7 dead 16 wounded at attack on Dutch queensday.

[Dartful Dodger]

Queen's day is very hard to explain to foreigners.

Not to all foreigners.  Chicago also has a parade for the queens.

[crashwg]

Mmmmmmmm, turkey.


This thread should get an award for going so far off topic.

As for the original intent.  Sad news of course when any innocent civilians are killed. 
Royal families don't make too much sense to me either being from a democratic nation in which we choose our leader...  But if it works for you I'm not going to bash it.

[Level42]

Geez, do I really have to explain how a modern-day kingdom works ?
Do they actually teach _anything_ about other countries over there ?

The king/queen in our country only has a ceremonial role. He/She has _nothing_ to say about how the country is run. We have a democraticaly elected government with a prime-minister.

[Edgedamage]

Geez, do I really have to explain how a modern-day kingdom works ?
Do they actually teach _anything_ about other countries over there ?

The king/queen in our country only has a ceremonial role. He/She has _nothing_ to say about how the country is run. We have a democraticaly elected government with a prime-minister.

These links might explain the problem:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/05/0502_060502_geography.html
http://www.cnn.com/2006/EDUCATION/05/02/geog.test/

http://www.wanderingeducators.com/best/traveling/can-your-child-find-washington-dc-map.html

[Grasshopper]

Do they actually teach _anything_ about other countries over there ?

Of course they do and here's the map to prove it.

[Grasshopper]

And the really advanced students use this map.

[Dartful Dodger]

Of course they do and here's the map to prove it.

Why is the part of the USA above Michigan green and uninhabited?

[patrickl]

Geez, do I really have to explain how a modern-day kingdom works ?
Do they actually teach _anything_ about other countries over there ?

The king/queen in our country only has a ceremonial role. He/She has _nothing_ to say about how the country is run. We have a democraticaly elected government with a prime-minister.

Now, now, that really understates the role that the queen has in our government. Her most visible and constitutional role is during the formation of a new government, but she's also a very influential adviser to the government. She has more power than she uses though.

Many countries have a president and a prime minister or a monarch and a prime minister. For instance Putin is now the prime minister of Russia where before he was the president. I don't think having a monarch is worse than having both roles electable.

[shmokes]

I would say it is considerably worse.  It doesn't matter how big a --cream-filled twinkie-- the person is.  He gets the job based solely on who his parents are.  And the people have no choice.  Why in god's name would I want that person advising my country's leader?

But what's worse is the absurd cost of such a useless resource.  Last I heard, supporting the royal family in England was pushing $90 million a year.  That's just wellfare.  It's a bunch of people who aren't required to do anything but live off taxpayer dollars (or pounds, I suppose).  To the tune of ---smurfing--- $90 million a year!?!?!?  Seriously embarassing.  Something tells me that the Prime Minister of England isn't even making a tenth that much money, and he . . . ya know . . . has an actual job.

[patrickl]

I would say it is considerably worse.  It doesn't matter how big a --cream-filled twinkie-- the person is.  He gets the job based solely on who his parents are.  And the people have no choice.  Why in god's name would I want that person advising my country's leader?

But what's worse is the absurd cost of such a useless resource.  Last I heard, supporting the royal family in England was pushing $90 million a year.  That's just wellfare.  It's a bunch of people who aren't required to do anything but live off taxpayer dollars (or pounds, I suppose).  To the tune of ---smurfing--- $90 million a year!?!?!?  Seriously embarassing.  Something tells me that the Prime Minister of England isn't even making a tenth that much money, and he . . . ya know . . . has an actual job.

Yeah I guess. You hugely underestimate the usefulness and competence of the royal family though. Being a royal really is a job.

Besides, the royal family is elected. Or rather, we could elect to get rid of them.

Lastly, don't compare overall cost with salary. Add the protection, representation, travel and whatever expenses to the prime ministers salary and you end up with a considerable figure too. How much does Obama cost the US tax payer?

[shmokes]

Well . . . just to be clear, Obama is the leader of our country.  He is not just a member of royalty that hs been stripped of all actual authority.  So it's not really a fair comparison.

But I think his salary is about $400k/yr and he will receive a pension for life (currently about $200k/yr).  He'll also have an office with staff for the rest of his life and we'll buy him a house somewhere when he leaves office.  He has the secret service and flies on a 747.  Of course the white house has a chef that makes his food.  No idea how much it all costs.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/06/27/queen.cost/index.html

Add the protection . . .

Oh no . . . that doesn't include protection.  The Brits don't release the cost of security provided to the royals.  Justification is that just letting people know how much is spent on security compromises security.  Translation:  Either they're not spending enough and don't want would-be assassins to know it, or they're spending way too much and don't want taxpayers to know it.

[ChadTower]

Right, that's all well and good until you have a time of "national crisis" and then those constitutional protections are all out the window. 

Erm, have you been sleeping for the last 8 years?   

[Grasshopper]

I would say it is considerably worse.  It doesn't matter how big a --cream-filled twinkie-- the person is.  He gets the job based solely on who his parents are.

Sounds like George Bush to me... 

[shmokes]

Yeah . . . democracy obviously doesn't increase the quality of our leaders, just their legitimacy.   

[Level42]

Yeah, Bush really won fairly the 2nd time....

[ChadTower]

This thread is like Nazis.

[shmokes]

It's funny you should say that.  I had a dream last night in which I went back in time and I was hanging out with Hitler.  It was weird cos I knew who he was, but I wasn't really bothered by him or anything.  Anyway, we were in this building that was like a school or something and went into a room where at one point Hitler saw a spider and got really squeamish.  He's totally an arachniphobe apparently.  So the spider went behind this board leaning against the wall and someone pulled it out and was like, "No wonder there's spiders in here, look at all these slugs!"  (apparently where slugs go, so do spiders).  There were a bunch of gross slugs back there, except they were more like something you might see in an episode of Star Trek: TNG.  So I tried to step on the spider, but it moved really fast.  Then the spider exhibited a really interesting ability.  At the end of each leg it had like three digits that could stretch out to about a foot long (it looked a lot like the way Venom's suit streams out to act like spiderweb).  So this spider started sending out all these tenticle-looking things that would stick to like three things at a time and it was moving around.  So my cat tried to get the spider and the spider was totally blocking my cats advances and pounces with these cool tenticle things.  Then I woke up.  For about a minute I was thinking about how cool the spider was before it occurred to me that those spiders don't really exist and that it was just a dream.  Then I remembered Hitler and went back to sleep.

[ChadTower]

This thread is like Nazis.

If you don't like it, move back to Canada and curtsy to your queen on the way.

[Ummon]

Hahhahahaha. Love the maps. Fun and funny stuff, especially the gayify your kids bit. I like plain tofu, but it's simply not a protein substitute for my body. Makes me feel hollow even after a whole pound of it. Good turkey can be hard to come by. Not that I would eat either very often, but once or twice a week I don't see being harmful.

Grasshopper, I thought you were veg.

[patrickl]

Well . . . just to be clear, Obama is the leader of our country.  He is not just a member of royalty that hs been stripped of all actual authority.  So it's not really a fair comparison.

Don't be pathetic, there is more to it than authority. Besides, how much can Obama do without approval from congress? Does that make him mostly useless too?

Why does Obama get the white house to live in? Why do US tax payers pay for that? Why do US tax payers pay for a whole fleet of presidential aircraft and other vehicles? Why does he need an army of people supporting him? Why doesn't he just stay at home and work in a small corner office of some generic building? That's about all the UK prime minister gets. Why all the show and "pompous" around Obama? Don't you have internet in the US and conference calls in the US?

Lemme give you a hint, Obama fulfils the same role as a royal does besides having authority to launch a "nucular" strike.

So let that sink in and realize that sending Obama on a trip might cost a fortune, but it serves a purpose. Same thing with the royals. Their paid travels are government business. Makes sense the government picks up the tab.

No idea how much it all costs.

Well then how can you make a comparison? Just the cost of the presidential air fleet easily eats up $200 million a year (low estimate). Then add the maintenance cost on the buildings that Obama uses, extra travel expenses for foreign trips, protection costs, the costs of his advisors, household staff, cigar moisturizers, the amount of money that ex presidents still cost the US tax payers and the cost of the first family including the dog. If you add all the costs I honestly doubt that you'll end up with a figure that's far below a billion dollars.

BTW $80 million sounds like a lot, but it's only that much because the US economy is in the gutter. The people in the UK "only" paid 40 million pounds. Most of that is for maintaining government property and travel expenses for government business trips. She gets something like 7 million (pounds) to actually spend herself and even that is mostly used to pay for official expenses of the household.

[Blanka]

cigar moisturizers

Does the president smoke Cuban's again?

[patrickl]

Lol, the pindouche comes up with two completely outlandish constructions to show that the US president is the coolzorz?

Lemme get this straight, you feel that those two links make it worth spending hundreds of millions on the presidents "appearance", but not a relatively few million on royal families in other countries?

[ChadTower]

I never thought I'd see someone accuse a Texan of saying a black democrat president was the coolzorz.

[patrickl]

(and 'the pindouche'?  C'mon, you can do better than that.  Go back to insulting my mother or something)

You are insulting enough on your own. Why would you need me to help you there?

Anyway as the Dutch say: "uitgeluld".

[Dartful Dodger]

Any more news on the clown that did this?

All we've heard on our end was the guy gets arrested tells the interrogator that he was working alone, then dies.

Not that I see anything wrong with that, but did he tell the interrogators anything else before his unfortunate death?

[patrickl]

Any more news on the clown that did this?

All we've heard on our end was the guy gets arrested tells the interrogator that he was working alone, then dies.

Not that I see anything wrong with that, but did he tell the interrogators anything else before his unfortunate death?

No nothing new really. The police is trying to figure it all out still. For instance, they are working on a simulation to see if a tiny car like that could actually have seriously damaged the open bus the royals were in. They are also trying to find out how the car actually made it through 2 perimeters without being detected and/or stopped. Maybe the fact that one of the dead people was a security guard has something to do with that though. They were looking for footage of the car before it went through. Obviously everybody had their camera pointed at the royal family as they were just passing, so I doubt they will find much footage before it ran the security.

The news media have been interviewing the friends and parents of the "clown". Turns out he was a security guard and he got fired and lost his house because of that. A friend claims he might have been out to show that the security company sucks. The same company that fired him was working on security during the event.

[shmokes]

LMAO . . . what in god's name?  You people do realize that Obama does more than sign legislation into law.  There's this . . . um . . . entire branch of government called the executive that he is in charge of.  In includes such trivialities as the Justice Department, the FBI, the CIA, the NSA.  He is also in charge of foreign policy, so he negotiates and signs treaties, which become supreme law of the land, trumping state law.  How about the FCC.  The FDA.  The EPA.  Patrick, are you really suggesting with a straight face that Obama and your Queen have similar levels of duties or responsibilities?

Anyway, stop being a baby.  I said having powerless royalty out of tradition is stupid, I didn't say you were stupid.  No need to get your panties in a twist.  If it makes you feel any better, I think that the electoral college in the US is a ridiculous relic of the past.  Much like your retarded royalty.  This isn't about America being better than you.  It's about royalty being retarded.  It is.

[ark_ader]

It's funny you should say that.  I had a dream last night in which I went back in time and I was hanging out with Hitler.  It was weird cos I knew who he was, but I wasn't really bothered by him or anything.  Anyway, we were in this building that was like a school or something and went into a room where at one point Hitler saw a spider and got really squeamish.  He's totally an arachniphobe apparently.  So the spider went behind this board leaning against the wall and someone pulled it out and was like, "No wonder there's spiders in here, look at all these slugs!"  (apparently where slugs go, so do spiders).  There were a bunch of gross slugs back there, except they were more like something you might see in an episode of Star Trek: TNG.  So I tried to step on the spider, but it moved really fast.  Then the spider exhibited a really interesting ability.  At the end of each leg it had like three digits that could stretch out to about a foot long (it looked a lot like the way Venom's suit streams out to act like spiderweb).  So this spider started sending out all these tenticle-looking things that would stick to like three things at a time and it was moving around.  So my cat tried to get the spider and the spider was totally blocking my cats advances and pounces with these cool tenticle things.  Then I woke up.  For about a minute I was thinking about how cool the spider was before it occurred to me that those spiders don't really exist and that it was just a dream.  Then I remembered Hitler and went back to sleep.

You know shmokes, you need, to put more commas, into your post, as I had a real problem, reading that whole useless post, about you and some unfortunate relic of the past.

Without sounding insensitive, why are we discussing something that is so old news?  The driver is dead, and Queen Betrice won't be allowed to ride her bike downtown anymore.  Its a sad thing to hear about the victims....  Life goes on.  I think of Iraqis, Afghans and the Palestinians who are killed every day, sometimes quite horrifically.  And I see this thread banging about something that really pales in significance.

I like butterball turkey, with cranberry sauce, but I find it is real difficult to buy whole turkeys during the summer.  With all those frozen turkeys at Christmas, you would think they would keep some for July.  BBQ turkey sounds nice to have on the 4th.  Has anyone tried turkey burgers?

The royal family in the UK can in theory retake Britain by disbanding the British Government.  The Queen has a lot of influence in world affairs, much more than a puppet monarchy.

Its apples and oranges to compare a President with a hereditary monarchy. 

LMAO . . . what in god's name?  You people do realize that Obama does more than sign legislation into law.  There's this . . . um . . . entire branch of government called the executive that he is in charge of.  In includes such trivialities as the Justice Department, the FBI, the CIA, the NSA.  He is also in charge of foreign policy, so he negotiates and signs treaties, which become supreme law of the land, trumping state law.  How about the FCC.  The FDA.  The EPA.  Patrick, are you really suggesting with a straight face that Obama and your Queen have similar levels of duties or responsibilities?

Anyway, stop being a baby.  I said having powerless royalty out of tradition is stupid, I didn't say you were stupid.  No need to get your panties in a twist.  If it makes you feel any better, I think that the electoral college in the US is a ridiculous relic of the past.  Much like your retarded royalty.  This isn't about America being better than you.  It's about royalty being retarded.  It is.

I think Shmokes needs to take a nap.    


Edit:  Not enough commas.

[Dartful Dodger]

I think that makes the whole thing suck even more.  If people were out to harm the royal family it would make sense to cancel or modify the event.  But now the parade will probably be changed forever because some nut, who was too unstable to be a guard, lashed out at his former employer.

When someone tried to assassinate the pope they built the domed pope mobile, which I think added character to his appearances, hopefully this tragic event will lead to a positive evolutionary step in queen's day for your country.  It would suck to let that clown destroy a national tradition.

They should stop interviewing his friends and family and just let his name and everything about him fade away as though he never existed.

[ChadTower]

I said having powerless royalty out of tradition is stupid, I didn't say you were stupid. 

<Homer>Lisa, get a grip!  I didn't say you were stupid!  I just said everything you love is stupid!</Homer>

[shmokes]

LMAO

[patrickl]

Patrick, are you really suggesting with a straight face that Obama and your Queen have similar levels of duties or responsibilities?

No. I'm simply rebutting your claim that the royals are a stupid waste of money by showing that the US president fulfils the same role (besides his other duties) and in doing so "wastes" seriously obscene amounts of money. The expenditure of all royal famillies in Europe really pales in comparison.

It's simply a matter of different roles. Where the US puts everything on one person and the UK and Netherlands divide it over two, the Queen + PM. You can call outward appearances and tradition silly, but it achieves an effect and thus it's not useless and not a waste either. To just focus on the negative side (cost) shows an utter lack of understanding of the role of the royals and of the same role of your own president in similar affairs.

It's just as stupid as claiming that marketing is a useless waste of money. Sure, if you look at it only from a production perspective it is. It doesn't generate products. If you look at the whole picture, it obviously isn't useless. The UK royals probably make more money for the UK with the tourism they attract.

Even the notion that royal families are completely (politically) powerless is nonsense. Would you say that someone like Karl Rove was completely powerless? Or Dick Cheney? Neither had much legislative or executive powers, but still. It appeared that at some moments they had more power than Bush himself. In fact the Dutch government had to take steps to insure that the Dutch queen didn't become too powerful. On the other hand, lately I have to admit she's become a bit too old and quiet to really be effective in the international political scene. It's time for her son to become king.

Anyway, stop being a baby.

Indeed, please do. Think about this, you follow in pindouche's "arrogance in ignorance" and you portray yourself in much the same fashion. The fact that you don't know what you are talking about doesn't make you right.

[patrickl]

Dude seriously.

[ChadTower]

[shmokes]

It's time for her son to become king.

Why should he be king?  What's so great about him?

[patrickl]

It's time for her son to become king.

Why should he be king?  What's so great about him?

Well he should do what royals do, but then more actively than the queen. The queen hasn't been doing much royalling lately. Actually the prince has been taking over more and more of her duties.

[shmokes]

Well he should do what royals do . . .

Okay . . . what are royals?

[saint]

Well he should do what royals do . . .

Okay . . . what are royals?

[ChadTower]

It's time for her son to become king.

Why should he be king?  What's so great about him?

Some moistened bent lobbed a scimitar at him.

[patrickl]

They are currently holding a memorial service in the city where the attack took place. The royal family is there and family and friends of the victims. Six big candles are lit to symbolize the six victims. Guess they didn't feel like remembering the dead loon who did this.

Several people are still seriously injured in hospitals. One of them an 8 year old girl.