There’s a rather misanthropic button on The Guardian homepage that dams the flood of coverage on the Queen’s jubilee celebration in London. Click on “Republican?” and it’s as if more than a million people didn’t stand in the rain on the banks of the Thames yesterday to watch ol’ Liz float on by.
Few — even among Guardian readers — will click on it.
The paper commissioned a poll last month that tested the support of the monarchy. Some 69% of Britons think the country would be worse off without the royals; just 22% supported offing their heads. That puts support for her reign at 15-year highs.
The problem for republicans — and a tiny anti-monarchy rally in London today was trampled by royal revellers — is the Queen seems, well, quite nice (despite her more boorish clan). Resilient; stiff-upper-lip and all that. Points for longevity, at least, if not practicality.
In Australia we seem to have reached the socially polite position of waiting until she drops off the perch before proceeding to cut the cord to the motherland. And she looked far too spritely on her river cruise yesterday to contemplate that.
So we’ll leave the final word to The Guardian, in its leader today:
“It’s a pity about the rain, because the event — and the Queen — deserved better. It was a colourful occasion on a grey day. It was full of spirit. But whether the nation which it affected to embody actually exists is another matter. Meanwhile, in Syria …”
Elizabeth II is streets ahead of any other head of state or ruling power in the world. She costs each Briton the price of one cup of coffee annually and for that paltry investment they get an outstanding return.
I watched several hours of the Thames event and the overwhelming impression was, ‘Oh Yesterday! How yesterday!’
Swords, a steam train, the Turbinia, the Britannia’s launch, quayside crowds that were overwhelmingly white, rowboats (in place of a naval review replete with all 28 major surface vessals)…compaed with 9 times that number of surface vessals a century ago…tinnies bearing the flags of the largely irrelevant Commonwealth…
Britannia rules the Thames?
Ms Windsor is the British equivalent of Ms Rhinehart.
Both inherited incredible wealth. Both have somewhat dysfunctional families. Neither is prepared to share their incredible wealth with the billion or so people who go to bed hungry every night.
The problem isn’t the monarchy, it’s what would the alternative be? (applied to both the UK and Au)
An elected president, where we might vote for Tony or Julia? Oh Noes!
ZUT: It’s not like you to fail to get the point. Which is “”Elizabeth II is streets ahead of any other head of state or ruling power in the world. She costs each Briton the price of one cup of coffee annually and for that paltry investment they get an outstanding return.”” As Australians we shouldn’t be interested in an inheritable head of state. This is 2012 ad, not the sixteenth century.
The point being she may suit the English very well but, in Australia, the monarchy has past its used-by-date by the proverbial length of the straight. Australia has as its head, a complete anachronism. Even that turgid dirge masquerading as our national anthem says “We are young and free”.
An hereditary head of state???? Give over. The people who lurve supporting the monarchy tend to be elderly queens; the rural vote-always a hundred years in the past in the past; Catholics; old ladies who knit baby clothes for the next royal progeny; dense females who purchase The Hun and or County Life; (There’s another English publication whose name escapes me) expat Poms; the nouveau riche (Gina Rhinehardt not loving royalty?) ; members of the Melbourne Club.
I mention Catholics because they have the absurd belief that God handed the recipients an inherited right to do bügger all for Oz.
MIKE SMITH: Perhaps if Australia stood on its own two feet we might get a better form of politician. I hate this default mentality. Australians don’t vote for a particular Party at election time. They vote for the Party they perceive to be doing the least harm to our national interests. And now you stick to the monarchy on the tenuous hypothesis that our politicians are no good. The real killer with defaulting is that there is never a leader pristine and pure enough to live up to the imagined virtues of an overseas monarchy.