The Null Device
Posts matching tags 'the royal family'
2012/1/17
As Britain sloughs into a new age of austerity, with the government cutting services, closing community facilities and admonishing the public to get by with less, the Queen prepares for her diamond jubilee, the 60th anniversary of her wedding (which, incidentally, also took place in a period of austerity). The diamond jubilee is a significant event in any sufficiently long-lived monarch's life, and so celebrations (including an extra bank holiday, not something bottom-line-driven Tories take lightly) have been on the cards since before the financial crisis. Some might have expected that a government trying to portray itself as almost painfully reasonable would insist on low-key celebrations, or at least not ply the world's richest woman with gifts paid for by the straitened taxpayer. However, this turned out not to be the case, as it emerged that education minister Michael Gove (i.e., the chap responsible for cutting school budgets and scrapping the Education Maintenance Allowance), apparently a passionate monarchist of the old school, pushed for the Queen to be given a new royal yacht, costing £60m, as a token of the public's gratitude.
The education secretary writes: "In spite, and perhaps because of the austere times, the celebration should go beyond those of previous jubilees and mark the greater achievement that the diamond anniversary represents."
He suggested "a gift from the nation to her majesty" such as "David Willetts's excellent suggestion of a royal yacht".In Gove's view, the beneficence of Her Royal Highness, and the must reach epic proportions, worthy of a North Korean God-Emperor, given that the little people were expected to graciously accept the money that isn't keeping their libraries open or providing services to the vulnerable being spent on a royal yacht. Unsurprisingly, that other astute observer of the public mood, Prince Charles, is emphatically in favour of the idea (presumably with the proviso that the yacht be of a traditional design, and not some ghastly modern monstrosity).
Unfortunately for the government, the public's deference to its aristocratic superiors isn't what it used to be and the proposal was met with incredulity, forcing the Prime Minister to make a show of rejecting it, before quietly backing a variant of the proposal. The yacht will now officially be a training facility, with only part of it serving as a stately pleasure boat for the Royal Family; there will also be the option of hiring it out as conference facilities, and some undefined part of the funds will come from private donors. (Already Canada, which has its own hardline Tory government, has pledged £10m.)
Meanwhile, here are a few suggestions for things other than a royal yacht that £60m could buy.
2011/4/26
Christopher Hitchens weighs in on the Royal Wedding, and, as usual, pulls no punches. The Hitch in full form is a splendid thing to behold:
A hereditary monarch, observed Thomas Paine, is as absurd a proposition as a hereditary doctor or mathematician. But try pointing this out when everybody is seemingly moist with excitement about the cake plans and gown schemes of the constitutional absurdity's designated mother-to-be. You don't seem to be uttering common sense. You sound like a Scrooge. I suppose this must be the monarchical "magic" of which we hear so much: By some mystic alchemy, the breeding imperatives for a dynasty become the stuff of romance, even "fairy tale." The usually contemptuous words fairy tale were certainly coldly accurate about the romance quotient of the last two major royal couplings, which brought the vapid disco-princesses Diana and Sarah (I decline to call her "Fergie") within range of demolishing the entire mystique. And, even if the current match looks a lot more wholesome and genuine, its principal function is still to restore a patina of glamour that has been all but irretrievably lost.
For Prince William at least it was decided on the day of his birth what he should do: Find a presentable wife, father a male heir (and preferably a male "spare" as well), and keep the show on the road. By yet another exercise of that notorious "magic," it is now doubly and triply important that he does this simple thing right, because only his supposed charisma can save the country from what monarchists dread and republicans ought to hope for: King Charles III. (Monarchy, you see, is a hereditary disease that can only be cured by fresh outbreaks of itself.) An even longer life for the present queen is generally hoped for: failing that a palace maneuver that skips a generation and saves the British from a man who—like the fruit of the medlar—went rotten before he turned ripe.
Myself, I wish her well and also wish I could whisper to her: If you really love him, honey, get him out of there, and yourself, too. Many of us don't want or need another sacrificial lamb to water the dried bones and veins of a dessicated system. Do yourself a favor and save what you can: Leave the throne to the awful next incumbent that the hereditary principle has mandated for it.
2011/4/25
As the Royal Wedding approaches, progressive commentator Johann Hari makes a case against the monarchy, and what he terms its subtly corroding effect on the nation's psyche:
Of course, when two people get married, it's a sweet sight. Nobody objects to that part. On the contrary: republicans are the only people who would let William Windsor and Kate Middleton have the private, personal wedding they clearly crave, instead of turning them into stressed-out, emptied-out marionettes of monarchy that are about to jerk across the stage. We object not to a wedding, but to the orgy of deference, snobbery, and worship for the hereditary principle that will take place before, during and after it.
Kids in Britain grow up knowing that we all bow and curtsy in front of a person simply because of their unearned, uninteresting bloodline. This snobbery subtly soaks out through the society, tweaking us to be deferential to unearned and talentless wealth, simply because it's there.
We live with a weird cognitive dissonance in Britain. We are always saying we should be a meritocracy, but we shriek in horror at the idea that we should pick our head of state on merit. Earlier this month, David Cameron lamented that too many people in Britain get ahead because of who their parents are. A few minutes later, without missing a beat, he praised the monarchy as the best of British. Nobody laughed. Most monarchists try to get around this dissonance by creating – through sheer force of will – the illusion that the Windsor family really is steeped in merit, and better than the rest of us. This is a theory that falls apart the moment you actually hear Charles Windsor speak.Monarchy, after all, is just a polite word for "hereditary dictatorship"; the difference between a monarchy and North Korea is the layers of glamour and mystique from centuries of submission and acclimatisation, which still remains in kitschy old fairy tales of wise kings, beautiful princesses and enchanted castles. Granted, in a constitutional monarchy like Britain's, in which the monarch has no power but to sit in a gilded cage, cut the odd ribbon and mouth the words written by elected politicians, the idea of monarchy is watered down almost to homeopathic levels, though the unpalatable reality of what a real monarchy would be like intrudes from time to time. For example, it is still a tradition for monarchs to act as a slightly peculiar global club and invite other crowned heads to their occasions, even if those crowned heads are actual hereditary dictators of the old school, like the Crown Prince of Bahrain, whose government recently massacred pro-democracy protesters. (The crown prince has withdrawn, much to his regret, though royals from Saudi Arabia and Swaziland, blessed with less immediately conspicuous human-rights issues, are still coming. Kim Jong Il, however, has not been invited, being too much of a hopped-up nouveau-riche to make the club.)
In a few days' time, Britain will have its first Royal Wedding since 1981; though, while it's big news in some places (such as the US), Britain seems somewhat more apathetic about the whole thing, particularly compared to Charles and Diana's nuptials:
The street party response has been disappointing – many fewer than 1981 and a more markedly southern retro- flavour to those that are planned. But 1981 was practically BC in terms of the changes to the kinds of communities that have street parties – company towns, motor towns, mining villages, the lot. After all, 1981 was the year of the Specials' "Ghost Town" and every famous riot going, but there were still communities to fight for. Now it's all grassed over for Call Centre and Office Park Britain. Gone. How could you expect cheery knees-ups everywhere?
What sociologists call our "reference groups" have changed. For the UK over-class, it's their global-rich peers (they compare themselves to Wall Street, Silicon Valley or Shanghai). And for the uniquely durable British underclass, it's Lottery winners, football players and entertainers, people in the low-end celebrity press, Fickle Fingers of Fate people. To stay relevant, royal people and styles have both to acknowledge all this, yet still stay aloof from it.Which is not to say Britain doesn't have communities with cohesion—one of them just rioted against the opening of a Tesco—but they're not the sorts of places that put up the bunting of Royalism, except perhaps in the most backhandedly sarcastic way (at the markets of Hackney, they're flogging boxing-match-flyer-style tea towels and commemorative mugs with the wrong prince printed on them to the bohemians and avant-bourgeoisie). Meanwhile, in the harrumphingly blue-ribboned Tory shires, they're probably too cosseted in their SUVs and too busy with serious business to spend much time putting up bunting and organising egg-and-spoon races; it's not really the sort of thing you can hire some Polish and/or Lithuanian workers to do either. Meanwhile, everybody else thanks the two young people for a long weekend to fly to Spain for and/or commiserates Ms. Middleton on the impending end of her life as a private individual.
2011/4/17
London folk singer Emmy The Great has written a song in back-handed tribute to the Royal Wedding. Titled Mistress England, it is dedicated to the mothers of the young women whom Prince William didn't end up choosing as his future queen, and it positively drips with a very British, very measured wit:
The subject has inspired a touching, tender song. "Fold up your clean white invitations/ There is no need to keep them now," run the lyrics. "He found a Queen/ He chose another." The middle eight conjures distant churchbells, but in the Union Jack-decked garden, "no celebration here". "I'm two years younger than Kate Middleton," says Moss. "I honestly knew girls who applied to St Andrews to meet him. Presumably they're a bit miffed now."
"I keep trying to put myself in Kate Middleton's place," says Moss. "She did a degree, right, that's how she met him? I have never, ever heard it said what she studied there. But I do know what boots she likes to wear. That's a bit depressing, isn't it?"
2010/11/17
In major news stories recently:
- Couple who met at university to marry, as the Caledonian Mercury's refreshingly unhyperbolic coverage puts it:
William Windsor (or possibly Wales or possibly Saxe-Coburg-Gotha) and Kate Middleton, both 28, met at St Andrews University eight years ago.
Mr Windsor is a Flight Lieutenant in the RAF – and also a prince.
Wall-to-wall, dewy-eyed hysterical coverage can be found in every other media outlet.
- The latest thing from Apple is not the long-awaited multitasking iPad OS, nor any shiny new gadget, but that iTunes will finally sell the albums of a band who broke up 40 years ago. Granted, the Beatles were significant, but were they really in a whole godlike league above a lot of other artists, such as, let's say randomly, Led Zeppelin or Michael Jackson? (Indeed, I've seen an argument that they were only the second most influential pop group, after Kraftwerk.)
Meanwhile, Fox News broke the news that Apple would be distributing "Manchester's favourite mopheads". I wonder whether that's a mistake or something they deliberately put in to maintain their carefully crafted image of not giving a shit about offending foreign sensibilities.
2003/5/12
After the BBC's 100 Greatest Britons series (in which Winston Churchill barely pipped Princess Diana for #1, and genuinely deserving candidates like Charles Darwin were left in the dust), bolshy TV broadcaster Channel 4 have compiled a list of the 100 Worst Britons. Tony Blair is #1 (though if these were voted on by the Guardian-reader types who watch C4, it's hartly surprising), followed by Jordan (she's some kind of model or something, right?) and Margaret Thatcher. Other notable figures: The Queen is #10 (one behind Geri Halliwell), Liam Gallagher is at #11 (though you'd think his ex-wife Patsy Kensit would get a mention on the strength of her complete inability to act), Prince Charles at #24 (Diana is apparently still too much of a national saint to merit the list), Harry Potter is at #35, Tracy Eminem at #41, Pete Waterman at #45, and Loony Left Red Ken at #50. (via VM)
2003/2/18
New claims have emerged that the Queen Mother, who died in her sleep last year aged 101, was euthanased with a massive dose of heroin. It is claimed that she saw it as her duty to avoid dying at an inappropriate time (such as her daughter's jubilee), and thus elected to die a "mercy death" beforehand. Euthanasia is somewhat of a tradition in the British monarchy; the terminally ill George V. was euthanased with cocaine and morphine, so that his death would make the morning papers rather than the "less appropriate" evening ones. Nonetheless, royalists are outraged by the allegations. Euthanasia and assisted suicide are currently illegal in Britain, with terminally ill commoners forced to travel to places like Switzerland to die with dignity.
2002/1/14
The youngest of the late Princess Diana's children, Prince Harry, has been committed to a drug rehabilitation clinic, after it emerged that not only had he drunk alcohol on several occasions, but had also smoked the evil weed Marihuana.
It was hoped he would meet heroin addicts and get a glimpse of the dangers of drugs.
Yes, of course. Marijuana is a gateway drug, and those who do it are likely to go on to harder drugs such as heroin. Also, masturbation causes blindness, and the hair of a seventh son cures warts. I'm sorry, but that has been debunked, and nobody other than William Bennett believes that anymore. Though, then again, we're talking about the Royal Family here...
(Then again, if you were in his shoes, wouldn't you be getting smashed regularly?)
2000/6/28
Republicanism: it's not just for Australians anymore. Well, maybe it is, but the Poms are making skeptical noises about the monarchy. Given that they foot the bill for maintaining it, they arguably have more right to than the Australians do. To be precise, it has been commented that the Royal Family should move to more modern (and cheaper) accomodation; among the candidates the BBC has raised are the Millennium Dome (a silly and expensive novelty in London) and Battersea Power Station (wasn't that meant to become the World's Biggest Cinema or somesuch?). As far as making the royals pay their way, there could be some ideas there. Given how the royal family is, for the most part, the world's most popular soap opera, why not sell them to Aaron Spelling or someone, or install webcams in Buckingham Palace and sell advertising on the site?
2000/4/5
Britain's Princess Anne condemns living alone as 'selfish':
``It could be more convenient just to live all by yourself but it means that you don't understand the impact of your life on other people's lives, and how you depend on other people all the time. It's no good.''
Wait until overpopulation kicks in; then the selfish bleeders who live alone will really cop it.