David Flint's dreamworld has now reached fairytale proportions, according to Barry Everingham, and his rant about how the royals pay their own way in Britain is pure bunkum.
THERE IS no doubt about Professor Flint – he really clutches at straws.
It seems he is reading too many back issues of The Australian Women’s Weekly – the editions published in the 1930’s, the 1940’s, the 1950’s and early 1960’s.
It was in those decades the British monarchy was treated with saccharine fawning ridiculous respect- and the old dear is now regurgitating that long gone and laughable style in his daily rants in his personal website – Australians for Constitution Monarchy.
Now some history is necessary here.
ACM is Flint’s personal fiefdom.
The professor and his English born side kick, the former seminarian, a Mr. Thomas Flynn, hold the ACM’s voting rights; they are the only members of this Flat Earth blue rinse outfit – the hapless paying section are billed as “supporters”; they have no say at all in anything.
Flint is so rusted on to yesterday he is always banging on about the restoration of the long unused titles contained in the Australian Honors system.
He really got his knickers in a knot when the new conservative prime Minister of New Zealand resurrected those out of date class dividing relics of yesterday.
He has called on Kevin Rudd to restore them – forgetting his pleas to that arch conservative monarchist John Howard fell on deaf ears.
His latest rant is about how cheap the Monarchy comes to the British taxpayer; which is pure bunkum. Queen Elizabeth is paid millions of pounds annually to keep the archaic system going- Flint mistakenly believes tourists would stay away from the UK if the monarchy was dumped.
That hasn’t happened in France and it won't happen in London when the English come to their senses and become, like France, a republic.
Buckingham Palace will house a president, the guard will change daily and all the pomp and ceremony will be dragged screaming into the 21st Century.
The Brits can get the blueprint from the French.
The Professor’s dream world has now reached fairy tale proportions; he really sees royal tours of Australia as crowd pullers and crowd pleasers.
The only really successful tour of recent times – I’ve been covering such events since 1979 and was sent by NBC from New York to London to report Edward’s wedding to Sophie Reece Jones – was Princess Anne’s bushfire visit in February last year.
She arrived unheralded, went to the State Memorial Service and then to the bush fire ravaged regions of Victoria to give succor to the victims. Four day later she was off again.
Flint sneers at the thought of a republic – calling a change a “politician’s republic”. It’s that already professor.
The most recent glaring example of the lack of power of the queen was Tony Blair pulling her into line and demanding she and her family behave themselves following the death of Diana.
This underscores that a constitutional monarch relies on her politicians for advice and guidance – and it underscores the need to become a republic as soon as possible.
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