"a prospective citizen would necessarily already have permanent leave to remain"
having looked it up: yes, you're right. Yet again my mental map of the categories of residency etc. has very little connection to the (confusing) reality.
"You and I owe our allegiance to the Queen" We live in a country where the queen has some powers, parliament and the executive have others, and there are various other rights and responsibilities scattered around the place. Few people would claim the Queen has the power to give me or you orders, except as a part of that system. I don't strongly object to asking people to pledge loyalty to the system.
But more generally I don't like arrangements where people are pressured to, or given incentives to, say things they don't believe in. It ends up penalizing people who refuse to lie, which feels deeply wrong to me. Compare to Irish nationalist MPs refusing to swear allegiance, or people wrongly imprisoned who are denied early release because they deny their guilt, or the Quaker teacher in California fired (briefly) because she inserted 'non-violently' into a loyalty oath. Even if Britain is a monarchy, and a majority want it that way, to make people swear allegiance to something 20-odd percent of Britons disapprove of is a recipe for hurting the honest.
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branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2008-03-11 09:13 pm (UTC)having looked it up: yes, you're right. Yet again my mental map of the categories of residency etc. has very little connection to the (confusing) reality.
"You and I owe our allegiance to the Queen"
We live in a country where the queen has some powers, parliament and the executive have others, and there are various other rights and responsibilities scattered around the place. Few people would claim the Queen has the power to give me or you orders, except as a part of that system. I don't strongly object to asking people to pledge loyalty to the system.
But more generally I don't like arrangements where people are pressured to, or given incentives to, say things they don't believe in. It ends up penalizing people who refuse to lie, which feels deeply wrong to me. Compare to Irish nationalist MPs refusing to swear allegiance, or people wrongly imprisoned who are denied early release because they deny their guilt, or the Quaker teacher in California fired (briefly) because she inserted 'non-violently' into a loyalty oath. Even if Britain is a monarchy, and a majority want it that way, to make people swear allegiance to something 20-odd percent of Britons disapprove of is a recipe for hurting the honest.