Interesting Links for 07-05-2023

[andrewducker]

1. Sad that Edinburgh Lib Dem councillors voted for monarchy

(tags:Edinburgh monarchy politics )

2. Why you want writers on-set when you're filming

(tags:writing TV movies )

3. How to paint a realistic dog. (A very patient one, from the look on its face)

(tags:dogs funny art video )

4. Writer memes

(tags:meme writing funny )

Comments

[calimac]

OK, then it does have nothing to do with voting for monarchy, or with titles being handed out by millionaires to their relatives. Noted.

[andrewducker]

The method by which they are associated obviously matters.

[calimac]

But not very much. ("It's not really in the purview of Edinburgh council to decide whether York should be happy about the Duke of York.")

[andrewducker]

Insofar as if York decided they were fine with the local Pastafarians declaring someone Gigapope of York, and that they would refer to them thusly in official correspondence then that's York's business. Edinburgh doesn't have any involvement in this.

But that doesn't mean that Edinburgh needs to take it seriously and follow in their stead for their local branch.

They're a local council - commenting on what other local councils do isn't really in their remit. Deciding how their council acts is.

Obviously, if they feel there is an effect on Edinburgh they might do. Edinburgh council has an opinion on the Ukraine war, because we have fleeing citizens of Ukraine here. But generally they don't interfere in things outside of Edinburgh.

But it still seems clear to me that if you accept someone's bestowed association with your city then you are accepting both them and the method of association.

[calimac]

Local bodies express their opinions about matters unrelated to their local concerns all the time. They're opinions; like the proverbial *ahem* everybody has one.

Yes, if you permit the Duke of Edinburgh to be referred to by his name of common usage, you're accepting the common usage. Same goes for the Duke of York, even though he's a malign clown, which as far as I know the Duke of Edinburgh is not. And that's true whether you're in York, Edinburgh, or neither.

And that's as it should be. Why? Because the title is a meaningless bauble not of your own making. To object is petulantly petty.

[andrewducker]

It's not meaningless though. It's assigned by an anti-democratic institution which owns over £28Billion, protected against inheritance tax[1], with access to veto the making of law before it ever makes it before parliament[2].

To accept said organisation's decisions to assign people to cities is to accept the organisation, and all that flows from it.

And we absolutely should not do that.

[1]https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/charles-inheritance-tax-uk-exemption-queen-b2165962.html
[2]https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2013/jan/14/secret-papers-royals-veto-bills

[calimac]

It's still meaningless. The Duke has no power over the city. The crimes of the monarchy would be a reason to disestablish the monarchy, and not to quibble about titles (which would probably remain even if the monarchy were abolished, judging by some other democracies which have done that). It's a petulant approach, reducing a serious problem to a state of pettiness.

I guess what really bothers me about this is that Duke of Edinburgh is the generally accepted way of referring to the man in question, accepted by everybody except the Greens on the Edinburgh city council. (So it's not like somebody declaring themselves Gigapope of York.) To refuse to refer to somebody by their chosen and accepted name, and to do so for nakedly political reasons, is too much like TERFs for me to be comfortable with.