Tag Archives: monarchy

Give the order

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by Climate Change, Media, politics • Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

You all remember Old King Canute taking his throne down to the beach, right – “Cnut set his throne by the sea shore and commanded the tide to halt and not wet his feet and robes. Yet “continuing to rise as usual [the tide] dashed over his feet and legs without respect to his royal person. Then the king leapt backwards, saying: “Let all men know how empty and worthless is the power of kings, for there is none worthy of the name, but He whom heaven, earth, and sea obey by eternal laws.”

Possibly true, possibly not. It was a thousand years ago, if it happened, and our media finds it impossible to recount accurately something that happened 1000 minutes ago. But if it wasn’t then it should have been. Should have been read out to every subsequent king and baron. Oh not the god nonsense of course, they did enough of that for themselves, but the idea that the most powerful person had no control over the natural world and its “laws”.

Certainly should be read out to Ms Gina Rinehart, richest woman in the universe, well, Australia anyway, and probably the one with the greatest hubris, now that Maggie Thatcher and Sarah Palin have left politics.

She was fairly private and low key until a couple of years ago. Then she emerged in the front of a crowd of well-dressed protesters, with professionally printed signs, bused in from a nearby office to stand at attention on astroturf. It was a very small crowd, but with the use of a camera carefully focussed just on the front row, managed to give the most inaccurate record of an event since US soldiers pulled down the statue of Saddam Hussein in a pretence it was a sign of popular support for the invasion.

But I digress. There was Gina (was she holding a sign? I forget) chanting with the others “Whaddawe want? No taxes for billionaires. Whendowe want it? Now”. No, I made that up a little bit, a rough translation but capturing the essence of the event.

Made so much noise that day and other days through the media they won the debate, tax essentially dropped, prime minister dumped from office partly as a result. Power, sure, but not much different to the power the very rich have been exerting in this egalitarian society for 200 years.

And then I read this and suddenly we were into much more sinister doings. Into the American world of the Koch Brothers, and PACs, corporations as people, and the Heritage Foundation.

So it has gone ahead. Last few days have seen Rinehart taking the major shareholding in Fairfax, Plimer appointed to her boards. And the IPA, apparently also supported by her financially has, over the last few years, become ubiquitous almost daily across all the media of the ABC. Some of the details about this are available here and here and here.

So we are reaching a situation where Murdoch controls 70% of the Australian commercial media, Rinehart in effect will control much of the rest, and the IPA is ensuring that the ABC takes a strongly right wing view of every issue and climate change is scarcely ever mentioned.

So expect over the next decades, that these powerful people will ensure the election of an ultra conservative Coalition government, the media will release only information it wants released and will tell you what to think about it, that no action witll be taken on climate change in any way, and environmental protection and regulation will be smashed. I can see no way of stopping this no matter how many of us blog away in our small corners of this brown land. Twenty billion dollars versus twenty million people in a democracy? No contest.

But then in ten years time I have a picture of this lonely woman sitting on a throne on a beach. Behind her a gaggle of shock jocks and climate change deniers and mining CEOs and conservative politicians. One of them is saying “Give the order, O great Queen, and it will obey”. She is holding out her hand to the sea and commanding “climate stop changing”, but then she gets drowned by the rising water levels and I can see her no more.

La même chose

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by Economics, politics • Tags: , , , , , , , ,

It’s one of those historic events that still, 630 years on, resonate with modern times and make your blood run cold.

In 1381 the so-called “Peasant’s Revolt” led by Wat Tyler massed tens of thousands of poor people protesting the new “Poll Tax” which, like our GST, made poor people pay as much tax as rich people. And against the essentially slavery conditions many of them worked under.

Richard II, then just a teenager, agreed in one meeting to a number of things the protesters wanted. Then in a second meeting the Mayor of London treacherously stabbed Wat Tyler during further negotiations. Tyler rode off, the king led the others into a trap and they were then dispersed. Tyler was dragged out of hospital and beheaded.

Then as Peter Ackroyd* recounts “A few days later Richard revoked the charter of emancipation [freedom of slaves, fair rent for land, punishment of the poll tax gatherers] he had granted to the crowd at Mile End, on the ground that it had been extorted from him by violence. He travelled to Essex in order to observe the aftermath of the now extinguished revolt. A group of villagers there asked him to remain faithful to the pledges he had made them a few days before.

His reply was:

“You wretches are detestable both on land and on sea. You seek equality with the lords, but you are unworthy to live. Give this message to your fellows: rustics you are, and rustics you will always be. You will remain in bondage, not as before, but incomparably harsher. For as long as we live we will strive to suppress you, and your misery will be an example to prosperity.”


A few months later “A parliament was called … where it was proposed that the state of bondage known as villeinage should be abolished.The Lords and Commons, their vital interests as landlords at stake, unanimously voted against any such action.” The leaders of the rebels were rounded up and beheaded (John Ball, as a major leader with Tyler, being hung drawn and quartered).

So a sad story. Just one of many attempts all over the world, through the centuries, to improve the lot of ordinary people, which has been met with brutal repression. And what struck me, reading the king’s words again, was that they could be used, unchanged, by billionaires and corporate leaders around the world today. And by their political front men (and women – not hard to imagine Thatcher making such a speech to the coal miners for example). The power relationships, and attitudes, in spite of centuries of “democratic advance”, remain unchanged in 2012, as seen in the Republican front-runners, the Cameron UK Government, the Australian Opposition.

* Peter Ackroyd 2011 “The History of England vol 1 Foundation” Macmillan, London

Counting out his money

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by Economics, Media, politics • Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

What slogan is above the door of the free marketeer’s think tanks? No, it’s not “Abandon hope all ye who enter here”, you naughty people. It’s “Government small enough to drown in a bathtub”.

These people believe that “government” should leave banks and financial institutions alone, get rid of regulation, has no business in business, as it were, should “get out of the way” of private enterprise, and so on. Any suggestion that the “government” should do something about CEO salaries, risky investments, fees, interest rates, is met with the outrage usually reserved for apostates from a religion. And the outrage in turn is largely met with acquiescence by the media, themselves determined not to be regulated in any way. Faced with the unanimity of “think tanks”, media, and of course the financial institutions themselves, politicians from both “sides” have quickly jumped in to say “oh my goodness gracious me heavens to betsy why no of COURSE we wouldn’t want to regulate banks etc. Reckon we are socialists or something?”

So let’s think about this for a moment. Twenty two million Australians elect several hundred people from among their number to represent their interests. Each one has gained the confidence of tens of thousands (in the case of Senators hundreds of thousands) of people. And yet, these people, combining to form a “government”, are told, by a handful of people with a bizarre ideology, that they must not attempt to have any control over the organisations that not only serve the financial needs of the 22 million, but through their activities fundamentally control the economy of the nation.

That is forget the word “government” as used pejoratively by this little band of reverse Sherwood Foresters, instead say to yourself – these financial bodies are supposed to have no oversight by we, the people of Australia? Really? How did that come to be a thing?

Well it came to be a thing because the banks and the think tanks kept saying it, and a lie repeated often enough becomes the truth for all practical purposes these days.

Look, money isn’t a get out of jail free card. Oh, sorry, yes it is of course. Let’s start again.

Just because your major activity, your role in society, involves money, doesn’t mean you can do what you like. I mean, banks aren’t churches, are they?

In almost all other major kinds of activities in our society we, as a people, through our government, decide how we want those things to work. If you are in medicine, teaching, building roads, serving food, police, flying planes, and all the rest, you work within structures, within limits, for the good of society.

Once upon a time only the church was, as they say, a law unto itself. the reason was obvious, they had you over a barrel, in an explicit, and exquisite form of blackmail – try to rein us in and we will damn your soul to eternal hell, no white robes, harps, bunches of grapes or virgins for you. So they were left alone and for centuries did very nicely thank you. Still do pretty nicely actually with tax exemptions, and ability to make their own laws, and avoidance of laws on discrimination, and largely a freedom from discrimination. Nice work if you can get it and they got it.

And then a second group achieved a similar status floating above and beyond ordinary mortals – the media. Achieved in the same way – hey, try to control us, even look sideways at us, and we will hack our phone, have you on the front page of a fish and chip wrapper; or running the perp walk between serried ranks of cameras and blonds with microphones as weapons, outside your own front door every morning. Wouldn’t like that would you mr politician, we know where you live, and we know where your children go to school, oh, and we have a copy of that ill-advised video you and your wife made on holiday in Bali. Any questions? Right then, piss off and leave us alone.

And now the third of this unholy triumvirate. The blackmailing style the same, the weapons slightly different. Not being poked by imps with red hot pokers for eternity, or junior reporters with red hot microphones, but worse, much worse, blackmailed by the guys, and gals, with the keys to the treasure chest. You want us to do what? Cut CEO salary from $20million to $19million, pass on interest rate savings to home buyers, lend more to small business, reduce fees on breathing while in bank, stop playing risky games with dodgy financial brothers? Right, we’re out of here, got a place to go to in Panama, Liberia, Burma, Zimbabwe, no nonsense about regulation there, few dollars to the country’s president and you can do what you like. See ya.

No wonder solidarity from the media, playing similar games. No wonder support from libertarians who mistake a license to print money for a statement about human freedom. No wonder that other industries, seeing the way these groups have got away with murder as effectively as Al Capone, are adopting the same tactics. MIners, clubs, supermarkets, manufacturers have all been at it, when faced with royalty payments, or regulation of problem gamblers, or food labelling.

So time we the people told our representatives we want the bluff called. Want banks behaving responsibly before we count to ten. Nine, ten, knockout. And the blackmail? To hell with it. Do you really think a rich country with 22 million people can’t develop new community banks if the others pick up their notes and coins and go home? Some genuine competition from groups prepared to work with community for a modest return rather than against it for greed would quickly emerge. Competition, you see, remember that quaint concept? Bit old-fashioned, but then I’m just an old fashioned guy with an old-fashioned idea about millionaires.

And with that victory under the belt the government could then tackle the media, and then, gulp, the church. Let’s move from the 14th to the 21st century in one giant leap. And put the fear of god into these other wannabe blackmailers while we are at it.

Oh, and that sound you hear? Tents being folded in the night as the freemarket think-tankers, no longer a job to do blocking regulation here and no money to be earned from doing so, head for Zimbabwe and freedom.

And Justices for all

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by politics • Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

Look forget about the Monarchists for a moment. The ones with flags and funny hats and collections of Charles and Diana commemorative mugs; the ones who camp out for two days on the street to possibly catch a glimpse of a gloved hand waving from a speeding limousine; the ones who spontaneously sing “god save the queen” or are in tears at the thought that they have been in the same public space as a person of royal blood. Forget them, I say (and yes, I know it’s not easy), and let’s look at the question of Australian “head of state” in a different way.

Oridinary intelligent thoughtful people (ie not monarchists) can still sometimes remain opposed to the idea of a “republic” in Australia. They will say “would you rather have the Queen or George W Bush?” and I admit that it is a fair question (more widely they will refer to the presidents of African or South American banana republics, suggesting that we are better off with the queen in, now that bananas are cheap again, a banana monarchy). Even more generally they will say “well, we have to have a head of state, so it might as well be the Queen, because elected presidents have too much power” (essentially the argument John Howard used to win the unloseable referendum on the republic). And so the combination of mad-brained monarchists and the apparently rational “we have to have a head of state might as well be the queen” middle-of-the-roaders, dooms us to another thousand years of the French-Scottish-German British Monarchy.

Look from time to time (not a lot of time) I mull over this issue when there is some media eruption over the sacred nature of the monarchy and how when people marry into it they (usually, except Fergie) acquire the magic DNA during a kiss on the balcony and become imbued with royalness themselves. I think of trying to explain to people that they are confused between the presidential style of executive government (US, Russia, France, China effectively, and, yes indeed, South American countries) and the Westminster style (Britain, Japan, Australia, Ireland, India). In the former the President holds the dual roles of head of government and head of state so an election sees the instant transfer of the embodiment of the state and its continuity to the winner of the election. In the latter the prime minister is there at the whim of parliament, and can be overthrown at any moment by a vote of no confidence in parliament or party room. In these countries then the continuity of the state, the person who hands the keys to the prime ministerial residence to the new leader, and who meets other leaders of countries as the symbolic embodiment of their own country, has to be represented by someone independent of the normal election cycle. Sometimes this is a monarch (Britain, Japan), sometimes a person elected to the role (Ireland, India) – and only to the role, taking absolutely no part, and there being no mechanism to take part, in the political issues and battles of the day.

But I tend to get tired about half way through that explanation and give up. If people don’t understand that there is absolutely no proposal by anyone to swich from Westminster govt to presidential govt in Australia then there is no way of reaching them.

But during the recent royal visit, as the Queen wandered around curing sickness by touching people or merely by being seen by them, I had a blinding epiphany. Why do we need a head of state at all? Or rather, to be more precise, why do we need a head of state who lives in govt house and puts the queen up in her spare bedroom and sits in the head of state box at Olympic Games? It is always confusing things (remember the arguments about arch-monarchist Howard going to the Games in Sydney). Essentially these days the PM accompanies the GG to any occasion where “Australia” is meeting “some other country”. The last time the GG played any role in sorting out a dispute in the actual political process and government of Australia was 1975 when unelected John Kerr so spectacularly injected himself into politics and corrupted our democracy for a decade.

Otherwise the GGs constitutional role has been restricted to making a batch of scones and handing a pen to the incoming PM to sign the pathetic oath of office (in which they essentially just promise to be PM). Then they all have a glass of best bubbly and stand around making small talk for 5 minutes before the PM goes off and does some real work. If we really do need someone to do that then there are any number of candidates around the country. Little old ladies, little old men, living in small country towns could be slipped a few dollars for scone mix every three years and the new PM and ministers could drop in to sign a stat dec to say they are going to be nice to poor people and not wreck the joint. I am referring of course to Justices of the Peace. Pick one at random out of a hat or a computer, ask for a volunteer. They don’t have much else to do except witness documents for the peasantry, they could easily do the same for the new government.

If there was some kind of constitutional crisis – and it is hard to picture what it might be, other than some even more complex variant on the last hung election – then I reckon any country JP could set the two opposing leaders down in the front parlour with a glass of home brew and bang their heads together until common sense prevailed. If it didn’t (and I only say this given the nature of the current Opposition Leader) then a committee composed of the Speaker of the House, the President of the Senate, and the Clerk of the House could be called in like a football review tribunal to make a final decision.

There you go. No foreign Queen. No Governor General. No elected President getting uppity. And a huge saving of money.

Some of which a grateful nation could send my way.

I believe

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by Climate Change, politics • Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Some news items make me feel sceptical that the human race is ever going to be smart enough to walk and chew gum at the same time. Last week it was a serious interview with John Edwards, “world’s greatest psychic” in which he was asked how his “psychic powers” worked; and the news that London rioters would be thrown out of public housing and made homeless. This weekend it was the news that Michelle Bachmann had won the Ames Straw Poll. Well, not that she had won the bizarre (even by American political standards) ASP, but that she had won anything.

On the home front Tony Abbott was ridiculing the Prime Minister for persisting with the “carbon tax” – “What planet is she living on?” he wanted to know. Well, um, Tony, same planet as you, the one that is rapidly warming towards a future that is going to doom us all, with Australia among the countries being damaged first. That planet. Of course Mr Abbott, along with all except one of his colleagues, is a climate change denier, sorry sceptic.

He is also, famously, fundamentally religious, a once future priest turned future king’s first minister (also famously a fundamentalist monarchist, saying that there was something mystical about the monarchy that republicans couldn’t understand). Which once again illustrates a curious thing about self-described sceptics on climate change – they are sceptical about nothing else.

Not a hint of scepticism about any aspect of Catholicism as expounded by one cardinal seems to have ruffled Tony’s brow while he simultaneously denied the work of tens of thousands of scientists. The people who unaccountably tell pollsters that Mr Abbott would be a good prime minister (shades of the Iowans who can seriously propose Bachmann for president) have no scepticism about any of his publicity stunts. Have no scepticism about what the shock jocks, who they listen to religiously every day, tell them (can believe any number of impossible things before breakfast), nor about the headlines in the Murdoch Press.

No sceptical thought about WMDs troubled them as Iraq was shocked and awed. Scepticism isn’t a respectable intellectual position as they listen to the claims of the mining industry about a mining tax, clubs about poker machines, tobacco companies about packaging, the alcohol industry about closing hours, media companies about media enquiries, cattlemen about live exports.

There is no room, it seems, for scepticism about claims that there are plenty of fish in the sea, plenty of water in the rivers, plenty of trees in the forests. Nor about claims that reducing taxes on the rich benefits the poor. Ghosts, UFOs, toasted virgin Marys, virgin Virgin Marys, psychic powers, alternative medicines, Barnaby Joyce – all things that need the white hot heat of true scepticism, and all things that receive unquestioning belief from the people who attend anti carbon tax rallies.

No, the one thing, the only thing, that these modern day Galileos (revolving in his grave faster and faster each time his name is misused) point their telescopes of scepticism at is a single phenomenon known scientifically for 150 years and supported by hundreds of thousands of research results from tens of thousands of scientists.

No wonder I’m sceptical about their scepticism – and about the future of the human race.

Put up your dukes

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by politics • Tags: , , , , , , ,

I know you have all forgotten the royal wedding (except for the 20 million friends, people with waaay too much time on their hands, of the Pippa’s bum facebook page) as indeed have I. The sight of an abbey full of the born-to-rule party at play, the sound of a wedding service which might have been thought out of date in medieval times, the hats, Elton John, all combined to create one of those events where my brain simply cannot cope with the sensory overload of irrational images and shuts down. It may, I suppose, re-emerge on a psychiatrist’s couch as a retrieved memory some time in the fuure, an explanation for some piece of odd behaviour, some uncharacteristic grumpiness, but for now it is safely locked away, buried deep.

So, no comments on that event from me. But I did want to note something that happened after the wedding, something that seems to have gone un-noticed, or, if not un-noticed, then simply accepted in a way that makes it even more disturbing. After the wedding the happy young couple instantly became, at the stroke of a royal pen, not just Mr and Mrs Windsor (or is it Wales?) but the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge.

Now I will leave that with you for a moment, let it sink in, while I have a cup of coffee (“Three cups of coffee?” said a nurse young enough to be my great great granddaughter the other day “You drink three cups of coffee in the morning?” leaving me with a vague sense, not uncommon throughout my life, of having done something wrong but not being quite sure what it was).

Still there? Yes, “Duke and Duchess of Cambridge”. In the real world a junior helicopter pilot and a recent university graduate don’t get awards, titles, big jobs, promotions. In the real world people work hard to learn, start at the bottom, work up, gain experience, achieve something, achieve something else, be, with a bit of luck, recognised in some way for those achievements much later.

In Conservativeland merit isn’t something you want to encourage in a country. You might want to pause briefly again to consider the psychological and political reasons for that. No, the idea that someone is just declared, by reason of their DNA or DNA marriage certificate to be, for example, a Duke (or, for that matter, the head of a corporation, the head of a national broadcaster, a university, and so on) is just the way things are, the way the world works. It is what the monarchy symbolises, holds in place.

Which is why conservatives in other countries (like that oddly shaped large island, small continent, a long way from the mother country) love the monarchy so much, will fight to the death to keep it in place. As Paul Keating once said – “Even as Great Britain walked out on you [the Liberal Party of Australia] and joined the Common Market, you were still looking for your MBEs and your knighthoods, and all the rest of the regalia that comes with it. You would take Australia right back down the time tunnel to the cultural cringe where you have always come from.” And am I right in thinking that one of the first acts of the incoming conservative NZ government was to restore imperial honours?

So complain all you want about the cost of the wedding and the archaic ceremony and the lack of former Labor PMs (as well as Tony Blair), the real message from the wedding came with the unearned honours, and the not so subtle message that WE will decide who rules the roost in this society. Sorry, not “We the people”, have I been unclear?

Frustrate their knavish tricks

by politics • Tags: , , ,

Several things have me puzzled by the events in the Middle East, but some of them have been puzzling me for a long time. The horrible Mubarak finally went, although he has left behind the military in charge in Egypt not a new democracy. Apparently the week or so when he resisted going, when the writing seemed to be on every wall in Cairo, and you’d think he would certainly have seen it much earlier, was to do with money. Trying to get his various overseas money stashes sorted out, moved around, safer havens found, new ATM cards issued and so on. Not that there was a lot of money you understand, but just a few billions in an account here, an account there, and pretty soon you are talking top league dictator overseas saving schemes. I saw all kinds of estimates of his wealth (but how could you know, really, that was the point) but they seemed to be up around the $70 billion mark. Richer than Bill Gates, or what. And then there were the sons, with their own billions, and set to inherit the rest before too much longer. None of it earned, none of it the result of developing the country, helping the poor, all of it, apparently, the result of charging percentages on all kinds of business deals. My question though, is why? I mean I can see that the kind of chap who gets to be dictator of a country would be in it for the money. Can even see that skimming a million off the top here, a million there, might be a price a country might pay for stability. Can see that, like sporting stars, some dictators might only have a few years at the top, and then have to go to the Bahamas or something with no chance of furthering their dictator career, and so need to have, oh, I don’t know, $5 million, $10 million, stashed away to compensate for lack of earning power in later life. What I don’t understand is Billions. What sort of a person robs his country of a billion dollars, and then goes on to another billion, and another billion, and trains his sons to start accumulating billions? What on earth do you spend billions on? Why do you want $70 billion?

And along similar lines, why do they want to keep running a country, decade after decade after decade? The other day there was Ghaddafi of Libya, in power since 1969, sending in the troops to machine gun ordinary Libyans who were not unreasonably pointing out that 42 years was a pretty good run as dictatorships go. You would think he would just say “Oh, thank goodness, can put my feet up now, play with the grandchildren, sort out my stamp collection, 42 years is an awfully long time, and now I am going to retire to spend more time with the family”. But he doesn’t. No, send in the troops, kill people, he wants to stay in power, it seems, for another 42 years? Why? What is the attraction of ruling for ever, and then trying to pass the job on to your son and have him rule forever? What is wrong with these people?

Same question you could ask of many others. There is no dictator so bad, it seems, that there aren’t people who support him. Mugabe, Kim, Mubarak, Ahmadinejad, Ghaddafi, Pinochet, Franco, Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot – all of them have or had their supporters. Will come out in counter demonstrations, beat up protesters, give impassioned speeches in support of their beloved leader that great and good man so unfairly judged by those who don’t know that he is kind to little children and dogs. Will go into exile with them at times, still protesting the unfairness of the revolution, still longing to return to the homeland, with the dictator triumphantly put back into power by his adoring subjects. Oh of course some of it is patronage, supporters get to be Army Generals, Central Bank Presidents, Senior Torturers, good money, powerful jobs. But it can’t all be patronage, as is obvious from any of those scenes where a big fat African (or North Korean) dictator, bursting out of his be-ribboned Commander in Chief’s uniform, is surrounded by his skinny, starving, diseased subjects, who are nevertheless gazing adoringly up at him and cheering his every word.

Is it that these people believe the dear leader has been sent by god? Do they think they will eventually get some crumbs trickling down from the great man’s table? Is it like making friends with the biggest bully in the school so you don’t get bullied? Is it a belief that you should worship the leader no matter what? Is it that he might be a bad man but he’s our bad man and will defend us against the infidels from outside? I don’t get it, and if you do you might explain it to me.

Of course we are totally free of such things here. But the English of course, not only also support a ruler for life, but her children, and grandchildren, and, as soon as born, great grandchildren, have gone on supporting the same family ruling them, and getting richer and richer, generation after generation.

Thank goodness we don’t live in a monarchy or I would be really really embarrassed. Just can’t understand people who are happy to sing “long to reign over us”. Long indeed, 57 years so far. Oh, sorry, did you think I meant the Libyans there?

Jolly good fellow

by politics • Tags: , , ,

Heard a description of the long awaited, loyal hearts-a-fluttering, arrival of young William Windsor (Wales? Whatever) in Australia. It will be, said one media outlet, speaking, I'm sure, for all of us, "His tour of duty to prove he's ready to be our King". Quite right too, and I think the principle could be extended to other important roles in Australia.

Imagine if you will that we have a young fellow wander into Yass – to see if he is ready to be Mayor (or police chief, doctor, headmaster, captain of football team). Has no qualifications, but is the son of the son of a woman whose father's brother was the second son of a Mayor in 1936. Pleasant sort of chap (with a lot to be pleasant about), it seems, not the sharpest knife in the drawer perhaps, but wears a suit, and a polo uniform well, and is apparently quite popular with the ladies. Church of England of course, no question of any other religion. Plenty of young fellows (and ladies, but ladies only get to play the DNA employment card if there isn't a man available) far more qualified, and experienced, to be mayor (or doctor etc) than this chap, but they don't have the breeding, do you see. And colonials just wouldn't do either. No, unless your great grandfather was available when his brother decided he didn't want to take over as Mayor from his father in 1936 then you don't have the right stuff.

So, anyway, the young fellow intends to arrive in Yass in a motorcade and wander along Comur Street for a few minutes. Will say, "Good morning, how are you?" and "Good morning, lovely day" to any locals who happen to be in the street. And they will all nod wisely and agree that there is something really special about someone who can trace his ancestry back to the son of a woman whose father's brother was the second son of a Mayor in 1936. Just looks …. well, just looks every inch a Mayor. Breeding will out every time of course.

He has this beautiful girlfriend too, so they will breed beautiful babies (just like Danni Minogue and what's 'is name), and then their oldest male baby will one day become Mayor of Yass in turn.

Look I know there are a few killjoys around. Not many, only a minority of about 60% thankfully, but they could never agree about whether a Mayor should get elected directly by the people of Yass, or whether the council members elected by the people of Yass should vote on who became mayor. Anyway, sort of like Stephen Bradbury winning the ice skating race after coming last and then all the other contestants falling over, the small number of mayorists won the day when the people got to vote about whether the great grandson of a former mayor should always become mayor. So the killjoys can mutter all they like, they know, really, it makes sense not to have to vote for a position like mayor. Sort of undignified really, this democracy business.

So the mayor of Yass will continue to automatically be the handsome young fellow with the right DNA (and a Y chromosome). We've seen him shake hands, and wave – he's clearly ready to be our mayor. After his father has his turn of course.

For he's a jolly good fellow, and so say all of us.

All David Horton's earlier writing is here.