The first concerns Corby and the Queen. OK, so we know that Corby is a republican, in itself not particularly objectionable. He does have a point. We also know that the UK is presently constituted as a monarchy and that doing anything about that is apt to burn up far more energy, not to say bandwith from our hard pressed governing classes, than it is worth. Which may well turn out to be not very much at all, it not being that clear that absence of monarchs is positively correlated with good governance, the bad example of Saudi Arabia not being enough to make the case. So why does he not just go along with the system as it presently is, without making childish gestures which irritate many of the people who might otherwise support him - or at least some of his ideas?
A more cynical view might be that a vast, long running row about the monarchy would be an admirable diversion of popular anger and unease about other aspects of our present situation into a more or less harmless channel, since nothing much is likely to actually happen. Apart, perhaps, from hurting the feelings of our aging Queen. A Queen who can hardly be blamed in her own person for the situation in which she finds herself. A large scale version of the row about fox hunting. Such a view would, of course, have to comes from the usually Queen supporting Tories to make any sense.
The second concerns tasers. Why don't we pay one of those fancy defense contractors to develop an updated version of the net used by a Roman retiarius? Perhaps fired from some sort of compressed air engine. Potentially far more reliable than both the taser presently used by the police and the bolas presently used by cowboys in South America. And much less likely than a taser to do serious or permanent damage to the person so disabled.
If I had still been working for the Home Office I might have earned a bonus by dropping a postcard about this into the staff suggestion box.
PS: picture from http://thegirlandglobe.com/learning-gladiator-secrets-in-rome/. An engaging picture, if not a particularly good example of a net. I don't, for example, see any weights.
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