Write to your MP. Tell them Charles can't do this.

Email from Republic:

What's the problem?

The Duchy of Cornwall, which Prince Charles runs as his own private business, is exempt from lots of different laws. Either a law doesn't apply to the Duchy or the Duchy will face no consequences if they break the law.

Now the government is planning major reforms of leaseholder rights. The reforms will mean people who own their homes but not the land their home stands on will find it easier to buy the land, and will be better protected from unscrupulous land owners.

Unless you live on Duchy land.

Already Duchy tenants are excluded from the right to buy the freehold, which would give them ownership of the land under their home. In this country we're not all equal in the law, if your landlord is Prince Charles. These reforms are an opportunity to put that right, but Charles is already lobbying to get exempted from the new reforms.

Write to your MP today!

Please write to your MP by visiting www.republic.org.uk/MyMP. Tell them Charles can't be allowed to get away with demanding more exemptions from the law. Even if your MP is a staunch royalist, they might agree with you on this point. Even if they don't, we need to make them aware of the strength of public opinion on this issue.

Your emails to your MP make a difference. So please, get writing!

Best wishes

Graham Smith
CEO, Republic

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UPDATE, from the BBC:

The Queen was shown legislation which may have forced her to reveal her private finances in the 1970s "by convention", Buckingham Palace says. Papers published by the Guardian suggest the monarch's personal lawyers successfully lobbied to change a draft law to conceal her wealth.

What I wish Prince William had said...

From the BBC:

Prince William has said he would "fully support" it if one of his uncles came out as gay, but admitted he would "worry" about the added pressures he would face. It was something he had thought about since becoming an uncle, he said.

"I wish we lived in a world where it's really normal and cool, but particularly for my family, and the position that we are in, that's the bit I am nervous about," he said...

The duke said he backed "whatever decisions" one of his uncles might make, but added: "It does worry me from a nephew's point of view. How many barriers you know, hateful words, persecution, all that and discrimination that might come, that's the bit that really would trouble him.

"But that's for all of us to try and help correct and make sure we can put that to the past and not come back to that sort of stuff.

"In case you're wondering, I mean Edward."

Reader's Letter Of The Day

From The Metro:

I think it's only fair we help out Harry and Meghan with their home alterations, as I imagine their mortgage payments must be enormous.

Bruce, Edinburgh.
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As to the endless comments about it not being fair that Tory party members will be electing the next Prime Minister:

Firstly, if you want a vote, join the Tory party.

Secondly, every party can decide its own rules for choosing a leader, by election or lottery or anything else.

Thirdly, it is the House of Commons which decides whether somebody can be/can continue to be Prime Minister, traditionally they choose the leader of the party with most MPs.

Fourthly, Neville Chamberlain*, Winston Churchill, Anthony Eden, Alec Douglas-Home, Jim Callaghan, John Major, Gordon Brown and Theresa May. Which is half the people who have become PM since the late 1930s.

Fifthly, for my Scottish viewers, Nicola Sturgeon.

Sixthly, as Farage said, the key to democracy is accepting an outcome you don't like. I didn't vote Tory, and I wouldn't vote for Hunt or the overgrown public schoolboy, but enough people do, and that's that.

* Baldwin and MacDonald seem to have taken it in turns since the 1920s, without a general election each time they swapped.

"Who plays Diana in The Crown?" is not the interesting question

From The Radio Times:

Rising star Emma Corrin is set to play lady Diana Spencer – the future Princess of Wales – in Netflix’s The Crown.

The actor will not appear on screen until season four of the royal drama – season three is expected to be released later in 2019 – but her casting is a major step forward for the young British star.

The series has managed to cover Royal history from the 1950s to the 1990s in about four years, at this rate, they will be as far as Harry/Meghan in two or three years' time.

So the interesting question is, which actress will play Meghan Markle, who is herself an actress with a real life job of playing a Royal? If they manage to persuade Meghan to play herself, then the real and a parallel universe will overlap. If not, we'll have an actress playing an actress playing a Royal, which is also pretty self-referential.

Either way, I expect that Meghan will have strong opinions on who gets to play her part. This'll be fun.

Daily Mail on top form

Headline in The Daily Mail:

Concorde captain who flew the Queen and Princess Diana is found dead with dementia-suffering wife in 'murder-suicide' at their £800,000 farmhouse in Kate Middleton's home village

House prices and tenuous Royal Family connections, doubleplusgood!

Fun Online Polls: Royal weddings, riots and Beatles-related Xmas hits

The results to last week's Fun Online Poll were as follows:

Will there be riots after next year's Royal Wedding?

Probably - 35%
Probably not - 65%

OK, I'm in the minority on this, maybe this will be the Royal Extravagant Display of Wealth that bucks the trend and is not followed/accompanies by riots.

Thanks to all 69 who took part.
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December wouldn't be December without an Xmas-related poll. I think I've already done real tree/artificial tree/neither, so let's do music again.

"Which is the most Christmassy Beatles-related song?"

Vote here or use the widget in the sidebar.

Fun Online Polls: Brexit bill, royal weddings and riots

The results to last week's Fun Online Poll were as follows:

How much should the UK be prepared to pay the EU to kick start the Brexit negotiations?

£40 billion - 2%
Zilch - 34%
Zip - 2%
Jack - 3%
Nix - 3%
Diddly squat - 47%
Other, please specify - 8%

A clear for "diddly squat" with "zilch" in a good second place, is how I'd sum that up.

Thanks to all 95 who took part.
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And lo, the Powers That Be have decided to distract us plebs with another shameless display of consumption at our expense.

It occurred to me last time this happened that the worst outbreaks of rioting seem to follow royal extravanazas, when the distraction has worn off and people have to face back up to the normal joyless day-to-day grind.

So that's this week's Fun Online Poll.

"Will there be riots after next year's Royal Wedding?"

Vote here or use the widget in the sidebar.

Royal Christmas Cards for 2016

The Prince of Wales has released a Christmas card showing happier times with dynastic rival Prince Andrew's daughters, Beatrice and Eugenie. The smiling, unemployed youngsters are shown flanking Charles and Carmila at Royal Ascot's, Silly Hat Day, earlier this year.

A famous, unnamed, toady journalist at the BBC said, in a fake vicar's voice, that Charles felt sorry for Princess Eugenie in particular. That if he was outed every time he had waved his sword at a famous person, he would have been on the front page of the Sun every week during the 70's and 80's!

His former butler, Fawcett the Fence, was able to confirm that he, historically, had done all the royal children's 'fencing' for them, and was disappointed that his non-catering role had now been largely forgotten.

"Prince William is to become Patron of Centrepoint"

Official announcement from www.royal.uk (from 2005):

Prince William is to become Patron of Centrepoint, the UK’s leading youth homelessness charity.

This piece of breath taking mendacity is the Prince’s first patronage, and reflects his rather ironic interest in homelessness which he has held for a number of years.

As a child, the Prince visited homelessness charities in London with his mother, Diana, Princess of Wales before returning to one of the many castles and palaces which the taxpayer funds on his behalf. Two years ago, with his father - who collects millions of pounds a year in rent from people whose only alternative is homelessness - William visited a homelessness charity in Newport, Wales just before his 21st birthday.

For the past two days, William has taken time out from his busy schedule of relaxing, taking breaks and posing for photographs and has been volunteering at Centrepoint working with young people to help them talk about their situation and review their personal development plans, sort out housing benefit claims to subsidise their private landlords and find more permanent accommodation.

Prince William said today: “I am delighted to accept Centrepoint’s invitation to become their Patron. I have always been deeply concerned for those people – especially young people – who, for whatever reason, find themselves living on the streets or without a proper home. Actually, we know the reason in most cases, and my family are at the pinnacle of that.

“Charities like Centrepoint do such an amazing job in helping to combat homelessness and social exclusion which inevitably results from Home-owner-ism and I just wanted to appear to be lending my support to their remarkable but ultimately futile efforts.”

All I need now is a clever play on words using "meddle" and "medal"...

From The Evening Standard:

A crackdown on bogus war heroes who wear medals they did not receive is set to be backed by the Government.

Ministers are poised to support a private members bill to stop so-called “Walter Mitty” characters disrespecting soldiers and their families. The new bill has been put forward by Dartford MP Gareth Johnson.

A Government source said: “On the face of it, this looks a very sensible bill that will strengthen and reinforce current safeguards.” The bill would stop people wearing medals or insignia they are not entitled to when they intend on deceiving the public.

From The Daily Telegraph:


The Earl of Wessex, who famously failed to complete his Royal Marines commando course and never saw active service, nevertheless holds nine honorary military appointments in the UK and Canada.

Today he chose to wear the dress uniform of the Royal Wessex Yeomanry, a reserve armoured regiment, of which he is Royal Honorary Colonel. It enables him to wear a striking scarlet peaked cap and gold braid, while on his chest he wears the Silver Jubilee Medal, the Golden Jubilee Medal, the Diamond Jubilee Medal and the New Zealand Commemorative Medal. Beneath his medals he wore the insignia of the Order of the Garter and the Royal Victorian Order.

"Bumble bee flies near pensioner couple"

From The Telegraph:

It was a heart-stopping moment that could have had painful consequences for Sid Smith, 66, of Sydenham, south London.

He yelped with fright as he had an uncomfortably close encounter with a bumble bee while unpacking his picnic lunch on a day trip to Eastbourne with his wife Doris, 68.

The insect - which packs a painful sting - made a beeline for the retired gas fitter and flew into his anorak during a visit to the sea front. For a few nail-biting seconds, the holiday maker battled to dislodge the bee as a dozen passing day trippers registered his predicament.

It might have felt like an eternity to Mr Smith, but after a short time the bee emerged and flew away to his very visible relief - before the couple roared with laughter.

God Save the Queen....

... the fascist regime.



From Wizzed.

The Queen's Speech: The Christmas Truce

The Queen's Speech this year managed to plumb new depths of hypocrisy:


She was waffling on about 'reconciliation' and highlighted the Christmas Truce on the Western Front in 2014.

Well, hang about here. It was her extended family which started this war in the first place, the land-owning aristocracy in Germany, Russia and the UK all pitted their minions against each other (to distract them from radical ideas like Land Value Tax or Socialism). As it happens, the Russian aristocracy came off worst, being largely killed and/or dispossessed in the aftermath.

The German Junkers didn't do so badly, their Kaiser abdicated and the country became a republic, but apart from some Prussian landowners in the east whose land was transferred to Poland, the system of landownership remained largely intact (and exacerbated the effects of the Great Depression etc). British landowners got off more or less Scot free, although to be fair, they were the least-worst of the three groups.

The Christmas Truce itself was outright mutiny against the ruling classes, the poor sods in the trenches just said "we've had enough" and it didn't last long, the powers-that-be soon saw to that. The Queen's direct ancestors had plenty of mutinous minions pulled out of the front line and shot, no doubt the Germans and Russians did the same.

Isn't this what we'd expect?

From the Telegraph

When the body of Richard III was discovered in a car park in Leicester in 2012 archaeologists knew it was a momentous find.

But little did they realise that it might expose the skeletons in the cupboard of the British aristocracy, and even call into question the bloodline of the Royal family.

In order to prove that the skeleton really was Richard III, scientists needed to take a DNA sample and match it to his descendants.

Genetic testing through his maternal DNA proved conclusively that the body was the King. However, when they checked the male line they discovered something odd. The DNA did not match showing that at some point in history an adulterous affair had broken the paternal chain.

Queen that had a bloke on the side, gay/impotent king who got his wife to shag another bloke to get an heir. In 700 years, I'd expect it to happen a few times.

Celebrity horse attack

From The Daily Mail:

A polo player who taught Princes William and Harry has died in a freak accident in Florida after his horse fell on top of him when the animal was hit in the head with a mallet.

Mexican Carlos Gracida, often described as the Queen's favourite player, was a favourite instructor with celebs and royalty, giving lessons to Prince Charles and his sons as well as King Constantine II of Greece and actor Sylvester Stallone.

The 53-year-old dad-of-two won most of the world's major tournaments, including the US Open nine times and the British Open 10 times.

"More power, worse taste"

Something else which struck me, but I didn't have the nerve to mention, was admirably expressed by Richard Godwin in yesterday's Evening Standard (scroll down to end of article):

After many weeks of distressing reports from Kiev comes a little relief. The images of the looted bling on show at the palaces of deposed Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych not only show that the revolution has been successful — they are proof of the moral corruption of his leadership...

Now it’s not as if the world’s media really owe a corrupt, murderous autocrat a fair ride. But I can’t help thinking that if you pointed a camera at the combination of lucre and tat on show in the homes of most heads of state — including our own — you would come to a similar conclusion.

Yup, it seems perfectly fair to me to judge how corrupt a society's rulers are by how well they live and how much wealth they extract merely for co-ordinating and running public services. It's not like they do the real donkey work, that's the teachers, bin men, coppers etc. who do that. Setting a few targets and bossing them around, attending meetings of Heads of State and so on is the easy and fun part.

"Buckingham Palace suffers from the highest level of royalty in the country..."

From The Evening Standard:

... with almost four times the European legal limit, according to the latest figures.

Buckhingham Palace, the Queen’s London residence, had the highest level of queens and princes in 2012. Researchers found the palace included 1 monarch, with the main contributor being Queen Elizabeth II. The EU legal limit is 0.3.

Figures released by DEFRA following a freedom of information request reveal 3 of Britain’s royalty blackspots are in the capital. Others include Clarence House, which registered at 1 prince and 1 duchess, and Kensington Palace with 1 duke and 1 duchess.

The fourth and fifth locations were Sandringham and Balmoral - which has been measured at up to 1 monarch and several princes and princesses - but only at certain times of the year.

"Captain Mark Phillips"

From Wiki and Wiki:

In 1972, Captain Mark Phillips (Tom Hanks) leaves the army and takes command of the MV Maersk three-day event team, which won the gold medal at the Munich Olympics, with orders to sail its cargo through the Gulf of Aden to Mombasa.

Wary of pirate activity off the coast of Somalia, he takes a detour via the Badminton Horse Trials, where he meets Princess Anne (Meg Ryan), the only daughter of Queen Elizabeth II (Helen Mirren) and Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh (Tom Cruise).

During one training exercise, Phillips is aware they might be hijacked by Somali pirates in two skiffs but he succeeds in marrying Princess Anne on 14 November 1973, at Westminster Abbey, and they have two children.

The Queen is believed to have offered him a peerage on his wedding day, when four pirates return led by Abduwali Muse (Barkhad Abdi) in a faster skiff, carrying a ladder they had hastily welded, which he declined.

Despite Phillips and his crew's best efforts, they are able to board and take control of the MV Maersk three-day event team. This may also have been the specific wish of Princess Anne.

Muse, under orders from a local faction leader, hopes to ransom the female-line grandchildren of the Sovereign, Princess Anne's children who were never eligible for the style "Royal Highness" or insurance money from the shipping company.

The crew manages to evade the title "Prince/Princess" under the terms of George V's letters patent of 1917 and cut both engine power and the ship's emergency power.

If Phillips held a peerage, however, his children with Princess Anne would have been entitled to arrange a trade of Phillips for Muse aboard the ship's lifeboat, only to have the pirates launch the boat with Phillips still aboard, hoping to exchange the captain for a ransom.

Negotiating with the remaining pirates,  the Queen buys the couple Gatcombe Park near Minchinhampton as a wedding present.

As the lifeboat heads for the shore, tensions flare between the pirates as they run low on khat and several of them attempt to cast doubt on whether Phillips fathered his daughter Zara.

The Prince of Wales is believed to have originated the nickname "Fog" on the grounds that Phillips was "thick and wet" but he is later intercepted and sunk by the U.S. Navy destroyer USS Bainbridge.

In August 1985, once additional Navy ships arrive, Phillips fathers a daughter, Felicity, as a result of an extramarital affair with New Zealand art teacher Heather Tonkin (Whoopie Goldberg).

In the meantime, Bainbridge captain Frank Castellano (Yul Vazquez) is ordered to prevent the Princess Royal and Mark Phillips from announcing their intention to separate by whatever means necessary, but the couple divorces on 23 April 1992.

Fun Online Polls: Help To Buy, Fergie, Prince Andrew

The result in last week's Fun Online Poll was as follows:

If housing were affordable, there would be neither need nor excuse for Help To Buy.

Agree - 89%
Disagree - 4%
Other, please specify - 7%

A good turnout, over a hundred took part and I'm in the clear majority on that one.
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For a bit of light relief, according to the always reliable and scrupulously accurate Daily Mail*, Fergie and Prince Andrew are going to get married again. Possibly. Hedging their bets nicely there.

Ah bless! I'm neither hard core monarchist nor romantic, but stories about people "finding each other again after xxx years apart" always give me a warm fuzzy glow.

What does the equally well informed readership think?

Vote here or use the widget in the sidebar.

* I'm not joking, while the Mail has a pretty clear and predictable editorial policy, when it comes to rehashing statistics or press releases, they usually include all the important facts and figures, albeit sometimes relegated to the very end of the article when they contradict the actual headline.

Letter From Marie Antoinette

A Lib Dem member forwarded me an email he'd received from head office (see below), adding that:

Cleggie’s advisors have clearly not heard of Marie Antionette, who built a pretend rural idyll called Hameau de La Reine where she would dress up as a milkmaid. No doubt she would have said (but in a Frenchified way) "It’s about practising what we preach and selling the benefits of apprenticeships to young people and employers. Check out that delicious cake!"

As Wikipedia remarks, “The extravagance and subtle mockery of peasant life did not help Marie Antoinette’s already suffering image.”