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LONG LIVE THE QUEEN? Fortunately in the United Kingdom we live in a democracy, or what's left of one now that Blair and his bunch has had his hands on it for far too long, as well as a monarchy. This allows me the privilege to be anti-royal should I wish, and on this right I bow to no one, and especially not to the Queen.     The reason I am anti-royal is not only that I find the way they conduct themselves nothing short of disgraceful, but also that I find it quite beyond me to accept a system of rule which allows that one person can somehow be better or more worthy than any other person. Put in the simplest terms the reason that the Queen is where she is and the rest of the population are where they are is because her ancestors were better fighters than ours.     Let's take royalty back to its beginnings. Once upon a time people used to live in small groups and go about their daily business of hunting for food and warding off wild animals and bashing each other over the head with clubs quite happily (Although it must be admitted that the ones being bashed over the head with clubs were likely to be less happy then the ones doing the bashing). Then one of them, call him Og, a bit bigger and stronger than the rest of the members of his group, decided that life would be a bit more enjoyable if he had people to do his hunting and warding off of wild animals for him.     So Og appointed himself their leader. To encourage them to recognise him as such he gave them all a good clubbing. Preferring the quiet life to another good clubbing they acquiesced, probably taking the line that although having to do their new leader's hunting and clubbing for him was perhaps not as good a life as they had previously enjoyed it was infinitely preferable to being clubbed over the head all the time.     What Og did in his domain was repeated in other areas of population, eventually resulting in lots off groups, each with its own leader. Soon, such is human nature, one of the leaders began to look fondly at one of the other neighbouring groups, and realised that if he were to be leader of their group in addition to being leader of his own group then he would be even more powerful than he was at present. The leader of the other group had similar pretensions. The two groups duly engaged in battle and a victor was determined. This resulted in one of the groups now being substantially larger than the other groups, and in the fullness of time the large group annexed all the other groups and the leader of the vast new group became the 'King'.     The rest is history - through the centuries Kings fought other Kings to create for themselves even bigger kingdoms, interbred with each other to create even bigger still kingdoms, until eventually we in this country ended up with the present sorry lot.     As I said at the outset, the Queen is where she is because her ancestors were better fighters than the rest of us. Certainly better than mine because if my ancestors were anything like me they couldn't fight for toffee. Even so I would fancy my chances in a fight against the Queen, and I would offer to fight her for her title and become King Terry the First except that I'm pretty sure my offer would be rejected, as the system of the best fighter being the ruler has long since been superseded by a system wherby the ancestors of the best fighter becomethe ruler, by (accident of) birth. And excepting of course that as I believe I am no better or worthy than anyone else I wouldn't want to be the Monarch.