Atheists can be morons too - probably.

[Gups]

My understanding is that the UK Parliament consists of the two houses and the Queen in her legislative role i.e. Grumbler is right.

[grumbler]

Oh, and as a matter of niggles which may become significant later, the Queen is, I am 99% sure a part of Parliament.  Parliament thus consists of the Sovereign, the House of Lords, and the House of Commons.

AFAIK, she is not. What you are looking for is Queen-in-Parliament, which consists of the Sovereign, the House of Lords and the House of Commons. The Parliament is a separate body from the Crown.

According to the Oxford University Press blurb for  What's Wrong with the British Constitution? http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/Politics/ComparativePolitics/GreatBritain/?view=usa&ci=9780199546954 which is just an early Google hit, she is a member of Parliament (and this conforms to what my British professor told me at LSE):

The position that still dominates the field of constitutional law is that of parliamentary sovereignty (or supremacy). According to this view, the supreme lawgiver in the United Kingdom is Parliament. Some writers in this tradition go on to insist that Parliament in turn derives its authority from the people, because the people elect Parliament. An obvious problem with this view is that Parliament, to a lawyer, comprises three houses: monarch, Lords, and Commons. The people elect only one of those three houses.

[Neil]

It's hard to define, because nobody wrote it down.  You're all equally wrong.

[Oexmelin]

Yep, I checked - I had thought the Glorious Revolution had ensured the separation of the bodies, but it still remains as was the case for the French the extension of the Curia Regis.

[crazy canuck]

Oh, and as a matter of niggles which may become significant later, the Queen is, I am 99% sure a part of Parliament.  Parliament thus consists of the Sovereign, the House of Lords, and the House of Commons.

AFAIK, she is not. What you are looking for is Queen-in-Parliament, which consists of the Sovereign, the House of Lords and the House of Commons. The Parliament is a separate body from the Crown.

According to the Oxford University Press blurb for  What's Wrong with the British Constitution? http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/Politics/ComparativePolitics/GreatBritain/?view=usa&ci=9780199546954 which is just an early Google hit, she is a member of Parliament (and this conforms to what my British professor told me at LSE):

The position that still dominates the field of constitutional law is that of parliamentary sovereignty (or supremacy). According to this view, the supreme lawgiver in the United Kingdom is Parliament. Some writers in this tradition go on to insist that Parliament in turn derives its authority from the people, because the people elect Parliament. An obvious problem with this view is that Parliament, to a lawyer, comprises three houses: monarch, Lords, and Commons. The people elect only one of those three houses.

Correct.

If the Queen was not part of Parliament then there would be no need for royal assent to pass a bill into law.

[Oexmelin]

If the Queen was not part of Parliament then there would be no need for royal assent to pass a bill into law.

Historically, that was quite the reverse. It is the Parliament that was part of the body of the Crown, hence the Crown's contention that it could basically do whatever it wanted. The need for royal assent is simply derived from the historical construction that the King, or Queen, is considered the source of all justice. 

I find it interesting how this fits more or less well with the practicalities, and ex post facto modern reconstructions.

[Berkut]

Oh, and as a matter of niggles which may become significant later, the Queen is, I am 99% sure a part of Parliament.  Parliament thus consists of the Sovereign, the House of Lords, and the House of Commons.

AFAIK, she is not. What you are looking for is Queen-in-Parliament, which consists of the Sovereign, the House of Lords and the House of Commons. The Parliament is a separate body from the Crown.

According to the Oxford University Press blurb for  What's Wrong with the British Constitution? http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/Politics/ComparativePolitics/GreatBritain/?view=usa&ci=9780199546954 which is just an early Google hit, she is a member of Parliament (and this conforms to what my British professor told me at LSE):

The position that still dominates the field of constitutional law is that of parliamentary sovereignty (or supremacy). According to this view, the supreme lawgiver in the United Kingdom is Parliament. Some writers in this tradition go on to insist that Parliament in turn derives its authority from the people, because the people elect Parliament. An obvious problem with this view is that Parliament, to a lawyer, comprises three houses: monarch, Lords, and Commons. The people elect only one of those three houses.

Correct.

If the Queen was not part of Parliament then there would be no need for royal assent to pass a bill into law.

The President is not part of Congress, yet you need Presidential consent to pass something into law, absent over-riding his veto, of course.

[grumbler]

The President is not part of Congress, yet you need Presidential consent to pass something into law, absent over-riding his veto, of course.

That is because such is part of the US Constitution.  The basic tenet of British constitutional law is not  checks and balances (as in the US), but rather "Parliament is sovereign."  There is, for instance, no court to rule a law passed by parliament unconstitutional based on some higher law - the very concept is not present.  The monarch is part of Parliament, though, and so part of the sovereign.  If the monarch were not part of the sovereign, Parliament could not need royal assent and still be sovereign itself.

[Agelastus]

I have no idea why you would believe this to be true.  The first government to recognize has no special standing whatever.  For a British court, what would count is whether the British sovereign had recognized a fellow-sovereign.

What is so difficult to understand about the premise that if it is successfully argued before a British Court that the original recognition of the Vatican by Italy was illegitimate that this would undermine the legal basis of everybody else's recognition of said institution, including Britain's?

This is selective quoting at its worst, gentlemen.

The rest of your statement had no logical connection to the first part of your statement.  Selective quoting is necessary if we are not to add the length of every prior post to each new post.  Thus, i would call this selective quoting at its finest.
[/quote]

Since the rest of my statement expressed my opinion of the legitimacy and likely success of the argument that was being presented in the first part of my statement, you attempted to grossly misrepresent my position on the issue by ignoring the latter part of my post. This is, of course, a debating tactic of the kind you profess to abhor, and repeatedly accuse others of indulging in.

[Razgovory]

I would call that a failure to quote.

[grumbler]

What is so difficult to understand about the premise that if it is successfully argued before a British Court that the original recognition of the Vatican by Italy was illegitimate that this would undermine the legal basis of everybody else's recognition of said institution, including Britain's?

What is so difficult to understand about the fact that your mere unsupported assertion of  something does not make it true?  Your assertion does not pass the smell test nor the common-sense test - particularly when it comes to British courts ruling on the actions of their  sovereign.

There is no basis under international law that I am aware of that even mentions the possibility that subsequent recognitions of a government can be tainted by the nature of governments recognizing faster than themselves.  I would be glad to be corrected with citations, but in the absence of evidence that your difficult-to-understand surmise is true, I must assume it false.

Since the rest of my statement expressed my opinion of the legitimacy and likely success of the argument that was being presented in the first part of my statement, you attempted to grossly misrepresent my position on the issue by ignoring the latter part of my post. This is, of course, a debating tactic of the kind you profess to abhor, and repeatedly accuse others of indulging in.

Since you first assertion in your statement was logically and semantically separate and complete, I left out the second, unrelated, assertion as not relevant to my point. 

Your position in your first paragraph is that the nature of the British recognition depends somehow on the nature of the Italian one. 

Your position in the second paragraph is that Mr. Stephen's position is fatuous, which is unrelated to the nature of the Italian recognition.  That this is not part of the same thought is clearly shown by you, as you put it in a separate paragraph.

You cannot complain when I consider two separate thoughts, in separate paragraphs, to be separate.

Well, not without sounding whiny, anyway.