All I have to say is that I am really unhappy with Yahoo. I am deliberating over switching servers, and will be deciding that for sure this week. I will definitely announce a change if that happens, so don’t worry about that!

Also, does anyone know why Ananova.com doesn’t have a royal section any more?

(Sunday, March 21, 2004)

Former Dutch queen Juliana died Saturday at 94 of pneumonia.

As a princess, Juliana spent the war years in Ottawa where she fostered enduring ties with Canada and who later oversaw the postwar dismantling of the centuries-old Dutch empire during a 32-year reign.

Juliana, who gave up public life in 1999 due to her weakening condition, died in her sleep of a lung infection at the royal palace in Soestdijk, about 50 kilometres southeast of Amsterdam.

Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende cancelled foreign travel plans and declared a national day of mourning for the popular monarch he called “a mother to us all.”

Several newspapers printed special free editions and national television channels broadcast hour after hour of special coverage.

Balkenende ordered flags on public buildings be flown at half mast until Juliana’s remains are interred at the ancestral burial chamber in Delft. Juliana will lie in state at the palace of Noordeinde in The Hague for several days next week before the funeral, probably on March 31.

The ‘download’ link in the Help section has been repaired. It now brings you to royal music and comics (like it was supposed to!) :-)

Just a note: If you sign the petition, that means you are agreeing to the creation of an official British Heritage Month. This is a PETITION, not a message board to tell me whether or not my idea sucks.

You sign, you agree. You don’t sign, that’s your perogative.

There are people who are posing as me, apparently. I just received an email from “myself” this morning. The address is “support@mandysroyalty.org” – there is no such email address… er, well, there is, obviously, but it is not me. Don’t open anything from mandysroyalty.org unless it has info@ in front of it.

Thank you!

I wanted to post something earlier, but there was a log in issue at Blogger.

To the Spanish people – you have America’s deepest sympathy. We are all very sad that this happened, and are resolved to help support you in this hour of need.

By Thomas Strathclyde

(Filed: 11/03/2004)

The Prime Minister and his faithful legal companion, Lord Falconer,

have only themselves to blame for the constitutional pit into which

they have dug themselves. They need to stop digging and do so fast –

in their own interests and those of the country.

†It all began last June, with an infamous press release. Number 10

suddenly announced that it had abolished the historic office of Lord

Chancellor, the voice of the judiciary in the Cabinet and the

protector of judicial independence, and was to boot the Law Lords out

of the Lords, where their presence is such an asset. Lord Irvine had

the integrity to resign rather than implement such ideas.

Enter Lord Falconer, a man with the eccentrically nihilistic ambition

to be history’s last Lord Chancellor. He grasped the poison chalice

Lord Irvine declined. The Minister for the Dome is to build an

unnecessary new Supreme Court. He claims he can do this for less than

£40 million. Wasn’t that the original estimate for the £430 million

Holyrood Parliament?

The abolition of the Lord Chancellorship and the building of a

Supreme Court are in keeping with a more recent government wheeze,

exposed in the Telegraph, to spend millions removing the Crown from

the Prosecution Service and renaming Her Majesty’s Prisons the

National Offender Management Service, a title not even Monty Python

would have dared invent.

There had been no call for any of these plans and no need for them.

Even Lord Falconer admits the senior judicial system we now have is

outstanding and that successive Lord Chancellors have fully upheld

judicial independence.

So where things work well and carry worldwide respect, why this mania for still more change on top of the maelstrom of constitutional

upheaval of the Blair years? I find it puzzling.

Surely there must be a better defence than Lord Falconer’s faintly

ridiculous argument that, while the system works well now, it might

break in future: “It works – so let’s break it.” I hope Lady Falconer

keeps the hammer safely under lock and key when she sees her husband eyeing the prize household clock.

Parliament has every right to look sceptically at these plans. The

Government points to a pamphlet from Justice a few years ago,

suggesting them. But there was nothing in its election manifesto. No

White Paper. No consultation with anyone before the botched reshuffle.

Both the Commons, through its Labour-dominated Constitution Select

Committee, and the Lords, by its vote on Monday, have said there must be scrutiny. A Bill can be carried over at the end of the session.

Scrutiny would not cause a Bill to be lost.

Government must now listen to Parliament, accept scrutiny and be

ready to accept the consequences, even if it means dropping some of

these discreditable and unnecessary ideas.

But there is another force at play – Labour’s inability to connect

with the institutions and conventions that underlie the subtle,

flexible and unwritten constitution that has given Britain domestic

peace and stability during 300 years of social change.

This is one of the unremarked fault lines in modern politics.

Conservatives, old Labour and many traditional Liberals have an

instinctive affinity for our ancient liberties, and the practices and

conventions that balance our constitution.

The neo-rationalists – New Labour and the Roundhead tendency among Liberal Democrats – lack any such affinity. They think offices such as the Lord Chancellorship are bad because they are old. They fail to appreciate they have become old because they are good.

The forces of change have had a good run; it would be wise for them

to pause and let what they have won bed down. It would be wise to

realise the constitution does not belong to one party or one group

within it.

There comes a point when those in Parliament, of all parties, who

believe no government has a right to ram through unilateral change,

irrespective of past undertakings or in the absence of any manifesto

authority, must be counted for what they believe in. These are not

arguments of mere academic interest or low politics, but of high

principle. They touch the bedrock of the way we are and will be

governed.

There is threatening talk of punishing the Lords. We hear of plans to

strip away our powers. We are told that, maybe next week, the

Government will act to throw out elected hereditary peers and create

an all-appointed House.

That would make a mockery, as Robin Cook rightly reminds us, of the

Government’s repeated manifesto promise to create a more democratic

House and its solemn undertaking to Parliament that the remaining 92

peers would “go only when stage two has taken place”.

Significantly, it takes us full circle. It was Lord Irvine who told

Parliament that the undertaking was “binding in honour” and Lord

Falconer who cites “changed circumstances” to dishonour it.

But, if such firm assurances can be so lightly abandoned, why should

Parliament trust any assurance from any minister, let alone the

umpteenth promise that Tony Blair truly, madly, deeply means to get

to real reform some day?

If Parliament lets Mr Blair get away with that and hands him his

political objective of kicking out the 92, then I will not hurry to

Ladbroke’s to lay a large bet against “changed circumstances”

overtaking whatever assurance Lord Falconer may give about long-term reform next week.

Frankly, I would not launch constitutional measures as my “flagships”

in the year before an election. I cannot be alone in thinking Mr

Blair might give a little more time to fulfilling his pledge to

provide everyone with an NHS dentist or cut violent crime.

Governments make their own choices of political priorities and are

judged on them. But they must understand the atmosphere that constant threats to the Lords, combined with flagrant breaking of

undertakings, are creating.

There is no need for conflict. Historically, the Lords has well

understood the boundary stones of our constitution. But, as yet more

of these are wilfully uprooted by this Government, then, as Monday’s

vote showed, the future becomes less predictable.

The House is within its rights to hold the Government to promises it

has made and question change for which the Government has no

authority. I know many in the Commons agree. However powerful any

government may be, Parliament is above it.

* Lord Strathclyde is Leader of the Opposition in the House of Lords