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Some aspects of the English/Scottish independence referendum confrontation rang interesting bells for Australia. But British PM David Cameron has had to tread cautiously on foreign policy to avoid adding grist to the 'Yes' campaign's mill. Not so Tony Abbott, for whom strutting the world stage works a treat to lift the pall of governmental confusion and unpopularity.
By clinging to this notion that the royals are just like us, even as we treat them as anything but, we brush aside the inconvenient fact that their status is a relic of a bygone era in which royal rule was enforced through brutal means. Is it right to forget that the British monarchy presided over colonialist expansion with all its associated genocides? A class system that bestows inherited superiority is a remnant of a more oppressive era best left in the past.
One curate in our parish claimed to dream about the royal family and believed everyone did. Any easy familiarity I had with an idealised royal family collapsed with the dismissal of the Whitlam government. Malcolm Turnbull is persuasive when he says in Australia there are now more Elizabethans than monarchists.
I saw a gloved hand at the window and that was it. The experience turned out to be the one time when I saw the Queen 'in the flesh'. I had gone under duress, having even at that young age vestigial republican tendencies. A few weeks ago I went with more enthusiasm to see another Queen.
Many Australian politicians who should know better give the people and the media exactly what they want: rancorous confrontations and barbed insults. The 'tough' way in which Australian politics is played corrodes civility and potentially erodes our democracy.
For the most part, last weekend's Rally for Sanity in the USA is a stellar piece of theatre. Featuring satirists Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, it was staged as a counterpoint to the Tea Party rallies. When people are being massaged by politicians and media personalities to be fearful and angry, humour often flips back the covers concealing truth.
We received an email from an acquaintance of Harry Nicolaides, a journalist and Eureka Street contributor. Harry had been arrested in Bangkok: 'Publish his story. He is in a bad condition. Please help.' We acted immediately.
Pundits who were left gasping by the announcements of Colin (‘Cry me a river’) Barnett would have been less surprised if they’d read the last issue of the Okotsk Institute Journal of Research into Inexplicable Public Behaviours.
Spanish royal wedding
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