Calling for abolition of monarchy is still illegal, UK justice ministry admits

[tay]

Only in Britain or would that apply to Canada?




Department wrongly announced that section of law threatening people with life imprisonment had been repealed



It turns out you can draw a life sentence under a law that forbids anyone from advocating the abolition of the monarchy. It's right there in the Treason Felony Act of 1848. It doesn't matter if you suggest that abolition be effected peacefully or constitutionally. If you put it in writing it's an act of treason and you can be banged up in HMPrison for the rest of your natural life.

The good news is that the Brits have repealed the Vagrancy Act of 1824 under which it was an offence to be an "incorrigible rogue."

 

[WLDB]

If they tried to prosecute someone for that today I imagine it'd only damage the monarchy's reputation or popularity. Unless of course that person was calling for a violent end to the monarchy and was a legitimate threat.

I think it should be abolished here through legal means. I don't really care what the UK does with it one way or another. If what I just wrote is technically a crime, so be it.

 

[Spade]

Queen E is wearing red and is in one of her moods. WLDB, you'd better watch out.

Red Queen : OFF WITH HIS HEAD! (Alice In Wonderland) - YouTube

 

[gopher]

 

[Blackleaf]

If they tried to prosecute someone for that today I imagine it'd only damage the monarchy's reputation or popularity.

Why? It's not the fault of the monarchy that that law is in existence. It's an old law, which dates back to before any human today was even born.

People forget just how old Britain is. There are thousands of ancient laws that are still on the statute books but which have no bearing on life today, but are still on the statute books merely books successive governments forget to take them off.

Evey so often, though, a government has a bit of a statute book clean up, taking of some useless or bizarre laws.

For example, it's illegal to wear a suit of armour in Parliament (from a law dating back to 1313 but which is still in effect because governments have forgotten to take it of the statute books).

Another ancient law states that it's illegal to DIE in Parliament.

Yet I doubt any MP would be put on trial for wearing a suit of armour in parliament, even though it's illegal, and I doubt old Dennis Skinner's family would be punished if the old Labour left wing dinosaur suddenly snuffed it during PMQs.

It's illegal to eat mince pies in Britain, because the Cromwellian Puritan parliament of the English Republic banned them in the 1650s. They are still illegal today because the law has just been forgotten to be taken off the statute books, but millions of people still eat mince pies every Christmas and I'm not aware of any convictions.

It's also illegal to fire a cannon close to a dwelling house (Met Police Act 1839); to use any slide (such as a sledge) upon ice or snow (Town Police Clauses Act 1847); and to drive cattle through the streets of London (Metropolitan Streets Act 1867). Yet I am not aware of any being prosecuted for using a sledge in the winter.

Not only that, but it's illegal to place a postage stamp bearing the monarch's head upside-down and illegal not to tell the tax man anything you do not want him to know, but legal not to tell him information you do not mind him knowing. Yet these things probably occur every day, yet nobody is prosecuted for them.

On the other hand, it is LEGAL for a pregnant woman to relieve herself anywhere she wants, even in the street. Yet if a pregnant woman DID relieve herself in the street, she'd probably be arrested and fined.

The head of any dead whale found on the British coast automatically becomes the property of the King. The tail automatically becomes the property of the Queen.

 

[IdRatherBeSkiing]

It's also illegal to fire a cannon close to a dwelling house (Met Police Act 1839); to use any slide (such as a sledge) upon ice or snow (Town Police Clauses Act 1847); and to drive cattle through the streets of London (Metropolitan Streets Act 1867).

I bet if you try driving cattle through the streets of London you will be arrested.

 

[Blackleaf]

Hanging washing in the street, beating a carpet and flying a kite are also illegal in Britain. They are set out in the Town Police Clauses Act, 1847, (chapter 89, section 28 ) as punishable by a £1,000 fine.

Yet I've never seen anyone be arrested for doing any of these things.

Despite that, it's perfectly LEGAL to shoot a Welshman with a crossbow within the city of Chester... but only after sunset.

I bet if you try driving cattle through the streets of London you will be arrested.

Maybe. Maybe not. I suppose it depends on how much commotion and mess you cause. But it's still a law which some polls have shown a lot of Britons want taken off the statute books.

I think it became illegal to drive cattle through London because Londoners eventually became fed up with the mess they caused as they were driven through their great city on their way to the famous cattle market at Smithfield, which has been there since the 10th Century.

In 1174 Smithfield was described by William Fitzstephen (who used to work for Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Becket) as:

a smooth field where every Friday there is a celebrated rendezvous of fine horses to be sold, and in another quarter are placed vendibles of the peasant, swine with their deep flanks, and cows and oxen of immense bulk.

Between 1740 and 1750 the average yearly sales at Smithfield were reported to be around 74,000 cattle and 570,000 sheep. By the middle of the 19th century, in the course of a single year 220,000 head of cattle and 1,500,000 sheep would be "violently forced into an area of five acres, in the very heart of London, through its narrowest and most crowded thoroughfares". The volume of cattle driven daily to Smithfield started to raise major concerns.

In the Victorian period, pamphlets started circulating in favour of the removal of the livestock market and its relocation outside of the city, due to its extremely poor hygienic conditions as well as the brutal treatment of the cattle. The conditions at the market in the first half of the 19th century were often described as a major threat to public health:

Of all the horrid abominations with which London has been cursed, there is not one that can come up to that disgusting place, West Smithfield Market, for cruelty, filth, effluvia, pestilence, impiety, horrid language, danger, disgusting and shuddering sights, and every obnoxious item that can be imagined; and this abomination is suffered to continue year after year, from generation to generation, in the very heart of the most Christian and most polished city in the world.

In 1843, the Farmer's Magazine published a petition signed by bankers, salesmen, aldermen, butchers and local residents against the expansion of the livestock market, arguing that livestock markets had been systematically banned since the Middle Ages in other areas of London:

Our ancestors appear, in sanitary matters, to have been wiser than we are. There exists, amongst the Rolls of Parliament of the year 1380, a petition from the citizens of London, praying- that, for the sake of the public health, meat should not be slaughtered nearer than "Knyghtsbrigg", under penalty, not only of forfeiting such animals as might be killed in the " butcherie," but of a year's imprisonment. The prayer of this petition was granted, audits penalties were enforced during several reigns.

Charles D ickens criticised the location of a livestock market in the heart of the capital in his 1851 essay A Monument of French Folly comparing it to the French market outside Paris at Poissy:

Of a great Institution like Smithfield, [the French] are unable to form the least conception. A Beast Market in the heart of Paris would be regarded an impossible nuisance. Nor have they any notion of slaughter-houses in the midst of a city. One of these benighted frog-eaters would scarcely understand your meaning, if you told him of the existence of such a British bulwark.


Today Smithfield is the only great London market (not counting lesser markets such as Leadenhall Market and Spitalfields) not to have moved out of central London for cheaper land, better transport links and more modern facilities (compare with Covent Garden and Billingsgate). The purpose of the market is to supply inner city butchers, shops and restaurants with meat for the coming day, so the trading hours are from 4:00 a.m. to 12:00 noon every weekday. Instead of moving away, Smithfield market has been modernised on its existing site: its imposing Victorian buildings have had access points added for the loading and unloading of lorries.

Smithfield Market today. Scottish terrorist William Wallace was butchered here in 1305


Smithfield market was also the location of many famous executions of heretics, political opponents and religious reformers and dessenters.

The Scottish terrorist William Wallace was executed there in 1305. The market was used as a meeting place for the peasants in the Peasants' Revolt of 1381 and the revolt's leader, Wat Tyler was killed there after being stabbed by William Walworth, the Mayor of London, and a squire on 15 June 1381.

Following the trial, on 23 August 1305, Wallace was taken from the hall to the Tower of London, then stripped naked and dragged through the city at the heels of a horse to the Elms at Smithfield. He was hanged, drawn and quartered — strangled by hanging but released while he was still alive, emasculated, eviscerated and his bowels burnt before him, beheaded, then cut into four parts. His preserved head (dipped in tar) was placed on a pike atop London Bridge. It was later joined by the heads of the brothers, John and Simon Fraser. His limbs were displayed, separately, in Newcastle upon Tyne, Berwick-upon-Tweed, Stirling, and Perth. A plaque stands in a wall of St. Bartholomew's Hospital near the site of Wallace's execution at Smithfield.

Wallace's plaque on the wall of St Bartholomew's Hospital, near where he was executed

Religious dissenters (Catholics as well as different Protestant denominations such as Anabaptists) were put to death at Smithfield in the course of the changes in the religious orientation of the Crown, since King Henry VIII. About fifty Protestants and religious reformers were executed here during the reign of Mary I during the Marian Persecution of Protestants.
​

 

[Cliffy]

There are thousands of ancient laws that are still on the statute books but which have no bearing on life today, but are still on the statute books merely books successive governments forget to take them off.

Kinda like the monarchy, eh - irrelevant and outdated.

 

[Blackleaf]

Kinda like the monarchy, eh - irrelevant and outdated.

 

[taxslave]

I agree with cliffy.

 

[Cliffy]

is precisely what the monarchy is all about - infantile adults who can't let go of fairy tales.

 

[Blackleaf]

is precisely what the monarchy is all about - infantile adults who can't let go of fairy tales.

What are you telling me for? The British want their monarchy. The last thing they want is a President Blair, a President Brown or a President Cameron. If you Canadians don't want your monarchy then get rid of it. It's nothing to do with me, is it? If you want to swap a monarch as your Head of State for a President Harper, then that's fine by me.

 

[tay]

The Doncaster man jailed for defacing a portrait of the Queen in Westminster Abbey has gone on hunger strike



Supporters of Tim Haries, aged 42, of Bellis Avenue, Balby, said in a statement he had begun a hunger strike after being sent to prison, in protest at the ‘politically motivated’ sentence.


It said: “He will continue his hunger strike until his case is reopened and he is reunited with his daughters.”


Haries said: “I hereby declare that the judge’s decision to ignore the Probation Service’s recommendation of a community service order and replace it with a custodial sentence leaves me with no alternative than to enter an immediate hunger strike.


“I consider that as the custodial sentence is well outside of the Probation Service recommendations, this can only be a political motivated decision. I therefore now regard myself as a political prisoner.


“My only crime is to fight to see my two daughters whom I love dearly, after being ordered to abandon them by the family courts.
“My children and I have done nothing to warrant such treatment by the courts and our Government.”


He revealed he had made a final application to the Family Courts to be reunited with his children and added: “My fast will continue until this application is granted. Until this application is granted I will accept nothing but water, no food, sugar, glucose, vitamins, supplements etc. I hereby insist that any medical examinations are conducted by an external and independent doctor.”


Haries wsa jailed for six months yesterday at Southwark Crown Court amid shouts of protest from his Fathers 4 Justice supporters.




Doncaster man goes on hunger strike - Doncaster Free Press

 

[EagleSmack]

 

[Blackleaf]

 

[EagleSmack]

 

[Blackleaf]

 

[EagleSmack]

 

[Blackleaf]

 

[darkbeaver]

I thought Britiania was a democracy.