Long to reign over us: a rant.

Who should run your country?

Old people? Young people? Women? Men? Right/Left/Centre/Out-in-the-car-park people? God? The high-born? The low-born? Clever people? Average people? Stupid people? Strong people? Weak people? Computers? Lizard people from the planet Onk? (Lots of people believe this is already happening.)

In Britain, the Electoral Reform Society has published a list of the most common Christian names for British Members of Parliament since 1945.

The commonest name is John. So far, so boring, but one statistic that did stand out was the information that there have been eleven Percys in Parliament since 1945.

I didn't know there had been eleven Percys in Britain since 1945.

Still, at least we know where they all ended up.

It isn't clear from the Electoral Reform Society's website whether it is campaigning for more or fewer Percys in Parliament (though they're certainly campaigning for more Margarets and Annes).

But it made me wonder who should be running my country. Kiwi and Pippin (both girls born in 2013) would be jolly fruity. But perhaps what we really need are some heroes.

Sherlock would do.

Or Boudicca.

Or Tin Tin.

Let's face it, Snowy might be an improvement on some of them.

Come to think about it, though...

Percy: that's the family name of those great rebels the Dukes of Northumberland. The warrior Harry Hotspur is probably the most famous of them:


The death of Harry Hotspur.

And then there's Percy Blakeney aka The Scarlet Pimpernel, who rescued all those French people from the guillotine in Emma Orczy's novels.

A hero's name...you know something? Perhaps Percy is the right stuff after all.

Word To Use Today: percy. As far as I know this isn't used as a vocabulary word much, but pointing percy at the porcelain is a very old-fashioned euphemism for doing a wee.