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Royalty

Entry 153, on 2005-04-05 at 15:15:56 (Rating 3, News)

I have never been much of a royalist. Theoretically the Queen of England is still the ultimate ruler of New Zealand because we haven't yet changed our political system to a republic, despite a growing pressure to do so. But I find a system where one family automatically gets the privilege associated with royalty quite disturbing.

Maybe one of the reasons more people want the country to dispense with British royalty is the ridiculous situation they currently find themselves in. Prince Charles is the immediate heir to the throne and is soon to marry his long time mistress Camilla Parker-Bowles. The prince is an odd character, quite a free thinker in many ways, but probably not the sort of person most people would want to see as king.

Now we have a series of debacles related to his second wedding. First it turns out that he can't be married with the full pomp you might expect, and because of this his mother, Queen Elizabeth, won't be attending the civil ceremony. Doesn't exactly say much for family loyalty and support, does it?

Next we were assured there was no way that Camilla could ever become queen, and she would be referred to by the bizarre title "princess consort" instead (if Charles ever became king, that is). Well OK, that's an acceptable compromise to most people. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to be possible under the current laws. So the laws of Britain, along with all the countries where the Queen is head of state (including here in New Zealand), would need to be changed.

And now to make things completely ridiculous we find that Charles' sons from his first marriage, William and Harry, would not be second in line to the throne after Charles himself, but Camilla's son Tom would be, because he is older. Our Prime Minister has flatly stated that King Tom will never be king of New Zealand!

While this is all very entertaining - its a new laugh almost every week - it does indicate to me that its time to dispense with formal ties to these bungling bunch of clowns and actually make our country a republic. We could then safely enjoy the comedy show without the accompanying embarrassment of knowing that its our head of state we're laughing at!

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