Thursday, April 20, 2006

Royalty Friday: Happy Birthday....


...Your majesty; you scrofulous, in-bred, un-elected, parasitic, hypocritical, greedy, contemptible German interloper, you.

God save the queen
She ain't no human being
There is no future
In England's dreaming

No chance of a knighthood then, I suppose?

If you'll excuse the anachronistic religious references, here's what Norfolk boy Tom Paine had to say on the matter a while back:

"In England a king hath little more to do than to make war and give away places; which in plain terms, is to impoverish the nation and set it together by the ears. A pretty business indeed for a man to be allowed eight hundred thousand sterling a year for, and worshipped into the bargain! Of more worth is one honest man to society and in the sight of God, than all the crowned ruffians that every lived."

7 comments:

Mondale said...

In your openeing bit you could have been decribing me.

Wisdom Weasel said...

Verily, thou art Carroll Gardens royalty.

Anonymous said...

I am appalled down to my anglophile bones. I just hope HRH doesn't read your blog.

God save the Queen! (and all those commemorative 80th birthday plates)

Anonymous said...

I agree!! replace her with a president that way we could have a party political (figure)head of state who:

1)rubber stamps the laws the Prime Minister and his cabinet makes;
2)"appoints" the government;
3)welcomes visiting dignatories;
4)lives in a big house paid for by the state;
5)carries out visits to hospitals;
6)performs walkabouts; and
7)gives a speech at Christmas.

All of this without the hassle of all those foreign tourists on the tube, coming over to look at palaces and spend their money in the UK, plus it would give us a chance not turn out for another election.

Anonymous said...

I agree with Horst...in what sort of country can you be head of state just because your dad was. Still as long as it is "democratic"!

Wisdom Weasel said...

Mrs. Roper: if the monarchy is ever done away with, I bet she'd love to move in next to us...

And to the presidents of Germany and Israel, Horst and Moshe (which troll is prentending to be both, I wonder?), welcome, welcome, pull up a stool and grab a pint. As a Brit living in America I can faithfully aver than both systems stink to high heaven. The "well, other ways are just as bad" argument is a very Bush adminstration/New Labour style of cop out however, don't you think?

As for "it would give us a chance not turn out for another election." Not a chance, a choice. Yo are right though; the fact that people are too lazy, too uninformed, or too unmotivated to vote really can only lead one to the conclusion that an anacronistic, expensive, and fundamentally baseless system should be kept in place. I mean look at the Church of England; hardly anybody attends the churches of the state peddler of hysterical nonsense but by gum, taxpayers still keep up the subsidies and stipends because its "traditional" and the buildings are nice.

And of course, the tourism thing is vital, because as we all know, any abolition of monarchy would cause Buckingham Palace to disappear from the face of the earth and all that. If she manned a ticket booth at Alton Towers there might be more of a case there, I grant you.

The queen is like the British "independent" nuclear deterrent: expensive and just for show.

Wisdom Weasel said...

Oh, and that "America as a hereditary monarchy" canard of "Horst/Moshe's"- as much as it pains me to say so, Shrub won at least one of the presidential elections he took part in. You could call if it a coronation if you want, if you want to ignore the fact that 62,040,610 cast votes for the man in 2004.

Indeed, Americans elected the son of an older politician. Like British voters did with Malcolm MacDonald (son of Ramsay) and Oliver Baldwin (son of Stanley), and more recently folks like Fatty Soames and Hilary Benn. Hereditary, you see; much like someone who follows their father into the gocery trade is a hereditary supermarketeer, right?

If you want to talk about the rotteness of the state of American particpatory democracy, or how on earth so many people found his horrible message palatable, that's a different matter. But mindlessly spouting meaningless and factually false tripe in attempt to make an "ironic" point; well, in truth its about as ironic as the subjects in the shitty Alanis Morissette song of the same name. But why let the inconvenient facts get in the way of a good sneer, eh?

Come back when you have finished your A levels and we can have a real discussion.

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