Some people do so love messing around with the old, don’t they? Everything must become shiny new:
An element which went largely unnoticed, however, was a decision to
review "archaic" aspects of the prerogative, including the Queen’s
ownership of swans.
…
Further historic royal powers which may be swept away
include the Crown’s right to impress men into the Royal Navy; the
monarch’s guardianship of infants, and the Queen’s ownership of all
"royal fish" – sturgeon, dolphins, porpoises and whales – caught in
British waters.
The Green Paper published by Mr
Straw last week, The Governance of Britain, states: "The Government
will consult on whether certain prerogative powers, many of which may
now be considered archaic, might be transferred elsewhere or even
abolished."
There’s something of a tragic misunderstanding here. There are many old things in the way the UK is organized, some bad, some good, most really rather neither. Swan upping, or the ownership of sturgeon, are neither. The power to press is clearly bad.
So when sorting through these various things, we should be looking to excise the bad: and then stop. Things that are good of course we keep, things that are neither, the swans for example, well, why not just leave them be? Swan upping, the Worshipful Company of Dyers, the archaic rights of St. John’s College (both Oxford and Cambridge) to serve swan while the rest of us may not. Isn’t this all part of the Britishness which we can celebrate, a part of our island history?
Why on earth would we want to get rid of these things?
Just because they’re old? If that’s going to be our measure by which we judge things then the outlook for Granny ain’t all that good, is it?
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