[Yahwe]

Originally Posted by Dante Hicks

Even if it costs as much again for another election (which - once again I will say I don't feel is required) that hardly seems overly onerous.

It doesn't matter if it's onerous or not.

Surely the definition of wasting money is choosing to pay for something which you previously got for free.

I appreciate your personal political beliefs, but in order to operate a legal system we would need something to be sovereign. This would mean that getting rid of the Queen would require her to be replaced and replacing her would be unnecessarily costly.

Originally Posted by Dante Hicks

By substantial diplomacy I mean something which has had a noticable and undoubted impact on our countries well being. You are saying there is a (presumably sizable) benefit to having a non-political head of state - I am asking for evidence of this.

Noticeable and undoubted to whom?
We're going to end up dissecting History if you carry on down this line.
Can you accept that Her Majesty does conduct diplomacy for the state?

because after that whether you or I think that she handled one meeting better than another or that one foreign government was more influenced by her than another is really a very subjective (and very very boring debate).

Originally Posted by Dante Hicks

I see no reason (along with many other arguments) that the honour system, in broadly the same format, couldn't exist without a monarch. And of course they cost something - these things don't administer themselves (sup T&F) - it's just not a large amount of money in the scale of things.

To understand you have to have a good grasp of what the honour system is (i'm including the Aristocracy).

Essentially honour systems are ways of a state manipulating citizens to act in a certain way. Like all manipulations it is based on a mythical premis. It is the strength of this premis which dctates the level to which the citizen will be manipulated (and thus the level of benefit for the country). Think of it as 'a gold star' system, it only has any effect if people want the stars so the best gold stars are ones surrounded in lots of mythology.

The system which exists under the monarchy couldn't exist without a monarchy because it is fundamentally pyramidal: removing the head honour, removes the validity of all honours beneath that. Thus making the honours themself worthless.

With a new head of state you'd need to create a new gold star scheme with it's own mythology and history. I can't see such a new system being plausible in Britain: if it were it would certainly have a lesser manipulation power than the current honour system.