The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #41128   Message #592277
Posted By: Gervase
14-Nov-01 - 04:57 AM
Thread Name: BS: The UK Royal Family
Subject: RE: BS: The UK Royal Family
Ha, ha, ha ha!
Sorry, mention of the Royal Family always gets me hooting.
I'm a dyed-in-the-wool republican, I'm afraid; someone who longs to be able to call himself a citizen rather than a subject. Although I suppose, as someone who has sworn an oath to uphold and protect Her Maj, her heirs and successors (note the canny wording there - the UK's unwritten constitution is quite prepared to accept that the House of Windsor/Saxe-Coberg-Gotha might not be around for ever) I could be guilty of treason, but what the heck.
I haven't got much against the Royal Family per se - the Queen appears to be remarkably well-informed, level-headed and genuinenely interested in her role, while Charles, whose job description is still essentially "waiting for mummy to die", has at least made an attempt to be socially useful in the meantime, even if some of his views are Pooterish and reactionary.
As for the rest of them; Philip, Edward, the Queen Mum - they're as odious a bunch as you'd expect from such a dysfunctional family. And I do mean the Queen Mum - I know there's been so much haggiography about "The Nation's favourite Grandma", but in her 101 years she's shown herself to be a mean-spirited, manipulative and vindictive old boot (but with some mitigation).
So I don't know about getting rid of them - perhaps it would simply be best to let them wither on the vine and crumble away. It was the constitutional writer Bagehot who warned in the 19th century of the dangers of "letting sunlight in on the magic". Over the past couple of decades Murdoch's Sun has certainly done its bit to bring its glare onto the Royal family, and I nurture a vision of the lot of them turning to dust like the finale of some grande guignol Hammer House of Horrors film!
Then all True Levellers can build a Commonwealth here on Earth...(ah well, a man can dream, can't he?)