The Independent's Mark Steel on the UK government's plan to make schoolchildren swear an oath of allegiance to the queen:
This is so advanced the rest of Europe only abandoned it 200 years ago. So there are probably other bits of his report, not yet published, which go: "Loyal British citizenship will be enhanced by dismantling the system of local government, and replacing it with a network of barons. A sense of modern national unity will be advanced if citizens, who shall also be known as 'serfs', kneel before them on the third Sunday of each month and offer them their wives as chattel. This measure, I feel, should bring about a rapid decrease in the practice of city centre binge-drinking."Public opinion in the UK seems to be overwhelmingly against it, but that didn't stop New Labour from going to war in Iraq, and it probably won't stop them from making everyone symbolicly defer to the aristocracy.
