The Queen Is Alive and Immune From Prosecution
She can technically sexually and racially discriminate against her employees, legally speaking
It’s a question that keeps me up at night, every night: Could the Queen of England murder someone in her sweeping fiefdom in cold blood and get away with it? The answer is sort of, maybe, if it happens at one of her estates, particularly at her privately owned salmon business at Balmoral. Oh? I had no idea the Queen was a foul-mouthed fishwife, but I suppose it’s a good use of resources if you’re a daughter and widow of the sea who owns most of the British shoreline.
In a new piece detailing her immunity from 160 UK laws, the Guardian reports that more than 30 of those bar police from entering Balmoral or Sandringham to investigate suspected crimes, “a legal immunity accorded to no other private landowner in the country.” The popo are also required to get her “personal agreement” before they can look at her salmon business, “where anglers are charged up to £630 a day to fish.”
But enough about Lilibet’s lucrative foothold in the river-based touristing industry! Can the Queen of Lean shiv someone with the sharpened end of her staghorn stick and live for 100 more years to tell the tail? I guess there’s no specific decree allowing her to kill humans for sport, but she does have the ill-defined and obscure power known as “the Queen’s consent, in which her lawyers are able to vet laws that might affect her before parliament can approve them.”
As such, she has exemptions from a lot of pretty wild stuff. For example, she can technically sexually and racially discriminate against her employees without violating the Equality Act 2010. Bad ass!
Per the Guardian:
She is fully or partly exempt from at least four different laws on workers’ pensions, and is not required to comply with the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974.
The practice of preventing the Queen’s employees from bringing discrimination claims against her household dates back to the late 1960s, when courtiers told ministers that “it was not, in fact, the practice to appoint coloured immigrants or foreigners” to clerical roles in the royal household.
Other privileges: Her Balmoral estate is also not responsible for employing a major Scottish law to curtail carbon emissions, she doesn’t have to pay taxes, and she could, if she wanted to, sell alcohol after midnight and be exempt from a local council tax.
The official legalese surrounding Lil’s exemption from personal mortality and total oblivion is opaque. Long live the Queen’s salmon fishery!
