This article in today's The Times is without doubt the most sarcastic, vitriollic and thoroughly enjoyable read I've come across in years
As with most commentary, it's 40% sarcasm and 49% entertainment but I still find myself agreeing with most of it... and rolling in the aisles at the same timeTO BE born British is to become used to many things, very quickly. The miserable weather. The shockingly bad education system. But on the other hand, these have their advantages. The rain gives us our glorious greenery. The flagrant failures of formal education mean that wild card wits such as myself know enough to bail out at 16 and not get chopped down into bland Euro-portions by the intellectual sausage machines of academe.
But in my experience, one never gets used to being insulted by the ruling house of this country, no matter how weary one’s bones or how thick one’s skin.
Of course, the whole basis of monarchy is savage and uncivilised, relying as it does on ancestor-worship, smoke and mirrors and superstition; it makes us look less rather than more developed than those who rely on their country’s citizens to be sensible enough to elect their own head of state. Without meaning to diss the Third World, a King of Tonga seems far more appropriate than a Queen of England.
On a personal level, I would also add that the concept of royalty is ceaselessly insulting to true Protestants, with the Divine Right of Kings and the loathsome idea that a monarch — no matter how cretinous, murderous or low — is closer to God than an “ordinary” human being; that is, a human being created in the image of God! But then, one hardly expects a bunch of inbred, bone-headed knuckle-draggers like the Windsors to grapple with significant theological issues.
No, it is the banal, everyday, humdrum insults dealt out to the British people by the House of Windsor which really stick in the craw. And the most hackneyed and contemptuous of all? Throw a wedding at it! Yes, be it rumours of homosexu- ality, of nymphomania, of financial flightiness, just chuck around the bunting and sound the trumpets and the nation will park its collective brain at the trestle tables and pig out on pageantry.
Forget for now the fact that this is a man who embodies all that is worst in both ancient and modern; the truly grotesque mating of the old expectation of blind deference with the more recent self-indulgent lack of sacrifice for a greater good. This is a “man” who urinates into a specimen jar held by his valet, who never puts his own toothpaste on its brush, who sells on gifts given to him by his humble (admittedly moronic) admirers and whose devotion to his country (“I serve,” indeed!) burns so fiercely, so intensely, that a few years back when the abolition of hunting with hounds was first suggested, declared with typical self-sacrificing dignity: “If I can’t hunt, I may as well just leave the country and go to live in Switzerland!” Gosh, doesn’t it just warm the cockles of one’s loyal English heart to know that this sceptred isle means so much to the Heir Apparent — God bless you, ’guv!
No doubt certain forelock-tugging, liege-licking seat-sniffers will by now be bleating that the poor dear sainted man deserves to be happy. But I’d bet that this is exactly the type of solid citizen who would otherwise scorn the modern cult of self-indulgence, whether the practitioners be single mothers on benefits or therapy junkies on Prozac.
No one is saying that the Prince of Wails shouldn’t be allowed to go off and marry a woman who has a face like Iggy Pop’s arse, if that’s what turns him on. But some of us refuse to understand why said Bum-Face will then be allowed to glory in the title of Princess Consort Queen in all but name. If he knew the meaning of the word honour, Prince Charles would choose once and for all between private life and public duty. But he doesn’ t, and he never has, so he won’t — he will simply continue, in the typical soft, decadent style that marks every aspect of his life, to demand the best of both worlds.
Though we never get used to being insulted by our monarchy, we are a stoic people and neither do we despair. For we know that they eventually will do for themselves; that given enough rope, they will first attempt to use it as a cummerbund, failing that attempt to tie their mistress to the royal bedstead with it, and failing that hang themselves with it — probably in pursuit of auto-throttling sexual excitement, the incompetent clowns.
In the coming months, as a good part of the nation whips itself into a knicker-wetting nuptial frenzy, we republican rotters can console ourselves with the knowledge that Charles Windsor will screw this up as surely as bad eggs is bad eggs. But for now, sound the trumpets and chuck up the bunting — because the prince of parasites is finally to marry the chief concubine, and we the punters will be paying for the privilege. Hip, hip, hooray!
Julie Birchill
The Times, Friday 11th Feb 2005
{loaths the Monarchy}
