Happy Birthday your Highness.

Today most of Australia celebrates the Queen's official birthday by having a bank holiday, unlike in the UK where you would be hard pressed to find anyone who even knew when her official birthday was, or  her real birthday (the 21st April for your information) for that matter.  I was supposed to have the day off work, but at the last minute was asked to come in, not that I am complaining, I can always do with the extra hours, and the double pay for working a bank holiday that they bring!  It is strange to think a country that is usually so vocal in their desire to remove their head of state are willing to honour her birthday with a public holiday, but then any excuse for a holiday.

Barnadi enjoying a little patriotism at Covent Garden

Although the Britt's don't really do anything for the Queen's birthday, I was surprised at how much apparent patriotism there was in the UK when it came to celebrating her diamond jubilee the other week.  Never have I seen the union flag so pervasively displayed in every available public space, bunting and shop windows awash with red white and blue. 

Taking things to extremes one very staunch royalist was inappropriately handing out an extremely emotive piece of propaganda at my father's church which he shared with us while we were visiting last week.  Now I might not be as strong a republican as Barnadi's friend Graham who works for the UK republican movement, but I have never really seen the point in maintaining a puppet monarch with no real power or purpose.  The author of this badly researched paper starts by referencing animal farm suggesting if we got rid of the monarchy we would end up with something worse, what I think he fails to realise however is that with a democratically elected leader we could also vote them out if they do a bad job, unlike the queen, who good or bad we are stuck with.  He then goes on with some general anti-European statements and some gibberish about how wonderful a tradition of hereditary peers is.  His next blatant error however is when he states that an elected leader would see his/her successful appointment as a license to turn into a tyrant, where as a monarch (who is appointed by God) would never do anything harmful to their country.  Historical evidence would beg to differ with this 'fact', for a start the concept of the 'Devine Right of Kings' disappeared with Charles I's head, it is this very concept that has allowed monarchs to commit many atrocities on their people unopposed, just look at the devastation caused to the country by Henry VIII and his children in the name of God.  Anyway that is enough of a rant from me, the Authors name is Christopher Luke, I have included a link to his e-mail if you wanted to send him your own comments.  (I haven't included a link to Grahams e-mail if you wanted to express an opposing view you can find his contact details on the republic website).