Saturday 9 June 2012

Interesting post on the jubilee and the Republic protesters

... at Boingboing.

I went down to the river, it was fun. I couldn't see a thing, the crowds were so tightly packed. Eventually on the South Bank I found a very narrow wobbly bit of fencing which people were standing on, and watched the boats go by for half an hour. It was quite fun and I saw a very small figure in white who was the Queen. (I think.) Then there were various small boats from the commonwealth, Dunkirk, etc. etc. Everybody was in a good mood, Union Jacks were everywhere and it only rained at the end.

This week I was chatting to a top academic who said, with a cheerful grin, "I was hoping for the Duke of Edinburgh to keel over. That would have been a result." There you have the republicans' image problem. Lots of them are nice people who bear no malice to anyone and simply want to change an institution; but some of them sound as if they bear a personal grudge against Ma'am herself, and this is not attractive.

I am ambivalent. The monarchy seems to embody some of the best things about Britain, and also some of the worst.

(By the way, that link will teach you the glorious fact that the President of Turkmenistan is called Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov. If we have a president, let's have him.)

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