Your Call, Guv.

A hypothetical:

You're a mad keen republican, and you've done everything you can intellectually to persuade the world of the silliness of a Constitutional Monarchy. You've argued, harangued, persuaded and nothing has worked. Why not expose it's flaws from the inside? Get yourself appointed as one of Her Maj's Reps and do everything you can to undermine the role. Start pontificating loudly about stuff you're not supposed to talk about, cause a stir by no-showing, with, I dunno, the Botswanans, get your Significant Other to act beyond their constitutional role... and see if you can't have a ready made home grown Constitution Crisis. It would be the best possible advertisement for a republic.

Any Harry or Tom can see that, and maybe even Dick as well.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Can conspicuous consumption save the news business?

Image
It’s a dire time for the news industry. Readers are flooding to social media for content, advertisers are moving with them and costs are being cut at a brutal rate in a desperate bid to meet falling revenue. It is increasingly clear that business models that depend on amassing large audiences in order to provide a forum for advertising will always struggle against the “niche of one” audience that social media platforms can provide for advertisers. There’s been lots of talk lately about ways to fund public interest journalism. One idea is to tax the online aggregators – Facebook and Google, primarily – that sell advertising against the news content of others to support news organisations. Another is to make news subscriptions or donations to its producers tax deductible.  Both ideas are worth considering, but they do not abrogate the need for news organisations to seek better ways to draw revenue from consumers.  (It is alarming that discussion of efforts to build a
Read more

Thanks for all the fish

After 13 years with Blogspot, I've shifted blogging platform. So (drumroll, please), you can find my new blog here . Ari on the Web will stay online, so you can scroll through the archives for all sorts of embarrassing tidbits. To make it easier to find some of my writing on particular themes, I've grouped some pieces together under a few labels: Cancer Fatherhood Indonesia travels North Korea travels United States travels Undergraduate days   So as they say here in my new home of Japan, so long, and thanks for the all the fish.
Read more

Much in a name

Image
Naming a child is one of the greatest responsibilities a parent has. Short of some dramatic action by its bearer, a person is stuck with a name for life and all the nominative determinist consequences that flow from it. While opening it up to the whims of the democratic process was one option ( Baby McBabyface? ) and engaging the services of a baby name consultant was another, Melanie and I opted to take on the responsibility ourselves. Our criteria? We wanted a name that suited a child as well as the adult she will become. We wanted a name that conveyed both warmth and gravitas. We wanted a name that carried some broader meaning, within our family and beyond it. We wanted a name that was easy to say and easy to spell. And we wanted a name that sounded good, in its entirety and when each part stood on its own. For us, it wasn’t just the given names that needed to be chosen. With Melanie and I each keeping our family names when we got married, our daughter’s family name also
Read more