Posts Tagged ‘monarchy’

I’ve got some time for The Queen.

I’m no Monarchist. I’m a paid-up member of Republic and demand my right, under both the UN Declaration of Human Rights and the European Convention on Human Rights, to elect my leaders. Those same declarations also grant us the freedom of expression to share the many anti-monarchy memes that have been floating around and if you are offended by them, maybe you should stop being such a snowflake.

But all of that aside, it also seems reasonable to celebrate the life of Elizabeth II. The strongest criticism that anybody has been able to muster so far is that she didn’t personally dismantle the monarchy. And to be fair to her, neither did any of us. And no, I don’t think it was any easier for her than it would be for us.

She did provide a lifetime of service to her country. 70 years of service: she worked up until the day she died (having to invite Lizz Truss to form a government would probably push me over the edge, too). She showed true leadership, most recently when sitting alone at the funeral of her husband while the prime minister was partying in Downing Street.

She gave us a glimpse into what leadership could be, one of the contributing factors to her surviving 15 British prime ministers.

And her life was remarkable. She was internationally loved. In fact, given the length of her reign and the exponential growth of the population, it seems likely that she was the most loved human being ever in human history. Part of that comes with the title. But some of that comes with the relentless ambassadorship that she provided.

For a long time now, the monarchy has been entirely out of step with modern Britain.

If the monarch had multiple children, the succession would be given to the eldest boy, rather than simply the eldest child. For the grave sin of being born a woman, you would be passed over by your younger brother, because men are obviously generically predisposed to be better at ruling a kingdom.

But no more! A new royal succession law is passing that removes said gender discrimination, meaning the eldest child, regardless of gender, will now inherit the Crown.

I have to say though, I can’t really believe we spent parliamentary time on this.

Ending discrimination is always a good thing, but the reality is that almost nobody is affected by this. Indeed, even if you look at the past thousand years, how many people would be affected by it? My guess is, it’s very, very few people. You would be able to count them on one hand.

That is far less than the amount of women who are going to be raped in the next 24 hours, or the number of transwomen who will be murdered in the next month. Maybe that would be a good place to spend some parliamentary time?

You can then argue that it is the principle that it is important – that the monarchy are the head of the UK, and indeed the Commonwealth, so it is important we show from the top that we don’t discriminate on gender.

This is a much better argument, but if we are going to recognise that the monarchy is a ridiculous unfair archaic system, why are we still tolerating it? Why not finally make the move to a republic? The phrase polishing a turd comes to mind, because we still have a system where 99.9999% of the population are excluded because of the circumstances of their birth – we have hardly fixed discrimination in this area – this isn’t a victory for women, it’s a victory for Kate Middleton’s daughter. That we spent our parliamentary time on.

Immigration has been a hot topic over the past decade. Many people are concerned about the level of immigrants coming into the UK, while other groups argue that we need immigrants to continue flooding to the UK in order to promote growth and ensure there is still a bit of money left in the pension pot.

Realistically though, there is really just one group of immigrants causing more problems in our society than any other. Addressing this one specific area would bring far more equality and fairness to our society.

That’s why I’m launching my new campaign Deport the Sax-Cobergs.

They come over here, they take our jobs…

They take our women…

And they live in massive council houses funded by the tax payer…

So, I’ll be handing round a petition…

Some of you may have been aware that there was recently a royal wedding.

Actually, I didn’t find the media coverage that overbearing. There was plenty of coverage of it, but then that is the media no matter what is happening – whether it’s the latest deadly pandemic, political scandal or international football competition.

What really annoyed me, was the amount of people who spent so long moaning about it. Every time I logged on Facebook, every time I looked at Twitter, every time I read someone’s blog, they seemed to be moaning about the amount of media coverage the royal wedding was receiving.

I mean, it’s not just me that thinks there is a certain level of irony that most of the coverage I have seen of the royal wedding, is people moaning about how there is too much coverage, right?