Governmental Appointment, Inspection of Chester, Notes on Matrimony and Test Cricket

Well, we have a lot of business to get through, given my absence travelling Thursday-Sunday. My Cheltenham comrade, Daniel Vine, has ably filled the gap in the meantime. I must write, loyal supporters of Her Maj, about several different items: a new appointment to the Government-in-Anonymity; the Official Inspection of Chester; Attendance at a Wedding; and my role as Official Representative at the fourth day of the Fourth Test against India, on Sunday.

Appointment

First, I am pleased to announce the appointment of a Civil Governor of Cheshire, James Cox. James does own a van, so would be qualified to lead the county's military forces too, but has declared it off-road – presumably due to the damage done to it moving my furniture all the way down to Hertfordshire in July, which as an experience was a mixture of the films Convoy, The Blues Brothers, and The Shining. Governor Cox is hereby invested with the authority to perform Commissions of Array and raise a militia for the defence of the county.

NB: Vine of Gloucestershire and Cox of Cheshire are not “Lord-Lieutenants”, though their role mirrors the historical content of that job; due to the seditious, Parliamentarian leanings of most Lord-Lieutenants in the Unpleasant Cromwellian Business, it has been decided to dispense with the term.

Official Inspection of Chester

My inspection officially began in the toilets of Bollicini's in Chester, as I changed into jeans from shorts. Unofficially, it had really been a day-long experience. On my journey to Chester, I had stopped in London to visit a science fiction exhibition at the British Library, which was very enjoyable. Then I travelled onward, up to Crewe, where I had to debark and wait for some time to change trains. Now, I am not a fan of Crewe Station (I have never been in Crewe itself but I am told it is a hole) – it is a place of changing trains, sitting in Upper Crust, and attempting to block out the perpetual sob of despair coming from the very stones of the place.

However, this trip, and my last up to Chester in July, I have stopped instead on one of the outer platforms (9, I seem to remember), where Virgin trains pull in to continue on to Chester. This platform faces outwards, to some sheds beyond the tracks. Both times I sat there, it had been damp weather. Rather than simply making Crewe more unbearable, as you might expect, it actually added an atmosphere to the place – the fine Victorian brickwork gleamed wetly in the haze, the air was fresh with vapour, and the platform island was silent. The place seemed to be straining to whisper of possibilities, of potential, of adventure. In the words of a poem by Wendy Cope - “from here I can go anywhere I choose”. (My chief proof for God: even Crewe Station can seem a hub for adventure.)

But yes – Bollicini's. Chester has a surprising number of places that serve cocktails. On the outskirts, there's the Handbridge Pub, and I believe Telford's Warehouse serves a few; more centrally, there is Off The Wall, the Slug and Lettuce, the Pitcher and Piano and Havana's. There may be others I haven't visited. But the only one to serve legitimately top-class cocktails is Bollicini's. Havana's and P&P are adequate; OTW serve a couple of drinkable ones. But only Bollicini's seems to be taking the whole thing seriously. What does this matter to the Government-in-Anonymity, I hear you (well, I hear me) ask? It matters because it exposes two problematic issues in our nation: pretence and crass commercialization.

There are so many cocktail-serving bars because people like cocktails. Presumably, it is specifically the people visiting those bars that enjoy cocktails; those people, statistically, are either students or reasonably well-off civilians (with a dishonourable exception for the OTW sports-watching crowd, who don't drink cocktails). They are going to bars which suit their tastes. Except – the cocktails aren't that good. Which means a lot of people are going to places which aren't putting much effort into their cocktails – and these are people who apparently enjoy cocktails. So they arrive at a place, order a drink they believe they enjoy but cannot in good conscience say is good in this particular iteration. They return, week after week. Why?

Well, the bars make poor cocktails and sell them (cheaply or expensively) because they quicker to make and in some cases cheaper in terms of ingredients, whilst being popular and raking in cash from the punters. I imagine a well-stocked cocktail bar is commercially akin to keeping real ale in good condition – expensive and time-consuming and at best a loss-leader drawing in punters to buy more profitable beverages and food (and as I was informed this weekend, often real ale is badly kept precisely because it is a loss-leader and not worth the extra effort). The people buying the bad cocktails are buying the poor cocktails (cheaply or expensively) because either their tastebuds are deficient, or they are stuck with friends with poor taste, or – they are more interested in buying a cocktail than enjoying it. So, a potent combination of poor taste, ruthless commercial interest and pretence mean several bars in Chester persist in selling subpar cocktails. Marvellous.

If you thought this would be the only commercial blemish on Chester – which is a magnificent city – you would be wrong, for the next day I had lunch at Pret a Manger, merely the most High Street Ken of the chain outlets that dominate central Chester. But happily, strength abides yet – at pubs like the Brewery Tap and the Pied Bull, cafes like the Watergate Deli, and little niche stores like the antiques bazaar outside the Eastgate, and the shop next to it that had been called Octopus, which sells – well, it's hard to explain. Imagine Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds but not terrifying.

So much for my whistle-stop tour of Chester (really, the three years of my degree are probably a better source for an inspection...). My conclusion? The people of Chester – groaning under the burden of bad cocktails but keeping the Brewery Tap in business – will, I believe, rise up in the name of the Queen. Governor Cox is just the first.

Matrimony

I attended the wedding of Nathan Luke Paylor and Joanne Lewis on the Saturday of my visit to Chester. Nathan is one of my dearest friends and a brother in Christ; he convinced me of the wisdom of coming to Chester, and so acted as an agent of Providence.

Knowing quite what to say about a wedding without lapsing into banal cliché is difficult. For instance, I legitimately did cry a little as Jo walked up the aisle – it was one of the most beautiful moments I have ever seen, and I was honoured to be a part of it. But then, no-one (or at least nearly no-one) seems to be terribly interested in hearing about the surpassing beauty of life, except that it fits into a consumerist box – ah yes, the heartbreaking wedding moment, we can attain that by spending £20k on the wedding! So what I will say comes from a distinctly Christian perspective (NB: the Government-in-Anonymity holds to no individual faith, though it does recognize Her Majesty's role as Defender of the (Reformed) Faith).

Echoing the words of the author of Genesis and of Jesus himself, the marriage service states that by the nuptial mystery, two persons become one. Now, this is not physically true, except insomuch as it implies sex; married couples do not, Hammer-style, become grotesque hybrid creatures with comical repartee between the heads. Rather, it aims at the new status of the married couple within the community of God (that is, the Church), and therefore the world, which through Christ is made for the Church (Ephesians 1.22). They surrender their freedom to each other, in imitation Christ's servanthood. Rather than standing alone in the world, they represent the relationship between Christ and his Church, mutually guiding and giving way to one another.

This is radical destruction of the Self as conceived by modernity and even, in truth, against its claims, postmodernity. That conception lionises the individual as a sceptical, autonomous being independent of others – whether seeking perfect knowledge with the Modernists or decrying structures of oppression and seeking an imperial “personhood” with the Postmodernists. Christian marriage denies that and points rather to the Trinity, whose very nature is relational and interpersonal.

Marriage is true joy, then, in the sense that it is painful – the obliteration of two individuals who become two persons united in matrimony before God. I attended not as a friend of the groom seeing him affirm his commitment to the woman he loved. That happened, but he has done that dozens or hundreds of times before, in word and deed. I attended as a friend of a man who died, marrying a woman who died. And it was beautiful. Death, where is thy sting!

Cricket

Cricket involves 22 individuals spending 7 hours a day doing incomprehensible things on grass. In one format, the Test match, this takes five days. And England are now number one in the world in Test cricket for the first time since the late 1970s, and are more dominant than they have been since the 1950s.

It was a pleasure to watch Rahul Dravid grind out a rearguard, Amit Mishra bat like a veteran, and Sachin Tendulkar scratchily but gutsily accumulate the first section of what almost was his 100^th 100. It was more of a pleasure to see Jimmy, Bres, Broady, Swanny and the lads send the Indian batsmen back to the pavilion. But do you know what gave me hope for the Government-in-Anonymity?

Everyone was applauded.

It hardly needs repeating, but we live in a banal, consumerist society; this is known by every cornershop philosopher. Yet here, against a team whose fans are the most aggressive and least charitable in the world (well...maybe apart from the Aussies), the English fans applauded every minute of the Indian rearguard. Even when we are at our most frustrated, we applauded. Because that is what cricket is to many of us – a sport for princes, where courtesy and respect are imperative.

Now, I think many people know and point to these last bastions of chivalry as beautiful bygones of a golden age. But I have not seen an attempt to explain quite why these relics survive. I suspect it is, in this case, linked, to the unwieldy, bizarre format of Test cricket; it is a thorough testing of every aspect of a man's game, not particularly suited to quick consumerist use. It has avoided better than most sporting events the absolute impingement of business; compare it to the IPL and there is a world of difference, and the obnoxious bat-stickers and enormous hoardings pale into nothingness.

So long as this England survives – the England that applauds the other's fellow's honest triumph graciously if not happily – I believe Her Majesty still has a constituency in this land. For, in Tennyson's words in “Ulysses”:

Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are.

Cheltz Chat

Hello, I am Daniel Vine, as Viscount Edwards has all ready mentioned, I am the Civil Governer of Gloucestershire, and will attempt to persuade the people of Cheltenham to join the Queen's forever loyal government. I do not imagine this to be a particularly demanding task. Historically, of course, Gloucester has respected and defended the royal family, as far back as the reign of Lear I; inviting him into it's homes and protesting against the mistreatment of HRH Lear I.

I am aware that there are those amongst you who would argue that this is a purely fictional event and that Lear I was not an actual King, but based on the legendary ancient king Lier, and that Gloucester was not involved in the original story. You might then be tempted to add "yeah, I read the same wikipedia entry as you Dan." But that is neither here nor there.

I recently paid a visit to some of the government-in-anonymity ground support in Shakespeare's birthplace Stratford-Upon-Avon. Judging from my visit, I must say I find it impressive that Bill found time to write and star in quite so many plays whilst also posing for portraits for every pub sign within a 50 mile radius. It is also quite surprising that he did not follow in the path of so many of his Stratford-Upon-Avon commune and open a B&B. Boy, are there a lot of B&Bs in Stratford-Upon-Avon! I would encourage all followers and supporters of Her Majesty's Government (ie. you. Yes you), to make use of these excellent facilities. These are the antithesis of modernity. Indeed I was shocked to discover that my room's television hid an attached DVD player upon it's back, given that such other modern luxuries were dispensed with (These include: coffee making facilities - although reassuringly there were still teas, space to move around and slick hotel receptionists. All of this was thankfully absent). I have stayed at a number of B&Bs and, unlike hotels these are not run by businessmen, millionaires and people with a passion to see Lenny Henry back on our screens. They are in fact run by the slightly odd. Couples of a certain age who have taken the decision to collect passing travelers in their home rather than cats. The ideal B&B owner has an air about them that leaves you staring at the bathroom mirror for ten minutes before showering wondering if it is two way. These strange people should be celebrated by our government, they have an interest in meeting people and bringing them together.

Incidentally, I am NOT a morning person, I do not like morning people, I do not sleep before Dave begins showing Radical Highs and do not wake until the third Top Gear repeat of the next day around 11am. I would therefore respectfully request that if you insist on only serving breakfast before 10am, please do not force me into theatre reviews of the previous day's production of The Merchant Of Venice with strangers while I scoff my bacon fat. (For those wondering, The Merchant Of Venice was very good. Patrick Stewart is excellent in it, despite a wig/glasses that made it hard not to associate him with Jonesey from Dad's Army. And Vegas is a genius setting, the Elvis impersonator was marvelous too (I'm not joking, one of the characters was played as an Elvis impersonator, and it was really fantastic)).

But of course, I jest to some extent. I think in many ways it is a wonderful thing that these oddballs encourage their oddball guests to speak to each other. These are warm and inviting places that, rather than separate people in a cold, empty, pub ajoining a Premier Inn, encourage them to speak to each other, relax and help themselves to cereal. Their rooms are proper bedrooms, not halls-of-residence, identikit, functional rooms. For want of a better cliche, I will say they have character - possibly literally as many of Stratford's buildings claim to be haunted. I completely approve of this character. One of these B&Bs goes one step further and is actually a Q&C (Quilts and Croissants) a modern spin, of which I wholly disapprove (actually I'd quite like to visit it, those Croissants sound good to me, however a quilt alone is scarcely adequate replacement for a Bed).

To summarise: Warm, friendly, inviting, full-of-character and bringing people together: Like her majesty. Unlike the hotels: stale, generic, millionaire-led, like David Cameron's government.

Yeah, it all links, you were wondering where I was going with that weren't you? To be fair, so was I around the two-way-mirrors suggestion.

So exhausted from my early morning breakfast/theatre review, I went out to find a pub with a picture of Shakespeare on the sign. I notice that all of the portraits seem to display a slightly different man, perhaps a testament to the poor quality of sketch artists of the day, or more (technically, less) likely a ruse to disguise Shakespeare's identity allowing him to spread the truth about Gloucester's involvement and support of the Royal Family, fighting those that would censor the original myth.

So Gloucestershire, now I am back amongst you, I urge you to pledge your historic support to the Government-In-Anonymity.

Her Majesty's Government-in-Anonymity Inspects City and University of Oxford: Conclusion is "Ehhhh..."

Today I undertook a survey of the City of Oxford and a general inspection of the University of Oxford on behalf of the Queen. I will be sending a detailed, confidential, saucy report to Her Majesty by beaver shortly, but here are my preliminary notes.

The City

Oxford is, it is immediately obvious, an industrial city containing an ancient University; it is not just the environs of the railway station that are classic brownland. Cars infest the city like mechanical plague rats. Where Cambridge's collegiate centre is broadly pedestrianised, only Cornmarket Street (and to a lesser degree Queen Street) in Oxford makes any pretence of catering chiefly to the walker; furthermore, there is a higher occurrence of “classic” buildings being neighboured by modern functionalities.

Indeed, the architecture, even at its best, is not a great boon for the city. A series of fine buildings in white sandstone (the blandest of stones) does not a fine city make; indeed, this building component makes Oxford appear as a vast, decadent beach on the Isis, that sluggish tributary of the Thames. The Radcliffe Camera, the best elements of Christ Church, and the Saxon tower of one of the churches are genuinely strokes of genius, but there is no clear competitor to Cambridge's King's College or the cousin of Montmartre headquartered round the Cantabrian Magdalen Bridge.

It must also be said that the apparent populace of the two cities over summer weighs robustly in Cambridge's favour. Denuded of its natural student populace, Oxford feels rather like a model village, swamped by half-interested tourists. Cambridge, perhaps due to its more compact manner, manages to escape this damnation by concentrating its “key populace” and its points of interest closely.

There are a number of quirky little cafes and bookshops, which do speak for a certain vibrancy to the intellectual culture of the city (quelle surprise), and it's a joy to behold the Oxfam Bookshop's holdings in 17^th century vellum-bound manuscripts. Nonetheless, as a city it is markedly inferior to Cambridge. Its chief virtue lies in one of its hospitals having employed my friend Hannah today.

The University

I inspected a number of the colleges today – Christ Church, Wadham, Exeter, Brasenose and Jesus. Christ Church is, commercially, the equivalent of King's College, Cambridge; it charges entrance (including to the cathedral contained within, see below) and is famous for cliché photographs of its great front quadrangle lawn and its use in Harry Potter and Golden Compass films. I did not cough up the £6.50 to enter as a student – that money should properly go towards actually paying tuition at my actual University.

Wadham, an alma mater of my grandfather, had a pleasant if bland frontage, with an attractive front quadrangle. I bought a keepsake from its porter's office, which was manned by an apparently monolingual Filipino. The negotiation was perhaps the most exhaustive ever made over a bookmark of a minor Oxbridge college.

Brasenose was closed for some sort of building work; no amount of raising the royal banner could convince its hidden watchmen to allow entry. Jesus had its front gates open, with views onto the front quad, but it was in fact closed – a Secret Garden of a place, and a marvellous film reference.

Exeter had a front quad with walls graffitied by victorious rowing 8s over time. I frankly found this charming, in a yobbish, Gap Yah sort of way. It was innocently triumphalistic, and most of the pieces were done with a surprising sensitivity to colour – pastels against the white sandstone blended well, leaving a maritime, mutative feeling.

The University itself – aside from its inflated academic reputation – was impressive architecturally, if overly homogeneous. Geographically it was not always sited to best effect, though there is nothing but Providence to account for that fact of history.

The Church

I visited 10 current or former church buildings (8 Anglican, 1 Methodist) in Oxford, attempting to rally the Divines of the nation to the Queen's banner. Alas, I met not one Divine, nor Assembly, nor Parson nor Person, nor any such figure of authority. Find below an inventory of my visits and their results:

*Christ Church Cathedral Church: General entrance involves a cost equivalent to £1.50 in the overall entrance free to Christ Church. The battle is already lost if a continued church presence in a building matters more than the public accessibility and image of accessibility given by charging entrance.

*St Ebbe's: An evangelical church with a second base in the suburb of Headington. Closed and poorly presented external reading materials.

*St Aldate's: A charismatic evangelical church with a modern glass porch on an impressive older church building. Good external materials and a Providentially welcoming courtyard in front The glass doors were, however, literally barred by a great wooden beam, as if the inhabitants expected a siege any moment. The glass might not suffice for fortification, I fear.

*St Mary the Virgin: On the Hight Street, in front of the Radcliffe Camera. Free to enter, but a charge to ascend the tower. Almost self-parodically, in this city of liberal theologians, it sold a book called “The Christian Atheist: Belonging Without Believing” recommended by Oxford don and noted atheist Philip Pullman. I left shortly after seeing this.

*St Martin's Carfax: Demolished in 1896 to expand the crossroads (Carfax), now simply a tower, which charges for ascent.

*St Michael at the Northgate: Stunning Saxon tower, genuinely peaceful and holy within. One dubious claim made in its literature: it boasts of a close connection to the Reformed martyrs Cranmer, Latimer and Ridley. This connection? It was formerly connected to the prison where the three were held. No, no-one from the church sought to help them. The connection relates to the parish's complicity in murder.

*St Mary Magdalen: At the north of the city centre, this impressive building is next to and associated with the Martyrs Memorial of Cranmer, Latimer and Ridley. It was closed when I visited, and quite imposingly quiet. Its chief Sunday service: High Mass. That is to say, a key conceptual phrase the three martyrs died, in part, for condemning. At best distasteful and ill-judged, at worst offensive and contemptible.

*Wesley Memorial Church: The Wesley Church was the only church building I managed to enter which felt like it might still have a congregation. Though there was a slight feel of the namby-pamb in the air but there was also a feeling of a living place, with actual Christian belief and an impulse for the growth of the Kingdom.

*St Peter's College Chapel: Closed, save for two fellows carrying materials out. One gave me a frankly suspicious look, as if I, with my faded khaki cap and M&S pullover, was planning a heist of the chapel silver.

*Exeter College Chapel: Built in stunning Victorian Gothic with magnificent ceiling bosses. The nave was, however, closed for a choir practice. Quite acceptable, given that as a private chapel it does not owe the public the right to worship or pray there (it does raise an intriguing discussion of Zizioulas' theory of the local church, however...intriguing if you are interested in the finer points of ecumenical ecclesiological discourse stemming from the Orthodox trajectory, anyway).

Conclusio

Given the loyalty of Oxford and its University to the King in the Civil War, I had hoped to gather support for the banner of Her Majesty, but the general atmosphere was of a pretentious Toy Town, highly monetized (even more so than the crassly commercial Cambridge), with an Established church structure in disarray (though evidently, thank God, God-fearers and God-fearing churches still in action).

The one absolute highlight was a visit to the Crown pub – visited by Shakespeare on his Jacobean route to Stratford from London. Though the beer was stale from dirty pumps (like what seems like most Oxford pubs, the Crown served more than the usual number of real ales), it was respectable, and the décor was traditional. There was a whiff of the Inklings in the air. It felt like – here, things happen! Here, actual thoughts are thought, thoughts beyond the yearly pretentions of academia and misguided intensity of the privately schooled populace.

Before my final point, I must confess an interest against Oxford – my grandfather's BSc was gained at Cambridge. This is, I think, balanced out by two points: first, that my grandfather was also educated at Wadham, as mentioned; second, that both Cambridge and Oxford rejected me for my Masters (I am a true Durham student in that respect – an Oxbridge reject – ironically, given the Durham course is markedly superior in reputation to the Oxbridge equivalents).

In conclusion, then, I believe Her Majesty's interests may be better served by Cambridge-men (from a finer city and more robust church), unless some stout-hearted fellow or fellette should step forward to claim Oxfordshire for the Crown.

Finally, there was a show scheduled for September at the New Theatre called “Puppetry of the Penis 3D”. What?

Government-in-Anonymity Makes Two New Appointments

This morning I was relaxing, jubilantly reflecting upon the fact that liberation was soon coming to our fair nation. Like Dickensian-Grey (official Dulux colour) clouds louring over a sports field with an Astroturf cricket pitch, however, misery soon arrived. I saw the crushing flaw at the heart of this grand endeavour.

I am incredibly lazy.

My solution: appoint others (the proletariat, if you will) to do the hard work whilst I do the important things like write this blog, play Operational Art of War Century of Warfare, and watch the Dune miniseries on lovefilm.com.

Therefore, in the Queen's name, I announce two new appointments to the Government-in-Anonymity.

*Daniel Vine is hereby appointed civil Governor of Gloucestershire. Dan has for some years been a bastion of resistance to modernity, basing himself at Cheltenham. His immediate objectives will be to persuade the people of Cheltenham to declare their loyalty to the Queen's only loyal government (hint: that's us). He will, I imagine, pursue this aim using Twitter commentary on events within "Cheltz" (has anyone ever called it that?) and sarcy jibes at David Cameron's expense. Dan will be contributing to our official blog, with his column "A View from Gloucestershire" or whatever he ends up calling it.

*Jamie Chalmers is hereby appointed Lieutenant-General of the Cavalry. He has a car, you see (aka the Horse Guards). The Horse Guards, commanded by Lieutenant-General Chalmers, will be accompanying me on my "State of the Nation" tour, scheduled for late September. Beyond that role, Jamie's role consists in protecting the Queen and her loyal Government (ie me) from harm (there are, I am sure, various scoundrels, rotters and Papists already arrayed against us), and securing the suburban conglomeration of central Hertfordshire for the Crown. He is hereby granted the power to hold a Commission of Array to conscript a force to accomplish this task.

Congratulations to both these fine gentlemen on their appointments!

Find below the timetable for the movements of the Government-in-Anonymity in the near future:

*17th August 2011: Oxford - official inspection of Oxford University, assessment of potential support for the Government-in-Anonymity.
*18th-20th August 2011: Chester - assesment of potential support for the Government-in-Anonymity, meeting with Reformed Divines to discuss the state of the nation, and a thoroughly British celebration of matrimony (that is, jolly, not miserly and pessimistic).
*21st August 2011: Kennington - attendance as official representative of the Government-in-Anonymity at the fourth day of the Oval Test against India.

The Panshangar Declaration

I took it upon myself today to create for myself the title of “Viscount Welwyn” in the Peerage of the United Kingdom.

I do not do this, of course, with any sense of self-seeking or delusional grandeur. I do it entirely for this nation's security. You see, I have realized two salient facts about the United Kingdom's modern system of governance: 1) it is as untrustworthy and undemocratic as ever; 2) it is a great deal more boring. On the other hand, the Queen, apparently in the least democratic of our institutions, is more trustworthy, more beloved and apparently more interested in her people than her government – all this, and she is the pinnacle of the bizarre, colourful, system which is the British and Irish nobility.

Hereditary titles ceased, as matter of course, to be granted in the UK from the point of Harold Wilson's government coming into power in 1965; since then, four hereditary peerages (two now extinct) have been granted, and one hereditary knighthood (properly speaking, a baronetcy; a baronet is not really a knight, but is addressed as such). Macmillan could say, just a few years before 1965, that “you've never had it so good”; since then the gap between rich and poor had increased significantly in the UK, racial and class tensions have increased, and any sense of public morality or responsibility have disappeared.

I am fairly sure the cessation of regularly granting hereditary peerages is the direct cause of the collapse of our once great nation. Nor is this issue restricted to Queen Elizabeth II's home realm; others of her realms have actively discouraged the granting of such honours to their citizens. I am thinking particularly of Canada's “Nickles Resolution” of 1919, which eventually passed their lower house but was not made law; nonetheless, Prime Minister Chrétien (suspiciously close in spelling to cretin) used it as precedent in a court case to disbar Conrad Black's proposed peerage. I can only describe that as open and un-Parliamentary rebellion.

Lord Black's peerage was, in any case, a life peerage – a plastic sort of finery, if you ask me. Hereditary peerages are living history – they remind us of where they began, even if the current incumbent is a dribbling loon. They create a rich tapestry of titles and precedence and legacy. Because of this, and the undoubted link between hereditary peerages being granted and our nation's wealth and security, I have done what I know the Queen would do if she were permitted to do by the band of villains about her.

I hereby declare a revolution in effect with this, the Panshangar Declaration:

“We, the Government-in-Anonymity of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, declare our intention to rescue Her Majesty's person out of the hands of those desperate person who are about her; for the defence of both Houses of Parliament (from themselves), and for the preservation of the true religion, the laws, liberties and peace of the kingdom.

Signed this day of 16^th August 2011 by my hand in the Queen's name,

Owen, 1^st Viscount Welwyn

Garden House, Welwyn Garden City”

Note 1: This blog shall be chiefly used to declare the movements and actions of the Government-in-Anonymity, and particularly the spread of the revolution.

Note 2: Insomuch as, two hours after my title was created, I have not yet been contacted by any person in authority to deny its authenticity, I think we may safely legally assume it is valid; frankly, low readership of this blog can only be of advantage to the cause of the revolution, so I will not find it disappointing if such turns out to be the case.