Possibility of an Elected Royal Family For the UK

Here's an idea, not a very good one I'll grant you - or well you can decide for yourself - but it appeals to me so I thought I'd throw it out there.

There has been much discussion of the last 15 years about the continuation of monarchy in the UK. On the one side we have the monarchists who say that the historic significance of the monarchy is too good a thing to lose. In rather the same way as we preserve our old country houses in an attempt to preserve our historic record and heritage, these people argue that we should keep our monarchy as part of Brand UK, its boost to tourism, its role as ambassadors for our national interests, and its provision of figureheads who stand for the embodiment of our national pride.

Against them stand the new republicans who don't like things like our national anthem being so queen centric. Why when we give three cheers for ourselves do we even need to mention her? Do we really want to hold, even in a figurative role, an institution which is the embodiment of anti-democratic ideas - an institution that drags along with it endless structures of power which favour the status quo and endorse the rights of rich and powerful people to use their wealth and power for the soul purpose of staying that way - ensuring that they and their friends and family keep hold of as much wealth and power as possible.

A possibility that I have never heard being entered into this 2-sided debate is a MIDDLE WAY. A third possibility that stands between the absolute fall of the monarchy, and the absolute continuation of it... namely an ELECTED ROYAL FAMILY. The suggestion is that we should keep all the current institutions of monarchy, all the existing property and land, all the existing jobs like opening fetes and hospitals, and international tours and so on, but have the people filling each of these roles be elected. This surely has the capacity to satisfy both sides of the argument. We keep all the institutions of monarchy, but have the people filling the roles be electable and accountable to the voting public.

One possible way to vote in the people to fill each of the jobs would be to do it on a family-wide basis. It could be done on a job by job basis, but I think there would be something good about voting for a whole family to take up the whole set of roles. The family could then serve a term of say 5 years, and then another family could be voted in to replace them. During their time as the Royal Family, each of these voted for families would take up residence in the various palaces, have use of the crown jewels, and be assigned with the various jobs like opening parliament that the current royal family do.

One possible way of choosing which family should be voted in would be a Big Brother style scrutiny of the families who are standing for election... I'm sure the nation would enjoy following that for 10 or 15 weeks... mega buck television for a broadcasting company that wants to get behind the project...

Don't forget, you heard it here FIRST... NotReallyRelevant

A question of what is really relevant?

I was prompted by my friend, Carl, to explore the merits of Wikipedia - which is of course wonderful and terrible - the very antithesis of the Not Really Relevant ehtos. However. Fight fire with fire? Infiltrate? Transform from the inside out? Lets see what we can do... ;-) ... Here is my user page: Not really relevant on Wikipedia

Positive Discrimination for the Socially Inept

Sometimes it seems to me, with all the various new disability legislation (and all power to it), that there ought to be positive discrimination for people who are socially inept. I mean I look around for a category of disability that covers me, and I think there ought to be one. People have all kinds of disabilities, and if society is going to go about re-dressing the balance regarding the lucky or unlucky, why stop at obvious physical disability. Some of us have just been born with a foot in our mouths, and didn't we ought to get some extra help with that? In many ways it is just as disabling as these other things.

This week David Cameron has been talking about giving tax breaks to married couples. How about some tax breaks for balding lonely losers? I'm not claiming to be grotesquely ugly, but I've been dull enough looking to make certain aspects of my life considerably harder work than they would have otherwise been. Perhaps some sort of sliding scale could be made, whereby the uglier you are, the more benefit you get.

I mean all joking apart, if society does consider it right to rebalance our various personal inequities, being so obnoxious that people at cocktail parties turn and run when they see me coming - doesn't that count for something?

I'm not saying I necessarily want a parking space outside the door at tescos, but how about some help paying people to pretend to be my friends?

Lynne's Site gets a new look

Lynne Hazelden's project, "PEACE in OUR lifetime" is here: Peace in our lifetime

Lynne Hazelden's site has just had a bit of a design tweak done to it. You can read Lynne's vision of a possible future for communication.

Dorchester Nursery / Preschool

Last week I was helping my sister with search engine optimisation. She has created a really cute site for the Dorchester Preschool where she works, with information about prechool term dates and all sorts of other useful stuff for pre-school parents with young children in Dorchester.