Come the revolution, brother

So old Lizzie turned 400 or something at some stage in my short-term memory. There's been the expected outpouring of vitriol from the usual suspects and probably the usual parade of sycophancy from the other usual suspects. I say probably because I didn't really notice her birthday sneaking up on me so didn't look for any coverage of it in the housewife porn mags*. I have nothing personal against Our Monarch, I just don't like the idea of having a monarchy.
Lizzie is only playing the cards that she's been dealt. As far as nominative (and ceremonial) Heads of State go, she doesn't do a bad job of it, either. Nor do I dislike Chuckles. He's a bit whacko, but at least he has opinions which are his own, which is refreshing. Also, anybody who likes the Goon Show can't be all bad. Needle nardle noo and all that. Admittedly the Windsors are no competition for the Grimaldis when it comes to hornbag-ness or even wackiness, but they provide amusement.
Which doesn't mean that they should have anything to do with The Great Southern Land. Adhesion to the poms has been a mistake financially and lately, diplomatically. It was always a one way street militarily - Boer War, anyone? World War One? (At least the yanks had the brains to sit out the first few years. Smarter than our mob.) World War Two was our go, but it wasn't until we got rid of Pig-Iron Bob and Curtin sided with Roosevelt over Churchill that our national security was, in fact, secure. The poms were ready to sacrifice us. Malaya was us, nothing against the poms there. Ditto Vietnam, given the locale and the (ultimately wrong) Domino Theory. Pity the Sepps didn't look a bit closer at how the Poms handled Malaya, the outcome may have been different. Wars are not won by statistics.
It is now easier for a Cypriot or Estonian or Lithuanian to enter, stay or work in Britain than it is for a bonzer Aussie to do so, fair dinkum. And yet conservatives- and I use the term here to describe one resistant to change - still cling to the monarchy as if it were indeed a Good Thing for the nation, instead of just a security blanket for people who fear the new. Of course, some of those people will point to the Summit or whatever it was called that we had in Johnnie's first term and say that Australians don't want a republic, carefully omtting the point that the whole thing - from membership to agenda - was carefully orchestrated by one of Australia's most ardent monarchists especially to produce an unpalatable outcome. I saw Tony Blair on Parkinson last night because I have no life and Blair said that Bill Clinton was the best 'politician's politician' that he ever met. I feel that this is a slight on Howard, that man is a genius.

I am by no means as slavishly devoted to the concept of democracy as most people would have you believe that they are. The trouble with democracy is that the same people who vote for the Logies also vote in general elections. The same people who made McDonalds the most popular restaurant in the world select the government in a popularity poll. For this reason, I think that a minimalist approach to a republic might be the most logical and likely to get up. Just stop the Governor-General from being a Vice-Regal representative. You wouldn't have to change the way that the Gee Gee is selected, or anything else for that matter. Call it the Presidency if it's important to you, but it doesn't really matter. Change the flag, if you want, but that doesn't matter either. I don't give a two nobs of goat shit what the flag looks like. I've heard all the arguments pro- and con- and I don't care if the blue ensign has never been officially elevated above the red ensign, I don't care if you want to get rid of the tea towel in the corner and I don't care if you fought for and died for the flag. Incidentally, anybody who fights for a flag is an idiot. Go to the disposals and get another one; it's a piece of dyed cloth, it's not important. The purpose of a flag is to provide a recognisable symbol of the nation. The current one serves the purpose; so would a new one. It's the nation that is symbolised that is important, not the design that is chosen to represent it. Too many people confuse the wrapping paper with the present.

Democracy is ok, works well to varying degrees in most cases and usually corrects its own mistakes given enough time, but I find myself being something of a fan of benevolent despotism. Democracies, by definition, are nations run by committees. This means that it takes ages for any decisions to be reached, they are usually poor compromises and errors are always somebody elses fault. The only trouble (but probably an insurmountable one) with benevolent despotism is ensuring its benevolence. I'm still working on that one.

While the minimalist approach to a republic is logical and pain free it isn't my preferred choice. I favour a much more extreme makeover of the whole system. If I had my druthers I would scrap the State system and revamp the way that Local and Federal government operates. Of course you would have to retain ceremonial State borders. I couldn't live without State of Origin, that's just silly.

I would break the whole country up demographically so that there was a Local Government Area for every hundred thousand voters. Each Local Government Area would elect a council of ten members. These ten people would then select a Federal Representative from amongst themselves. This representative would then go off to Canberra and have nothing more to do with the running of the council, which would look after the traditional council stuff. All the reps from all the councils would then form a government along traditional party lines, the Prime Minister, who would be selected by the reps, would be the President. No more playing the blame game in health, education or anything else. Plenty of power with nowhere to hide. Everybody's vote carries the same weight and the bloated bureacracy would be less bloated.

I am a fucking genius.

* I am a fairly difficult person to offend. I don't have a thin skin and I am tolerant of divergent opinions. Some things disgust me, though. Probably what exemplifies it best was the cover of (I think) Women's Weekly that had a full page photo of Princess Di on the Pec Deck. Not that there was anything particularly lewd or lacivious in the photo itself; more that it was seen fit for publication at all, let alone on the front cover of a national magazine. I didn't give a rat's arse one way or the other about Di, I certainly never bought into the whole 'People's Princess' bullshit - she was a Sloane Ranger who managed to elevate herself into the position of Uber Ranger by boonting an ugly inbred. She wouldn't have given 'the people' the steam off of her piss on a cold day.
Which doesn't mean that she wasn't due her share of privacy. People who enter into the public arena (as opposed to being born into it) must expect to have their every public move examined and critiqued. They shouldn't need armed guards at the upper story windows to prevent photographers from feeding housewive's addictions to salacious material. I don't dislike papparazzi - they've seen a market and they're exploiting it - I hate the prurience and hypocrisy of the scum who buy their product.