Difference between the UK, Great Britain & England. Finally, the difference between the United Kingdom, Great Britain and England explained in simple terns.
Tuesday, February 1, 2011 11:08:02 PM
lol I love the "who cares" comments... It's statements like that, which give American`s the reputation of being naive.
Tuesday, February 1, 2011 6:50:01 PM
Hmm, I realize the monarch doesn't really have any power anymore realistically. But if the monarch were to come to Canada/Australia and start ordering people around how much control would they theoretically have?
I know here that the Governor-General (Monarch`s representative in Canada), while mostly symbolic, does have some amount of real power in being able to freeze parliament and call an election. So if the Queen came here would she be able to do that? Or perhaps even more?
Theoretically, yes. Practically, no.
The last time a UK monarch exercised *any* formal power was in 1708 when Queen Anne vetoed a law. It was the year after Scotland entered the union and she waded in on the contentious issue of a Scottish militia.
King William informally used royal power to rig a key vote and force voting reform through in 1832, but that was an extreme case that stood due to popular support for the reform and he did it to stop a revolution.