Quotulatiousness

February 6, 2012

The Diamond Jubilee

Filed under: Britain, Cancon, History, Media — Tags: — Nicholas @ 12:07

Paul McMichael Nurse on today’s 60th anniversary of the start of the reign of Queen Elizabeth II.

Today marks the 60th anniversary of Elizabeth II’s accession to the Throne of Great Britain in February of 1952. There can hardly be many heads of state, past or present, who have witnessed so many major events over so long a period. Elizabeth has outlasted 12 British prime ministers, 10 Canadian ones and 11 U.S. presidents. Decolonization, the Cold War, the space race, civil rights for minority groups, various assassinations and international regime changes have all taken place during her reign. From the grim austerity days following the end of the Second World War to the technological wonders of the early 21st century, Elizabeth as princess and queen has seen Britain transform from a quasi-imperial nation to something less than the superpower it was a century ago.

A number of events are planned to celebrate this year’s Diamond Jubilee, capped by a massive flotilla of boats accompanying the queen’s barge up the Thames on June 3. Members of the Royal Family will visit all 15 countries of which the queen is head of state, and Elizabeth herself will travel extensively within the United Kingdom.

Royal jubilees are rare things at the best of times, but none rarer than 60th anniversaries. Over 1,000 years of British monarchy there have been only two Diamond Jubilees, and the last one occurred not in the last century, but the one before, in 1897, when Queen Victoria celebrated her own reign of 60 years. To this day, Victoria remains the longest-serving British monarch on record, ascending the throne on the death of her uncle William IV, in 1837, and seeing Britain grow into the most extensive global empire since Rome.

Update: Even some self-described anti-monarchists think she’s been a fine Queen:

But admiration for the monarch might be unexpected coming from me. After all, I’m a republican.

Heredity is just about the silliest method I can think of for selecting someone to govern a country. Think Kim Jong-Il.

[. . .]

It’s true that bad prime minister, premiers and presidents can stick around long enough to rot in office. But no elected leader gets to stay for 60 years. Democracies may be imperfect, but they are self-correcting in a way hereditary monarchies never can be.

So why such effusive praise for our Queen from such a staunch anti-monarchist? Because Elizabeth has been a remarkable queen, an inspirational queen, steadfast, steady, intelligent, balanced and above reproach. She has seldom, if ever, put a foot wrong. Without her pitch-perfect discharge of her duties, it is entirely possible the British monarchy would have gone the way of other European royalty decades ago.

In short, Elizabeth is the Queen we would have chosen to elect if a campaign were ever held to select our monarch. Heredity may have placed her on the throne, but had voters ever been asked, democracy would have kept here there. I can think of no elected leader who could have acted so impeccably in office to remain popular from 1952 until today. Indeed, if anything, the Queen is more popular today than at any time since the first years after her accession. And it is an earned popularity, a reward for her unwavering commitment to serve her subjects and the people of the Commonwealth.

February 4, 2012

In praise of Her Majesty the Queen

Filed under: Britain, Cancon, History, Media — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 11:33

Conrad Black goes full monarch in his latest column:

The Queen has an outstanding record of absolutely unblemished service, through tumultuous changes and always having to endure suggestions of impending obsolescence — not just of the monarchy itself, but of its various separate functions, especially the ambiguous positions of head of the Commonwealth and supreme governor of the Church of England.

The 1950s were a constant round of independence ceremonies, mainly for countries that had a very rocky start and little aptitude for premature emancipation from unfashionable colonials status. This made for ever larger and more incongruous Commonwealth meetings, as the shared British traditions that supposedly united the “British Dominions, realms and territories beyond the seas” frayed and became always more threadbare except, perhaps, among the former so-called “white Dominions.”

In this present time of glaring, intrusive, nasty media, it is hard to imagine the proportions of the Queen’s achievement in serving 60 years, every one of them as one of the most prominent and publicized people in the world, without one gaffe, one embarrassing photograph, one injudicious utterance or slip on a banana peel, literal or metaphoric.

[. . .]

Queen Elizabeth II has personified the British middle-class virtues: moderation, unflamboyant consistency and unflappable reliability. It hasn’t always been exciting, and in satirical magazines such as Private Eye and on the BBC, she has paid a price for that and was lampooned for decades for stiff formality and stilted phrases — “My husband and I,” etc.

January 22, 2012

The real story of The King’s Speech

Filed under: Australia, Britain, Economics, History, Media — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 12:13

I was going to just tack this on as an update to the last entry (as it’s the same author and a kinda-sorta similar topic), but it deserves to be in its own post. Colby Cosh on the historical reality behind the movie The King’s Speech:

I got the book The King’s Speech for Christmas and just finished it; in the very wide field of “slender material adapted into a thrilling hit movie, on whose strength it is then flogged”, it must be some kind of record-breaker. I enjoyed the book, as a reader with about a degree-and-a-half in European history and a keen interest in the pre-war period, but I do not have the creative imagination to have imagined it as fodder for Hollywood. The plain fact is that Lionel Logue scored his big breakthrough in treating the Duke of York (the future King George VI) very quickly, taking a matter of literally a few weeks in late 1926 to help him overcome his stammer and to raise his oratorical abilities to a standard of adequacy. After that time, Logue was consulted very occasionally, serving the King as a sort of good-luck totem on major occasions like the Coronation.

The men obviously got on well, and for decades His Majesty treated Logue with a touching solicitude. Logue’s life was otherwise uneventful. As even the most unschooled reader must have intuited, most of the stuff of the movie — the shouting match in the street, the poignant reconciliation, the surprise royal visit to Logue’s home — is a fairy tale.

But it’s a rare article by Colby that doesn’t include a juicy bit of economics:

It was only with the return of Australian soldiers from the First World War that Logue’s calling as an elocution teacher began to tilt, almost imperceptibly, toward the bailiwick of medicine. Like chiropractors of today, he was ostensibly able to assist some afflicted people for whom scientifically validated medical care cannot do much good. His looks, along with a bit of actor’s training, must have helped a great deal.

(Incidentally, after Logue climbed to the top of the new discipline with royal help, he shrewdly pulled the ladder up after himself, employing George VI in an effort to establish standards and licensing criteria he could never himself have met when he was starting out. Public-choice economists will find this a textbook example of how health cartels establish “restricted entry” barriers.)

“We don’t do kings”

Filed under: Africa, Government, Middle East, Politics, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:03

Colby Cosh suggests that the long aversion to monarchy on the part of US policymakers may be hindering their long-term plans around the world:

Monarchies in the Middle East and North Africa have been stable relative to their republican neighbours; the replacement of a monarchy with a republic rarely if ever makes the people better off; and the monarchies in the region tend to be more liberal economically, even if they don’t have particularly liberal political structures.

In the ci-devant monarchies of the Arab and Persian world, nostalgia for overthrown Western-friendly regimes of the past seems fairly common. When the Libyans got rid of Gadhafi last year, for instance, they promptly restored the old flag of the Kingdom of Libya (1951-69), and some of the anti-Gadhafi protesters carried portraits of the deposed late king, Idris. From the vantage point of Canada, constitutional monarchy looks like a pretty good solution to the inherent problems of governing ethnically divided or clan-dominated places. And in most of the chaotic MENA countries, including Libya, there exist legitimist claimants who could be used to bring about constitutional restorations.

The most natural locale for such an experiment would have been Afghanistan, where republican governments have made repeated use of the old monarchical institution of the loya jirga or grand council.

January 10, 2012

Political geometry

Filed under: Economics, Government, History, Liberty — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:16

L. Neil Smith on the inadequacy of “left” and “right” to properly describe the political spectrum:

When I took my one and only Political Science course in college, in 1966, the instructor told us that when certain opinions show up in the polls he and his colleagues conduct — chiefly those of admirers of Ayn Rand, or followers of Henry George — their opinions have to be thrown out, since they don’t fit anywhere on the traditional political spectrum.

This is science? When the data refuse to fit the model, throw out the data, rather than the model? If this is “science”, it’s exactly the same “science” that brought us Global Warming. And it is from at least forty years of corrupt, lazy, irresponsible academics like this poli-sci instructor that we get our present generation of news media “personalities”.

Let’s throw out the model, instead, and see what happens.

Imagine a triangle, with a lower right corner, a lower left corner, and a corner, or apex, at the top. Even at this stage — when the picture is far from complete — such a diagram comes closer to representing the real shape of our political landscape than a simple line.

Label the right-hand corner paternalistic. Those who occupy this corner, and the positions they take, tend to be autocratic, strongly oriented to the past, concerned with what they believe (often falsely) is history and tradition, and with, above all, punishment, which they offer as a cure for every social ill. Their mysticism tends to focus mostly on an ancient, angry father-god. In their view, others should be adequately organized, even regimented, properly disciplined, and controlled. They maintain a posture of perpetual threat-display. People of the right either want to be spanked, or to do the spanking, themselves.

Think of the patrician George F. Will or the late William F. Buckley.

Individuals who occupy the left-hand corner are inclined to be maternalistic, majoritarian — as long as the vote goes their way — oriented toward the present (they call it “living in the now”), and prone to medicalizing social problems and “healing” everybody whether they wish to be “healed” or not. They substitute animism and other mystical nonsense for traditional religion. They believe people must be watched over, taken care of, institutionalized, and medicated. When their veneer of altruism is stripped away, they become hysterical and violent. People of the left either want to be mommied, or to be Mommy, themselves.

Think of Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, or the repulsive Elizabeth Warren.

Inhabitants of the upper corner of the triangle typically think of themselves as self-determined, self-motivated, individualistic, and oriented toward the future. It is less common for them to be mystical or religious than otherwise. They display a live-and-let-live attitude of respect toward others — believing they should be left alone rather than meddled with — and favor restitution rather than punishment or therapy in the case of wrongdoing. The other two positions, right and left, are basically infantile. The apex is the only place for real adults.

Good examples would be LeFevre, Robert A. Heinlein, or Dr. Mary Ruwart.

It should be reasonably clear by now that the left-hand corner is where socialism lives — if you want to call it living — the ethical view that the rights of the group come before those of the individual. However the right-hand corner is often misidentified, as with the case of Mussolini, Hitler, and the Nazis. Look over the characteristics associated with it: the correct political expression of the right is monarchism. Long after revolutions in the 18th and 19th centuries, loyal advocates of the king are still out there, pressing his royal case.

November 2, 2011

History pop quiz

Filed under: Britain, Government, History, Law — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 09:12

Tim Black wants you to identify how long ago a certain communication to the royal family was written:

‘I write to formally request the consent of His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales to provisions to be included in the . . . Bill.’

So, history fans, in which democracy-forsaken year did a member of the Houses of Parliament open a letter to an heir to the throne with this line? Not sure? Perhaps this sentence will help: ‘Granted that these proposed changes . . . will apply to . . . contracts entered into by or on behalf of the Duchy of Cornwall, we should be very grateful to receive the consent of the Prince of Wales.’ There are plenty of clues there: the cowering, creeping tone; the excessive, almost fearful formality; and, of course, the sheer palpable deference towards the Crown. Surely this particular parliamentarian’s request must originate from some time before parliament began to forcibly assert its interests against those of the Crown during the seventeenth century? Perhaps it was even earlier: 1590 or maybe even 1565.

This is a follow-up to a post from earlier this week.

October 31, 2011

British constitutional quirk: Prince Charles has a limited veto over some legislation

Filed under: Britain, Government, History, Law — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 09:17

There are times when I think the British system of government compares poorly to that of Terry Pratchett’s Ankh-Morpork. This charming little hangover from medieval times, for instance:

Ministers have been forced to seek permission from Prince Charles to pass at least a dozen government bills, according to a Guardian investigation into a secretive constitutional loophole that gives him the right to veto legislation that might affect his private interests.

Since 2005, ministers from six departments have sought the Prince of Wales’ consent to draft bills on everything from road safety to gambling and the London Olympics, in an arrangement described by constitutional lawyers as a royal “nuclear deterrent” over public policy. Unlike royal assent to bills, which is exercised by the Queen as a matter of constitutional law, the prince’s power applies when a new bill might affect his own interests, in particular the Duchy of Cornwall, a private £700m property empire that last year provided him with an £18m income.

Neither the government nor Clarence House will reveal what, if any, alterations to legislation Charles has requested, or exactly why he was asked to grant consent to such a wide range of laws.

October 28, 2011

Royal succession rule change

Filed under: Australia, Britain, Cancon, History, Law — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 09:20

Dedicated republicans, feel free to skip this item. Thanks to an agreement among the heads of government meeting at the Commonwealth meeting in Australia, the line of succession to the throne will now treat women equally:

Sons and daughters of any future UK monarch will have equal right to the throne, after Commonwealth leaders agreed to change succession laws.

The leaders of the 16 Commonwealth countries where the Queen is head of state unanimously approved the changes at a summit in Perth, Australia.

It means a first-born daughter of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge would take precedence over younger brothers.

The ban on the monarch being married to a Roman Catholic was also lifted.

Under the old succession laws, dating back more than 300 years, the heir to the throne is the first-born son of the monarch. Only when there are no sons, as in the case of the Queen’s father George VI, does the crown pass to the eldest daughter.

August 15, 2011

Navy and Air Force to be “Royal” again?

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Military — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 14:12

Andrew Coyne linked to this article at the Huffington Post:

Canada’s navy and air force will get a royal name change Tuesday, The Huffington Post Canada has learned.

The Conservative government plans to announce that Maritime Command and Air Command, the official names of the two Canadian Forces’ units, will be returned to Royal Canadian Navy and Royal Canadian Air Force, monikers last used in 1968. Simultaneous announcements on the name change are planned for Tuesday in Halifax, Kingston, Valcartier, Que., Cold Lake, Alta., and Esquimalt, B.C.

The Canadian army, which is officially called Land Command, will also be renamed simply Canadian Army.

The change is mostly symbolic and won’t affect how the Canadian Forces are run.

It may be “mostly symbolic”, but symbols matter.

Up yours, Mr. Hellyer.

July 4, 2011

The difference between the 4th of July and the 1st is more than a few days

Filed under: Britain, Cancon, Government, USA — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 16:06

Publius, from his Dominion Day post this year:

It’s a quibbling nonsense and very foreign. The idea of an independence day is unCanadian. It is mostly an unconscious American import. Well, if the Yankees have it then so must we. Given that history is not taught in the school it is a plausible enough mistake. One of the reasons we are not taught our history in the schools is that so much of it is, how to put this, British. Not Swinging Sixties British. Not even Cool Britannia British. It’s the boring old sort of British. Queen Victoria. Old men in wigs. Long speeches that refer in passing to Magna Carta. Very dull. Since history abhors a vacuum many Canadians simply import whatever they’ve picked up about our southern neighbours.

It is one of this blog’s governing theses that Canada is the most boring nation on earth. Boring in the sense that nothing “exciting” ever happens her. No civil wars, insurrections, coups, putsch and the last rebellion was during Queen Victoria’s reign. Dull, duller, Canada. That is why the idea of an independence day is so unCanadian. A clean break from something implies drama. A gradual development is very dull. It is also very practical and very sensible, thus very Canadian. We might even venture to say that it is positively Burkean.

I was once asked, many moons ago now, by an American friend to explain how Canada became independent. My explanation ran like this: We went over to London, along with the Australians, New Zealanders, South Africans, Irish and Newfoundlanders and asked, very politely, if we might become independent. Nothing personal. It was just time to leave. We’d definitely stay in touch. Family being family and all. We’re definitely keeping the monarchy. Send us a telegrams if the European continent starts getting dicey. All the best chaps.

I can’t really improve on that explanation. I’m missing the odd imperial conference, to say nothing of the battle of Vimy Ridge and the Hundred Days. The gist is about right. No muskets, no machine guns, no blood bath. Civilized men speaking in polite tones to one another. A fuss was not made. Everyone was terribly decent. The British officials sighed about how time had passed. Their work was done and all. The final act of parenthood is to see the young ones off. So they did. Nary a tear. Upper lip being kept quite stiff.

May 3, 2011

The Royal Wedding as proof of monarchy’s descent to celebrity status

Filed under: Britain, Media — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:57

Brendan O’Neill won’t expect his name to show up on the royal honours list after this scathing piece:

Now that the I do’s have been done and the dress has been papped to death, it’s time to put the wedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton into perspective. Friday’s knees-up in London and other parts of Britain was not, as both right-wing fantasists and bitter republicans would have us believe, evidence that everyday Brits remain in thrall to monarchy. Rather, the Big Day confirmed just how far the monarchy has been hollowed of meaning, and the extent to which it has rather desperately thrown its lot in with one of the few institutions that still has political purchase in Britain today: celebrity culture.

The observing classes were in equal measure overexcited and disgusted to see so many little people waving Union flags on Friday. For monarchists, this was evidence that Britons still have ‘great affection’ for their Queen and her brood and all that they represent — including hereditary privilege. For the more fashionable Windsor-weary set — republican commentators at publications such as the Guardian and the New Statesman — the sight of hordes of happy people cheering a prince and his gal was utterly alien. They are ‘brainwashed drones’, sniffed one columnist, partaking in a ‘monstrous [display] of imperial pride’, said another.

What both these cheerers and sneerers amongst the chattering classes fail to appreciate is the extent to which the royal wedding was a celebrity event rather than an imperial one. And people related to it accordingly, cheering and photographing Will’n’Kate not as their future natural rulers, but as individuals who have the aura, and authority, of celebrity. This was a celebrity happening not only in the much commented-upon fact that slebs such as David Beckham, Elton John and Tara-Wotsit-Wonkynose squeezed into the pews alongside the King of Tonga and the Queen of Denmark, but also in the fact that all those Union flags were handed out to the revellers by Hello! magazine. Responsibility for adding a nationalist gloss to Friday’s proceedings was effectively outsourced to the army of ‘Hello! helpers’ who ‘lined the royal wedding route’ armed with thousands of factory-made Union flags.

April 24, 2011

No 21-gun salute for royal wedding due to “health and safety” concerns

Filed under: Britain, Bureaucracy, Health — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 13:41

Ah, those “elf’n’safety” goons strike again:

When Prince William and Kate Middleton leave Westminster Abbey on Friday, there will be no 21-gun salute to mark their union. Mandrake can disclose that plans for such an honour in Hyde Park were abandoned because of fears over “health and safety” and “noise pollution”.

One of the Prince’s pals tells me: “We thought it would be a fitting tribute for the wedding, but we were told that, because of health and safety, and noise pollution concerns, it would involve too much red tape to get a new salute authorised.”

Twenty-one gun salutes in Hyde Park and Green Park are a traditional military honour, carried out by the King’s Troop, Royal Horse Artillery, to mark important royal occasions including Coronation Day and the official birthdays of the Queen, the Duke of Edinburgh and the Prince of Wales. Queen Victoria and Prince Albert’s wedding in 1840 began with such a tribute.

March 26, 2011

550th anniversary of the bloodiest battle in English history

Filed under: Britain, History — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 00:07

Unless you were paying close attention in your history classes, you probably wouldn’t recognize the name:

It was one of the biggest and probably the bloodiest battle ever fought on British soil. Such was its ferocity almost 1 per cent of the English population was wiped out in a single day. Yet mention the Battle of Towton to most people and you would probably get a blank stare.

Next week marks the 550th anniversary of the engagement that changed the course of the Wars of the Roses. It is estimated that between 50,000 and 80,000 soldiers took part in the battle in 1461 between the Houses of York and Lancaster for control of the English throne. An estimated 28,000 men are said to have lost their lives.

But this bloody conflict is unlikely to remain forgotten for much longer. Archaeologists believe they will unearth what is likely to be Britain’s largest mass grave this summer.

Work is to begin in June, at a site 12 miles south of York between the villages of Saxton and Towton where the battle took place in snowy March weather. The locations of the graves were discovered by archaeologists using geophysical imagery and now, with funding in place, they are able to begin excavating.

And why is such a major battle so little-known? Perhaps because the “wrong” side won:

Very few records of the battle survive, which is one reason that so little is known about it. Historians believe this could be due to an early propaganda campaign by the Tudors.

Author and historian George Goodwin, who this month publishes a new book: Fatal Colours: Towton, 1461 — England’s Most Brutal Battle, said: “The Tudors did a tremendously good propaganda job in making Bosworth the key battle because that was the battle which ended the Wars of the Roses. They were the winners and they got to write the history books. Because Towton was a Yorkist victory that wasn’t really very useful to them.”

March 3, 2011

Happy 25th anniversary to independent Australia

Filed under: Australia, Britain, History, Law, Pacific — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 09:30

I had been labouring under the impression that Australia had been freed from the colonial yoke in 1931, but I was mistaken:

TWENTY-FIVE years ago today, Australia became independent.

You might think this statement absurd. Surely Australia has been independent for a lot longer than that? Let me provide a lawyer’s answer: yes and no. Yes, Australia as a nation became independent at some unknown date after 1931. By 1931 it had the power to exercise independence but chose not to do so for some time. Arguably, having the capacity to exercise independence is enough to be classified as independent, although the parents of 20-something children who show no inclination to leave home may beg to differ.

The Australian states, however, did not gain their independence from Britain at that time. Bizarrely, they remained colonial dependencies of the British crown, despite being constituent parts of an independent nation. This meant state governors were appointed by the Queen on the advice of British ministers and that it was the Queen of the United Kingdom (not the Queen of Australia) who gave royal assent to state bills. When an Australian governor-general once complained to the British government about this anomaly, the response of British diplomats was that it was better to “let sleeping anomalies lie”.

H/T to Roger Henry for the link.

December 13, 2010

Aha! A new conspiracy theory

Filed under: Britain, Law, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 08:27

Following up to this post, Chris Greaves offers both a link, and a theory to explain the link.

The prince’s office also declined to comment, but stressed that the royal couple did not seek medical help after Thursday’s altercation.

Officials are assessing royal security after the attack on Charles and Camilla, whose Rolls-Royce strayed into the path of protesters against tuition fee hikes.

They hit the car with sticks, fists and bottles and chanted “Off with their heads” before the vehicle pushed its way through the crowd and drove off.

One casualty of the review may be the classic Rolls-Royce Phantom VI the couple were using, a gift to the Queen on her Silver Jubilee in 1977. The 33-year-old limousine does not have bulletproof windows or other modern protection features.

So what’s the conspiracy theory, you ask? Here you go:

Liz Windsor: (Thinks) How to get rid of Camela?
(later) I know, I’ll give her a Rolls Royce whose windows are not bullet-proof.
Heh heh.

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