The Probus Discussion Group met on the day that President Biden visited Israel. It was therefore inevitable that we should discuss the ongoing crisis in the Middle East. There was a general feeling that despite the attempt of the Americans over several years now to improve relations between Israel and its neighbours, culminating in the Abraham Accords, the extraordinarily vicious attack in southern Israel by the Hamas Islamist group will have certainly made it much more difficult for Israel’s Arab neighbours to continue with these discussions, at least in the short term. While all members of the group were keen to see an end to the violence there was no clear pathway to this happening. The Americans, for all their desire to stand “shoulder to shoulder” with the Israelis, were clearly working hard to try and calm the situation.

The next meeting is planned for 15 November (although this may need to be changed because of a local funeral.)

The Probus discussion group met on 20 September to discuss the issue of monarchies vs republics. A presentation was given by Gareth Walters (a copy of which can be found here.)

Although there was some feeling that if one was starting with a clean slate, it would make little sense to create anything other than a republic, there was a general consensus that starting with the history that we have in the UK it would be foolish to shift from a monarchy to a republic. There would almost certainly be no majority support in the country for such a change in the medium or even longer term.

Points were made about the dangers of having a head of state chosen on the basis of their hereditary. Sometimes you would end up with a reliable and intelligent head of state. But sometimes you could be unlucky. On the other hand, in the UK when difficult problems arose with the choice of head of state, the (unwritten) constitution enabled changes to be made. The best and most recent example of such a change was of course the replacement of Edward VIII by George VI.

The next meeting of the discussion group will take place on 18 October.