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British legislators are demonstrating that Britain may be the only developed nation in which it is believed that feudalism is worth defending.

MP Gordon Prentice has told the head of the civil service that the "honours system", under which the state awards feudal titles, will fall into disrepute if Fred Goodwin, former chief executive of the failed RBS bank, is allowed to keep his knighthood. If his demand is met Mr. Prentice will be able to stop calling Mr. Goodwin "Sir Fred."

Seventy MPs want the same and have signed a motion calling for. Mr. Goodwin, who has refused to give up his £700,000 a year pension, to forfeit the feudal title.

Apparently the honours system was not made disreputable when two citizens with the titled of Lord, a higher position in the class structure, were sentenced in recent years to prison terms. A system in which the state spends the people’s money placing citizens into positions in a class hierarchy was unblemished.

Apparently the honours system was not blemished last year when the legislators who are able to sit in parliament without election by the people because they have the title of Lord, sabotaged a change in the law agreed by legislators like Gordon Prentice. The reform would have allowed the British people to exercise what should be their democratic right to elect all their legislators.

But if a "knight" refuses to forgo part of his pension as a punishment for guiding his bank onto the rocks the precious "honours system" will be shamed, at least in the eyes of "Labour" legislators.

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The Royal Mail is to be true to its name by marking the bicentennial year of British and American republican Thomas Paine with the issue of postage stamps honouring 16th century monarchs.

The state mail service will issue 6 new stamps commemorating Tudor dynasty members who ruled England from the late 15th to early 17th century. Another 4 will feature what the Royal Mail describes as "icons" of the same period.

Even thirty-five years after the death of the last Tudor to be honoured by the Royal Mail, the country they ruled was so lacking in democratic rights that a republican democrat John Lilburne could be flogged and dragged through the streets of London tied to an ox cart. His offences were to import forbidden publications and then insist that he be arraigned in English, not Latin.

The Royal Mail is not expected to honour Paine, Lilburne or any other citizen who struggled for the rights of the people against feudal rulers. In 2007 it also rejected a proposal by artist Steve McQueen that he design stamps to commemorate the British soldiers who had given their lives in the service of their country in Iraq.

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