Inevitability of Republics?

Here's a good question that many republicans in the Commonwealth these days seem rather quick to avoid: WHY is a republic inevitable in New Zealand, Australia, Canada, even Britain? What makes a republc inevitable? How is the march of republicanism so supposedly unstoppable? We at the Monarchist certainly don't see it as inevitable, as we resist it at every turn, to the best of our abilities. So why, then, is there this perception that republics are inevitable?

Turning our gaze to history, it rather seems to me that the fall of republics is inevitable. Rome started out as a republic, but when a suitably strong single figure emerged from the ceaseless infighting of a republic in crisis, Octavian in Rome's case, it became a rather fair, pseudo-constitutional monarchy of a sort. That is, until the Emperors became rather more... forward with their power, later in the Empire's history. The English Republic of the two Cromwells was rather short-lived. France would be the most famous example of this occurance, it's republics having been toppled by external and internal pressures no less than three times. Spain has been a republic twice, and both times the republic fell, and the monarchy restored (though the dictator Franco did not allow a monarch until 1975). And let us not forget the fall of the Weimar Republic that allowed the rise of Hitler. A republic seems a rather unstable thing to me. The only one two that have truly stood a test of time have been Switzerland and the United States, and one of those is rather insignificant on the world stage. And the American Republic has had it's brushes with destruction as well, witness the American Civil War.

So why, then, is the American system of republic seen as something implacable and unstoppable. Once, people thought that communism was the same way, and that did not spread across the civilized world as people thought it would. So why, then, do the people of New Zealand and Australia, and even Canada and Britain think that a republic will eventually happen? I mean, it's not as if we are somehow oppressed by our distant Monarch. The Royal Family costs us nothing, and provides a vast array of benefits in return, which are too numerous to list here, and indeed have been ennumerated several times before here at the Monarchist. What is this obsessing with streamlining and cutting down, of 'trimming the fat' of society, as it where? Of removing everything that isn't strictly necessary. It is true that our democracies would get along without Her Majesty, they'd be damaged and malfunctioning, but they'd get along. To go back to my metaphor of food, imagine that you are sitting in a fine restaurant. You have ordered the prime rib. Now imagine that your meal arrives and you discover than some overly-judicious and health-conscious cook has trimmed every last bit of fat from your prime rib, as well as deprived your table of butter and salt with which to season your roast potato, and you have been robbed of any Yorkshire pudding. Perhaps, in the strictest sense, this is 'healthier' for you, but will you not have been robbed of much flavour, taste and enjoyment in your meal? The same is true of a monarchy that has been 'republic-ized'. Sure, maybe things will be a bit more efficient, but will things truly be better if the aristocracy of peerages and royalty is replaced with that of Hollywood and the media? Will things be better with the 'Australian Republican Guard' rather than the Royal Australian Regiment? We will lose so many of the little niceties and finer points of life by transforming into a typical gormless, feckless, unadorned republic.

And we would lose the Duke of Edinburgh, and his delightful vocalness and frankness about his views. And who would want to live in a world where such a gentleman as he is not in the public view?

In any case, I pose the question to you, Monarchists, why do you think republics are perceived as an inevitable step 'forward'?

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Queen commemorates Yeomen of the Guard on 500th anniversary of Henry VII's death

The oldest British military corps still in existence, the Queen's Body Guard of the Yeomen of the Guard are a bodyguard of the British Monarch. King Henry VII who died 500 years ago today, created the Yeoman of the Guard in 1485 at the Battle of Bosworth Field. As a token of the Guard's venerability, the Yeomen still wear red and gold uniforms of Tudor style.

The Queen and The Duke of Edinburgh sit for an official photograph at the Service to Commemorate the 500th Anniversary of the Founder of The Queen’s Body Guard of the Yeoman of the Guard in Westminster Abbey. The Queen laid a posy of red and white roses near the tomb of Henry VII in the Lady Chapel, Westminster Abbey, 28 April 2009. © Westminster Abbey

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A Salute to our Prince Consort

We would be remiss if we didn't pause long enough to salute our Grand Old Duke's latest achievement - becoming on 19 April 2009 the Commonwealth's longest serving consort, amassing 57 years and 71 days and thereby becoming consort for longer than Queen Charlotte, consort of King George III.

Yes, the man's a survivor. Forget the caracature journalism and the constipated gripings of the left. Prince Philip is refined grace and dignified propriety, who has personified gentlemanly elegance since his formative years as a dashing and heroic naval officer many eons ago. His so-called gaffes are not the indiscretions of a silver-spooned pantywaist prince, but the spontaneous opinions of someone who is thankfully still not afraid to speak his own mind, a mind which stood the rigours of Gordonstoun I would add, and whose opinions were settled long ago in the naval wardrooms of His Majesty's Ships at sea and at war.

There are precious few left who I can still look up to. Our Grand Old Duke happens to be one of them.

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Freedom wears a Crown

Most people would reflexively ridicule the notion that we were freer when kings sat all-powerful on their thrones, but not so writes Mark Steyn.

"Two centuries ago, Tocqueville wrote:

There was a time in Europe in which the law, as well as the consent of the people, clothed kings with a power almost without limits. But almost never did it happen that they made use of it.

True. The king was an absolute tyrant — in theory. But in practice he was in his palace hundreds of miles away, and for the most part you got on with your life relatively undisturbed. As Tocqueville wrote:

Although the entire government of the empire was concentrated in the hands of the emperor alone, and although he remained, in time of need, the arbiter of all things, the details of social life and of individual existence ordinarily escaped his control.

But what would happen, he wondered, if administrative capability were to evolve to make it possible "to subject all of his subjects to the details of a uniform set of regulations"? That moment has now arrived in much of the western world, including America... — and the machinery of bureaucracy barely pauses to scoff: In an age of mass communication and computer records, the screen blips for the merest nano-second, and your gun rights disappear. The remorseless, incremental annexation of "individual existence" by technologically all-pervasive micro-regulation is a profound threat to free peoples. But do we have the will to resist it?"

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Bring Back the Scottish Executive

Read Andrew Cusack's call to heraldic arms: Give Scotland back her heraldry!

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An Interview with the Monarchist

I’m wondering if you can tell us why Mr. Monarchist – where you derive this rigid inclination towards another time, this ludicrous commitment to stuffy clubs, old dukes and ear trumpets – as if you need to escape the world in which we live today.

I would put it down to boredom, mainly, I can find nothing about modern civilisation that inspires me. I think it is far more ludicrous to be committed to the present state of things.

And so you intrigue yourself by consciously retreating into this anachronistic world of tweedy, fogy types.

No, not anachronistic. We may be chronologically out of sync with the masses, but it would be wrong to imply that our cause is obsolete. Certainly the monarchy still exists, and we don’t believe it will ever outlive its useful purpose, but besides the monarchy we are principally dedicated to the restoration of lost virtues. It is true that much has been lost over the past century, but it would be crazy to believe that virtue is a corpse.

So you don’t think that society has progressed in the last hundred years or so?

Not in a virtuous sense, no. Of course not.

If we accept your premise that virtue is a timeless quality, how do you propose we get it back? Nobody seems to be campaigning on a platform to bring back the gentleman, for example.

Well no, and nor should they. Evelyn Waugh once said something that I found quite striking, and which has stayed with me for years. That is, no good ever came from a public cause, only a private cause of the spirit. That’s what we are, I think – we are a private cause of the spirit. If a few hundred or a few thousand people become captivated by it, then I think we have achieved some good.

When you say that no good ever came from a public cause, do you mean to say that collectivist action basically destroyed private virtue?

Yes, I think so. The advent of democracy brought a decline in values. The old aristocratic virtues of loyalty, duty and chivalry, which one was born with and naturally aspired, have been replaced with statist ideals like equality, tolerance, political correctness and other low level conformist group think, which no one really likes but everyone puts up with.

Yes, but surely there was some social progress. The aristocrats were hoarding all the land and never earned any of their wealth.

Well, the first Duke of Wellington certainly earned his, as did all the other great hereditary first in lines. As for the crime of hereditary wealth, I wonder how many of Madonna’s adopted children will earn their millions, or how many will deserve to inherit her English country homes and landed estates. How many snooty kids and toffee-nosed teenagers of the instant dot com zillionaires will earn their fortunes, I wonder, or how many offspring of high and mighty CEOs will be able to justify their multiplied existence. There is unearned wealth everywhere you look, and more of it than ever before.

But you’re in favour of hereditary wealth?

I’m in favour of hereditary everything. My problem with the new aristocracy is their almost total lack of virtue and class. Today’s propertied elite prefer narcissism over nobility.

And the new middle class...

A welcome development, but I would be happier if they wore old clothes, adopted traditional manners and read ancient liturgy. Spontaneous reorganisation into rural hierarchies would also be appreciated.

Who is the greatest prime minister in history?

My icon is Lord Salisbury because he was a libertarian Tory and an exemplar of traditional aristocratic values. He stands for everything that today’s political class are against, and I find that extremely appealing about him, you know, the fact that he was a patrician and not a politician. Unfortunately he is a largely forgotten figure, or when he is remembered he is usually treated with contempt, probably because his whole philosophy was to do as little as possible while in government.

You consider him great because he did nothing?

Well, he was prime minister at the zenith of empire, so he obviously had a lot on his plate. By do-nothing I mean he was doctrinaire laissez-faire, he believed that government shouldn't interfere in the economic and social affairs of the nation, yet he still told the industrialists to fly a kite by passing the workers compensation act, and ended child labour by raising the age to fourteen, I believe, which in those days was considered a young man. So he was not indifferent to the plight of the masses – he was very much a beacon for liberty and civilisation.

You said you prefer a patrician over a politician, why is that?

Well both bother me because both are paternalists, both think they are there to help us little people. The difference I suppose is that the patrician is detached to the point of aloofness, while the politician sucks up to the masses and depends on the people’s adulation for his own self-esteem. In other words, politicians tend to be cowardly, whereas patricians are more likely to be real leaders with little or no propensity to follow the crowd.

Is that your problem with modern democracy, because it has degenerated into a popularity contest?

In a way, yes, that’s why we should limit it as much as possible. Democracy has a natural tendency to follow fashionable causes, when it is often the unfashionable thing that is right.

Like the monarchy...

Precisely, because it is assumed that there is something stuffy about the status quo, politicians are always looking for ways to differentiate themselves from their opponents, so they are constantly promising change. It is very hard to rally the troops to maintain same old this and same old that, unless of course the change is perceived to be radical.

Is that what republicans are, radical?

Radical yes, but not daring. There is no sense pretending that there is something daring or original in proclaiming yourself to be a republican, any more than there is something original about pretending one is an anarchist, an atheist, a pacifist, etc. The daring thing, or at any rate the unfashionable thing, is to believe in God or to defend the monarchy. Promoting republicanism in this day and age requires no moral courage whatsoever.

What’s so appealing about republicanism do you think?

I think there is nothing appealing about it, but it does have one huge advantage outside of Britain, you know, this notion that Her Majesty is an offshore Queen, that she is not really “one of us”. This is more problematic in far away Australia because that country is much more nationalistic than Canada or New Zealand and some of the other not so stridently self-assured smaller ones. I really think it boils down to this perception that we are ruled by a foreign absentee landlord, along with the fact that the international media takes every opportunity to remind us that she is “Britain’s Queen”.

Last question: If we all had the ability to choose our own name at birth, what would yours be?

A commenter signed off on the name, Howard P. Bickerstaff, Esq. once, and I fell in bed with it. Talk about a tweedy, fogy name.

Well, Mr. Bickerstaff, thank you very much for the interview.

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Lord Salisbury's Pavan

Orlando Gibbons (1583 – 1625) was an English composer and organist of the late Tudor period. King James appointed him a Gentleman of the Chapel Royal, where he served as an organist from at least 1615 until his death in 1625. He was a leading composer in the England of his day, his obit service is commemorated every year in King's College Chapel, Cambridge.

Glenn Gould (1932 – 1982) was a Canadian pianist noted especially for his recordings of Johann Sebastian Bach, "remarkable technical proficiency, unorthodox musical philosophy, and eccentric personality and piano technique. He is one of the best known and most celebrated pianists of the twentieth century."

Gould's favorite composer was Gibbons: "Ever since my teen-age years his music has moved me more deeply than any other sound experience I can think of." Gibbons' famous Earl of Salisbury Pavan, composed in memory of Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury, who died on 24 May 1612, is probably the best known and arguably finest of the Renaissance Pavans, with its slow melodic progress and stately breadth and dignity. Enjoy.

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Support the Sir Keith Park Memorial

"If any one man won the Battle of Britain, he did."
Lord Tedder GCB, Marshal of the Royal Air Force, 1947


The Sir Keith Park Memorial Campaign
Despite the efforts of the Sir Keith Park Memorial Campaign, a surprising number of people have never even heard of this heroic New Zealander. But he played as important a role as the great Admiral Lord Nelson, who dominates Trafalgar Square, in securing the freedom that we enjoy today. As Hitler's army gathered in the Channel ports in 1940 in preparation for his planned invasion of Britain, the Luftwaffe was fighting a battle for control of the skies over southern England. Hitler needed to achieve air supremacy for the invasion to go ahead and the only thing preventing him was the stubborn Royal Air Force.

Sir Keith was the unsung hero of the Battle of Britain. Commanding 11 Group Fighter Command, he was responsible for the defence of London and south-east England and his squadrons bore the brunt of the fighting. His role in the battle led the then Marshal of the RAF, Lord Tedder, to say after the war: "If ever any one man won the Battle of Britain, he did. I don't believe it is recognised how much this one man, with his leadership, his calm judgment and his skill, did to save not only this country, but the world."

The heroism of Battle of Britain commander Air Chief Marshal Sir Keith Park has gone unsung for too long. Support the Sir Keith Park Memorial Campaign today!

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The "Slimehouse Speech"

ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO the Chancellor of the Exchequer, David Lloyd George, famously delivered the most incendiary political speech of his life to an overflow audience of 4,000 at Limehouse, one of the poorest areas of the East End of London, attacking the House of Lords for its opposition to his "People's Budget" of 1909.

It is rather a shame for a rich country like ours probably the richest in the world, if not the richest the world has ever seen, that it should allow those who have toiled all their days to end in penury and possibly starvation. It is rather hard that an old workman should have to find his way to the gates of the tomb, bleeding and footsore, through the brambles and thorns of poverty. We cut a new path for him, an easier one, a pleasanter one, through fields of waving corn...

The landlord is a gentleman - I have not a word to say about him in his personal capacity - who does not earn his wealth. He does not even take the trouble to receive his wealth. He has a host of agents and clerks to receive it for him. He does not even take the trouble to spend his wealth. He has a host of people around him to do the actual spending for him. He never sees it until he comes to enjoy it. His sole function, his chief pride, is stately consumption of wealth produced by others...

The landlords are receiving eight millions a year by way of royalties. What for? They never deposited the coal there. It was not they who planted these great granite rocks in Wales, who laid the foundations of the mountains...And yet he, by some divine right, demands as his toll for merely the right for men to risk their lives in hewing these rocks eight millions a year...These capitalists put their money in, and I said: When the cash failed what did the landlord put in? The capitalist risks, at any rate, the whole of his money; the engineer puts his brains in; the miner risks his life....

And yet when the Prime Minister and I knock at the door of these great landlords, and say to them: Here, you know these poor fellows who have been digging up royalties at the risk of their lives, some of them are old, they have survived the perils of their trade, they are broken, they can earn no more. Wont you give them something towards keeping them out of the workhouse? they scowl at us, and we say: Only a hapenny, just a copper. They say: You thieves! and they turn their dogs on to us, and you can hear their bark every morning. If this is an indication of the view taken by these great landlords of their responsibility to the people who at the risk of life create their wealth, then I say their day of reckoning is at hand.

The speech was well received but provoked wrathful protests from powerful quarters of the country, most especially from the British Opposition and the Ruling Establishment. Three days later Prime Minister Asquith found King Edward in a state of great agitation in consequence of Lloyd George's Limehouse speech. The elderly King had never been more irritated and annoyed, or more difficult to appease.

The ominous sounding "People's Budget" was indeed a revolutionary concept, because it was the first budget in British history to introduce the Welfare State with the expressed intent of redistributing wealth to the British public. Its rejection by the House of Lords led to a constitutional crisis and two general elections in 1910, including the subsequent enactment of the Parliament Act of 1911, which forever removed the veto of the House of Lords on money bills. The era of the gentleman aristocrat was over, the age of the ambitious politician had begun.

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Vimy

Vimy... it is such a simple word. Vimy. Short, and very simple. Yet the name has such complex meanings to Canadians. Properly, the name is Vimy Ridge. It is place in Northern France where, 4 days and 92 years ago, all four divisions of the Canadian Corps fought together for the first time, and the modern country of Canada was truly born.

Vimy Ridge was a Canadian achievement. It is not a battle, it is an institution. Vimy, to Canada, is like Waterloo or Trafalgar to Britain, or Gettysburg to America. It represents the independence of Canada within the British Commonwealth, it represents courage and sacrifice in the face of overwhelming odds. But most of all: Vimy represents our nation's, my nation's, birth and baptism of fire. Many Americans will call the Second World War their country's crowning achievement. The First World War was the same for Canada. Even though it is nearly a century after the end of the Great War, it's echoes still effect us... still haunt us.

My great-grandfather fought in the First World War. I knew him only as a small child before age took him from us. Being a small child, I was very curious about wars, and I often pestered my great-grandfather to tell me about it. Like most veterans, he never wanted to talk about it. He only spoke of what he did once... he said he had bayonetted a German boy in the throat, and that the sounds of the boy choking in his own blood echo in his ears still. I remember him silently crying after he told me this. I think all the sounds of the Great War echoed in my great-grandfather's ears, all of his life. Many years later, when my great-grandfather was on his deathbed, he kept saying "Forgive me... I'm sorry... I'm sorry," over and over again. I've always thought he was trying to apologize for all the things he did, from 1915 (the year Canada's troops entered combat) to 1918.

The Great War was the furnace that forged this country, and Vimy Ridge was the hottest part of that furnance. The French had lost 150,000 men in earlier attempts to take the strategically vital ridge and the surrounding territory. The Canadian leadership, Arthur Currie in particular, was not eager to repeat their mistakes. Through meticulous training, preparation and planning, the attack on the 9th of April went off without a hitch. All four divisions of the Canadian Corps emerged from the trenches and marched through sleet and snow to attack one of the most heavily fortified and defended positions of the Western Front. They faced barbed wire, artillery, rifles, machine guns by the thousands. They marched into the valley of the shadow of death, knowing that many of them would fall, but at the same time knowing that they would bring victory. Perhaps they were not fighting to overthrow a great evil, as their sons and grandsons would do in the Second World War. These men fought for King and Country, they fought for Canada and England, but most of all they fought for each other. Shakespeare would've named these men a true band of brothers. They all came to the War from different backgrounds and for different reasons. From aristocrats to peasants, from noblesse oblige to just needing a job. As they marched, they knew that the day's work would be desperate and deadly, and they knew the mettle of their foes. It did not dissuade or dishearten them. Perhaps it even encouraged them, for Canadians have always taken well to a great challenge. I cannot say, I was not there, and those who were there are slowly disappearing from this Earth, slowly, but surely, God is giving them the rest they so deserve.

I can think of no better way to honour the fallen than Laurence Binyon's most famous poem 'For the Fallen'

With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children,
England mourns for her dead across the sea.
Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit,
Fallen in the cause of the free.

Solemn the drums thrill; Death august and royal
Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres,
There is music in the midst of desolation
And a glory that shines upon our tears.

They went with songs to the battle, they were young,
Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted;
They fell with their faces to the foe.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years contemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

They mingle not with their laughing comrades again;
They sit no more at familiar tables of home;
They have no lot in our labour of the day-time;
They sleep beyond England's foam.

But where our desires are and our hopes profound,
Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight,
To the innermost heart of their own land they are known
As the stars are known to the Night;

As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust,
Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain;
As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,
To the end, to the end, they remain.

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Mother of the Free or the Fall of the Aristocracy

Flail Britannia.

Brought up by drug-addicted parents in a poor neighborhood of London, she was transformed by the glare of reality television into a multi-million-dollar product whom the public was urged to celebrate, especially after being diagnosed with cervical cancer, Mr. Parkinson noted.

"Jade Goody has her own place in the history of television and, while it's significant, it's nothing to be proud of," he wrote in the Radio Times.

"When we clear the media smokescreen from around her death what we're left with is a woman who came to represent all that's paltry and wretched about Britain today. She was ... barely educated, ignorant and puerile. Then she was projected to celebrity by Big Brother and from that point on became a media chattel to be manipulated and exploited till the day she died."

What made Ms. Goody stand out in her reality-TV appearances was her shocking ignorance of her country's geography, her naked and drunken exploits and her racist bullying of an Indian housemate.

To generations of outsiders the image of Great Britain was captured in films like Goodbye, Mr Chips and the Brideshead Revisited miniseries. Dignified, well educated men and women, often reserved to the point of being aloof. Everyone had been to one of the great public schools, then Oxbridge. They governed a third of the earth's surface with a detached, albeit often farsighted paternalism. Over the skies of Southern England in 1940 a few hundred men, many of them toffs, flew Hurricanes and Spitfires while wearing neckties and using cricketing metaphors. Much of this was myth, a skillful exaggeration of a Britain that never really was but many assumed should be. If the quintessential American was the businessmen, so the quintessential Englishman was an aristocrat. Unlike the continent, being a peer of the realm was a sign of genuine social distinction. Pre-revolutionary France was full of thousands of minor members of the nobility who lived little better than the peasants over whom them held often only a nominal lordship. In Britain only a few hundred were genuine aristocrats, though younger siblings were given courtesy titles. The law of primogeniture, much maligned by egalitarians, created a class of aristocrats without real titles and little money. 

They married into the upper reaches of the productive middle class, worked in the City, sat in the House of Commons, served in India, or the Navy or the Army. Noblesse oblige was their code, which they followed more or less well. Their paternalism could become authoritarian and their class system was rigid and obtuse in its manners and customs. A gentleman was anyone who behave as such, and could demonstrate some independence of means. This gave the governing classes of Britain a remarkable flexibility. In three generations, the Peels of Tamworth went from humble merchants, to founders of the industrial revolution to the very pinnacle of political power, under their most famous son, Sir Robert Peel, who governed as Prime Minister in the 1830s and 1840s. For North Americans this seems unimpressive, raised on the themes of Horatio Alger, rising to the top is something a man does before middle age, not something his grandchildren accomplish. The old American saying is "shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations." Compared to continental Europe, however, the British class system was self renewing, adapting to changes in the economic and social structure of their society. Had it not been, Britain would have gone the way of France, Germany or Austria, a blood soaked nineteenth century and the jackboot ridden twentieth.

The class system, however, was unjust, denying men of talent the relatively unobstructed rise that they could obtain in the colonies or the United States. It's unlikely that Andrew Carnegie would have become the great success in Britain that he became in Pennsylvania. Injustice breeds resentment, especially among the talented and ambitious. That resentment found its outlet in politics, especially in the New Jerusalem promised by the socialists. Had this hatred of the aristocracy simply been directed toward the economic sphere, the wrecking of great fortunes through the workings of the inheritance tax, the damage would have been contained to there. The Jacobin spirit which moved these men could not stop there. They found that while taxation had destroyed the fortunes, ruined great family manors and embarrassed more than a few heirs to the continent - back when the pound was much stronger than today - it could not destroy the lure of the aristocracy. Many of these jacobins were also republicans, but few dared attack the monarchy openly. So much easier to subvert it and the peerage.

However impoverished many great families became, the lure of a title was strong. The middle classes, while mocking the idleness of their social superiors, wanted to adopt the manners and customs of the elite. Britain was an aspirational culture. While the vast majority of men and women were necessarily absorbed in the daily struggle for life, the aristocracy was able to focus on cultivating the softer elements of civilization. Manner of dress, manner of speech, the revised code of chivalry, a conception of honour. These things trickled down. It was pointless, reasoned the jacobins, to economically destroy the aristocracy if its spirit lived on and grew. The culture of aspiration was replaced with the culture of degradation. In America a similar phenomenon was seen among the blacks. To aspire to a higher standard of living and behaviour was labeled as "acting white." During the Second World War Greer Garson became one of the English speaking world's biggest stars. Playing middle class housewives, Garson spoke the received pronunciation and was seen as the exemplar of English womanhood. She was a lady, though from a comparatively modest background. The middle classes had aspired and achieved. In the 1960s the descendants of the Minivers began to aspire down. In three generations we have sunk from Mrs Miniver to Jade Goody. The schools, which once taught classics, behaviour, mathematics and history are now focused on:

A new report on the primary school curriculum in England and Wales encourages educators to place more emphasis on technology than on traditional subjects.

According to its recommendations, students would not necessarily have to learn about the Victorian era or the Second World War - teachers could choose two "key periods" of British history - but learning skills such as blogging, podcasting and Twittering would take a central role.

Plutarch or Twittering? Mrs Miniver or what Americans call white trash? Does Britain aspire up or down? Is there an up or down?

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Republicans act like Moses

"It's a question of not if, but when" — Helen Clark

I have only two criticisms of Helen Clark, the former Prime Minister of New Zealand - that is, the sound of her voice and the words they form:

The most remarkable topic in her speech was when she asserted New Zealand will inevitably give up the British monarchy as head of state.

"It's a question of not if but when," she said during her farewell address, which was light on emotion.

She also took the opportunity to attack the return of titular honours, introduced by the National government shortly after their return to power.

The Prime Minister of Australia too has been guilty of this "not if but when" republican arrogance, as have many others before. It is an attitude that pronounces with totalitarian authority a ruling to which it allows no appeal. Like Moses they command that the monarchy is toast, thou shall not even question the inevitability of what they are saying.

I for one am not so arrogant as to presume what will eventually happen, but I can perceive no weight of inevitablity to the republican position. Our constitutions are not political feathers, they are tablets that can only be changed with sustained hurculean concerted effort. Perhaps that is why republicans talk like Moses, because it would take the equivalent of a Moses to remove the Crown from our constitutions.

You know, there just might be something to the recent academic theory that Moses was hallucinating under the influence of a mind-altering drug at the time of his biblical achievements. It has been revealed that the acacia tree, frequently mentioned in the Bible, contains one of the most psychedelic substances known to man. Republican Boomers know all about psychedelic substances - it is high time they stopped smoking them.

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Queen of the World

I read somewhere that the G20 Summit in London was the most powerful gathering of heads of state and government since the United Nations was first convened following the end of the Second World War. You have to admire the symbolism of Her Majesty's position here, sitting not just as the host head of state but also as the world's most senior statesperson. But even if Her Majesty wasn't host sovereign or the world's most senior statesperson, it is inconceivable to imagine the Queen ever being relegated to the second row like the President of the United States, much less the very back like the Secretary-General of the United Nations. Monarchy maintains its priviliged position, as evidenced by the front-row sitting of its weakest member, the King of Saudi Arabia.

The Queen sits with G20 leaders for a group photograph in the Throne Room at Buckingham Palace, 1 April 2009. © Press Association

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The Queen? Oh, Yes.

Canadian monarch to visit Canada.

The Queen and possibly Prince Charles will come to Canada within the next year and a half, the Prime Minister's Office confirmed yesterday.

Although details are still being worked out by Ottawa and Buckingham Palace, speculation is that the Queen, who turns 83 on April 21, will come next year to open the Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver and perhaps mark the centenary of the navy, and Prince Charles, the heir to the throne, will come earlier.

The Globe and Mail reported in February that the Prince was keen to deepen his relationship with Canada, but was thwarted by not having been invited to the country for eight years.

By convention, the Queen and Charles, respectively head of state and next-in-line, can set foot in the country only officially and by invitation.

A convention which should be ditched. Surely the head of state should be able to visit the state she is the head of, without asking the permission of her own ministers.

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Thanks for the iPod

Just look at that big California smile, the Obama's beaming from cheek to cheek, the President resembling the modern day happy-faced politician. Traditional monarchs don't do happy face, at least not in the same way, their outward demeanor tends to be more restrained and composed, even when they plaster on the forced grin, as the Queen hilariously appears to be doing here, which looks even more forced than usual. The irony is that the involuntary smile is more sincere than the happy face, because while you can easily fake a happy face, one cannot easily fake an involuntary smile. Her Majesty appears genuine enough, but the President doesn't even look real, he looks like he belongs in a wax museum.

But let us not begrudge the President's (presumably sincere) excitement at finally meeting the Queen. And let us not begrudge our Grand Old Duke's wish to be somewhere else - if His Royal Consort looks singularly unimpressed, remember he's been entertaining American presidents since Truman, they by now probably mean as much to him as the Queen's corgis.

Let us take issue, rather, with the incorrigible shallowness of the gift-giving. I realize the President is addicted to his gadgets, that he apparently can't do without his blackberry and teleprompter. But giving the Queen an iPod as an official gift with the sound of his own voice recorded on it, is only marginally better than the unworkable DVD collection he gave Gordon Brown the other week. I will admit that President Obama has a very pleasant and well modulated voice, but IT gadgets are little more than transient objects that are meant to be discarded, unlike say a fine painting or a rare old book. So thanks for the keeper - suffice it to say, it's the thought that counts.

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Some Observations on the 1701 Act of Settlement

Some thoughts for Gordon Brown:

Allowing a Catholic to sit upon the throne would put him in a terrible conflict of conscience. As a Catholic he would be in full communion with the Holy Father in Rome; as sovereign his coronation oath would oblige him to keep many Anglicans out of full communion with the same Catholic Church. Regardless of the laws of Westminster, the laws of conscience would preclude a Catholic from serving as head of the Church of England. Again, disestablishment must come first. But as I oppose disestablishment as an unwelcome step toward secularism, the Catholic question should not arise at all.

The Young Fogey himself, Rafal Heydel Mankoo, made some more practical objections back in 2007:

The requirement for unanimity brings with it other perils. Requiring all Commonwealth Realms to consent will inevitably lead to a debate within each realm as to the continuing relevance of the Monarchy itself. Governments of nations with strong republican elements will no doubt face a question of this sort: As we are examining the succession to the position of head of state surely this is the time to embark upon whole-scale reform.

Those who call for change should realise that any attempt to alter the Act of Settlement will stir a hornet's nest in various Commonwealth Realms which may ultimately result in the transformation of many from constitutional monarchy to republic. Of course the counter argument is that it is better to deal with the issue now, during the stable era of The Queen's reign, rather than to wait until forced to deal with it in an uncertain future.

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Mexican President Receives Knight of the Bath

Perhaps we shouldn't criticise republican presidents for their chronic inability to dress up to royalist standards, or even up to gentlemen standards, for they have never received the training. Here the President of Mexico at a State Banquet given by Her Majesty, commits a major faux in the wearing of his white tie. That is, the waistcoat should never extend below the bottom of the tailcoat - egad, how embarrassingly obvious.

The Queen and President Calderon of Mexico make their way to the Ball Room at Buckingham Palace for a State Banquet given by The Queen and The Duke of Edinburgh on the first day of a State visit by the President and First Lady of Mexico, 30 March 2009. His Excellency is wearing the insignia of an Honorary Knight Grand Cross of the Civil Division of the Most Honourable Order of the Bath, presented to him by Her Majesty earlier in the day. © Press Association

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The Queen Receives Her Canadian and Australian Prime Ministers

There are probably no two nations more alike or more blessed than Canada and Australia. Both are vast continental federations, both are major resource rich world class economies and both are significant constitutional monarchies, who happen to share the same language, history, culture and Queen.

Above: The Queen receives the Canadian Prime Minister, the Rt. Hon. Stephen Harper MP, at Buckingham Palace, 1 April 2009. Mr. and Mrs. Harper, with the Australian Prime Minister and his wife, were later invited to lunch with The Queen and The Duke of Edinburgh. The Prince of Wales and The Duchess of Cornwall also attended the lunch. © Press Association

Below: The Hon. Kevin Rudd MP, Prime Minister of Australia, is received by The Queen at Buckingham Palace, 1 April 2009. Mr. Rudd and his wife, Ms Thérèse Rein, later joined the Canadian Prime Minister and his wife for lunch with The Queen and The Duke of Edinburgh. © Press Association

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Mad monarchy over a fair republic

"I think in the 21st century people do expect discrimination to be removed"

— Prime Minister Gordon Brown

Well, Mr. Brown, does that mean we should remove the monarchy altogether, surely the whole foundation of monarchy is quite spectacularly a rather deliberate show of institutionalised discrimination. The people don't get to choose their King, birth and hereditary succession choose it for them. Ought we not to tidy our hands of this little tyranny while we're at it?

I won't question the absurdity of denying women and Catholics their rightful inheritance, even if it is the entire apparatus and trappings of state. Some of our best monarchs were Catholic, and few would disagree that three of our most successful sovereigns have been women: Elizabeth, Victoria and Elizabeth again. So no, there is no good reason why our ancient monarchy should have been, for more than a thousand years, dominated by men.

But if you want to talk about discrimination and violations of human rights, when can we expect to see legislation that will reduce the Queen's workload down to a 40 hour work week like everyone else? When can Her Majesty expect a little privacy in her life? What is the mandatory retirement age for Queens anyways, a ripe old 118? If it all were not so laughable:

The royal family, while nominally our betters, are in fact our captives and an interesting and profitable focus for media attention. It's as unfair as life; the royals can't escape and if you want to become royal, you basically can't. It's a more or less functional arrangement that no one would ever have had the wit to devise deliberately.

Which is why Liberal Democrat MP Evan Harris's attempt to fiddle with it is so enervating. He wants to change the Act of Settlement whereby Catholics can't marry the sovereign and end the discrimination against female heirs to the throne. He thinks this will make the monarchy more fair. I suppose it will, in the same way that throwing some bread into the Grand Canyon will make it more a sandwich.

The monarchy is overwhelmingly, gloriously, intentionally unfair - that's the point. The defining unfairness is that you have to be a member of that family to be king or queen; fringe unfairnesses like their not being able to marry Catholics or men having priority in the line of succession are irrelevant in that context. And what's so fair about primogeniture, which Harris is not planning to touch, or the sovereign having to be Anglican, which is also apparently fine? He wants to spend parliamentary time, mid-credit crunch, on a law aimed primarily at helping Princesses Anne and Michael of Kent.

When will people get the message? If you want a fair system, have a republic, elect a president and live with some arsehole like David Cameron giving a speech every Christmas Day afternoon, bitter in the knowledge that you asked for it. Otherwise, we should stick with what we've got, rather than trying to tinker. No abdicating, no skipping Charles, no changing weird ancient laws. We get who we get because we'd rather live with the inadequacies of a random ancient structure than the inadequacies of one designed by Brown and Cameron.

The monarchy's not perfect, but it's also not harmful, powerful or, and this is the clincher, our fault. The inevitable imperfections of anything we replaced it with would be.

So fine, tinker away. However, know that with all the tinkering in the world, we will never devise a "fair monarchy", for that is wishfully absurd. Our best hope is that we retain a monarchy steeped in duty and dignity, heritage and habit, but most importantly one in which the most powerful politician in the country still has to kowtow to someone other than himself. If putting up with some crazy discrimination gets me that, I'm all for a mad monarchy over a fair republic.

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