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An Australian Republic

 

So, now the Queen is gone many are saying it's time to replace our Head of State with one requiring less pomp and circumstance and more relevant antecedents: by removing the present descendent of Princess Sophia as our monarch and replacing our several 'King's Representatives' with Presidents (or some other title, to address the status of State Governors). In reality, this is already the case. So, let's keep the part 'that sort of works' Then it's simply a matter of amending the several written and implicit Constitutions to provide that these figureheads should be agreed to and installed at regular intervals (currently five years, by convention) by our various Parliaments.  

But let's not elect them separately. And when they die let's have a modest memorial, befitting an esteemed citizen.

Travel and life experience has taught me not to support the separate election of Presidents. If it ain't broke don't fix it'.  

Electing a President introduces a competing democratic power to elected Parliaments. Competing candidates need to contrive a 'platform' and, by financial necessity and contest, often fund their campaign agenda through hidden patronage, as in the United States.

Throughout the world there are at least a dozen examples of presidents using their initial success and supposed 'mandate' to seize power over the constitutionally established parliament and to install themselves and/or their chosen successors indefinitely.  The most glaring examples are Putin in Russia and Xi Jinping in China but the same applies in almost every 'new democracy' in Central Asia, that gained a 'US style' constitution at independence. Even the US itself was recently subject to a coup attempt by a president reluctant to relinquish power.

For the worst example in history, we need only cast our minds back to the Weimar Republic in Germany in 1933, to appreciate the risks that empowering an autocrat entail.

In maintaining Churchill's 'flawed democracy' our leaders should continue to be our democratically elected parliaments alone, because it's the best of: "all those other forms (of government) that have been tried".

Thus, echoing the 1689 the Bill of Rights, our new figurehead needs to continue to be beholding to the Parliament, not an independent power in the land.

In the meantime, we are still a monarchy and so can expect: more ceremonies, pomp and circumstance, and almost certainly, another Royal Visit.

 

 

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Travel

Egypt, Syria and Jordan

 

 

 

In October 2010 we travelled to three countries in the Middle East: Egypt; Syria and Jordan. While in Egypt we took a Nile cruise, effectively an organised tour package complete with guide, but otherwise we travelled independently: by cab; rental car (in Jordan); bus; train and plane.

On the way there we had stopovers in London and Budapest to visit friends.

The impact on me was to reassert the depth, complexity and colour of this seminal part of our history and civilisation. In particular this is the cauldron in which Judaism, Christianity and Islam were created, together with much of our science, language and mathematics.

Read more: Egypt, Syria and Jordan

Fiction, Recollections & News

Recollections of 1963

 

 

 

A Pivotal Year

 

1963 was a pivotal year for me.  It was the year I completed High School and matriculated to University;  the year Bob Dylan became big in my life; and Beatlemania began; the year JFK was assassinated. 

The year had started with a mystery the Bogle-Chandler deaths in Lane Cove National Park in Sydney that confounded Australia. Then came Buddhist immolations and a CIA supported coup and regime change in South Vietnam that was both the beginning and the begining of the end for the US effort there. 

Suddenly the Great Train Robbery in Britain was headline news there and in Australia. One of the ringleaders, Ronnie Biggs was subsequently found in Australia but stayed one step of the authorities for many years.

The 'Space Race' was well underway with the USSR still holding their lead by putting Cosmonaut, Valentina Tereshkova into orbit for almost three days and returning her safely. The US was riven with inter-racial hostility and rioting. But the first nuclear test ban treaties were signed and Vatican 2 made early progress, the reforming Pope John 23 unfortunately dying midyear.

Towards year's end, on the 22nd of November, came the Kennedy assassination, the same day the terminally ill Aldous Huxley elected to put an end to it.

But for sex and scandal that year the Profumo Affair was unrivalled.

Read more: Recollections of 1963

Opinions and Philosophy

World Population – again and again

 

 

David Attenborough hit the headlines yet again in 15 May 2009 with an opinion piece in New Scientist. This is a quotation:

 

‘He has become a patron of the Optimum Population Trust, a think tank on population growth and environment with a scary website showing the global population as it grows. "For the past 20 years I've never had any doubt that the source of the Earth's ills is overpopulation. I can't go on saying this sort of thing and then fail to put my head above the parapet."

 

There are nearly three times as many people on the planet as when Attenborough started making television programmes in the 1950s - a fact that has convinced him that if we don't find a solution to our population problems, nature will:
"Other horrible factors will come along and fix it, like mass starvation."

 

Bob Hawke said something similar on the program Elders with Andrew Denton:

 

Read more: World Population – again and again

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