From the Royal Palace of WestminsterThis isn't quite on theme, but I turned on the radio for the four o'clock news in time to hear our new Prime Minister's latest proposal: a motto for the country, to show our "values". He is pretending that it has escaped his notice that we have one: Dieu Et Mon Droit. All part of airbrushing out the Monarchy, I assume. What is his suggestion - "In Gord we trust"?
Here's my suggestion: stop indulging your Ruritanian fantasies and do something to restore the economic stability of this once-great country. You've had ten years as the de facto general manager of Great Britain plc, with what results? A social security system that we can't afford and the claimants can't understand; an industrial base that is shrivelling like shrink-wrap on a bonfire; and a demolition derby of a democracy, in a country that mothered many other democracies and paid heavily in blood and gold to save Europe from fascism - twice.
5 comments:
I always rather like
nemo me inpune lacessit
Hi Nick. Gordon should stick to his knitting - he's dropped enough stitches as it is. With luck he will not be impune, either. To think that Blair should be succeeded in office by someone even madder!
"paid heavily in blood and gold to save Europe from fascism - twice."
I meant twice in the 20th century, of course; I didn't mention our role in resisting/overcoming religious fascism in the 16th, religious/revolutionary fascism in the 17th, revolutionary fascism in the late 18th/early 19th, and (I hope) bureaucratic fascism in the 21st.
Forgive me for commenting so late but I've been catching up. We cannot continue with the head of state not intervening in the face of grotesque perversions of the constitution; it is the primary task of the head of state to defend it, and to prevent the diversion of proper loyalty to country into improper and divisive loyalty to party, or class, or self interest (which last ususally implies criminality).
We have now a regime that acts as if nothing may interfere with its interference in every aspect of life, as if there is no church, no state or country other than party, no great institutions of learning and research, no private thought or public stance that is not required to conform to party think.
This regime sees nothing wrong with what has been done in the last decade; it is, in their view, the payback for the years of Tory rule. But the Conservatives did not attack the very substance of the settlement between the individual members of the state, and between the powers within the state. This regime cannot distinguish between the political and all other aspects of our society.
If the failure of the judges to prevent the abolition of the Lord Chancellorship means that the monarch is now finally without weapons to face this overweening executive does that mean that all the devastation is acceptable, or now to be accepted? And who is now to be our champion?
Perhaps the time has come to address HM The Queen directly, if you feel this is truly a constitutional crisis of that magnitude. I'm not joking. I have considered taking American citizenship in order to Know that I have some civil rights - my brother in America is currently applying for himself.
Good to see you up again. The Russians used to sew themselves into their multiple layers of clothing for the winter, I believe.
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