Thirdly, some critics claimed that the royal family is expensive. According to the report of civil list, the Queen’s official expensive is ‘£7.9m a year until 2011’. What’s worse, maybe we can still clearly remember that in 1993, Windsor Castle caught a fire and it cost approximately 37 million pounds to rebuild it. Where is the money from? The answer is tax. Do we really need to pay so much tax to support the constitutional monarchy? Many people give a negative answer. Support the monarchy is too costly indeed. Although the royal has agreed to pay tax since a couple of years ago, the situation still has not changed a lot. But at least, they show a positive attitude to us that they tend to be more equal as other people. And lots of evidences also can counter-attack these criticisms’ view. Because they are not only spending but there is also some revenue from them. A good illustration of this point is the monarchy stimulates the development of tourist industry. The monarchy often attends many social and national ceremonies, trooping the colour, opening of Parliament. Together with her royal buildings, it has become many local and foreign visitors’ ideal destination. Every year, it makes thousands of millions pounds that could easily cover the expenses of the royal family.
Beside the above three disadvantages that I could argue about, there are still a few other weaknesses. For example, as the UK has become a multi cultural country, more and more people will have quite different regional beliefs. So the function of the monarchy as the defender of the faith is no longer appropriate, because she defends Christian faith only. What is more, the death of Princess Diana also seriously destroyed the royal image of the royal family in some aspects.
From what I discussed above, we may easily find out the existence of constitutional monarchy has many disadvantages. Just like what the queen said ‘lessons would be learned’. I am glad to aware that the royal family has recognized these problem and they ‘set up a discussion procedure known as the Way Ahead Group. Senior members of the family, with the Queen herself in the chair, got together twice a year, during the holidays at Balmorals and Sandringham.’.
The advantages
In contrast, we cannot ignore that the existence of monarchy still has a considerable amount of advantages nowadays. Now, I will discuss them respectively.
In the first place, the monarch is an impartial head of the state, so it provides a symbol of national unity and continuity. Just as what I mentioned above, monarchy is ‘the oldest institution of government in the United Kingdom’ and it is fully neutral. All people want to have a democratic society; some politicians are elected to be responsible of all the national affairs. Monarchy then plays the role of a supervisor, although she does not have any executive political power nowadays. As we are aware that at present, ‘Civil liberties were threatened by Tony Blair and New Labour's centralisation of power and control freakery.’ However, the new labour is not able to take over the power from the monarchy, so the monarchy has become ‘the only bit of 'democracy' we can rely on!’ Without the monarchy, I am afraid that British citizens cannot enjoy any democratic rights.
Meanwhile, monarchy takes part in many charitable activities. According to the report: ‘The Queen and other members of the Royal Family have close associations with a wide range of charitable organisations covering many areas of national life. As patrons of over 3,200 charities, the Royal family visit a large number of charity organisations and projects each year.’
It has undoubtedly created a bright image for the royal family inside the UK. At the same moment, monarchy has also created a good world wide image for the UK that is just the second point I want to talk about.
‘Since becoming Sovereign in 1952, The Queen has visited over 325 countries (including repeat visits) during her reign. She has visited all the countries in the Commonwealth except Cameroon, which joined the Commonwealth in 1995.’ From this fact, we can realise that the monarchy of the UK has established an extremely long-term good relationships with many other commonwealth countries. It is obviously one of her smart advantages; no elected politicians can do that because they may be easily eliminated through selection that will be held every four years. From this aspect, we can say that the monarch not only an excellent spokeswoman of the UK, but also an experienced head of the commonwealth.
Thirdly, the monarchy is currently popular. A recent poll demonstrates that ‘the monarchy was very popular among the over-60s’. So it is unrealistic for us to get rid of monarchy nowadays, because the elderly constitute amounts a large part of the overall population. Another point I want to argue is that the monarchy is inherited, not like the other politicians who are probably elected in the elections by winning less than 50 percent of the overall votes and who represent less than half of the people. So the monarchy could win more support than the elected politicians.
To sum up, from what I discussed in this essay, we can realise that the advantages of the monarchy are far more important and vital than its disadvantages. So we may safely arrive at the conclusion that the monarchy is running smoothly and the existence of monarchy is quite reasonable, hence we should support her work continuously instead of trying to abolish it. Yet, from my point of view, the monarchy still need to reform in some places to achieve more support, such as changing into a European style and more modern royal family and etc.
( 1476 Words excluding reference)
Bibliography:
Understanding Politics (page 111-114) Chapter 6, the Monarchy. written by Moyra Grant
Politics UK (page 319-336) Chapter 16, the Crown. written by Philip Norton
Royal Insight <2001> The Royal Collection
Available at: < >
God Save the Queen! <2001> pishton
Available at: < >
This op. is more worthy of a crown than the Queen! <2001> Greg Moorlock
Available at: < >
Reference:
----------------------Qingdao IFY Politics Assignment---------------------
-
Cambridge International Dictionary of English <2003> Cambridge University Press
Available at: < >
God Save the Queen! <2001> pishton
Available at: < >
Keeping a tight rein on the Royal purse strings. <2000> accountancyage.com
Available at: < >
The changing face of the monarchy <1998> BBC News
Available at: < >
History of the monarchy <2003>
Available at: < >
Making Liz the last <2000> Dave Craig
Available at: < >
The Queen’s Role <1999>
Available at: < >
Royal Visits <2002>
Available at: < >
Making Liz the last <2000> Dave Craig
Available at: < >