A fairy story already going wrong!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“The Petulant Prince” or “The Cantankerous King”

     It sounds as if it ought to be the title to one of the fairy stories that Oscar wrote, a seemingly simple tale, told directly and simply with a poignantly heart-warming moral at the end.

     But this is what is laughingly called real life and though it has a ‘real’ prince, he is not the handsome ingenue all golden curls and peachy skin, no, this is an ageing man who has endured decades of being on the side-lines and now can almost feel the impress of the coronation crown on his head.  He’s well past retirement age and the passions that filled his heir apparent youth, middle age, and early old age, must now be supressed for the greater good of maintaining the position of ‘The Firm’ in the public imagination.

     The image of ‘The Firm’ (a term coined by a man who often unsettled the fantasy of the importance of the Royal Family himself) is a delicate balancing act to maintain, and there have had to have been a certain amount of dynastic acrobatics to keep ‘The Firm’ alive and well. 

     Although The Queen has played her role almost to perfection, in her studied probity, determined neutrality, and political vacuousness, the same cannot be said for her children and other members of the wider family.  Scandal, corruption, speaking out of turn, crassness, divorce, fire, and death – the back story of King Charles III is well worthy of a much saltier series than the reverential TV saga presently working its way towards the present.

     The Transition is a delicate time for any organization, but much more so for an institution that defies reason, logic, and democracy, and really needs the political and social version of smoke and mirrors to justify its existence.

     And what has our Petulant Prince (aka The Cantankerous King) done to ease the transition from QEII to CIII?  Apart from making his every public utterance sound as if he is auditioning for the Boris Karloff role in something like The Sombre Crypt, he has shown all too clearly his pettiness.

     The YouTube films doing the rounds are concerned with pens, and the intolerable pressures that such writing implements put on our new monarch.

     The first bout of pen pressure came during the televised signing of the proclamation of his new position.  The proclamation was on a large sheet of vellum (?) and Charles found that the inkwells were in the way and grimaced and imperiously tried to wave the thing away with regal hand flips while saying “I can’t be expected to move the thing!”  No indeed, moving a small piece of desk furniture is obviously a no-no for a man who has servants to iron shoelaces flat and put toothpaste on his toothbrush!

 

 

 

 

 

     The signing of the visitors’ book in Northern Ireland was even worse when, having first written down the wrong date, he discovered that his pen was leaking.  He did a mini-rampage and swore, “bloody thing!”

     This would all be quite amusing, if such entitled petulance was not from a man who had just been made head of state.  If he finds it difficult to cope with a misplaced inkwell and a leaking pen, it really doesn’t say very much for his future ability to cope with issues that might be of a little more moment!

     But if you could laugh at his various hissy fits over ink and the way it is applied to surfaces (including his fingers) there is nothing funny about the story that, while a thanksgiving service for the Queen was in progress in St Giles’ Cathedral in Edinburgh, warnings of redundancy notices were issued to staff working for the former Prince Charles in Clarence House. 

     While the move from being ‘Prince’ Charles and the heir to the throne, to being King Charles III would of necessity entail some movement – physically from Clarence House to Buckingham Palace, and administratively from Prince to King – the optics of telling staff, some of whom had worked for the Prince for decades, that their jobs were on the line while a commemorative service for the Queen was happening and before she had even been buried, was bad to say the least.  Or crass.  Or unfeeling.  Or even, un-kingly.

     Some people have been quick to defend the king and make the point that his mother had just died, and he found himself under great stress, no matter how long he had waited for the moment and how many plans had been made for a smooth transition. 

     And that is the point, plans have been made for years, every detail has been considered and planned for.  The movement of staff, or their replacement, or amalgamation or whatever must have been planned for, long in advance, so why the hugger-mugger inept and insensitive speed with which to tell long serving employees that they were going to be sacked.

     It remains that the public face of the king is now seen as a that of a petty old man, who demands everything be ‘just so’ and is enraged when it isn’t.  He could, of course, have turned any slight inconvenience into something of a joke and passed-off the moment with deft insouciance.  But he didn’t.  Because he isn’t that sort of man.  And, slight though the ink-related issues might be, the staffing inconsideration is much more worrying.

     I think that Charles starts his reign with an overarching sense of, “it could have been done differently.”

     Perhaps that might just sum him up.

    

 

Blank Resistance Now!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

While not actually apologising, the commissioner for the Met has issued a statement emphasising that the police have been reminded that the right to protest exists and that it is enshrined in law.  Is it?  I wonder.

     What are protesters against the unelected imposition of a head of state like Charles III – not him personally of course (though there could be valid objections to his assuming the role given his suspect character) – but to anyone who gets the top job because,  solely because, he happens to be his mother’s eldest son to do?

     Any attempt by the police to interpret laws in a way that restricts reasonable freedom of expression is to be resisted.  But how to resist without putting oneself in the way of considerable danger (both social, political, and legal) and of being true to the cause that you think is worth speaking out for?

     Some protesters have found a way, by holding up blank pieces of paper and having a large banner on which nothing is written.  This is a response to the ill-advised attempt by some hapless policeman to try to arrest someone (in fact a barrister) in Westminster who had held up a blank sheet of paper and asked what would have happened if he had written, “Not My King” on it.  He was promptly asked for his details which the barrister refused to give demanding to be told why he was being asked for them, “Because you said you were going to write stuff on it that may offend people around the king . . .  it may offend someone.”  That sort of response makes any use of an exclamation mark at the end of that extraordinary explanation complete redundant – and of course, inadequate.

     “May offend” is an open invitation for its use being employed to ensure our complete lack of freedom of expression.  Yes, at a time of national mourning, it could be considered crass or bad manners to protest – but being crass and bad mannered are not criminal offences.   

     At this time the police should accommodate protest and not be seen to supress it.  The police are there to protect ordinary people, they are a non-military force who serve the interests of the general public, and they should need to be reminded of their status and their duties.

     I am the first to admit that the policing of a public event like the funeral of the Queen, and the gathering of heads of state concentrating in The Abbey must be a considerable nightmare, and most people recognize that general safety means that some restriction on freedom of movement and access must be allowed.  But apart from the family event of the death of a matriarch, it must also be recognized that the whole concept of the way that this country continues to be governed is also a discussion that needs to be protected.

     If the police and the government are not careful then they will have given protesters against the anti-democratic imposition of a hereditary ruler imposed on them by tradition the simplest of all protests to show that this is not the way that they wish ruled.  All they have to do is hold up a blank piece of paper.  No protest is simpler to make: no writing or sloganizing necessary; no use of felt tips and paint brushes, just a simple blankness.

     After the vicious governmental oppression during and after the 1^st of October Referendum on Independence in 2017, a yellow ribbon became a symbol of support (my Christmas tree in 2017 was covered in them!) and the Spanish government went full paranoid and began banning the colour yellow wherever they could.  So, if you were wearing a yellow t-shirt you were not allowed to go into a football match, or enter certain government buildings, in short it became an absurdity, and the symbol of the yellow ribbon grew and grew.

     If the authorities are not careful, then the blank sheet of paper could take on a similar significance and become a potent symbol in its own right.

 

 

 

 

London Bridge is Down, Operation Unicorn has begun

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What appears after this brief introduction was written earlier this afternoon.  Since I wrote, The Queen has died.  Whatever I think of the institution of The Monarchy in British political life, I am conscious that a woman had died and that her family is mourning her loss.  I do extend my sympathy to them, as I would to anyone experiencing the death of a close family member.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My one slip from grace in my slavish following of The Guardian newspaper, was when the Independent informed readers that it would NOT print ‘royal’ news, the tittle tattle of various parasitic members of the House of Wettin, that used to (and still does) drive me to impotent fury.  Perhaps I am deluded in thinking that there was ever a proper broadsheet (in the days when the Indie was a broadsheet) that would dare not report the most trivial of non-escapades of the various princes, dukes, and other hangers-on.

     However, The Queen is not just a relic of an outmoded and undemocratic from of government, she is also the Head of State, and as such she has an importance because of her role, that little in her life has justified her for.  Whether I like it or not (and you can tell that I don’t) The Queen has an importance in our national life, and she is generally liked and admired.

     It is clear that her health has worsened, and members of the royal family have journeyed to Scotland to be with her.  She is a very old woman, and there must be an expectation that her life is coming to an end.  It must have been disconcerting, to say the least, if The Queen read the newspapers and watched social media to see the amount of informed speculation that has centred on her demise and how it would be handled.  We even know the code phrase that will be used to indicate her death, “London Bridge is down!”  And if she dies in Scotland, then “Operation Unicorn” will swing into operation which will deal with the movement of her body from wherever she dies to London.

    Of course, not only the details of what happens to her body and what ceremonial will be associated with its burial has been widely discussed, there is also the question of the succession as the crown passes to Charles III or George the whatever if he decides that to be called King Charles brings up too many memories of the people decapitating the king who was the first of that name.

     There again there is the character of the heir apparent: his unfaithfulness to his late wife; his meddling in affairs of state; his reactionary views; his general unpopularity.  The Queen has been a positive but anodyne figurehead, doing what has laughingly been described as her duty, wearing various hats, and waving to crowds.  She is revered because she has been around for a long time, and unlike so many of her relatives she has managed to maintain a low profile of well-behaved, unreachable, otherness.  Her ‘act’ will be a very difficult one to follow, and Charles (or George) has not shown himself prepared to accept the publicly (and possibly privately) undemonstrative quiescence that has marked her reign.

     Charles has ideas, and is not backward in making them known, as the ‘spider letters’ 

 

 

 

 

 

eventually made public by reporting and efforts by The Guardian highlighted.  I find it difficult to imagine the new King Charles (or George) taking a back seat and allowing the elected (ELECTED) representatives of the people to go about their work without his interference.  If he does meddle, then he risks upsetting the delicate series of compromises that allow such a grotesque form of archaic deciding on the head of state in a so-called civilized and developed country. 

     Primogeniture to decide a head of state is an absurdity, and perhaps if Charles (or George) can’t restrain himself from taking a more overt role in government than his mother did, then he could preside over the end of the institution.

     Already the whole edifice is wonky, with the car-crash interview of Andrew merely the latest in a series of scandals that illustrate with glaring obviousness the unsuitability of this family or any family to ‘rule’ a country for generation after generation merely because they happen to be one particular family.

 

What follows is written on the evening of the 8^th of September as I have escaped from the frankly ridiculous hagiography about the life of somebody who appears to have been a rather ordinary person placed in extraordinary circumstances by the actions of a randy duty-denying uncle.

 

 

 

 

 

I tried to listen to Truss giving some absurd puff to the late Queen, by saying, “she was the rock on which modern Britain was built” but listening further to her nasal, monotonous whine was way beyond my patience and I turned her off.

    I fear that I am going to have to do a great deal of turning off in the coming days, as history is re-written, being seen through the twisted bi-focals of boosting a fairly empty figurehead into a dynamic force for good.

    Given the embarrassingly gushing coverage of the Queen Mother’s life when she finally died and the humiliating lines of people waiting to see her coffin, I dread to think what repetitious garbage we are going to be forced to accept as ‘reportage’ and ‘fact’ given that the Queen was around for 70 years, meeting and chatting with the great and the good – and indeed in many cases, the clearly not so good.  And doing what?  What did the Queen actually do during her reign?

    It is a fair point to make that, given the way the relationship of the Crown with the elected parliament works, if she had actually tried to do something substantive, then there could easily have been a constitutional crisis.  There are clear (or at least clearish) limits to the power of the monarch.  In theory the power is enormous, s/he is head of state, head of the armed forces, justice is administered in his/her name, s/he is head of the established Church of England, and so on.  But if the monarch dared to exercise those powers, then the state would descend on the crown and force an abdication.

     The monarch can wield a sort of soft power and, behind the scenes, according to the reporting of newspapers like The Guardian, direct power on laws so that sections related to the interests of the royal house can be excised, or obligations erased.  But mostly the monarch can try and influence - after all, s/he has the direct ear of the prime minister, and she has a council of privy counsellors to keep her informed.  But to be that near the levers of power and being unable to press them must be frustrating, and it takes a certain type of personality to be able to be placid and allow things to happen when, in theory you are the one who could make a difference.

 

 

 

 

 

 

We are now going to have to go through the unfolding process of a state funeral, followed by a coronation.  Truss must be thanking her lucky stars that not only will she have two massive ‘Bread & Circuses” events to keep the people thinking of something other than their parlous financial states, but also, she will be in the foreground, mixing with the royal family and the Grand Gathering of the Clans of presidents, prime ministers, royals, and other VIPs to bolster up her image.  Johnson must be foaming at the mouth thinking that he has been effectively side-lined on an occasion when he could have inflated himself to an absurd extent.

     And how much is all this going to cost?  At a time when people are frightened about the coming winter because they will not be able to afford to heat themselves and eat, how can we possibly justify the millions that will be spent on what is going to be a couple of tasteless jamborees?

 

 

 

      

 

 

     

 

 

 

 

My plan would be for the power, electricity, gas, water companies to fund it all out of their obscene windfall profits.  It would only (!) cost umpteen million to back the funeral and coronation and that would be a midge bite to the billions that they have made by doing nothing – and just think how those saps laying wreaths and feeling a personal loss over a person who has barely acknowledged their existence would feel.  As usual, those suffering and taxed the most, would doff their caps and thank those who exploit them.

     You could always argue that at times of national desperation the one thing that is needed is some sort of distraction – and who doesn’t like a good funeral, and we do them so well.  And what better for a government that believes in unicorns, to have the fairy tale splendour of gilt coaches, jewelled crowns, robes, lords, choirs, and troops to keep the people happy.  I wouldn’t put it past this Tory government to give each primary school child a coronation mug and a day off, rather than ensure that they are properly fed.

 

I hope that the Queen’s death gives the British people an opportunity to re-assess the value of a royal family, with the eldest child of one particular family becoming the king and head of state.

     It is time to bury the Queen with due dignity.  And it is also time for us to bury the whole institution.   

     Let Queen Elizabeth II, be the last of her house and her line.