I didn’t realise the appointment of QC’s is no longer happening, and the new system does seem rather confusing.

I see your reasoning on the Bob Brown post, but I reckon Bolt and Blair are skating pretty close to the edge of — if not “intellectual dishonesty” then just plain old complete dishonesty — in terms of misrepresenting what’s happened in those court cases.

Thanks for that Rob, you’re certainly right about Charles being groomed for the throne all his life and therefore there’s almost no doubt he’ll want to assume it when the time comes, and yes you make a good point about the letterhead.

Good point. We’ll have to be careful to not name the President on the letterhead, or we’ll be changing that every 4 or 8 or ???? years

As for cost – we’re going to have to spend millions changing all those things when the Queen dies anyway, and then when Charles dies, and for each new “Divine Right” head of state. The proposed constitutional change wouldn’t require further public money because the work would’ve been done before the referendum, and by the people advocating for it, not the taxpayer. As last time.

PS “Silks” aren’t appointed as QCs any more anyway – they’re called SCs, “senior counsel”. Which is confusing because there are many senior counsel who aren’t “SC”s, so you have people called senior junior counsel instead. It’s a bit silly. The best solution would be to abandon the entire dodgy and archaic system of having the court appoint “super” barristers, and leave it up to the market to decide who’s good and who isn’t.

Sorry Rob, meant to ask you I’m not sure how all this stuff works, can he not just voluntarily abdicate in favour of his son if he chooses to ?

Agreed that the Western Republics are comparable to our system, but they aren’t any better so I see no reason to change for what would really be just more of the same under a different name.

“Why would it cost “huge sums of money”?

Without knowing exact amounts and not knowing the full spectrum of what changing our Constitution would involve, there would be the cost of setting up and holding a referendum, the no doubt considerable lawyers’ fees — (I imagine QC’s, what would their title be under a Republic ?) — for performing whatever legal work needs to be done, depending on how the new head of state is going to be appointed, if by popular vote there is the cost of setting up and holding that referendum. I’m sure there would be other requirements for changes as well, but I’m no legal or constitutional expert so I don’t know the full picture and there would I suspect be costs associated with title changes on documents as well.

Off this topic, I just read your post on Bob Brown over at your own site Jeremy, I’m no fan of his but I agree with you that his treatment in this court case has been disgraceful, I will be donating to help him with the fees — (something I thought I’d never do for any politician of any sort) — would you consider putting that post here as well so that those who don’t visit both sites can see the details of the case and how to support him ?

Well it’s debatable… I’d nominate France though. There are many Republics that are comparable, all Western Republics spring to mind.

“I wonder if Charlie would ever become king, or if he would just pass the crown to his son ? ”

Doesn’t work like that, unless the Queen outlives him he will be King. There’s no obvious reason for him to abdicate his heritage…

OK costs aside, I’m still with GavinM, I’m a Republican but we have bigger fish to fry (ETS?).