Does 'the top job' involve sacrifices?

And we shouldn't forget Cleopatra. How did he find the time?

But he wasn't actually married to Cleopatra...

'And every night when Caesar said goodnight at 3 o'clock:--
A roman engineer was waiting , just around the block!

According to Plutarch (and Shakespeare and Shaw), Cleopatra had a son by Caesar, Ptolemy Caesar, aka Caesarion.

Yes, she was his mistress but not his wife. Presumably she didn't need to be above suspicion!

Sorrygreatnan it was JESSM not you!
Mea culpa, mea culpa mea maxima culpa! What penance do you want to impose?
I wouldn't dream of saying you have no soh!

Just as well she did not have to be above suspicion. Wasn't she married to her brother, and moved on from J Caesar to Mark Anthony who said, according to Shakespeare, "I found you as a morsel cold upon dead Caesar's trencher; nay, you were a fragment."

Most of the Ptolemy family had incestuous marriages - presumably to keep the blood line pure, though that's just a guess.

All the Pharaohs did. They married their sisters. They became very inbred. Some people think that was happened with Tutankhamen . His father was very odd!

I seem to remember (may be wrong) that buried with/near Tutankhamen were two little newborns or foetuses with his DNA which were deformed and non-viable. Inbreeding was not as good for the dynasty as they thought it would be.

Quite correct. His wife was his half sister. Daughter of Nertiti and Akhenaten.
Tuts mother was a lesser queen who seems to have disappeared from history after the birth.

GN is nothing if not informative. European royals rather fond of keeping it in the family too. Queen Victoria passed on haemophilia gene to a lot of GSs , GGSs etc
Xi Jinping is new top man in China. He spent 6 years in his youth doing physical labour in the countryside - during the Cultural Revolution. Some say this should help him to empathise with the rural poor.
This has led me to wonder if one of the sacrifices we should demand of our cabinet members is prior experience of manual labour on a non-mechanised farm. Or some other job maybe, as there are not too many vacancies as apprentice peasant in the UK right now? Any suggestions or nominations.
I think I would just like to get the ball rolling, how about George Osbornea stint of shelf stacking on the night shift while trying to look after 3 young children in the day time.

Yes but where did Victoria's haemophilia gene come from? Girls get it from their fathers and her father didn't have it!

Back to the points from the classics. I'm reading 'The Prime Minister' by Anthony Trollope ( a tip from GN books thread) and all this corruption and newspaper gossip was going on in his novel written in 1870. Sometimes I feel he must have written it last week.

I don't know what to think about Cameron. He comes over as well meaning and honest but I suppose its the circles he moves in. He can't just cancel them out. But at least his connections are not dangerous for the country.

You can get spontaneous mutations. She probably though got it from her mother. It is recessive so only gives the disease in men as it is a lethal gene if inherited from both parents. Remember the high infant mortality in those days may have masked its prescence in former generations. A woman with it couldn't live beyond puberty.
The gene is carried by the female on one of the X chromosomes. It only manifests in males as they are missing a bit of the x giving them a y instead.
This proves women are superior as men are lacking something![hsmile]

Her father was quite old when she was conceived. Could this have been a factor in gene mutation?

Another possibility - there was a race on for the royal dukes to produce a legitimate heir after Princess Charlotte, Prinny's daughter, died in childbirth.
Could Victoria's mother have helped the succession along with a bit of outside assistance? She was ambitious, and certainly did not balk at an unofficial relationship later in her life.

I think Charlotte died from postpartum haemorrhage.

Yes. I was being rather general with "in childbirth". What a difference modern medicine would have made at various points in history, or would it all have turned out the same in the end?

Damn, no one is entertained by my notion of our dear leaders doing 6 years low paid work before they are allowed to become MPs?
Hunt the health secretary anyone? A gift...

They are so conniving the low paid jobs would make them millionaires!

But they wouldn't would they jeni because poverty is an energy draining trap. Our dear leaders are full of pontification about hard working people getting on and improving their lot (as opposed to the lazy sods on benefits) - but if you are struggling along on a very low wage, counting every penny, how are you going to improve your lot? It is an American con - work hard, everyone can make it and get rich. This actually only applies to a small minority who have the resources (emotional, intellectual, family support and financial) to start their own businesses. But how many self made millionaires are there who really started with nothing - having to pay for a roof over their heads, nobody to lend them £100 ?
Ok - I would like to see Hunt the health minister installed into a nasty rented room with a dependent 5 year old and no relations living anywhere near. And a promise of a job wiping the bottoms of people with advanced dementia. And see how he gets on.

I like the idea, Jess. Perhaps they could raise the age at which you can stand as an MP and require all candidates to have done a real job (not as a political hack) and earned a living for a couple of years at least. Or bring back National Service!

JessM The image of the smirking Health Minister wiping demented bottoms and living in a nasty rented room is, naturally, a pleasing one, but it would be appalling to inflict him upon a defenceless five-year-old.

I think that something needs to be done to ensure that MPs have some connection with the society in which most of us live. Dear God, not National Service Lilygran but perhaps some sort of age restriction and job qualification (i.e. having done a "real" job) as you suggest.

I should also like to see a quota of female ministers in the Cabinet. At the moment 15.6% of the Cabinet is female. If it's left to Old Etonians the balance will never change.

Five year olds, defenceless absent Don't know about that. Faced with an exhausted parent ...

I can still never think of Hunt without smirking at the R4 worst ever online gaffe!

Mr Hunt the Culture Secretary as he was known then.

absent, if you think 5-year-olds are 'defenceless', I'd love to introduce you to my youngest GS.