Should British Royal Succession Rules Change?

I have no intention in this posting of entering the debate on New Zealand becoming a republic, I'll assume for now that New Zealand is to remain a monarchy.

With the upcoming marriage of Prince William and Kate Middleton, various people, including the British Prime Minister are suggesting that the British succession laws should be changed to allow a female child to have the same precedence in the succession order as a male child.

There is a constitutional convention among the various Commonwealth Realms (Countries that have Elizabeth II as their monarch) that no country should change the fundamental laws about succession on their own. This comes from a time when the Commonwealth was a part of the British Empire and reflects the realities of 80 years ago. Since then the Commonwealth Realms have become fully independent and the Empire is no more.

There are historical precedents to a king or queen reigning over countries with different succession laws. Before Victoria came to the throne, kings George III,George IV and William IV had been kings of both Britain and Hanover. As these two countries had different succession laws, Victoria did not become Queen of Hanover, that honour falling on her uncle and the two nations peacefully separated.

What made this possible in 1837 and would make it possible in 20xx is that Britain and Hanover had what is known as "Personal Union" which meant that they were two countries that just happened to share a monarch. The same situation that Britain, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and so-on find themselves in today.

Today we are fully independent and the British succession laws are irrelevant to New Zealand, no change to the British laws would apply here unless passed by our parliament. What should be changed are our succession laws which should match our beliefs as a people. The succession of the New Zealand monarchy should be gender neutral and not have the requirement of belonging to any particular religion or religious denomination.

If we change our succession law while the British don't change theirs and at some future date this means that the last combined British and New Zealand monarch is succeeded by separate British and New Zealand monarchs then so-be it.

Driver charged over car door cyclist death

The man who opened a car door and caused a cyclist to fatally swerve into the path of a truck has been charged with the criminal charge "careless use of a motor vehicle causing death".

Source.

Credit Card Merchant Accounts

A week or so back there was a discussion on one of the mailing lists I subscribe to about obtaining on-line merchant accounts for credit cards that would accept multiple currencies.

The answer is that New Zealand banks try to restrict their customers to only accepting NZ currency and place all kinds of barriers in the way of businesses that want to accept payments in foreign currency. No wonder so many smaller NZ businesses are forced into accepting paypal and incurring their relatively high merchant charges.

We're in a global economy and if you want to sell to people in larger countries you usually need to accept their currency. This is especially true of Americans and the English but also applies to a lesser extent to Europeans and even Australians. With information products I can sell globally, it only requires a few photons to go down the fibre cable to the world internet. Even for physical products its' possible to ship from New Zealand to the major markets of the world ... just ask the people who have been exporting cheese, meat and wool for the last 120 years.

Call me disloyal, but I get my business cards printed in Australia ... I simply can't find a New Zealand printer who can give me anything like the convenience and price of the Australian offering. They have a .co.nz site and accept NZ Dollars, and it wasn't until I checked the whois on the domain before placing my first order that I even realised that I was dealing with a foreign company.

If you look at the US market, accepting credit cards is a competitive business and there are a lot of people offering this service. It took me under a minute to find Ms Merchant Account whose banner proclaims you can start accepting credit cards today with low discount rates and they are prepared to accept on-line transactions and foreign currency transactions.

So, why aren't our banks offering us services like this? Have they simply had a nod and a wink and decided not to compete?