Our heritage.

 Having watched a program celebrating the Queens 90th year I am always amazed at the deference paid to an anachronistic figure who's relevance to modern day public life is to say the least problematic.  Why do we still place such importance on titled people. 

Why do we make such a fuss of the New Years Honours List. Why do we still confer titles and privilege, why do we still differentiate between the Commoner and the Aristocracy.
We still doff our caps and tug our forelock when in the presence of these people, we confer special opportunities on them and deny ourselves many millions of pounds to maintain the myth.
Of course in the Queens case there is the respect for an older person but one must keep in mind the paraphernalia behind the scenes which enables her to act out the image. From the Royal household and the palaces which enable the awe to be felt by people not used to opulence, to the lines of tradition as the flanking soldiers in all their plumage, keeping control whilst reminding us of the gulf between the ordinary and the privileged.
What is especially intriguing is the way ordinary folk react when she drives by. The flag waving, the excitement of a glimpse are all a part of an inculcated sense of "nobleness oblige", a calculated plot to keep us all under a mystic which should be so totally foreign to every normally functioning human being that the potion should be bottled. Grown men and women who normally would feel righteous rage to be told that they were second best, become putty at the sight of royalty. They curtsy and bow and follow the torment of protocol, the do's and don't's, the what can's and what can't's would and do fill a book, a book proudly upheld by a certain sort of person who's image of people stops below the footman.
Of course nations seem to need a figurehead, be it royalty or presidential. I'm not sure why. Their elected head of state is a politician who can be removed by the ballot box and not the executioners axe and is where the real power resides. Why do we need another layer on the cake and importantly the cost, which goes with it, when democracy for all its failings was invented to keep "them" away from power and out of our business. Why do we linger. Is it because we like the pomp and majesty to keep our thoughts away from the austerity of our ordinary lives. Is the sight of opulence, much like an opiate it makes us lightheaded. All forms of dynastic rule have this way of dressing up their position with robes and magnificent buildings, priceless paintings and a wall to keep "us" out.
The religious and the aristocratic have this in common to bamboozle us, to make us know our limitations, to keep us behind the ropes and in our place.
On another channel,  the story of the development of the Vulcan bomber, a beautiful technical achievement of the 1950s, a period when as a country we could built not only the Vulcan and its sister the Victor but aircraft carriers, and missal systems, and we managed to sell home produced products to the world, we were rightly proud to be British.
Now we only have the Monarchy, a monarch who has ruled also from the 50s and seen the demise of the country and its expertise. Perhaps her reign has not been as impressive as the program about her would suggest.