Is the Monarchy ridicules

 

Subject: Is Monarchy ridicules.

Is Monarchy ridiculous. Would we be better off as a Republic electing  a president.

With the death of the Queen and the arrival of Charles III to hold the post of titular head of state with theoretical powers of dissolution it potentially asks the loaded question about hereditary power. The idea that a family can assume through hereditary the role as head of state with all the pomp and grandeur, the enormous estates and huge houses, the staff and the stipend from the state for its upkeep. It all seems antediluvian  and archaic, belonging to a different age and custom but is that distancing from the rumbustious politicising of the democratic process a bad thing. Democracy, a system on the one hand which grants all citizens the vote and then nullifies their power through electoral  protocol which ensures that votes are counted and then distributed in such a way that for many the vote means nothing under the contrivance of the 'first past the post system'.

Hereditary power is held to be above the one man one vote system in that it gives 'continuity', something which is missed in this over pampered popularise world of individual rights topping any national interest. The question of who sets the national interest is mired as illustrated in the decision of our elected (chosen) head of state the Prime Minister not to attend the COP meeting even though climate warming is the most important item facing us as a species.  He apparently persuaded the King, who throughout his life has argued for more critical attention be given to global warming,   not to go.  Mr Sunak has a close affinity with the 'fossil fuel, lobby (through his previous life in the City), a group  who just happen to hold the sovereign funds which are keeping us financially afloat at the moment, is practicing 'real politic', that Achilles heel of all democratic institutions.

Is anyone better equipped to reason against the almost immediate demise of our society as we know it, or the one, 50 years down the track when Steinbeck's dust bowl economy may become the norm than the Archbishop of Canterbury who holds another version of the 'confused archaistic dynasty modal' but it must be said, a much more pleasant one than some I can think of.