"Tim Streater" wrote in message
.. .
In article , Simon Brown
wrote:

"Tim Watts" wrote in message
...
On 03/05/15 09:32, gareth wrote:
"Andrew Gabriel" wrote in message
...
In article ,
"Mr Pounder Esquire" writes:
Their castles, not our castles. Their palaces, not our palaces.

The only ones which are theirs are Balmoral Castle and Sandringham
House. All the others are owned by the British state.

But the British State is a monarchy.

You won't be happy until you are president. Anything less and you still
have someone with more than you telling you what to do.

No president tells anyone what to do in any decent modern democracy.

You're excluding France and the USA, then, where the President is Head
of State *and* Head of Government.

No, they dont tell anyone but their personal
servants and people like that what to do.

Which means that they very much *do* tell people what to do.

No they do not.

The Yanks copied, and then froze, the system we had back in 1776 or so,
except that they elect their King every four years.

The power the president has today is nothing like what the King had then.

Otherwise, it's quite similar to here in 1776,

Nothing like it in fact.

when the monarch was very much involved in the government.

Quite differently to how the president is today.

Our system has evolved considerably since then.

So have both of theirs.

One particular bifurcation point being when Victoria was persuaded by that
Cherman princeling she married, to stop interfering in politics by openly
preferring one party leader over another.

And no modern president has anything like the power she had in that regard.

They dont even get to decide who is prime minister or have the prime
minister waste his time visiting and grovelling every now and then.