An overflowing bucket of fucks

Now I ask you, is that any way to hold
a cricket bat?
And what is she looking at?

In the back corner of my garage, next to my golf clubs and underneath an empty brewing tun, is a bucket filled with the fucks I couldn't give about the royal visit. I could have gone down to Latimer Square and given a few fucks as the Duke of Cambridge bowled his wife a few badly bowled deliveries, the Duchess awkwardly flailing a plastic cricket bat, but even though the bucket of fucks I have in the garage is close to overflowing, I couldn't be bothered giving the royals any. Nope, this visit got the same amount of fucks I have to give for Justin Bieber, New Zealand's Got Talent and English Premier League football - zero. There are things I go out to the garage to get some fucks to give, but when Wills, Kate and their screaming shit-machine* popped down for a $1.2m visit to give us a metaphorical pat on the head, I only went out to the garage to trouble the beer fridge.

"The Japs have invented this amazing
vibrating throne. This is why I haven't
abdicated and let Charles have a go.

I would understand if you thought I was a republican from the unchanged level of fucks in the bucket, but I'm not. I won my high school speech competition holding a picture of the Queen and with a Union Jack draped around my shoulders. I have guarded the Queen at Government House when she visited in 2002 and to be honest I rather like most of the royal family (especially Phil the Greek). I think the Queen is a practical, capable, conscientious and charismatic woman who has done credit to her role as head of state by being even-handed and even-tempered since taking the reins in 1952. She's been a paragon of dignity, when at times her own family has let her down. I do also think that New Zealand being a constitutional monarchy is an anachronism, like closing the pubs during Easter. We're as far away from London as we can geographically get and it's not as if we're beholden to the Crown for any reason. After all, it's 2014, not 1914, why have a New Zealand monarchy at all?

However, I'm not a republican either. 
There hasn't been one convincing reason the republican movement has offered that has swayed me one iota:
The head of state is not a New Zealander and having a G-G who is, is not adequate.
A republic reaffirms New Zealand's sense of nationhood.
A republic would make New Zealand more democratic.
A republic remains an effective constitutional safeguard.
I shan't be bothering to head out to the garage for any of these, particularly any aims to further democracy considering how flawed I think it is. Our monarchy is a constitutional convenience, if anything. We operate autonomously and the Queen has absolutely no say in how New Zealand is run. The only power she holds are the reserve powers to approve law and appointing and dissolving the government which are exercised by the proxy of the Governor-General. Even then, the approval of law is blindly applied to rubber-stamp legislation and the out of term dissolution of government has never happened in New Zealand. The monarchy is mostly harmless and would only apply its powers in the absolute worst-case scenario. Based upon this, my opinion of retaining the monarchy is one of unimpressed ambivalence. You just have to look through most of my previous posts. I also find the vehemence of those who argue for republicanism to be spectacularly unedifying. If anything the name calling and questioning the value everyone is supposed to get from the royal family galvanises my resolve not to give a fuck. But then I'm not going to go out of my way to argue for the monarchy either. Were it not for their position and lives of privilege, they would be almost unable to function in the real world, and I think that's what alienates them from their subjects... that and calling them their subjects.

Now, if you monarchists and republicans don't mind, I have some very important ironing to do.

*My grateful thanks to the broadcaster Dave Ward for introducing me to this term when writing about the over-publicised birth of some 'celebrity' baby about seven or eight years ago. I loved the Private Eye headline when Prince George was born satirizing the media over-reaction: Woman Has Baby.