In over 1100 words about the Governor-General in The Age of 18 February, 2008, (“No job for a human”), Germaine Greer manages to neither inform, nor educate nor entertain. And Dr Greer, The Queen hardly “nominates” the Governor-General. It is extremely simplistic and wrong to say Governors –General have to do as prime ministers tell them. Think of 1975.
Further the Canadian Governor-General is not the only one to have visited the troops, and you are forgetting that in 1983 the Governor-General of Grenada, Sir Paul Scoon, GCMG, GCVO, OBE, had to exercise the powers of the Commander –in-Chief when all government had collapsed in a bloody insurrection.
What on earth do editors do these days? Must they give carte blanche to writers to say the first thing that comes into their heads? Who actually checks what goes out?