stare while You Have Certain Thoughts in Your Head, but I really hope they don't cut this piece, partly because it's a long overdue conversation that really needs to be had and partly because absolutely no audience deserves to be subjected to 25 minutes straight of this, yes.

That's our program. Thank you very much for watching. See you next week. Good night.