Happy Birthday Ma'am etc

As a politically aware but not very active person I am a lukewarm monarchist. As a tourist guide, I am a rather more enthusiastic supporter of the institution. Of course, any position which relies on heredity is a little absurd 'in this day and age' (a phrase I irrationally hate). However, guides rely on the outsider's love of the monarchy as a way of staying in work. Most people are fascinated with the insitution and often have very strong feelings - on Charles and Camilla for instance. I often tease the Americans who established a republic as a way of shrugging off the tyranny of George III over two hundred years ago and now come over here expressing opinions on how we should run the royal family. This is potentially dangerous - I sometimes unintentionally cross the line which divides good natured ribbing from anti-Americanism. You can generally be as rude as you like to Australians and they know you are winding them up - Americans can be a little more touchy, however.
I have a certain residual fondness for an organisation that has survived for over a thousand years (the length of time, incidentally, that Hitler intended for the Third Reich) and has adapted to changing circumstances, staying just far enough behind the times to avoid appearing too trendy and opportunistic. My main objection to republicanism is that it depends on a view of life which demands uniformity, logicality and rationality. At its worst this is just boring - want to live in a world in which every country has the same system of government? - while at its worst it leads to tyranny. The French Revolution wanted to start from year zero and sweep away all of the old world and most of its people. This led to people being executed for what they were rather than for what they did - the epitome of tyranny.
In contrast our Glorious Revolution, almost exactly a hundred years earlier, was more akin to a shareholder's revolt - the replacement of an out of date chief executive (James II) with his more enlightened successor and son-in-law (William of Orange). Forty years before that in 1649 Charles I had been executed and we had established a short lived an unsuccessful republic under Cromwell, unmourned when the monarchy returned soon after his death. As all schoolboys know, Christmas was abolished along with the monarchy as was dancing around the maypole and no-one had any fun under the Stalinist rule of the puritan commonwealth.
So, if people want us to have a republic they have to convince us that life will be fun under the new system - would we have street parties to celebrate its establishment or its silver and golden anniversaries? I doubt it, somehow. Would we have a better chance of winning the World Cup if the players sang God Preserve ther Republic rather than God Save the Queen? I doubt it somehow. In fact, I cannot think of one significant way in which our lives would be better under a sensible republic rather than an irrational monarchy.
And we would not even have the Changing of the Guard to take people to...
So Happy Birthday Ma'am and two cheers for the monarchy. Just don't take it too seriously.