Thank you but I'm British, I really don't need to have it explained to me what I knighthood is.
The whole Royal family works in two ways - the theoretical what they (or more usually the Queen) can do, and the way it actually works.
In theory the Queen can veto any law, could decide who to knight herself and so on but in reality this doesn't happen for the simple reason that the minute she did we the people would advance on Buckingham Palace with torches and pitchforks and burn the place to the ground. She is very much the Queen because the people and the government allow her to be, whatever the technicalities of the law say.
The reality of the situation is that the democratically elected government (sort of, see the House of Lords below) make all the decisions and the Queen merely "endorses them" (though even that suggests she has a say in it which she doesn't in any real way).
Do the Royal family have influence? Yes they do, but I'd suggest it's really no more than anyone else with that much money has (look at Adrian Beescroft right now) and they're far better than most with that much money in this sense as they're aware that they should remain neutral and do so. Generally the worst that happens is that Prince Charles runs his ill informed mouth about homoeopathy and architecture.
It's an odd system and no-one in their right mind would design one like it but as it operates now it's really not that broken.
If you want to take a swipe at something can I suggest the unelected House of Lords which has genuine power over the laws of the land and frequently uses it?
And even they tend to be a force for good, curbing the worst excesses of successive governments, though I may be more positively inclined towards them than I could otherwise be as I detest the current government so like that the Lords are giving them the run around.
Sorry, simply having a Royal class is paying lip-service to a state of affairs that is unhealthy.
How it actually works because people (or more specifically, parliament) don't feel like aligning theory and practice is not my problem.
If to the law there are more than one kinds of people then you may say that in theory it isn't like that however in practice this has all kinds of real effects and these will remain as long as Royalty is not formally abolished.
Knighthoods are one of those effects, another is the fact that people of 'royal blood' are to some extent above the law. And are protected in ways that no commoner would ever be protected.
On top of that it is still hereditary rule, you may be Knighted but your children will never accidentally be born King or Queen. And to me that is just plain wrong, ceremonial or not.
Reminds me of the Hugh Laurie joke "I used to be Princess Anne's assistant but I quit because I realised that however hard I worked they were never going to make me Princess Anne".
The difference between how it works in theory and how it works in practice is everything. British law is largely unwritten - until the EU gave us them we had no written bill of rights and most of our laws are based on precedent rather than anything parliament has decreed. If you do the immigration test one of the things you might be asked is what sort of constitution Britain has (correct answer "an unwritten one"). To try and understand Britain based on what is theoretically true is an exercise in futility that will rapidly lead you away from anything resembling reality.
I don't know if you have to live here to really understand it but what you imply simply doesn't tally with the way the Royal family are viewed. It's a strange combination of soap opera, duty, alien otherness and sentimental fondness. For most people there's more of a feeling of pity for them than any idea that they're better than us. They are an anachronistic anomaly but that's how they're viewed - so different, so outside that the comparisons you make really aren't there, any more than you'd compare yourself to something in a museum.
Now that's obviously not true of everything to do with the class system which at it's top levels embodies almost everything you say (the Prime Minister for instance is to me far worse, an elitist fop with none of the Royal family's sense of duty or propriety) but to pick on the Royal family is a little like protesting against BP by not buying sweets in their garages when you're filling up your car with petrol - it's really not the problem.
"it isn't like that however in practice this has all kinds of real effects and these will remain as long as Royalty is not formally abolished."
Yeah, because countries following "the modern theory" are doing so much better than countries with a Royalty.
In practice, it makes no significant difference, governments can and do have lavish expenses and luxury. So it's not like not having a monarchy is saving them any significant amount of money
"another is the fact that people of 'royal blood' are to some extent above the law. And are protected in ways that no commoner would ever be protected."
Oh you mean like diplomats or a president? I'm sure the POTUS is the most protected human being on the planet way more than any king or queen
"On top of that it is still hereditary rule, you may be Knighted but your children will never accidentally be born King or Queen"
Knighthood is not hereditary and even you're "royal blood" tough chance being born King or Queen (if not altogether impossible, but I'm not sure about that)
The bigger problem in my mind is that so many of our prime ministers and other government ministers come from a very select elite background. But then America has this problem too, even though there is supposedly no class system in the US. For example, the concept of, and everything that's wrong with, the Bullingdon club at Oxford is interchangeable with the Skull and Bones club at Yale.
If you are looking for elitism in the British system then you are missing the point when you pick on the Royals. They are probably one of the better investments the government makes in boosting the tourism sector. As your comments demonstrate, lots of people around the world take them very seriously, a lot more seriously than British people typically do.
While I would prefer an apolitical president for Head of State of the UK, I feel that the Royals do deserve some credit for their hard work and willingness to put themselves in harms way in the Armed Forces.
I honestly think that the monarchy represents 'god' in the UK political system. And Lizzie has behaved as a decent omnipotent hands-off nothing. Far better that, than a bunch of US politicians running around ostensibly in the service of an invisible "higher power".
In my mind, an unelected Lords is far preferable to an elected one for the simple reason that both houses will make mistakes. If the houses are both selected on the same basis, their mistakes will be correlated, rather than cancelling out. Given that the Lords is there precisely to hold the Commons in check by stopping its mistakes as early as possible, you don't want the Lords and the Commons to have the same biases.
I don't know that hereditary peerage is a good idea, but I'm pretty certain that an elected peerage would be worse.
That's why in most countries, the second house is elected on a different rythmn than the main one. So you get balance.
Interestingly, I have never seen anyone theorize about this. Everyone understands why democracy and elections are related. Parliament is a snapshot of public opinion at a given time. By using two snapshots taken at different time intervals, you get better reliability. Sounds obvious to IT engineers :-)
Elected politicans think as far ahead as the next election, be it 5 years or 5 weeks away. Hereditary peers think as far ahead as their own grandchildren, who will need to clean up and mess they make.
It's still the same fundamental selection method, though. It's less bad if elections are staggered, but it's still skewed by the the same forces - for instance, public opinion can be consistently wrong about a lot of things. A purely random selection process would be better, but I've got no idea how that would work in practice.
The main duties of the Lords are to impart wisdom and delay bills. On the whole this is a good thing, and it is unclear what benefits will come from being democratically elected.
I think I am more in favour of the un-elected House of Lords than you are, but I rather liked the proposal in the recent draft that elected Peers serve for 15 years. Having long terms would make them less influenced by the political wind (I would hope).
Let me clarify. Randomly selected such that over time they will represent all walks off life, backgrounds, regions, ages, faiths and so on.
Heredity as it is (or rather was) favours white, male (many of the titles couldn't be passed to women), upper class, privately educated, wealthy, christian individuals.
However, it's fairly clear what one of the downsides would be: media manipulation. Allowing Rupert Murdoch and his media empire an even tighter grip on UK parliament would be nothing but a terrible thing.
The whole Royal family works in two ways - the theoretical what they (or more usually the Queen) can do, and the way it actually works.
In theory the Queen can veto any law, could decide who to knight herself and so on but in reality this doesn't happen for the simple reason that the minute she did we the people would advance on Buckingham Palace with torches and pitchforks and burn the place to the ground. She is very much the Queen because the people and the government allow her to be, whatever the technicalities of the law say.
The reality of the situation is that the democratically elected government (sort of, see the House of Lords below) make all the decisions and the Queen merely "endorses them" (though even that suggests she has a say in it which she doesn't in any real way).
Do the Royal family have influence? Yes they do, but I'd suggest it's really no more than anyone else with that much money has (look at Adrian Beescroft right now) and they're far better than most with that much money in this sense as they're aware that they should remain neutral and do so. Generally the worst that happens is that Prince Charles runs his ill informed mouth about homoeopathy and architecture.
It's an odd system and no-one in their right mind would design one like it but as it operates now it's really not that broken.
If you want to take a swipe at something can I suggest the unelected House of Lords which has genuine power over the laws of the land and frequently uses it?
And even they tend to be a force for good, curbing the worst excesses of successive governments, though I may be more positively inclined towards them than I could otherwise be as I detest the current government so like that the Lords are giving them the run around.