[ad133]

I was hoping there was going to be some minimum definition, and that I could call myself Lord, but alas, my ~300m^2 of land doesn't seem to qualify me either (I live there, I didn't get scammed ~3k times over for 1 sq foot).

I mean honestly if you could be a lord with 1 square foot, there would be a lot of lords in Scotland due to the ownership nature of buying a house (very little of this "leasehold" thing that's prevalent in England). My parents would be a lord and lady, so would their parents...

I've not encountered these ads though, I guess it would be pretty dumb to geo-target it to people living in Scotland.

Edit, on the other hand, if you buy a house and let it out, I guess you can be a land lord, even if you still can't call yourself lord.

[synu]

Or you could just call yourself lord regardless, and the monarch won’t appear and throw you in the oubliette.

[DocTomoe]

It's Britain, the country that wants to get out of the European Human Rights Convention because ... it protects human rights. I wouldn't be so sure about oubliettes...

[Veen]

That's a misrepresentation. The UK government merely wants to make the UK supreme court the final authority on some human rights cases in the UK, which seems perfectly reasonable to me. The UK is not abandoning the convention, and there are plans to create a UK Bill of Rights.

(Putting people in oubliettes is illegal under UK law anyway.)

[growse]

> That's a misrepresentation. The UK government merely wants to make the UK supreme court the final authority on some human rights cases in the UK, which seems perfectly reasonable to me.

Perfectly reasonable, until the executive decides to pack the court, and then renege on / "creatively reinterpret" their shiny new "bill of rights" (or even just simply amend it).

You say "merely", but that's the whole dog and pony show. This isn't some abstract, ideological exercise, the current government wants to pass laws that would currently not fly in the ECHR court. If they didn't, there would be zero practical need to change the current state. Ask yourself which bits of the ECHR you think are worth doing without?

Remember, the whole point of the ECHR is to prevent the oppression of a people by their government. Having the court be drawn from a range of different nations and not having any single government exclusively in control is a feature, not a bug.

[homonculus1]

And what happens when the ECHR starts oppressing people? It's turtles all the way down!

[IIsi50MHz]

Pshhh, we all know turtles would never oppress people. Gödel, Escher, and Bach, though, would be an Eternal Golden Braid.

[Xylakant]

Those two things are mutually exclusive. The convention establishes the ECHR as the highest court ruling over matters of the convention and states that are part of the convention are bound to those rulings. Establishing the UK high court as the highest court would be violating the obligations under the convention. So yes, if you want to have the high court be the last court of appeal, you’d have to abandon the convention.

[ben_w]

What the UK politicians say they want and what the actual bills say are not necessarily aligned. FWIW, the rhetoric that gets hate-quoted at me is mostly in the camp of "rights are bad".

(Would it be illegal to make a law whose punishment was an oubliette? Can the queen be detained at her own pleasure, at least for anything other than the detonation of a nuclear device in her personal capacity?)

[matthewheath]

> Would it be illegal to make a law whose punishment was an oubliette?

No, it would not be illegal to make a law whose punishment was an oubliette. The British Parliament is sovereign and supreme, and can make any law it wishes.

The devolved legislatures are limited by the Act(s) establishing them. Such a law passed by the Scottish Parliament would probably be challenged under S29(2)(d) of the Scotland Act 1998 which prohibits breaches of the European Convention on Human Rights.

In this case, such a law in Scotland could potentially breach Article 3 of the Convention which prohibits inhuman or degrading punishment. The British Parliament can simply choose to ignore it, but the Scottish Parliament can't (unless the British Parliament chose to give it such powers).

> Can the queen be detained at her own pleasure, at least for anything other than the detonation of a nuclear device in her personal capacity?

No, she cannot be prosecuted for anything while she is the monarch. She would need to abdicate or otherwise be legally removed (e.g. an Act of Parliament abolishing the Crown) from her position.

Even if she were able to be prosecuted, the Nuclear Explosions (Prohibition and Inspections) Act 1998 is not currently in force, and even if the Act were in force, Her Majesty would be exempt under S14(4):

"Nothing in this section affects Her Majesty in her private capacity; and this subsection shall be construed as if section 38(3) of the Crown Proceedings Act 1947 (meaning of Her Majesty in her private capacity) were contained in this Act."

[growse]

> No, it would not be illegal to make a law whose punishment was an oubliette. The British Parliament is sovereign and supreme, and can make any law it wishes.

Sure, but this is the same argument that comes around whenever previously signed treaties become 'inconvenient'.

Parliament can, of course, choose to ignore EHCR/Geneva/pick-any-other-ratified-treaty. But there are both predictable and unpredictable consequences for doing so, so in practice it's prudent for parliament to not just wield their unlimited power to just start murdering whoever they fancy.

[d1sxeyes]

> In this case, such a law in Scotland could potentially breach Article 3 of the Convention which prohibits inhuman or degrading punishment. The British Parliament can simply choose to ignore it, but the Scottish Parliament can't (unless the British Parliament chose to give it such powers).

Well, if Westminster choose to ignore the convention, I don't see why Holyrood would not choose to ignore Westminster?

This whole politics thing only works if we DON'T ignore stuff we all signed.

[Zuider]

The monarch can be 'detained at his own pleasure' and even charged with treason and executed as Charles Stuart discovered, or simply run out of the country like his son, James.

[Banana699]

Why is becoming a Scottish Lord desirable in the first place ? explained for someone who doesn't live in Scotland or any of the neighbouring Isles ?

[munificent]

I'm guessing that many of these are targeting Americans.

One of the weird side effects of being from a melting pot country only a few hundred years old is a yearning for connection to things that feel permanent and historical. "Owning" some land in Scotland and "having" a title may be appealing to an American who otherwise feels cut off from their Scottish ancestry or other longer-term cultural practices.

[troutwine]

It would have an appeal to me, because it's absurd. I'm an American and was raised up with the notion that royalty and monarchies are patently absurd, a feeling that has only grown as I've aged. Having a Lordship would be like owning a three-wheeled car or living in a house that looks like a giant seashell, to my mind. It'd be a funny thing to tell folks about at parties. I might even go about creating knights or whatever if the party was good enough.

[Gordonjcp]

It's pretty absurd in the UK, too, and no-one really cares about it.

Where I grew up, Lord NotGoingToDoxxHim, Clan Chief of the MacDonalds, was the local TV repairman and satellite dish installer who drove an admittedly rather nice Volvo and had a house with a garden nearly as big as ours.

[Semaphor]

Eh, I’m German and almost bought a royal baker title some years ago. It’s mainly fun ;)

[dilyevsky]

I don’t think it’s related to melting pot thing - new world history is just not that rich compared to european/asian ones due to its recency and (for the most part) lack of conflict

[bee_rider]

Isn't that sort of related? People in the mixing pot want to find some rich historical legacy to connect to so they can feel distinct from the rest of the pot.

Personally, I've always found it a bit silly -- the folks I most admire in my ancestry are the ones who looked around and said "Yeah current events are shaping up to be part of some nation's rich history, time to get the hell out of dodge." Rich history is largely made of poor people being shoved into the meat grinder of 'glorious' national struggles.

[ido]

There was a tremendous amount of conflict in the new world, just mostly not between countries (the conquest of the Americas had a death toll of 70-100m people).

[dilyevsky]

Sure but those are relatively few events (though large in magnitude) compared to stuff that was going on in europe/asia. And americas are fucking huge compared to europe and coastal east asia. Turns out when lota people are sandwiched in tight geography, competing for resources for thousands of years a lot of stuff happens!

[noSyncCloud]

Counterpoint: New World history is/was just as rich and valuable; it was just systematically erased by one of the largest genocides in history spanning from pole to pole.

[dilyevsky]

They had 10% of world population at the time conquest began so just by that metric nah

[munificent]

What level of population is required for one's culture to be considered interesting or worth preserving?

[fwip]

What other genocides do you know of that killed more than 10% of the world population?

[WorldMaker]

Titles are a form of addressing people. Sometimes it is just nice to be addressed by something that isn't Mr/Ms/Mx(/Mrs/Miss). Plenty of people have been motivated towards a PhD or MD for among other reasons the hopes of getting to be addressed as Doctor. For various reasons most of the available Titles to be found in our world are old and baroque (sometimes literally), which both has its appeals (a feeling of "tradition") and detriments (hard to get).

I've many non-binary friends that especially pine that Mx isn't greatly accepted by many and most of the non-gendered titles (including Doctor) are hard to acquire. I keep joking that if I were Governor of Kentucky, I'd make a simple form for any non-binary person to acquire the Colonel title if they wished.

(In Kentucky the Colonel title, the same one used by, for instance, the well known Colonel Sanders, is a title gifted to anyone for general service to the Commonwealth. It's origins are military, but it's been much more a philanthropic thing for much of the past couple centuries, including in the case of Colonel Sanders who was awarded it for his role as a businessman in the Commonwealth. It's a fascinating title.)

[dylan604]

I mean, you know, would you rather have a chat with Ben Kingsley or Sir Ben Kingsley? I know I'd rather chat with Lord Banana699 than just plain-ol' Banana699

[salawat]

And this is why marketing is a thing, for the record.

[dougmwne]

I doubt it confers any practical modern day benefits aside from the Right of the Braggart.

[ogogmad]

I imagine it isn't. It's simply something you can mention during drinks.

And the correct term is laird btw.

[thaumasiotes]

> And the correct term is laird btw.

The OP quite clearly notes that this is false:

> In the United Kingdom, “lord” and “lady” are peerage titles, meaning a person can only hold the legal recognition, privileges, and protections associated with those titles if they rightfully inherit them, if they marry into a noble family, or if the queen grants them a peerage.

> Companies that sell souvenir plots with the claim of granting titles often rely on a conflation of the titles “lord” and “lady” with “laird,” which is not a peerage title, but rather solely a courtesy title akin to the English phrase “lord of the manor.” In Scotland, this title is traditionally applied to a member of the landed gentry who owns a large estate that has a long history and who generally has servants and tenants. Because “laird” is merely a courtesy title, it has no legal significance

The title of nobility is "lord". "Laird" is not a title at all, but a conventional designation for a somewhat related concept.

[CharlesW]

Scottish Lords and Ladies get a free pint from their local pub the third Tuesday of the month between 3-5pm.

[globalise83]

Only if they loudly declaim their status to all present...

[slowmovintarget]

Time was, you could be a Senator in the American South without the land... or the actual job. They'd call you that in the bar or restaurant, just in case your were.

[tailspin2019]

And I believe there is a requirement to do a funny little dance…

[PaulHoule]

If you make a reservation at the Marriott they have a long list of titles you can claim. You can say you are a "Lord" there. Also an example that "Established Titles" makes is that you can have your credit card say "Lord so-an-so"

[d1sxeyes]

For the Marriott, sure. But for credit cards, normally you can't though. It's not part of your name, and it's not a legal title. Most KYC processes will stop you if you try.

[Macha]

There are sufficient people who value items that give them (real or imagined) prestige with other people (especially those of a similar mindset) to sustain these industries.

[JamesBarney]

It's bought as a fun gag gift.

[cjbgkagh]

I think it’s a holdover from when airlines and other service industries would treat their customers with titles more favorably.

[slowmovintarget]

Or the square foot grant when you buy a bottle of Laphroaig... I have a few, though I'd strongly doubt they're contiguous.

[iak8god]

The only way to know for sure is to go check it out :)

And while you're there, take the Water to Whiskey tour: https://whiskystories.com/2017/02/18/laphroaig-water-to-whis...

[splonk]

They don't do water to whiskey anymore, the new version is called "uisge". I believe the primary difference is that they don't take you out to dig peat on the new tour (because all the peat is dug mechanically now).

Still a nice day out with a picnic by the water source, as long as weather cooperates.

[iak8god]

> They don't do water to whiskey anymore

Ah, so I see. It has been a while.

The stop to dig peat was fun, but it's still a really good tour without that.

[rob_c]

the distillers wares tour at laphroaig is much better imo: https://www.laphroaig.com/gb/book-islay-distillery-tour#id=d...

went a few years ago

[iak8god]

I think the uisge tour (formerly known as w2w but now without peat digging) is basically just distillers wares with a picnic first.

[CRConrad]

> I've not encountered these ads though, I guess it would be pretty dumb to geo-target it to people living in Scotland.

In-video "sponsored content" on YouTube is probably only made in only one version and thus not geo-targetted, right? I've seen this in several videos on history and adjacent subjects (for instance in some by Max Miller, whose "Tasting History" channel on old recipes seems rather popular here). So if you want to see it, that's where to look.

[yupper32]

Could be targeting tourists.