Accident of Birth

So, now they want us all to sing 'Sweet Caroline' in unison at street parties celebrating the Queen's Platinum Jubilee.  Obviously, the correct response to this is 'fuck off'.  The idea that the entire population are going to go completely ga ga next month and uncritically worship at the feet of the Royal Family is simply offensive.  There are still some of us who find all this fawning over something as archaic as a hereditary monarchy quite repugnant.  This is the twenty first century, for God's sake, not the middle ages.  Monarchy is an anachronism which has long passed its sell by date.  My late father was a fervent anti-monarchist.  I remember both the Silver Jubilee in 1977 and the later Royal Wedding of Charles and Diana not for street parties, but for the fact that we went to the beach instead.  We were the only kids in our street not to attend either street party.  Not that this turned me into an ultra Royalist in reaction to my father.  I simply developed a disinterest in Royalty, an ambivalence which saw them as a harmless anachronism.  It was the Diamond Jubilee that really radicalised me - I started out ambivalent but ended up turning into my father.  It was the TV coverage that really did it for me - all the deference and creeping and crawling.  It made me realise that my father had undoubtedly been right - there's nothing harmless about the continued existence of our monarchy.  It is used to constantly reinforce the idea that there is a correct social order in the UK and that we should all 'know our place' - a justification for the class system and the snobbery, privilege, entitlement that comes from unearned hereditary wealth.  The sort of wealth that too many of our leaders enjoy and use to wield disproportionate influence

It isn't that I want to see the UK equivalent to the storming of the Winter Palace, or see the entire Royal Family executed in a cellar, you understand.  I don't really have anything against them personally.  But, at the very least, we need to see them radically scaled back, much like other constitutional monarchies have been in places like Norway, Denmark or the Netherlands.  Get rid of all the bloody hangers on and the extended family of parasites.  Moreover, we need to make them properly constitutional.  I used to labour under the common misapprehension that the 'Royal Assent' required for parliamentary bills to finally pass into law was merely a formality.  But this turned out not to be true - the Queen has refused assent to some legislation, namely that to do with her and her family's finances.  This really must stop - it undermines the fundamental concept of the 'rule of law' which is meant to govern democratic societies - nobody gets to pick and choose which laws they observe.  But hey, as, thanks to the propaganda of the right wing press and establishment, daily brainwashing the UK into believing that accident of birth is a perfectly reasonable criteria for selecting leaders, none of this is likely to happen.  Instead, the best that the likes of me can do is to simply ignore all the forthcoming Jubilee bollocks.  Not that it will be difficult for me - if a street party has been organised for my street, nobody has invited me.  Which is par for the course - I don't get invited to barbecues, house warming parties or anything similar - which is fine by me.  I like to keep myself to myself and politely avoid the neighbours wherever possible.  So, with luck, I won't be hearing anyone singing 'Sweet Caroline' to the Queen, so won't have to lean out of a window and shout 'fuck off!'...