Leave the question of monarchy alone, Musket, it's a red herring allowing him to slide out the side door.

I suspect Backwoodsman's a bit like me, rather too high an IQ to be allowed to argue on sites like this: he's taken something of Bill's which is patently ridiculous rather literally. But then again, most of what Bill writes on this meme can't be taken seriously by anyone with either head or heart. OK, Bill has a decent heart on other things, but none of us is perfect, and I think this is an area where he's been brought up in a macho image he's going to find hard to leave behind. We can't help our parenting, but we can leave it behind: my old man was psoitively Edwardian, I left the world's mores go their own way in the late 70s (I have no detailed knowledge of anything in popular music since 1977, for example, as I got reet pissed off with the presumption I'd like hip-hop: I understand it, I just think it and virtually everything since excessively simple, rhythmn alone doesn't make music).

And in any case we're more likely to replace a monarch with a politician. A President should be a statesman - and I don't think we have any in the UK at the moment.