Tetradki

Brothers sisters have I none,
but that man's father is my father's son.
Who is it?

That is a well known English rhyming riddle. The story below uses the same technique, but extended to hilarious lengths. It's been a favourite of mine, giving me endless mileage at all sorts of dinner-table conversations. And a good test of others' sense of humour.

(The text below was sent to me by a friend and it looks like it has been circulating for a while. Please let me know if it needs attribution or copyright holder's authorisation.)


Make of this what you will. This joke was told the other day by Peggy Noonan, who used to be Ronald Reagan’s White House speech writer.

Al Gore was in London and met the Queen. Ever the policy wonk, instead of asking her about race horses he quizzed her on her leadership philosophy. The Queen said she found that the best way to govern was to surround herself with intelligent people.
“But how do you know they are intelligent?” Gore asked.
“I ask them telling questions” said the Queen and promptly telephoned Tony Blair. “Mr Blair,” the Queen said, “your mother has a child, your father has a child and this child is not your brother of your sister. Who is it?”
“Why, it’s me,” said the Prime Minister, without a pause. “Correct” said the Queen.

Gore returned to America and called George W.
“Mr President, may I ask you a question?” he said.
“By all means,” said the President.
“Your mother has a child, your father has a child and this child is not your brother or your sister. Who is it?”

George W. was stumped and remained silent for a while before saying, “May I get back to you on that, Al?”
He asked all his closest aides before finally ringing Colin Powell, to whom he posed the telling question. Powell, like Blair, replied, without a pause: “It’s me.”
George W rang Gore and said: “I know the answer to your question. It’s Colin Powell.”

“Wrong,” said Gore. “It’s Tony Blair.”

Photo of Al Gore by Breuwi from here.
Photo of George W. Bush from here.

A few thoughts on the Queen's official birthday. (Read the full article in the June issue of theFrenchPaper) :

I grew up in the Soviet Union – one of the biggest republics of them all, apart from six years spent in Australia when my father was posted there with the TASS news agency. In my professional adult life I have lived and worked, for several years each, in Japan, the States, the UK and now another great republic, France.

That’s three monarchies and three republics, so I feel entitled to throw my own observations into the debate. And the longer I dwelt on it the more I concurred: in monarchies – and obviously we are talking modern, constitutional monarchies here not the absolute regimes of the past – people appear, in my experience, if not necessarily happier, then certainly more relaxed and at ease with themselves.

A monarchist state encourages a sort of anarchist, self-motivated compliance with rules rather than a republican anarchist rejection of them.

Of course, in the 21st Century, the very notion of a hereditary monarchy with its system of titles, curtseying , pageantry and palaces is absurd. But if we set this aside for one moment, it is still interesting to examine the apparent paradox that, generally ‘subjects’ are enjoying better lives than ‘citizens’.
The obvious first distinction between the monarchy and the republic is head of state – in a republic, a political figure. Do Presidents or General Secretaries behave any differently from monarchs – taking the podium or salute on state occasions, enjoying the pomp and ceremony of monarchs, clearing streets as their motorcades sweep past, surrounded by a buzz of secret service bodyguards? As UK Labour MP Denis MacShane, who has studied France’s political system in depth, put it: ‘Britain is the parliamentary republic that just has common sense to have a nice lady as head of state. France is a real monarchy. They elect the monarch, and then, by goodness, Sarkozy, Mitterand, de Gaulle – they have power no other head of state in any other country has.’

The value of a sitting monarch is that they stop politicians indulging in delusions of grandeur. I was astonished to see David Cameron, when he drove to the palace to be invited to form Her Majesty’s Government, stopping at traffic lights! Monarchs keep politicians in their place – and that is healthy.

This leads us to the second major difference between the two systems: the size and (self-) importance of the state. What do expatriates who settle in France – or indeed in Russia, where my wife lived for many years – complain about most? (As well as the French and Russian peoples.) A bureaucracy which is cumbersome, oppressive and arrogant? Shouldn’t it be the other way round – that the machine of the state is more authoritarian in a monarchy? So perhaps it is in their attitudes towards the state that subjects and citizens differ? In a republic, the state takes on the mantle of a higher power; in a monarchy that mantle is already taken so the State is less respected, less resented and less relevant.

Surely it couldn’t be that driving is safer in monarchies? Yet the figures bear this out!

Again, it is kept in its place leaving ‘subjects’ to get on with their lives. Ironically, by being more responsible for their own lives, ‘subjects’ are more positive, self-confident and at ease.

An inevitable, in my experience, consequence of an all-powerful state is a higher level of subversion as the populace seeks to get its own back on the plethora of rules and regulations – it is well known that where there are hundreds of rules they tend to be disregarded but where there are but one or two they are generally obeyed. So I looked up figures for the black economies – and bingo! European studies show that in the UK, undeclared work amounts to about half of what it is in republican France and Germany. In Russia, the black market is a means of survival, amounting to about 50 percent of the economy. In the Emperor’s Japan, it is negligible.

So there seems to be, under a monarchy, more willingness to play by the rules rather than to ignore them; the relatively lighter bureaucracy of a monarchist state encourages a sort of anarchist, self-motivated compliance with rules rather than a republican anarchist rejection of them.

These startling figures lead me to examine another common complaint about France: the driving. Surely it couldn’t be that driving is safer in monarchies? Yet the figures bear this out! Looking at the statistics of deaths in road accidents per 100 thousand of the population, per year, the figure in the UK is approximately half of that of for France – 3.5 against 6.9. The difference between the USA, a republic, and Canada, a monarchy, is equally striking: 12.3 against 9.2. I remember Japan, a constitutional ‘empire’, for its disciplined, courteous behaviour on the roads – compare their road fatalities with those in the neighbouring republic of South Korea: 3.85 against 12.7. In the kingdom of Sweden the figures are less than half those of republican Finland: 2.9 to 6.5. And in Russia? Way over the top with a depressing 25.2 per 100 thousand.





[埋込みオブジェクト:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/telegraph/template/utils/ooyala/telegraph_player.swf]

(The Daily Telegraph video)
Photo from here.

Outside of the countries with constitutional monarchies the value of the royals to society is rarely debated, but in Britain monarchists and republicans continue sharpening their arguments even though the monarchy enjoys solid support among the people.

On the eve of the wedding of Catherine Middleton and Prince William BBC ran another interesting debate on the role of the monarchy (Moral Maze – Meritocracy and Monarchy, listen here). 'Royalists argue that the monarchy symbolises deeply ingrained values that go beyond social and political fashion', says the BBC blurb. 'Republicans counter that an hereditary ruler makes as much sense as an hereditary dentist and the monarchy traps us as subjects, enshrines inequality and that we should have the power to choose our head of state.'

'Royal family does stand in the way of any demagogue taking over the whole state', argued one of the participants.

Me, I am more on the side of the monarchists. While hereditary wealth and privilege may be unfair, it is less fair when an elected servant of the people uses attributes of power more lavishly than in a monarchy. Which is especially striking in countries where presidents also head the executive branch, France and Russia for example.

There was one argument in favour of constitutional monarchy which I'd never heard before. Robert Hardman, writer on Royal affairs, pointed to the UN Human Development Index, a comparative measure of life expectancy, literacy, education and standards of living for countries worldwide. Among the top ten countries with 'very high human development' there are seven monarchies. In the 2010 Human Development report they are Norway, Australia, New Zealand, Liechtenstein, the Netherlands, Canada and Sweden (UK is 26th). Even in inequality-adjusted index, which factors in inequalities in the three basic dimensions of human development (income, life expectancy, and education) five monarchies are in the top ten: Norway, Australia, Sweden, the Netherlands, Canada and Denmark (UK is 21st).

Now, this may not be an argument for re-establishing monarchies in the countries that had rejected them, but there seems to be a strong case in favour of a strong counter-balance to the power of the executive.

In the video the republican French give excited coverage to the royal wedding:

[埋込みオブジェクト:http://www.youtube.com/v/9yCJplE_XYg?fs=1&hl=en_US]