Friday, January 21, 2005

Citizenship Events - A Great Idea

Only one problem with the Home Secretary's proposal to host citizenship ceremonies. This is a monarchy, which means that we're not citizens but "subjects" - take a look inside your passport. To become citizens, we need our rights and privileges to be set out in a Constitution that can't be changed without a referendum. So, go on, Mr Clark, give us a written constitution, then we can affirm our status as citizens.

But then again, the British like to delude themselves. Not only are we variously described, incorrectly, as citizens or "nationals", we also seem to believe we still have an empire. And we're assisted in keeping up the self-delusion by the Queen - after all, she hands out gongs twice a year proclaiming celebs, business types - plus the token streetsweeper - to be members or commanders of the British Empire.

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