11 A Joke with a Bad Punchline

The idea of a monarchy is a joke. The grovelling we witness from politicians and media figures is hilarious to watch and the royal families involved act as ornaments on a shelf. 

But the joke has one problem; some people don't realise that it's a joke.

Many steps beyond!

10 Money

It is said that money can’t buy you happiness but it can buy a better class of misery, but what changes to coins and paper currency would take place under the Cat Queen model? What benefits would we see? Let’s find out!

9 Selecting a Cat

A Cat Queen needs to enjoy cuddles and be friendly towards humans. This alone would be a marked improvement over what we currently have (cough), but we would want the role to represent more. We want to improve the lives of felines and other animals as much as possible. Therefore, we propose the following selection process.

8 Animal Rights

Having a cat as head of state will bring a number of benefits. The one we will look at today is advancing the cause of animal rights and welfare.

I have the right to stay in my house if I want!

7 War and Religious Leader

In our last blog, we noted that the queen is not only the Head of State but also ‘defender of the faith’. The faith in question is the Church of England (also known as the Anglican Church), which has the queen as ‘Supreme Governor’ (source) and is also the only religious group which has members within the House of Lords. Other religious groups and denominations get no representation (although to be fair, they make up a very small proportion of the total legislators, 28 out of 789 source).

Just to note, our argument here isn’t against the privileged position of the Church of England (that falls under democratic rather than constitutional reform), just that the Head of State should not endorse or promote a religion that could be viewed as providing her access to legislators. The ‘Black Spider Memos’ show that members of the Mountbatten-Windsor family are not adverse to using their position to gain political and legislative changes (source).

The queen is also head of the UK armed forces as Commander and Chief (source), whom all officers and soldiers must swear allegiance to. No oath to their country or the rule of law is required, just to the queen. This doesn’t mean that she leads the soldiers, but it does allow her to appoint her son to the rank of Vice Admiral just a few months after allegations made in a US court about his extracurricular activities (source). 

Our proposal would have the Cat Queen be an entirely civil and secular role. We do not believe that a cat should be Head of State, head of her own religious group with legislative influence and Commander and Chief of the military at the same time. We don’t want her being able to appoint her kitten to a senior military position, regardless of how qualified that kitten may be.

The Church of England would be free to keep whoever they wanted as their leader. They would not need to change a thing. We’d recommend that the ceremonial position that the head of state holds with regards to the military should be ended, and that the oath of allegiance soldiers make should instead be directed to the people and/or the rule of law, but this isn’t necessary. Senior military personnel may want to stick with tradition and swear their loyalty to their Cat Queen and we wouldn’t want to make a change that upsets someone just for the sake of it. The whole point of the Cat Queen is to help keep these traditions alive whilst removing the chance of personal failings creeping into the role.

It's still better than the recent military recruitment posters!

Would you keep the Cat Queen as Commander and Chief? Let us know in the comments section below!

Beira Nevis

6 Trial Run

Our blogs have offered logical reasons based on available comparisons and examples to back our campaign for a cat to be queen, yet the fairest way to demonstrate which approach is best would be a trial run.

What we would be looking for is to see whether the Cat Queen model produces better results. The first metric would be the number of tourists visiting royal residences. Raw numbers offer quantifiable data and focuses on actual activity, and thus be largely impartial. We believe that making these fantastic and lavish palaces open to the public would see visitor numbers soar and a trial would see a fair comparison between both sides.

5 Tourism

Tourism is one of the major bonuses of the Cat Queen model. Every royal palace (you can see pictures of 18 of them here: source) would be made available for the public to enjoy, creating the kind of tourism boost that France enjoys. The Palace of Versailles, for example, receives over 7 and a half million visitors every year, whilst Buckingham Palace, England’s closest equivalent, ranks well outside the international top 10, admitting under 600,000 (source and source).