the Law on the abolition of wage slavery operates in Russia since 2014. Employees have the right to choose the Bank card that will be paid salary. Last year came into force the latest amendments: employers will be fined for refusing to list the salary on the card that was chosen by the employee. The new law complicated the work of accountants: they have to manually transfer staff salaries to cards of different banks. However, at the end of 2019 appeared a service that will help move the time-consuming process in a single click.

Amendments to the labor law gave Russians the right to choose any Bank to open a salary account. The downside is the increased time and financial costs, which fell on the shoulders of employers.

How much money big business loses on salary

Accountants have to complete a separate payment documents and send them to different banks. The increase in labor costs is especially noticeable in medium and large business. The staff also noticed the change: wages began to fall to the map later than usual.

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Wage slavery: why employees withhold wages, and accountants across the country are going crazy in payday - The Global Domains News

As I scrawl the sloppy copy for my latest manifesto on a windowpane between my thoughts on string theory and Kevin Bacons connection to 9/11 (Madoff made him do it!), I am sincerely struck by Americas latest outpouring of affection for the pathologically eccentric. We may be on the veranda of a new black death but it has never been a better time to be mad in America. Not only is the evening news waxing hysterical and joining the angrier voices in my head like a Henry Rollins gospel ensemble, but every corporate huckster from Viacom to Disney apparently wants to be alone with me (Ill be Daria if you play Snow White).

Even before this country was strapped down into the straitjacket of corona pandemonia, a movement to normalize and destigmatize the scarlet letter of mental illness in mainstream America was well underway. Finally, its OK to be nuts! Fuck, its downright sexy. But this brings to mind a question that has long haunted me. What exactly is mental illness in this age of post-modern collapse and synergistic corporate hysteria? What does it mean to be crazy in such a sick sad world?

According to all the back-slapping do-gooders in the medical establishment, as well as the cultural icons who pander in their jabber, mental illness is just that, an illness of the mind. But just try and ask your therapist what the fuck that really means and hell likely smugly reply, Well, what do you think that means?, before charging you half a grand for his insightful Freudian evasive maneuver. The fine folks at the DSM seem to agree that mental illness is a condition affecting mood, thinking, or behavior in a way that negatively affects functioning in mainstream society. But thats just it, have you taken a fucking look at mainstream society lately?

Palestinian children are starving next door to wealthy kibbutzs, the coral reefs are bleaching like goddamn gym socks, the Amazon is burning to the fucking ground, supposed democracies are fighting a plague with a growing police state, and you fuckers still care more about Kylie Jenners bleached asshole than your own impending doom. If this is what passes for mainstream society, why the fuck would any person with half a conscience even want to function in it? I may be sick, but you people are fucking depraved. Lets have another Whopper and bomb Iran, oh what a normal world!

I have always been pathologically at odds with the normal world and the normal world has never made their disdain for my inability to conform to its wishes a secret. At a very young age, I learned the harsh lesson that I was different and that wasnt OK with the upstanding adults in my life. My issues with what is commonly known as mental illness have always been deeply intertwined with my dizzyingly fluid gender identity, and why not? Just like gender (not to mention race, sexuality, and adulthood), mental illness is essentially a social construct defined by class and civilization.

In fact, it wasnt so long ago that the DSM considered all queer bodies to be insane. I happen to agree with them. Your average Jane is just peachy with normal. She puts on the appropriate uniform, performs wage slavery, and goes home to accept all the right organs in all the right holes. Us queer and crazy folk are biologically driven not to blindly embrace such preconceived notions and for that sin we must be carefully categorized and heavily medicated before we can serve the only role deemed fit for us to play by the sane world, as well behaved tokens of progress and tolerance. Ooh! Doesnt it just feel yummy to belong?

But some of us dont want to fucking belong. Weve had a look at your beige Barbie Dreamworld and we can smell the corpses baked beneath the plastic veneer. And now there are more of us, more every single day. You see, it is society, with its amoral global capitalist bloodbath and the diseases this fosters, which is truly unhinged, and the harder this hard truth becomes to ignore, the more insane people proliferate. Do you really think all the mass shooters work for the NRA? Do you honestly believe that kids are throwing themselves from tall buildings because theyre simply bummed out? Weve had enough. We see the writing on the fucking wall and we dont like what it says. Coronavirus is just a dress rehearsal for the upheaval that is to come. So civilization finally sees us, and welcomes us, and cherishes us, just so long as the growing horde of pathological malcontents stays home and stays properly medicated.

Well, Ive got some writing for your wall- Fuck. You. This is one crazy person who wont keep quiet while the sane savages rape and pillage whats left of this planet in one big craven mass suicide attempt. I will rage like a proud lunatic against your twisted designs and youre gonna need to build bigger pills and bigger prisons to shut me up. Better get to work. Your time is running out. The dawn of the day of the mad dog is upon us.

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Fear and Loathing in Coronaville Volume 4: Insanity is a Virtue in a Mad World - CounterPunch

When I teach First Amendment law, I tend to talk for a few minutes each week about real First Amendment events in the news. In October 2019, when two UConn students were being prosecuted for "racial ridicule" for walking on campus and shouting "nigger" (apparently at no-one in particular)an extremely rare instance of an actual hate speech prosecution in the U.S., and thus an excellent illustration of the legal rules that we had been learning and the arguments that we had been consideringI discussed that case in class. As I always do, I discussed the facts, without expurgation or euphemisms. A few weeks after the class, I learned that some students had disapproved, but I didn't discuss it further with any students.

In early March 2020, right before an event at which a professor from a different law school was talking, someone shouted to me something like, "Volokh, don't use the n-word today!" (I'm not expurgating here, as you might gather; he did say, "n-word.") The speaker, to whom I was talking at the time, asked me what that was about, and I responded that, last Fall, I had talked about the prosecution of the UConn who had shouted "nigger," and some students were upset about my quoting that word. I wasn't speaking to the class as a whole, though I also wasn't trying to whisper: Especially at an American university, it seems to me, faculty and students (and others) should be free to discuss incidents in the news (or incidents in the law school) without looking over the shoulder to see who might overhear and be offended.

Also, no-one has tried to make anything of this (at least yet), but to fully disclose matters, let me note that in my Amicus Clinic class this Semester we were discussing our cases, and in one of them a man was being prosecuted for saying "What, are you an idiot? What do I have to do, be a nigger to be served in thisin this place?" to a black employee at the VA. (I believe that such speech might well have been constitutionally unprotected against a "fighting words" prosecution, or perhaps under some other theory; but the jury instruction in his case allowed the jury to convict him based on the use of "loud, abusive, or otherwise improper language," and our argument for amici will be that this prohibition on "otherwise improper" language is unconstitutionally vague and potentially viewpoint-based.)As you might gather, I quoted that as well.

My Dean (whom I much like, and whose work I generally much respect) has now issued a public apology to the UCLA Law community for the first two of these incidents:

Earlier in the year, Professor Eugene Volokh used the "n-word," both in classin teaching a First Amendment caseand outside of class when recounting the incident to a colleague. As you may know, Professor Volokh has strong views about why he chooses to use incendiary languageeven when vilein his classroom, without euphemism or alteration. While he has the right to make that choice as a matter of academic freedom and First Amendment rights, so long as he is not using this or other words with animus, many of usmyself includedstrongly believe that he could achieve his learning goals more effectively and empathetically without repeating the word itself. That is equally true in casual settings outside the classroom. Slurs, even when mentioned for pedagogical purposes, hurt people. The n-word is inextricably associated with anti-Black prejudice, racism and slavery; it is a word that carries with it the weight of our shameful history and the reality of ongoing anti-Black racism. I am deeply sorry for the pain and offense the use of this word has caused, and I very much respect the important work our Black Law Students Association undertook, using speech to counter speech, in the flowchart they distributed around the building.

I want to respond here by explaining why I think I was right, and why I will continue to accurately quote things in class and outside it. This is of course very similar to what I said about the controversy at Wake Forest involving the great legal historian Prof. Michael Kent Curtis, but I thought I needed to repeat it here as well.

My view is that, in class readings and in-class discussions (as well as in outside-class discussions), professors ought to mention what actually happens in a case or incident, without euphemism or expurgation; and students should feel free to do the same. If professors and students feel uncomfortable with saying those words themselves, I wouldn't condemn their decision to use an expurgated form (see, e.g.,Prof. Geoffrey Stone's decision along these lines); but I think the better approach is to accurately quote.

Professors certainly shouldn't use epithets, racial or otherwise, to themselves insult people. But when they are talking about what has been said, I think it's important that they report it as it was said. This is often called the "use-mention distinction," see, e.g., Randall Kennedy,How a Dispute Over the N-Word Became a Dispiriting Farce, Chron. Higher Ed., Feb. 8, 2019; John McWhorter,If President Obama Can Say It, You Can Too, Time, June 22, 2015(distinguishing "using" from "referring to").

Thus, when I have talked in my First Amendment Law class aboutCohen v. California, I talked about Cohen's "Fuck the Draft" jacket, not "F-word the Draft." When I talked aboutSnyder v. Phelps, I talked about Phelps' signs saying things like "God Hates Fags." When I talked aboutMatal v. Tam, I talked about a trademark for a band called "The Slants," which some view as a derogatory term for Asians. I suspect many, likely most, law professors do the same; they should certainly be allowed to. If I were to talk about the Redskins trademark case, I would say "Redskins," rather than talk around the word, the way some news outlets apparently do.

To turn to speech hostile to a group I belong to (Jews), when I talked about a rare recent group libel case, the MontanaState v. Leniocase, I noted that Lenio said, "I think every jew on the planet deserves to be killed for what kikes have done to our #dollar and cost of living Killing jews > wage #slave .," "#Copenhagen [referring to the then-recent Copenhagen shootings, including at a synagogue] It's important to note that jews hate free speech & are known bullsh-ters, could be #falseFlag So Hope for many REAL dead kikes," and "Now that the holocaust has been proven to be a lie Beyond a reasonable doubt, it is now time to hunt the Nazi hunters." (As it happens, both my parents came close to actually being killed by Nazis in World War II: My father was trapped in besieged Leningrad [civilian death toll about 1/3], and my mother was a Jew in Kiev [likewise, death toll about 1/3 or more] who would likely have been murdered with the other Ukrainian Jews if she hadn't been evacuated to Siberia. Nazi rhetoric and symbolism: Not my favorite.)

We have had readings or slides discussing cross-burning, and depicting swastikas and Confederate flags connected to cases or problems. And of course when I talk about leading First Amendment cases (such as Brandenburg v. Ohio,Virginia v. Black,NAACP v. Claiborne Hardware,Board of Ed. v. Pico, and more) that use the word "nigger," I don't try to avoid the word, and don't expect my students to.

This is so for several related reasons:

[1.] First, the law school is part of a university, where we should try to discuss the world as it is, the evil as well as the good, whether in law classes, history classes, literature classes, film classes, modern music classes, or elsewhere. This strikes me as a fundamental feature of the modern university: The right (I think the duty, but at least the right) to accurately present and discuss the facts of the world around us. That should be true of literature departments, of history departments, of law schools, or any other part of the university where such matters may arise.

[2.] Another reason is that, once a rule is set forth that you can't use "nigger," people will naturally assume that this reflects a broader principle. What about "fag" in "God hates fags" fromSnyderor the other Westboro Baptist Church cases? What about swastikas or Confederate flags or "Negro," in law school classes or history cases or other classes in which these are parts of the relevant materials?

Normally, we expect students to accept candid discussions of awful things (and history and law are chock full of awful things). But once one word that bitterly insults one group is made taboo, it's human nature for other groups to expect equal treatment for themselves. A categorical principle that all of us can quote all words, precisely because we are reporting the facts rather than using the words pejoratively, strikes me as a much better approach, and one that will help decrease the extra hurt feelings that will arise if, say, gay students were told that "fag" can be quoted but "nigger" can't be.

[3.] Beyond this, a good deal of history and of crime is much more painful than mere racial hostility (even the bitter hostility that many actual uses of "nigger" reflect). Genocide. Slavery. Hitler, Stalin, Mao. Rape.Child molestation. Lynching.

Some students may understandably find being reminded of such things to be much more painful than just hearing a quote from some racists. To give one concrete example, some years ago several law school administrators at a Top 20 law school told students designing a moot court problem to remove one of the precedents from the readings. (Moot court problems often focus on writing and oral delivery rather than research, and therefore give students a closed set of precedents on which they can rely.)

The problem was about the First Amendment and threats. The case that they were told to remove was the most important precedent in the field,Virginia v.Black.The reason given to remove the case was that the precedent involved cross-burning, which might be seen as too traumatic for some students. The result would have been pedagogically nonsensical, Hamlet without the Prince. Indeed, it would have taught the wrong messageand, I think, would have been humiliating for the students and the school when outside judges asked the students in the oral arguments why they hadn't discussedthekey precedent.

Fortunately, the decision was ultimately reversed. But this is where we go with the logic of compulsory expurgation of racially offensive material from sources that include it.

[4.] Moreover, law schools are training people to become lawyers. Lawyers have to deal with facts as they are, regardless of how unpleasant those facts may be. They need to read cases that contain nasty words and describe nastier actions. Do a Westlaw search fornigger & da(aft 1/1/1990), and you will find a bit more than 10,000 such cases, and there are many cases that quote other epithets as well; nor is the pace slowing down. (These cases, by the way, include Supreme Court opinions by, among others, Justices Blackmun, Ginsburg, Marshall, O'Connor, Sotomayor, and Thomas.)

And that's just in the cases that lawyers may have to read and discuss. On top of that, lawyers have to listen to witnesses who report what they heard. They have to listen to opposing counsel who quote cases and evidence. They have to hear judges who do the same. (Westlaw archives far fewer oral arguments than cases, but a search through its limited trial transcript and oral argument database for likewise reveals hundreds of mentions of "nigger.")

And indeed every day, lawyers of all races, religions, ethnic groups, and sexual orientations handle caseswhether in criminal law, employment law, education law, civil rights law, family law, or elsewherein which they hear extremely offensive material. They handle these situations with professionalism, and don't let the casual cruelty, callousness, and hatred that they read or hear about get them down. (Just to give one prominent example, the defendant's brief in the leading First Amendment precedent Brandenburg v. Ohio, a case in which a KKK speaker used the word "nigger" repeatedly, was cowritten by Eleanor Holmes Norton, now the delegate to Congress from D.C. and then a young black lawyer. Unsurprisingly, both the Supreme Court opinion and Del. Norton's brief accurately and repeatedly quoted that word.)

I do not for a moment think that black lawyers allow themselves to be debilitated by hearing material about racism, gay lawyers about hatred towards gays, Jewish lawyers about anti-Semitism, and so on, whether that material describes violent attacks, contains epithets, or whatever else. I think that, as law students and law professors, we should follow this example.

[5.] Indeed, the implicit message of the claim that black law students, in particular, need to be protected from hearing cases that contain the word "nigger," because they find it so "painful" or "challenging" (to quote the Dean of Wake Forest's law school) or offensive or even traumatic, is that young black lawyers will likewise be sharply disturbed by hearing the word in the everyday reality of their practicesin courtrooms, in depositions, in witness interviews, wherever it is part of the facts of a case or of a relevant precedent. If this were true, then this would suggest that black lawyers are going to be less effective than white lawyers, because they are so pained, challenged, disturbed, and distracted by simply hearing the word.

As I mentioned in item 4 above, I do not for a moment believe that black lawyers actually are less effective lawyers, precisely because I do not believe that they are so easily wounded simply by hearing the facts of a case. But I also don't believe that black law students (or other law students) are likewise so easily wounded.

I believe that students and lawyers of all identities are perfectly capable of handling the often ugly reality of the world, as reflected in the precedents and in the cases before them. And I think it does them no service to tell them that they are somehow entitled to be so shielded from that reality that they don't even hear some aspects of that reality.

For more on this subject, see Randall Kennedy's bookNigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word,(2003), as well as Randall Kennedy,How a Dispute Over the N-Word Became a Dispiriting Farce, Chron. Higher Ed., Feb. 8, 2019; John McWhorter,If President Obama Can Say It, You Can Too, Time, June 22, 2015, which I also mentioned above. And if you're interested, you might also considerJohnnie Cochran's argumentin the O.J. Simpson trial, which I think provides a helpful analogy (though I recognize that we're talking here about analogy and not identity).

Prosecutor Chris Darden had argued that the Judge should exclude evidence of Mark Fuhrman's use of the word "nigger," "because it is so prejudicial and so extremely inflammatory that to use that word in any situation will evoke some type of emotional response from any African American within earshot of that word." Darden went on,

Mr. Cochran would like to ask a white police officer if he ever used that word and after that white police officer testifies there will be other white male police officers, and by the time those other officers testify they willthe jury will have heard this word, they will be upset, they will have become emotional, and as soon as Mr. Cochran works them up into that emotional frenzy he would like to get them into, as soon as he does that and the next white police officer takes the witness stand, the jury is going to paint that white police officer with the same brush Mr. Cochran painted Detective Fuhrman.

Here was Johnnie Cochran's response:

[Mr. Darden's] remarks are demeaning to African Americans as a group.

It is demeaning to our jurors to say that African Americans who have lived under oppression for 200 plus years in this country cannot work within the mainstream, cannot hear these offensive words. African Americans live with offensive words, offensive looks, offensive treatment every day of their lives, but yet they still believe in this country. And to say that our jurors, because they hear this offensive wordevery day that people call, that they interact with people, we have heard this in the questionnairesto say they can't be fair is absolutely outrageous for the prosecution to stand here and over the last couple of days to present character assassination against this man, unfounded, bogus charges after charge after charge, then to withdraw seventeen of those charges, for them to have the temerity, the unmitigated gall to come into this courtroom and talk about fairness.

What we are going to be talking about this afternoon, your honor, is words out of the mouth of Mark Fuhrman. What I want to share with you are the things that this man said, not what we made up, what he said, what he told people.

Your honor, we didn't create Mark Fuhrman. We take witnesses the way we find them. We didn't tell him to go to the doctor and say all those things that I will share with you this afternoon. We didn't tell him to say those things in front of Kathleen Bell.

Cochran was an excellent lawyer who was prepared to confront the ugly reality of the world in effectively defending his client. Teaching students that they are entitled never to hear the word "nigger" quoted from accounts of real cases or incidents will not, I think, help them become such excellent lawyers.

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UCLA Law Dean Apologizes for My Having Accurately Quoted the Word "Nigger" in Discussing a Case - Reason

Slavery is not a thing of the past. It still exists today, affecting millions across the world, including our home here in Hong Kong, where Kenyan domestic workers are trafficked and subjected to forced labour in the city.

In the past years, high-profile stories documenting the abuse of foreign domestic workers in Hong Kong, such as the cases of Erwiana Sulistyaningsih and Kartika Puspitasari have put modern slavery and forced labour into the spotlight. But there have been many, perhaps thousands of cases that have never been covered. The stories of these victims of human trafficking, abuse, modern slavery are more often than not hidden, lost and forgotten, especially amidst the dominant headlines surrounding months of protests followed by the global coronavirus pandemic.

Investigative work undertaken by Hong Kong nonprofit Migrasia has uncovered at least 5 known victims (and dozens more implicated) in a collective case of human trafficking and forced labour of Kenyan domestic workers.

In 2018, the Hong Kong government enacted an Action Plan to combat trafficking and enhance the protection of migrant domestic workers in the city. The plan outlines various measures, from mechanisms to screen victims to increasing penalties for offenders and providing witness immunity.

But what Migrasia has exposed is the depressing fact that Hong Kong isnt just a regional transit hub for the global illegal trafficking trade. There is a systematic failure to protect victims at every turn. Kenyan victims of trafficking and forced labour who are fighting for their justice have been facing opposition at every single step of the way.

The stories of the women that Migrasia are currently working with are appalling cases of consistent exploitation by an agency which is still operating at large, unpunished and with near impunity.

Victims were deceived by an unscrupulous agency and lured into believing that the job that lies ahead of them will promise high salaries, long-term contracts and good living conditions. Unaware that agencies are bound by Hong Kong law to charge no more than 10% of the first months salaries, prospective workers were overcharged a fee of HK$24,000 to take up the opportunity, forcing them to undertake various loans and guarantee documents.

Upon arrival in Hong Kong, their passports were confiscated from them. They must work for a monthly salary, 90% of which is deducted until they pay off their loans all the while being subjected to physical and verbal abuse. They are left with practically nothing. No phones, no holidays, no statutory days off that domestic workers are entitled to by law. Not even three meals in some cases. Some are not allowed to set foot outside their employers homes for months on end. They are stripped of their human rights and dignity.

While a handful of victims have stepped forward, Migrasia estimates that dozens from Kenya have been brought to Hong Kong by this particular agency alone. It is possible that more than 200 were involved, but the Hong Kong Immigration Department has not made available the statistics of entry visa applications for Kenyan and Nepalese nationals, despite an Access to Information request submitted by the organisation.

When at least 8 Kenyan nationals reported their case to the Employment Agencies Administration (EEA) and the Hong Kong Police Force in addition to the Immigration Department in 2018, no concrete action has been taken to stop the perpetrating agency from its illegal operations, from facilitating modern slavery to suspected laundering of the funds they illicitly took from the victims.

There has been no investigation, no prosecution, no warning letter issued.

In fact, victims were threatened with arrest when they explained to the authorities that the agency had forged some of their employment documents. Even when the individuals were identified as victims of trafficking by the United Nations-affiliated organisation International Organisation for Migration (IOM), no conclusive law enforcement actions were taken by the Hong Kong authorities.

And now, not only are low-wage earners and disadvantaged groups in Hong Kong disproportionately exposed to the impact of the the coronavirus pandemic, those who have been harmed by the fraudulent agency are being pushed even further away from the justice they deserve. The most vulnerable in society are now even more at risk due to Covid-19. Victims of abuse are having difficulty accessing justice. Hong Kongs courts have been practically shut down and cases are being pushed over and over again, explained David Bishop, co-founder of Migrasia, lawyer and principal lecturer at the University of Hong Kong.

The Hong Kong system should have sprung into action when authorities were first notified of alleged modern slavery. But it didnt it failed to protect some of the most exploited people in the city where help is needed the most.

Despite the uphill battle, organisations like Migrasia are still advocating for change and are actively working to bring justice for the marginalised. Last year, 80% of the Hong Kong governments successful prosecutions relating to migrant workers and forced labour including the most recent arrests of job scammers targeting foreign domestic helpers were brought forward by Migrasia. They have also developed the Know Your Agency app to visualise the scale of the problem and educate the community.

But we cannot rely on civil society organisations alone. The Kenyan cases of human trafficking are just one of many cases where people suffer horrific conditions of abuse and modern slavery passing through or happening in Hong Kong. Across wider Asia, there are 11.7 million people in forced labour conditions.

Without systematic change in the city to eliminate its role in the underground market, there will only be more hidden victims left in the dark.

Lead image courtesy of Freepik.

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Modern Slavery: The Kenyan Domestic Workers That Are Trafficked & Forced To Work In Hong Kong - Green Queen Media

When the 13 United States of America declared independence from the United Kingdom in 1776, the founders were attempting to break free from the tyranny of Britains top-down centralized government.

But the first constitution the founders created, the Articles of Confederation, vested almost all power in individual state legislatures and practically nothing in the national government. The resultpolitical chaos and crippling debtalmost sunk the fledgling nation before it left the harbor.

So the founders met again in Philadelphia in 1787 and drafted a new Constitution grounded in a novel separation of state and national powers known as federalism. While the word itself doesnt appear anywhere in the Constitution, federalism became the guiding principle to safeguard Americans against King George III-style tyranny while providing a check against rogue states.

READ MORE: How the United States Constitution Came to Be

The Articles of Confederation.

Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images

The Articles of Confederation were written and ratified while the Revolutionary War was still raging. The document is less of a unifying constitution than a loose pact between 13 sovereign states intending to enter into a firm league of friendship. Absent from the Articles of Confederation were the Executive or Judicial branches, and the national congress had only the power to declare war and sign treaties, but no authority to directly levy taxes.

As a result, the newly independent United States was buried in debt by 1786 and unable to pay the long-overdue wages of Revolutionary soldiers. The U.S. economy sunk into a deep depression and struggling citizens lost their farms and homes. In Massachusetts, angry farmers joined Shays Rebellion to seize courthouses and block foreclosures, and a toothless congress was powerless to put it down.

George Washington, temporarily retired from government service, lamented to John Jay, What a triumph for the advocates of despotism to find that we are incapable of governing ourselves, and that systems founded on the basis of equal liberty are merely ideal & fallacious!

Alexander Hamilton called for a new Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787 where the Articles of Confederation were ultimately thrown out in favor of an entirely new form of government.

READ MORE: The Founding Fathers Feared Foreign InfluenceAnd Devised Protections Against It

When the United States cut ties with Britain, the founders wanted nothing to do with the British form of government known as unitary. Under a unitary regime, all power originates from a centralized national government (Parliament) and is delegated to local governments. Thats still the way the government operates in the UK.

Instead, the founders initially chose the opposite form of government, a confederation. In a confederation, all power originates at the local level in the individual states and is only delegated to a weak central government at the states discretion.

When the founders met in Philadelphia, it was clear that a confederation wasnt enough to hold the young nation together. States were scuffling over borders and minting their own money. Massachusetts had to hire its own army to put down Shays Rebellion.

The solution was to find a middle way, a blueprint of government in which the powers were shared and balanced between the states and national interests. That compromise, woven into the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, became known as federalism.

The Constitution and the Bill of Rights created two different kinds of separation of powers, both designed to act as critical checks and balances.

The first and best-known of the separation of powers is between the three branches of government: Executive, Legislative and the Judiciary. If the president acts against the best interests of the country, he or she can be impeached by Congress. If Congress passes an unjust law, the president can veto it. And if any law or public institution infringes on the constitutional rights of the people, the Supreme Court can remedy it.

READ MORE: How Many U.S. Presidents Have Faced Impeachment?

But the second type of separation of powers is equally important, the granting of separate powers to the federal and state governments. Under the Constitution, the state legislatures retain much of their sovereignty to pass laws as they see fit, but the federal government also has the power to intervene when it suits the national interest. And under the supremacy clause found in Article IV, federal laws and statutes supersede state law.

Federalism, or the separation of powers between the state and federal government, was entirely new when the founders baked it into the Constitution. And while it functions as an important check, its also been a continual source of contention between the two levels of government. In the final run-up to the Civil War, the Southern states seceded from the Union in part because of the federal government was unconstitutionally encroaching on their domestic institutions of slavery.

WATCH: The Legislative Branch

According to James Madison, a committed federalist, the Constitution maintains the sovereignty of states by enumerating very few express powers to the federal government, while [t]hose which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite.

Article I Section 8 contains a list of all of the enumerated powers that are exclusively delegated to the federal government. Those include the power to declare war, maintain armed forces, regulate commerce, coin money and establish a Post Office.

But that very same Section 8 also includes the so-called Elastic Clause that authorizes Congress to write and pass any laws that are necessary and proper to carry out its enumerated powers. These powers are known collectively as implied powers and have been used by Congress to create a national bank, to collect a federal income tax, to institute the draft, to pass gun control laws and to set a federal minimum wage, among others.

Other than that, the Constitution grants almost all other power and authority to the individual states, as Madison said. While the Constitution doesnt explicitly list the powers retained by the states, the founders included a catch-all in the 10th Amendment, ratified in 1791:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

Those so-called reserved powers include all authority and functions of local and state governments, policing, education, the regulation of trade within a state, the running of elections and many more.

In the United States, federalism has proven a successful experiment in shared governance since 1787 and provided the model for similar federalist systems in Australia, Canada, India, Germany and several other nations.

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When the Founding Fathers Settled States' vs. Federal RightsAnd Saved the Nation - History

Uberisation has become so prevalent in our Western economies that the word itself has entered the most conservative French dictionaries. The uberisation of the economy refers to a new type of worker, most of the time working for digital platforms as gig workers. Such platforms business model only works if they offload their costs related to employees and most often, also their tax burden, as most of these companies are based in tax havens or states that have highly reduced corporate taxes.

Digital platforms such as UBER, Deliveroo, Take it Easy, Foodora or Amazon choose to rely on freelance service providers rather than contracted workers in order to make an increased margin of profit. These platforms entice thousands of workers with false promises on the advantages of not being salaried employees: freedom, staggered working hours, being their own boss and so forth.

The other side of the coin is obvious, but not always properly assessed by those that are targeted: since they are not contracted workers, they do not benefit from the protection of Employment Law or from collective agreements. They therefore do not have access to employment benefits such as paid holidays, compulsory weekly rest, a minimum fixed salary, limited grounds for dismissal and, above all, unemployment protection and pension contributions. This pension contribution usually amounts to 50 percent of their wage and would be covered by the employer in France if they were under contract

What freedom is there when such platforms impose clients and routes? How can you be your own boss when you cannot turn down a call or a passenger at the risk of being badly rated and immediately dismissed? What free time do you have when you do not set your own prices and those imposed on you are so low that they force you to work until you find that you are putting your life, and sometimes even your health, in danger?

Ken Loach, in his latest film Sorry we missed you, illustrates the precariousness under which the uberisation of our economies is placing an increasing proportion of workers, including its potentially fatal consequences: You dont get hired here, states the delivery-depot boss in Loachs movie You come on board. We call it on-boarding. You dont workforus you workwithus but you die alone as a consequence of it, he may have added.

Uberised workers have become the new slaves of our economies: they are exploited at will for miserable incomes without any social protection and permanently tracked by embedded geolocation tools. The newspaper The Australian referred to this as The Hunger Games at Work.

Many large companies have seen the benefits they can derive from this flexible and disposable workforce. For example, some French retail banks recently announced that their account managers would soon no longer be hired as employees but will be accepted on a freelance basis.

During COVID19, major household retailers are now also adopting similar practices: in France as in other European countries, supermarkets like Franprix and Carrefour are taking advantage of this crisis to uberise their new staff instead of hiring them, even though their current profits would enable them to continue hiring employees.

Not only do self-employed workers no longer have any income, but they also have no right to unemployment benefit. They have little or no access to medical services depending on the country in which they work. Yet on the frontline, one finds those exploited workers, serving as delivery people who take on the risks of the virus to deliver takeaway meals, DVDs and toys to a confined population who will pay a trifle for a non-essential service.

A large number of customers who have become accustomed to these types of services for quite a few years now do not seem to ever ask themselves the question of whether or not they are endangering the lives of others. It is reminiscent of left-wing politicians prior to the COVID19 crisis arriving in Uber cars to campaign rallies where they would denounce low wages and precarious working situations.

Uberised workers constitute a proletariat that we do not hear from because they are not salaried workers and hence do not have workers representatives nor trade unions to speak for them.

For the moment, salvation came from a few courageous individuals amongst them and from the reasonable decisions handed down by several courts of justice that have taken hold of the problem in a number of European countries and beyond:

Most recently on 4 March 2020 the French Court of Cassation demonstrated the existence of employer-employee relationship between the Uber platform and its workers as they must obey the platforms commands and handed down a major ruling which reclassified this kind of service contract as an employment contract with all of the protections inherent to the status.

Platforms complained that this would ruin their business model. Ironically, it could be argued that in the early 19th century some businessmen also considered that the abolition of slavery would ruin their businesses, but this obviously would not justify holding back the abolition of slavery. Nevertheless, Emmanuel Macrons government immediately reacted by declaring that there was a need to invent new rules allowing freedom. Whose freedom?

In these times of COVID19, where health protection is synonymous with life or death, it is essential on this subject as on many others that DiEM25 encourages and leads trans-European reflection to counter the wishes of neoliberal governments allied with such platforms.

These platforms do not even pay taxes in the countries where their underpaid and abused workers operate, face danger and have to be taken care of by underfunded hospitals and infrastructure. They need to be held accountable for the position that they are putting workers in. The uberisation of the economy must be halted in order to guarantee that the labor rights of all European peoples are protected.

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Uberised workers are on the frontline of the crisis - DiEM25

Thank you for your mails on Gary Neville, Newcastle United and much more. Keep them coming to theeditor@football365.com

The other end of player wage questionCompletely agree with Gary Neville on Peter Swanns comments on that players not be paid to be well, bad.

Players are not contracted for games, they are contracted for a length of time and as far as I know that includes breaks. It is one thing if they caused the shutdown, but they didnt. Their contracts far as I know, are not open contracts that can be ended anytime but guerenteed unless they do something horrible and void it. Im sure a virus pandemic isnt one of those breaking conditions too (which should have a backup clause sure, but negotiated by both parties before signing).

If youre mad that you didnt for see a century wide virus pandemic, then too bad for not signing it as a condition the first place. You didnt like then next time contract for games then, and see whether the player accepts it or not or maybe ask for higher base wage. These days, more and more money is tied to performances bonus anyways than base wage.

The PFA has screwed up in some areas, some of the stick they get is warranted, some not. But as a union, times like this are where they protect the players especially those of the lower leagues. That doesnt mean not compromise to keep clubs alive, but arbitrarily not paying them when the is tight contract stipulates so? Yeah thats another thing.

Its easy to think of rich multimilllionaire stereotype when it comes to footballers, that is certainly true of the EPL in general and maybe the Championship to some extent. But League One and Two players dont earn much as far as I know (League Two has a wage limit for gods sake) and have have the limitations of short career and uncertainties that come with it.

Not saying it is the worse job in the world (they are worst paying and more dangerous) but some players of this category earn little money on short contracts with little guerentees and certainly took some time/training to hone their skills. They have bills, mortgages and families to feed too.

Some sacrifice will be needed, even in the lower league players side but that will be their call to make together cos they dont benefit from the club going down either. Running a League Two club in the midst of a global economic crisis, I can sort of sympathize with Swann to some extent, but that to say dont deserve their salary cos theyre not playing? Then put it in the contract in the first place. You are running a professional legal entity, not a school clubhouse.Yaru, Malaysia

NUFC and WhatabouteryDear F365,

A lot of debate about the possible ownership of NUFC and as usual with any debate on the tinternetthese days, the usual whatbouterykeeps popping up. So, just to provide a personal view about this from a Newcastle supporter whos currently having to spend time pondering the morality of this (because Newcastle have spent 40 years coming up with new and ingenious ways of torturing me and wasting my time, this being the absolute pinnacle).

1. There is, absolutely, a moral difference between retailers, bankers, financiers, and people you just dont like and describe as loathsome on twitter, and a regime that regularly kills and oppressespeople in more or less direct ways. There just is. Mike Ashley, much as I despise him, never deliberately bombed a Yemeni hospital. Zero hours contracts are a disgrace that should prompt a revolution in how we think about industry. They are not the murder and dismemberment of a journalist. Owning a hedge fund makes you a twat. It doesnt make you an actual dictator responsible for beheadings. On that basis, then, there is only club in Britain that is owned by people anywhere near as morally compromised as the Saudis. And thats Sunderland. Only kidding. Its Man City, obviously.

2. It doesntmatterthat there are other owners, in Britain, or the world, that are as bad, or nearly as bad. Because I dont support them. Im not a fan of them. I dont give them money, wear their shirt, add my voice to theirs, make them an interesting commercial or cultural proposition. They dont belong to me. In fact, at least twice a season Ill call them twats and actively wish them to be beaten.

3. So, while being part of the whole circus of football compromises us all in the same way that buying fast fashion makes us distantly responsible for labour standards in bangladesh, its only when your club is actually bought by someone who puts women who want the vote in jail and keeps a large population of workers in a state of semi-slavery that this stuff becomes genuinely relevant to you. And you do, genuinely, have to make a decision about that comes down to, fundamentally, do you support that regime? Do you support the use of the money they have generated via their dictatorship to buy someone who can drop a ball onto a five-pence piece in the box? Are you going to cheer thatPROJECT on on a Saturday afternoon?

4. It doesnt matter what other clubs do, it doesnt really matter what the objective of the exercise is from the Saudi point of view. It matters that this is who they are and where they get the money from, and you are either supporting it or not. Its as simple as that, really. Anything else is just white-wash and self-justification for a decision that you are choosing to make, as an adult.

Which is fun.Simon (not likely for much longer) NUFC

No chance this is getting published in the mailbox (MC thats what you think!) but I thought I would write in with some views on the Newcastle takeover (still wont believe it is real until I see Amanda Staveley riding a camel round the pitch, burned too many times where takeovers are concerned) and the Twitter storm and moral outcry from various media outlets and football supporters over the last few days.

Ill caveat the below by saying the below is not a dig at Football365 specifically, love the site and have been a reader for many years. Your content is a lot more balanced than most where morality is concerned and is always thought provoking even if I dont always agree with it.

Personally, Im delighted that Mike Ashley looks to be on his way out and the club is being taken over by investors with a lot of resources and will hopefully make the club competitive again. All I want is a club I can enjoy supporting and does its best to try and win the competitions it enters which for me (Jeff) is the entire point of sport. If you arent trying to win why bother competing?

So, what about the nature of the potential new owners and their backgrounds. The alleged murder of a journalist, human rights abuses, the war in Yemen etc.

Honestly, I really couldnt give a shit and most NUFC fans probably dont either. Same as I dont care that my smartphone parts are made in China, my clothes are probably made in a sweatshop in Bangladesh, my car runs on petrol from the Middle East, animals are killed to feed me every day and my online shopping gets delivered by Amazon. Call that morally repugnant if you will, I prefer to think I live in the real world, where no one is perfect, I care about family and myself first, most other things a distant second and we all have to put up with things we dont like because thats life. I also think if it really came down to brass tacks the vast majority of people would be honest enough to admit they are exactly the same. Sure, there will be exceptions to that rule, good for you, Im honest enough to admit to myself Im not one of those people.

Now to the various pieces by journalists and media outlets saying how terrible it is that such a regime should become involved in Newcastle United and it shouldnt happen, its sports washing, etc etc. My response would be let he who is without sin cast the first stone. Your employers are part owned by Saudi Arabia, you all use a smartphone and laptop, your websites are covered in betting adverts. You make a living commenting on the Premier League, that bastion of good moral standing, and youll all be covering the World Cup in Qatar in 2022. For a lot of you, your country and mine (the UK) has done worse things over the last 300 years of colonialism, slavery, wars in the Middle East etc than Saudi Arabia has ever done.

But thats just whataboutery Whataboutery is what hypocrites use to deflect from their hypocrisy. If it is of such importance to the sport then use the position of influence you have and do something about it. Stop buying goods and services from companies that are considered morally questionable, stop showing betting adverts, fight for the rules on ownership to be changed, dont write about the Premier League, dont cover the 2022 World Cup etc etc. Campaign against it, encourage others to do the same and practice what you preach. You certainly have a greater ability to affect the football world than a regular fan does.

But thats not my responsibility, Im just doing my job or its different in my situation, I have a career to think about etc will be the response.

Its easy to criticise but responsibility and choice start with the individual. If you dont take responsibility for yourself and your choices then dont complain about being called a hypocrite and try to deflect. Or be honest enough with yourself to admit that you might think these things are bad but if they meant making a change, or doing something difficult that puts you out then they suddenly become a bit less bad and you arent really as bothered about it as you might say. Youve always got a choice and whilst some are much harder to make than others they are still a choice.

In summary, walk the walk if you are going to talk to the talk or be honest with yourself that you wont and lets all get back to what we enjoy which is football not the circus that surrounds it.Dave, Washington

I cried todayI cried today. I watched the video obiturary for Norman Hunter onThe Guardianwebsite and the moment Hunter, interviewed just last year, looking healthy, determined and resolute said in my lifetime Id like to see us back in the Premiership . That was me calling for the Kleenex.

He would have, too. If only you can fill in the rest yourselves. He died from the virus, and Leeds United have not claimed the prize because of the virus. Its a bastard.

Im a Chelsea fan, but I can reel off the names of that magnificent Leeds side as easily as my Chelsea heroes. Im still in shock that we beat them in the FA Cup Replay in 1970. He didnt just bite yer leg that was conceit from a journalist in the Yorkshire Post which stuck. He had the skill, the intelligence and a left foot to astonish you.

Its been a tough week with Hunter and Peter Bonetti both passing in the same week.

Fuck.Steve, Los Angeles

Bias of commentatorsDear F365,

Ben (Wales for the foreseeable future) made a good attempt to argue that most accusations of bias against journalists or commentators are most likely due to knee jerks and one eyed partiality. But sometimes

Opening day of last season, Wolves against Everton, live on BT Sport. Steve McManaman, apparently not realising his microphone was still on, said to someone with him, I dont like Wolves. Believe me, Steve, in all your commentaries since, youve done nothing to disprove that confession.

Keep safe,Paul Quinton, Wolves

Ermcan someone send Ben stuck in Wales a link of Martin Samuel latest nonsense. Or a link to mediawatch will do.

Open your eyes Ben.Ginger Pirlo

World XI challengeI found that World XI challenge surprisingly difficult, heres my attempt;

GK: Oliver Kahn Germany (Karlsruher/Bayern)DC: Paolo Maldini Italy (AC Milan)DC: Toby AlderwiereldBelgium (Ajax/Atletico/Southampton/Spurs)DC: Sergio Ramos Spain (Sevilla/Real Madrid)CM: Roy Keane Ireland (Cobh/Forest/Man Utd/Celtic)CM: Gilberto Silva Brazil (At. Minero/Arsenal/Panikanithos)AM: Pavel Nedved Czech Rep (Sparta Prague/Lazio/Juventus)AM: Lionel Messi Argentina (Barcelona)AM: Steven Gerrard England (Liverpool)CF:Didier Drogba Ivory Coast (Marseille/Chelsea/a f**k tonne of others)CF: Edison Cavani Uruguay (Palermo/Napoli/PSG)Nill Ryan

Just seen Shane in Kilkennys world XI in fridays mailbox.

Hes picked Roy Keane and John Terry.

Everyone knows they both played for Forest.

Unlucky son.Al (Wolves)

Dutch strikersTo help Cheesom from Nigeria with his striker conundrum perhaps well keep the fullbacks Brazilian and add a few Dutch strikers

Van Nisterlrooy, Van Basten, Bergkamp, Van Persie and Cryuff.TX Bill (witty comments quarantined at present) EFC

Im sure this has been thought of butHi,

So, Ive been thinking about how to handle the end of this season and I will admit that Im a Liverpool supporter so have a bias.

One thing that I feel should be getting more coverage and Im surprised it hasnt been is that this season should just continue as and when it can be and should just finish whenever it can. The way to do this would be to cancel the 2020/2021 league season to allow for this season to continue whenever this current apocalypse ends. This way promotions / relegations happen as normal but carry over to next next season.

The cup competitions could also continue as well. Next season there could be shortened timelines for the cup competitions potentially due to the lack of league action. This would have benefits in that the cup competitions would be reinvigorated as they would be the major honours. Also, this might allow England players a bit of a break / time to practice as a team ahead of euro 2020 so we have a half decent chance in the tournament assuming we all dont live a mad max lifestyle by then.

Anyway, as I say Im sure this has been mentioned countless times but I needed to say it out loud to someone and my wife doesnt give a f*ck.

ThanksRob

The F365 Show is on hiatus until the football returns.Subscribe nowready for its glorious comeback. In the meantime, listen to the latest episode of Planet Footballs 2000s podcast,The Broken Metatarsal.

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Neville was spot on, Newcastle United, whataboutery and... - Football365.com

My dearest dearest dear Albert and his excessive love and affection gave me feelings of heavenly love and happiness, I never could have hoped to have felt before, wrote Queen Victoria of her wedding night. His beauty, his sweetness and gentleness Oh! This was the happiest day of my life, she continued ecstatically. Coming from a woman who, from the moment she had ascended the throne in 1837, had resisted all attempts to force her into wedlock despite some of Europes most eligible bachelors being paraded before her it was clear that marriage to Albert was borne out of love rather than duty.

Albert was Prince of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, in the present-day states of Bavaria and Thuringia in Germany. He was also Victorias first cousin, son of her mothers brother, Ernest I, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. Despite being delivered by the same midwife within three months of each other, the pair had had little contact as children, yet each knew of their familys desire to see them married one day.

A brief encounter at celebrations for Victorias 17th birthday in 1836 had planted the seeds of an attraction between the pair. She writes passionately in her diary of Alberts beautiful nose and sweet mouth with fine teeth as well as the charm of his countenance, which she describes as being full of goodness and sweetness, and very clever and intelligent. But Albert, unused to the late nights and whirl of fashionable gaieties of the English court was forced to leave several balls early, feeling sleepy and faint, leaving his lively young cousin to dance on into the night.

Albert was one of several suitors introduced to Victoria in the months before she turned 18 and inherited the throne from her uncle William IV, bringing to an end more than 120 years of male Hanoverian rule. Another first cousin, Prince Augustus of Saxe-Coburg, made a favourable impression on the young princess, more so than Princes William and Alexander of Orange whom Victoria described as being very plain.

By 1839, Victoria was relishing the relative freedom of being an unmarried young queen and once again declared herself reluctant to marry. But in October 1839, Albert visited England again. This time, Victoria was smitten.

It was with some emotion that I beheld Albert who is beautiful, she scribbled in her diary that night. Just five days later, on 15 October, in accordance with royal protocol, Victoria proposed, exclaiming: Oh! to feel I was, and am, loved by such an Angel as Albert, was too great delight to describe! he is perfection; perfection in every way.

The marriage ceremony, which took place on 10 February 1840 in the Chapel Royal at St Jamess, was everything a royal wedding should be. Dressed in a white satin gown with lace veil, a wreath of orange blossom, and attended by 12 bridesmaids, Victoria married her Albert.

Victoria fell pregnant almost immediately, giving birth to their first child, Princess Victoria, nine months after the wedding. The future Edward VII (Bertie) was born the following year. The physical attraction between the pair never faded and, between 1840 and 1857, Victoria gave birth to nine children.

However, Victoria was not a natural mother. Her own childhood had been an unhappy one, kept in seclusion at Kensington Palace by her own domineering mother with little in the way of companionship or affection. The death of Victorias father when she was just eight months old had a profound impact and the only male influence she had had as a child was that of her mothers despised advisor Sir John Conroy. I had led a very unhappy life as a child had no scope for my very violent feelings of affection and did not know what a happy domestic life was, admitted Victoria in later life

Albert, too, had suffered an unhappy childhood. His father had been a serial philanderer who paid little attention to either of his sons. Alberts mother, Princess Louise, had been forced into exile following an affair and the breakdown of her marriage, and Albert had grown up determined to be the type of father he had never had.

Grandmother of Europe

Victoria and Albert were rulers of a vast empire that dominated global politics by the end of the 19th century. It included Australia, Canada, the Indian subcontinent and much of Africa. Extending British influence and keeping allegiances closer to home in Europe was an equally important, albeit more delicate matter, and was achieved through marriage. Victoria and Alberts nine children married into royal houses across Europe from Denmark to Russia and Victoria was eventually grandmother to 40 grandchildren. Eight of these would eventually sit on the thrones of Britain, Prussia, Greece, Romania, Russia, Norway, Sweden and Spain.

George V of Britain, Tsarina Alexandra of Russia (wife of Tsar Nicholas II) and Germanys Kaiser Wilhelm the three warring royals of World War I were actually all grandchildren of Victoria and Albert. During her lifetime, Victoria had successfully managed the difficult relationships between her grandchildren and their respective nations, but after her death in 1901, peace faltered and Europe began to edge closer to war. Kaiser Wilhelm is reported to have remarked that had Victoria still been alive, World War I may never have broken out she simply would not have allowed her relatives to wage war with one another.

But Victoria and Albert shared more than just their children and grandchildren across the royal dynasties of Europe. They also introduced a devastating genetic condition. Victoria is believed to have been a carrier of haemophilia a hereditary condition that affects the bloods ability to clot. The couples eighth child, Leopold, was a haemophiliac and died aged 30 after a minor fall triggered a cerebral haemorrhage. Two of the couples five daughters Alice and Beatrice are confirmed carriers and unknowingly passed the disorder to the royal families of Spain, Germany and Russia.

Victoria and Albert were united in their desire to create a model, loving family that would set an example to the world. But neither were quite sure how to do it. Victoria hated being pregnant and found babies equally repugnant. An ugly baby is a very nasty object; the prettiest are frightful when undressed as long as they have their big body and little limbs and that terrible froglike action. Breastfeeding, too, was deemed a repulsive act and a wet nurse was employed for all of her nine children, allowing Victoria more time to devote herself to matters of state, and to her beloved Albert.

Their children were spoilt and lavished with every describable luxury from birth, yet expected to adhere to their parents ideals of a model family. Countless works of art depicting royal domestic bliss are testament to the public relations campaign Albert sold to the world.

Behind closed doors, however, royal relationships were often strained none more so than that of Victoria and Albert.

Albert was not a popular choice of husband for Victoria with the British public. He had come to the marriage an impoverished and relatively low-standing prince, despite his royal connections. And he was German to boot. He comes to take for better or for worse / Englands fat queen and Englands fatter purse were two lines from a popular, if insulting, song of the day.

The traditional sum of 50,000 as an allowance for the consort of a monarch was reduced to 30,000 for Albert by Robert Peels Conservative party the smallest sum ever to be offered. He was refused both a peerage and a seat in the House of Lords a mixture of anti-German sentiment and an attempt to limit Alberts political power. In fact, it was not until 1857 that Albert was finally granted the title of Prince Consort.

As a champion of the rights of workers, improvements in social welfare, education, the abolition of slavery, as well as a patron of the arts and technology, Albert must have been bitterly disappointed not to have had a bigger say in government affairs.

With his wife distracted by regal duties and himself lacking a formal role, it was Albert, then, who initially took on much of the responsibility for the upbringing of their children. But from the start he wanted more.

The difficulty in filling my place with the proper dignity is that I am only the husband, not the master in the house, Albert is said to have uttered to his university friend William von Lowenstein. And he was right. Albert entered a royal household that was governed by his wife and run by her former governess, Baroness Lehzen.

But within a couple of months of the wedding, Victoria reluctantly began to hand some of her official duties over to Albert as she was forced by continued pregnancies to take more of a backseat. Privately, he became her most trusted advisor and the pair worked side by side attending to royal business.

Albert was Victorias rock and she looked up to him as her intellectual superior, encouraging his ideas. But although she was happy to share power with her husband within reason Victoria had a strong sense of her own hereditary right and resented having to hand over her powers while restricted by childbirth.

The issue of sharing power was a constant thorn in the marriage. Albert was an accomplished polymath with deep interests in the arts, science and new technologies of the day. He used his influence as Victorias husband to further some of his passions, adding President of the Society for the Extinction of Slavery and Chancellor of Cambridge University to his titles. He was the driving force behind the Great Exhibition of 1851, which shone a light on British engineering and technology, and was a staunch promoter of British manufacturing.

But behind closed doors, the carefully crafted public image of the perfect family was showing signs of strain. Locked in an endless power struggle, terrible rows broke out between the lovers. For his part, Albert was terrified of Victorias violent outbursts, fearing that she had inherited the madness of her grandfather George III, whose near 60-year reign was peppered with periods of mental ill health. Advised by the royal doctor not to argue with his wife in case his fears proved true, Albert was forced to communicate during her periods of rage by means of handwritten notes meekly posted under her door.

After Alberts death, Victoria fell into a deep depression and mourned her husband for the rest of her long life. But, as the decades passed, she did find solace in the company and friendships of several men.

One notably close relationship was with her servant John Brown, the hard-drinking, bearded son of a Scottish crofter. The controversial friendship between queen and servant caused great rifts in the royal family, and Browns influence over Victoria was much criticised. Some have speculated that the relationship was more than platonic with a supposed deathbed confession from Scottish clergyman Norman Macleod that he had married the pair.

Victorias passion for India and her longing for Albert saw her strike up an intimate friendship with another servant, 24-yearold Abdul Karim, a young Indian man who had arrived in England for Victorias Golden Jubilee in 1887 to wait on tables and attend the Indian princes in residence for the celebrations. Arriving as he did some four years after John Browns death, Karim instantly charmed the Queen. Within a year, he had become Victorias teacher, instructing her in Urdu and Indian affairs, introducing her to curry and, like Brown, becoming one of her closest confidants. Lavished with gifts and promotions, Karim became even more hated by the royal family than Brown. After Victorias death, her eldest son, Bertie, ordered all records of their relationship, including correspondence and photographs, to be destroyed.

The couples eldest son Bertie, the future Edward VII, also caused tension within the family and was something of a disappointment to his parents. Neither gifted intellectually nor especially handsome his own mother described him as having a painfully small and narrow head, those immense features and total want of chin Bertie rebelled against his parents grand expectations for him. The young prince devoted himself to a life of pleasure and, when word of their sons tryst with a lady of easy virtue reached his parents ears, Albert took it upon himself to meet with his wayward son to deal with his reckless behaviour before it became public knowledge. It would be the last time father and son would ever meet feverish, racked with pain in his legs and wet through from their long walk in the rain, Albert returned to Windsor where, just weeks later, he died. He was aged just 42.

Victoria never fully recovered from Alberts death. For the rest of her life, she dressed in black and appeared infrequently in public. She surrounded herself with memorabilia to remind her of her beloved husband, taking his dressing gown to bed with her each night and continuing to have hot water for shaving brought up on a daily basis, as it had been when he was alive.

Albert had been everything to Victoria confidant, husband, lover, closest advisor and his death dealt a devastating blow to the Queen and the British monarchy. After his death, Victoria papered over the cracks in their marriage, memorialising her husband as an almost saintly figure. In a letter written 15 months after Alberts death, Victoria wrote: The poor Queen can only hope never to live to old age but be allowed to rejoin her beloved great and loyal husband before many years elapse. It was a wish that would be denied her.

Charlotte Hodgman is the editor of BBC History Revealed magazine

This article was first published in the June 2017 edition of BBC History Revealed

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Queen Victoria And Prince Albert: What Was Their Relationship Like? - BBC History Magazine