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If Parliament accepts changes to the law proposed by Justice Secretary Jack Straw, some legislators will be free to resign from the House of Lords, hereditary legislators will not be able to hand on their seats to their children and the House will be able to expel legislators for serious misconduct. But the people would have no more control over these legislator than at present.

The reforms in a constitutional reform bill proposed by Mr. Straw would mean that some legislators-for-life will hold their seats in the legislature for life only if they choose to. If they wish to resign they will be able to do so.

Hereditary legislators will, however, continue to be legislators until they die. But another reform proposed by Mr. Straw will stop their children inheriting the seat.

Mr. Straw also intends to introduce another bill that would provide for election to the House of Lords, but probably only for 80% of the legislators. In any case there is little likelihood of this reform being approved by Parliament before the general election.

Allowing "life peers" to resign as legislators is widely believed to be intended in large part to allow Peter Mandelson, recently made a legislator-for-life, to advance his political career in the House of Commons again if he wishes. Legislators who do give up their seats in the House of Lords will keep the feudal title of "Lord".

Even if the reforms are agreed, after ten years of a Labour Party government, Britain is likely still to have legislators who have no accountability to the people.

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Hereditary head of state Elizabeth Windsor has twice written to the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans, a conservative group within the Anglican Church, to wish it well. The Fellowship is opposed to the ordination as bishops of gay men and lesbians.

The British head of state, who is also titular head of the Church of England, is expected to be politically non-partisan although the "unwritten constitution" provides no way of enforcing this.

A spokesperson for the Republic group said "This is a catastrophic blunder by the Queen. It gives the lie to the idea that she is politically impartial. By publicly aligning herself with the FCA, the Queen has strayed not only into a religious debate but also a highly political one."

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Sixty five per cent of Canadians want their country to end its tie to the British monarchy when Elizabeth Windsor dies, according to a poll by the Globe and Mail newspaper.

Seventy per cent of those polled said they felt no personal connection to head of state Windsor or her representative in Canada, the Governor-General. Only 20% did feel such a connection to Britain’s feudal head of state.

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The Telegraph newspaper has revealed that Andrew Windsor, a son of the hereditary head of state, is spending £4000 of taxpayers’ money a week paying bills for hotels, restaurants and receptions. Between £3000 and £4000 has also gone on a helicopter flight for what would otherwise have been just a 146 mile road trip.

Mr. Windsor justifies these expenses as a "trade ambassador for Britain", a job apparently created for his benefit.

Under Britain’s feudal system Mr. Windsor is known as the Duke of York.

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As a part of a supposedly "radical vision" for Britain the Prime Minister has announced that he intends to ask Parliament to approve a change in the law that would stop the seats of Britain’s 92 hereditary legislators being taken by their children when they die.

However, even the introduction of a bill before the next general election to stop this feudal practice is not guaranteed. And the last attempt to reform the second chamber of parliament by allowing the people to elect at least some of the legislators was blocked by the very people whose feudal privileges it was intended to end - the legislators-for-life.

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New Zealand is again to appoint "queen’s counsels". This follows the recent replacement of the title with "senior counsel".

According to the Attorney-General the title has been brought back to protect "the essential independence of the inner bar".

The New Zealand Republican Movement described the restoration as "a retrograde act". The change has also been condemned by some lawyers.

The term "queen’s counsel" is no longer used in Australia and a number of other countries in the British Commonwealth. And in Northern Ireland queen’s counsel are exempt from the requirement to swear allegiance to the hereditary head of state.

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