The Ned Wood Archive

God Save the Queen

The Sex Pistols

The funny thing is that back then, I was a monarchist.  Not so much out of conviction, more out of rebellion.  No really.  I was rebelling against my peers.  Everyone around me was an abolitionist, so just like the Tammo Musichead says in Head On that he got married in 1978 or whenever because everyone around him was single, so in 1977 when everyone around me was against the monarchy, I came out in favour of it.

Nothing drastic mind.  It was just an excuse to dress up.  I did my hair red white and blue for the Jubilee.  Red and Blue food colouring and toothpaste.  Except you couldn’t see the toothpaste, only smell it if you got close, but nevertheless, you could tell it was supposed to be a Union Jack.

Nowadays, of course, I can’t understand my youth.  I can’t understand my lack of judgement.  I can’t understand how anyone, even me, can propose any logical basis for a monarchy.  Let’s get this straight.  We have a group of folk being paid by the country to live in these really big comfortable houses, able to earn vast sums of money off their property and not pay their share of tax just because someone’s dad killed off or bribed or slept with a few influential people a few hundred years ago.  Am I missing something?

And if you tell folk you want to get rid of them, they say no, you can’t do that or we won’t get any money from tourists.  So I ask them when was the last time they actually heard of HRH standing outside Buck Palace shaking hands with folk straight off the London-Stratford-York Minster coach.  And do they really sell Lizzie T-shirts at the Edinburgh Festival?  And, if we really do want to flood these shores with tourists, which is another debate you and I can have, then can we not create something more attractive than a dysfunctional family to show off.  How about a sacred family?  Have you been to Barcelona recently?   

And then there’s the really imaginative argument which goes, we have to keep them because the alternative is worse.  Which seems to imply that if we ditch this royal family, we’ll just have to elect someone to take their place.  Why?  

I know it is far from perfect, so don’t get me talking about electoral systems, but let’s NOT replace the queen.  Let us fire her and downsize her job.