What happens to the royal perogative powers for example? We could accidentally 'good chaps theory of government' into a very overpowered executive like the Americans have in my view, the increasing presidentialisation of the PM role and centralisation of power in Number 10 is already a long term concern of mine.

Also there's lots of weird technical factors around the issue , like what happens to the Crown Estate? Does it lapse to the Windsor family or to the president? Presumably we'd want to nationalise it directly by Act of Parliament but that's a can of worms in itself.

Yeah I don't like the monarchy but I suspect I'd like a British presidency even less. If it were up to me I'd abolish the hereditary principle but to avoid the genuine constitutional shitshow I'd simply keep the throne empty rather than abolishing it, have Parliament elect a regent from among itself periodically. A regent unlike a president holds no power in their own right, they hold it on behalf of someone else. This would keep egos in check and help prevent an overly powerful executive I think. If anything it'd be Parliament putting a much-needed brake on Downing Street.

Also historically it'd be the final culmination of the 800 year British project to subordinate monarchical authority to constitutional authority. It's keeping the current constitutional notion of the 'crown in parliament' while admitting the reality no living human can actually embody it.

The popularisation of the idea that ornament is inherently bad genuinely did far more damage to the visual environment of the UK than the Luftwaffe managed with years of strategic bombing in my view.

I'm still a fan of emoticons personally, can't beat >:( to express irritation for example.

When it comes to killing God, the His Dark Materials series has an interesting take on the matter.

Also today I was literally at the bitter end anchoring a boat with almost all of the available chain.

That's a vintage reference!

Looking at you Anne Sacoolas, a name that should be infamous throughout the Western world.

For those who don't know, this piece of crap was driving on the wrong side of the road after leaving a US base in the UK and through her extremely negligent driving killed a teenager on a moped. Instead of answering for her crime, she fled like the spineless excuse for a human being she is back to the US on a diplomatic passport. Seeing as we're basically America's Belarus, she never got close to seeing the inside of a British prison and the US actively refused to send her back. If you work for US intelligence you are literally allowed to kill British people in cars with impunity, they'll even come out and bat for you when you're caught.

There may be no hell but I hope the rest of her days are as close to it as possible, but her actions reveal a callous moral vacuum of a person who no doubt only feels good about getting away with it. Shame on her name forever, shame on the US government for protecting her, and shame on the British government for folding like tissue paper instead of heeding its duty to seek justice for its citizens.

In the world of sloppageddon, I actually don't mind being bamboozled by a photoshop now and then.

Reminds me of the story that goes around these parts (Wales) of a far-right type demanding a pair of Middle Eastern-looking women speak English when in Britain. They were in fact speaking Welsh, the oldest living language spoken in Britain.

The whole notion of lethal injections is the product of a sick and cowardly mentality in my view.

I oppose the death penalty in general, but at least the gallows or the firing squad have the decency not to lie about what they are: the state violently ending someone's life in cold blood. The lethal injection is a perverse inversion of medicine, it exists solely to protect the moral blushes of the pieces of crap who carry it out. Only a profoundly immoral political culture could invent something so blatantly perverted in my view. I particularly loathe the concept for this reason:

If executions are gruesome enough the people who order them haven't the stomach to pull the lever on the gallows, the correct response is to abolish the death penalty; not to sanitise it behind a ghastly pseudo-medical ritual which exists solely to allow those people to sleep at night. It is a coward's way to have the death penalty without being considered cruel and despotic, but it is in reality among the most cruel and despotic forms of execution. If executions are to take place at all (and I think they should not) they should be very public, very swift, and very traditional so people are forced to see what the death penalty actually is.

If you give these people 25.4 millimetres they'll take 1.6 kilometres.

Honestly I'm done with the moderation more than anything, I got so fed up with the blatant manipulation on one of the subs I've frequented for over a decade I wrote a script to see what was going on with all the silent removals and so much was just vanishing. Capture all the comments every minute and diff them, you'll see what I mean.

Realised the reddit most of us knew was as good as dead then to be honest. Powermods are a cancer and the only chemo is to leave the place altogether.

My 'favourite' fact about Soviet-era bioweapons is that they had a facility on an island in the Aral Sea. Said sea vanished from existence after the Kremlin redirected all the rivers which fed it in an effort to grow cotton in the desert, causing it to shrink to some 10% or less of its original volume. As well as destroying the livelihoods of the fishermen of Aralsk in Kazakhstan, it also made the island full of fucking anthrax among other things part of the mainland.

I'll say this for the Soviets, they didn't do environmental disasters by halves. Also as a Briton we had our own anthrax island in Scotland from the war that was only decontaminated in the '90s.

Yeah it was literally drilled into me as a child that you aid a vessel in distress until the point you would be in distress yourself, provided you are in position to do so. It's the law certainly, but without highly extenuating circumstances there's also the matter of serious personal disgrace in my view.

Remember that the fossil fuel industry knew what was going to happen in the 1970s and lied to governments around the world to ensure our future of maximal fossil fuel burning and damn the consequences came to pass.

We have words for people who betray their country, we have words for people who betray their family, we even have words for people who betray the firm they work for every day, but we have no words for people who betray their entire species.

The real problem in my view is that people don't recognise post-imperial fusion cusines as 'legit' British food even though the curry house is the definition of an Anglo-Indian institution. When people in Britain claim the tikka masala it's not being twee or politically correct, rather it's earnestly considering an immigration-originated fusion cusine as part of the wider national one.

Also even pre-20th century British food isn't exactly bad, I'd argue it doesn't travel amazingly in many cases but a Sunday roast in our climate is sheer perfection. Too many people expect France or Italy from a country with nothing like their climate.

I was really looking forward to my luxury German nuclear-powered car as well >:(

Let's not discount the possibility of creaking Soviet-era equipment that should have been replaced decades ago but the money was non-existent/spent corruptly/not enough to touch the sides of the neglect/delete as appropriate.

We're talking about the country which operates the poor Kuznetsov which has been begging for death for many years.