Well bugger me, Alf spluttered on hearing of changes afoot for the monarchy. It looks like another serious setback for blokedom.
Under the new deal, our future Kings or Queens – yep ours, coz we haven’t become a republic yet despite the best efforts of a bunch of constitutional reform tossers – would be decided simply by order of birth.
This means a first-born daughter of William and Kate will accede to the throne regardless of any male siblings under new plans which have been personally approved by the Queen.
It also means the Princess Royal would leapfrog over her younger brothers, Princes Andrew and Edward, to rise from tenth to fourth in the royal pecking order in the line to the throne.
The Daily Mail tells of these dubious changes that will do away with monarchical rules that for centuries have favoured male heirs ahead of older sisters.
The story re-introduced Alf to a big word he rarely encounters.
The current law of male primogeniture only allowed Elizabeth II to be Queen because she did not have any brothers.
Now the Queen has signalled that she supports calls made last week by David Cameron to change the system giving female heirs the same rights as their male siblings.
Alf had always supposed that Cameron bugger was a Conservative and therefore bound to resist nonsense like this, which obviously flows from the women’s liberation thing that has gone on for two long.
Praise be, we here in New Zealand can exercise a veto to stop it.
Mr Cameron has described the system as ‘an anomaly’ but requires the consent of all 15 commonwealth countries in order to change the law.
The next Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting is due to take place in Perth, Australia, from the 28th -30th of this month.
The Queen will be making an 11-day Australian tour to start this Wednesday to coincide with the meeting.
Alf will be taking the matter up of the succession with The Boss and hopes to persuade him to leave alone something that is not broken.
The Daily Mail explains that, as the law stands, if William and Kate have a girl followed by a boy, their son will become king.
But if they have daughters only, the eldest will become queen.
This is as it should be.
Praise be, there are other hurdles in the way of change.
As well as the unanimous consent of the 15 Commonwealth countries the reforms would require a repeal or ammendment to the Coronation Oath act of 1688, the Bill of Rights 1688, the Act of settlement 1701 and the Royal Marriagers Act 1772.
The 1701 Act was brought in following the Glorious Revolution – when a Dutch invasion helped overthrow a Papist king – so that a Catholic could never sit on our throne again.
But bugger me, the British Prime Minister is also hoping to repeal the ban on the monarch being married to a Roman Catholic, although the King or Queen, as Supreme Governor of the Church of England would have to remain protestant.
Just why we should not tamper with a good thing is nicely illustrated by the Daily Mail.
If an 18th Century law not been passed by Britain’s Parliament, our monarchy throughout the last 300 years would have had a very different cast of characters.
For starters, rather than becoming one of the most recognisable faces in the world, our present Queen would have spent her life as a minor princess in some German backwater.
And instead of pledging allegiance to Elizabeth II, loyal British subjects would now be singing God Save Our Gracious King to… Francis II of Bavaria.
The 1701 Act Of Settlement passed the crown to Electress Sophia of Hanover and her Protestant descendants – and banned all Roman Catholics from ever ascending the throne.
That law – and the centuries-old practice of male primogeniture, in which a male child automatically leapfrogs over his older sisters – has largely dictated who became King or Queen of Britain for centuries.
Historian Ian Lloyd has written that Francis II would now be ruling Brittania had those laws not been adopted.
Franz, Duke of Bavaria, is a distant cousin of the Queen and head of the House of Wittelsbach, Bavaria’s ruling family.
He is the senior co-heir-general of King Charles I and therefore regarded as the rightful heir to the House of Stuart, which ruled England from 1567 to 1707. From birth Franz was recognised by the Jacobites as a Prince of England, Scotland, France and Ireland, Prince of Cornwall and Rothesay.
The Duke’s great-grandfather was the last king of Bavaria before being deposed at the end of World War One in 1918.
During World War Two, the Dukes’ family condemned the Nazi regime and fled to Hungary. When Hitler’s stormtroopers marched into Budapest in 1944, the Royal Family was arrested and detained in a number of concentration camps.
Following liberation in 1945, Franz, studied business management at the University of Munich. Now 78, he still lives in an apartment in the city and is a keen collector of modern art.
He might be a splendid fellow and has the huge advantage of being a bloke.
But Alf is happy things have gone as they did do over the past few hundred years and is seriously bothered by silly changes being made in the name of silly squawks and shrieks about sexism.
Alf Grumble 