According to the BBC news, the only thing of note that happened today was that an obscenely wealthy 90 year woman with access to the best health care money can buy hasn’t died yet. All across the country there are elderly women and men turning 90, many of whom have had to live in poverty and survive lengthy NHS waiting lists, but that’s not news. It should be news that elderly people in this country are struggling in poverty, but they can’t afford a street party so the BBC doesn’t give a toss. It’s only news that it’s the Queen who has just turned 90, in case you haven’t noticed, and the BBC and the rest of the British media are doing their utmost to make sure that you can’t not notice.
Actually, she turned 90 in April, but she gets two dibs on birthdays because one set of presents for the wealthiest woman in the country isn’t enough. And none of that cheap tat from the Pound Shop either, except maybe the bunting. One can never have enough bunting. This is the Queen’s official birthday, as opposed to her actual birthday. Her actual birthday was a quiet family only affair, so Prince Harry can be invited to the official one.
Nicholas Witchell gushes about the non-achievements of those born to rule because he was born to drool. He has been greasing all over our TV screens in ecstatic sycophancy as he reports on the events in the manner of a North Korean state broadcaster only without their grounding in common sense and reality. Nicholas got his current job after impressing BBC bosses with his dedication and the thorough nature of his preparation. He licked his way through an entire sub-post office worth of stamps so that he was well versed in getting his tongue up the monarch’s back side.
But let’s not be churlish, Nick is a highly skilled reporter, and is able to fill minute upon interminable minute of air time with gushing praise for tiny non-achievements. The royals rarely if ever do anything of real note, and only manage non-achievements only because the media refuses to report on just how obnoxious and entitled most of them are. We don’t hear much about Prince Andrew and how he’s pals with dictators, rich businessmen convicted of procurement, and how he flies around the world playing golf at public expense. We don’t hear much about WillnKate with their non-jobs, part time playing at helicopters and full time vapidity. Just look at the bunting, isn’t the monarchy marvellous! It’s like listening to a very posh nursery school teacher going on at us for over an hour about how wonderful it is that little Sebastian has managed to get through fifteen minutes without picking his nose even though little Sebastian is sitting there with his index finger on one hand jammed very firmly up his nostril and the other scratching his bum.
Scotland on the whole seems to be immune to the dubious charms of the Windsor clan and their media tribute acts, because no one in this country is convinced that rich people putting on kilts and blasting Highland wildlife with shotguns on a private estate that’s almost the size of a small county actually counts as empathising with Scottish culture. The chances that we’ll get a referendum on the future of the monarchy from the Westminster parliament are as near to zero as makes no difference. The only referendums that Westminster offers concerning the pretensions to rule of upper class idiots with a sense of entitlement are those about Boris Johnson’s hopes of leading the Tory party.
Boris got his arse handed to him on a plate last night by Nicola Sturgeon in the ITV EU debate. The only plates that the media offers concerning the monarchy are the printed tat cheesy variety that will appear on a future edition of Bargain Hunt when an auctioneer tuts and says it’s not even worth the price of a cheeseburger.
According to a poll on Sky News this week 70% of people in the UK want to retain the monarchy. We’re going to be stuck with the world’s most highly paid benefits claimants for quite some time to come, yet oddly Channel 5 is bereft of programmes shaming them for their oversized social security claims and multiple cooncil hooses. Although to be fair you can’t shame the Windsors on account of them being utterly shameless. You can’t shame people who have been born and brought up with the unshakable belief that the world really does owe them a living. After all, the head of the family’s head is on the money, so it must be theirs by right. The rest of us just get to borrow a little bit of it occasionally.
The existence of the monarchy at the apex of the class system is what justifies the entire class system and which allows balloons like Boris Johnson and Davie Cameron to imagine that they have an entitlement to rule over us. We have an etonianocracy because of the monarchy. It’s the monarchy which provides the justification for the democratic obscenity which is the House of Lords. There can be no justification for appointees who have their posts for life if it were not for the existence of an unelected head of state who has their post for life. The monarchy symbolises that the UK is founded upon the privilege of the few and the entitlement of the rich. This is a country in which unfairness is a foundation of the constitution.
This is the god-knows-how-many-th royal sycophanfest we’ve had occupying our telly screens this year. It won’t be the last. We’re stuck with this intelligence insulting charade as long as Scotland remains a part of the United Kingdom, a convenient bunting bedecked distraction from the real issues that this country faces. Why worry about the yawning chasm between the haves and the have-nots when you can wave a Union flag and coo isn’t she marvellous. Well it’s not marvellous, and the sooner we can put an end to this circus the better. If you’re a republican, only an independent Scotland offers you any prospect at all of living in a country where we’re all equal and where we don’t have an upper class that’s born to rule and a media that’s born to drool.
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Wee Ginger Dug 
Precisely!
…so Prince Harry gets his invite…
Brilliant writing, yet again!!!
“All across the country there are elderly women and men turning 90, many of whom have had to live in poverty and survive lengthy NHS waiting lists, but that’s not news. It should be news that elderly people in this country are struggling in poverty, but they can’t afford a street party so the BBC doesn’t give a toss”
Two of the most important sentences you have written as WGD.
Thank you Paul
Couldn’t agree more.
Anent the sycophantic Nicholas Witchell, his first claim to fame was the writing of a book about the Loch Ness monster. I don’t know whether he remains a believer but I do know that for many years he came every summer to live in a caravan up Glen Urquhart.
I can’t quite understand the mentality. There was the famous incident at Klosters in the Alps when Charlie mumbled his grievances with Witchell to his sons as they were doing a photoshoot for the assembled Press. You have to ask about the culture of the BBC when its journalists can overnight become obsequious creatures for the sake of the monarchy.
I can remember when Jenny Whatshername left the BBC and the Royals behind and all of a sudden became normal.
“Bloody people, I can’t bear the man!”
Ahh, that takes me back, what a hoot.
How do I, a mere commoner, become Head of State?
Lawful answers only. And at that I rest my case.
Feudalism has never really gone away in the UK superstate/single market. It has just bided it’s time over the centuries, hiding behind it’s political front organisation the Conservative and Unionist Party along with any opposition parties it can subsume to give the veneer of choice, until such time as it no longer needs to bother with the tedious business of sharing any wealth, resources and decision making with the peasantry because it needs that same peasantry to provide things and services for it.
It is no coincidence, as Paul Mason sets out in his tract on Post Capitalism, that the latest fifty year upswing in capitalist renewal, first proposed by the Soviet economist Kondraiev (who Stalin sent to the gulag and subsequently executed for his “heresy”), is well overdue and instead of new investment driving another wave/cycle of technological innovation on a par with previous cycles (steam power, railways, factories – telephony, automobiles, aircraft – production lines, aeronautics, transistors/electronics etc) we have the re-emergent dominance of rent seeking pushing down wage levels whilst increasing profits which is stifling entrepreneurialism except when it comes to AI technologies – which have the potential to produce things and services without the need for us bothersome oiks, peasants and plebs.
What will be interesting entertainment is the increasing potential of a Brexit to trigger the break up of the original European superstate, the UK single market, leaving England to fulfil it’s destiny, in the eyes of its royalist cringe majority, as the feudalist kingdom of Ruritania.
The plethora of “Royal events over the past two years has turned me Republican.
Oh the sycophancy reaches new heights every time.
When she finally shuffles off the BBC will declare a year of mourning.
I’m planning to book a holiday somewhere with no mobile phone or internet access when that happens. Like Antarctica, or the Moon.
Bet there would be a newly found need for the BBC to broadcast to anywhere you are!
I recall reading somewhere not too long back that the Crown Estates, whose head is one Elizabeth Saxe-Coburg, owns something like one sixth of the Earth’s land mass. I’d start looking at trivago/trip advisor etc straight away if I were you to avoid the rush. On the day of the William & Kate fest we tried escaping on a walk around Ladybower – it was like the bloody Yukon during the Gold rush, you could not shift more than a few yards without bumping into other people with the same idea. In which case you’d best rule out Antarctica given the thinness of the icecaps from global warming. That’s a disaster waiting to happen as tens of thousands of republicans line up on the ice caps only to sink into now the warm waters of the Polar region.
Or you average part of the Highlands and Islands – plenty spare room with us Paul and you’d be made welcome!
Plenty places in Scotland would be fine.
Let me know if you find a dug friendly igloo… 😉
The French had the right idea – I wonder if they’ve got any old tumbrils we could borrow. It’d be nice to do a bit of knitting again.
Yeah no class divisions or economic inequality in France is there?
I recall our whole school being taken to line the street in Bothwell when the Royalty passed in one of their grandiose cars. We were given Union flags to wave at a person who sped past waving a royal hand.
I returned home to find my father weeping as he had not been able to find a job. He said he felt humiliated.
The steelworks had closed and being unskilled he had to take what he could get. He eventually got a job as a tram conductor and thoroughly enjoyed it. I had never seen him weeping before nor did I again.
Another memory is of having to stand for the national anthem in the cinema. It was interesting that some folk rebelled and sat firmly in their seats. Others fled as soon as the film ended. The royalty must have twigged as the national anthem was silenced in cinemas.
They are without doubt the greediest folk in this world. Love wee GD to bits!
Reblogged this on pictishbeastie.
Overheard lady to daughter at Crieff Community Centre where a fest for the queen with tartan bunting ( concession to the cottars)was being set up for later that evening (ticket entry)saying: She has had one birthday celebration – one is enough!
The idea that political sovereignty can be passed down from one generation to the next through a bloodline, and that any “legitimate” sovereign has an equal right to that political power regardless of their skills, capacities, or moral character is what made Thomas Paine come to regard it with this statement
“There is no more ridiculous figure of government, than hereditary succession, in all its cases, presents.”
But in the UK we don’t even have that. We have a fake monarchy. If it was jewelry it would be a nasty lump of zircon mounted on a fake gold plastic ring. It doesn’t rule and the UK gov does not in actual fact rule in its name. Its a rubber stamp for a gov and a sop to all those who love the idea of monarchy, its pointless puffery and pageantry. Not the actual real deal.
In the end, that is all it is. Theater. Nothing more. What makes it obscene is that the tax payer pays for this pleasant fiction. Another chintzy gewgaw of no real value. The ultimate self licking snow cone. That is what is so obscene and wrong about it.
“Obey your queen” screech the yoons of orange – How? we reply, She doesn’t rule or command anything.
The royal family may not openly rule but they have a massive influence on how the UK is controlled. The mafia would recognise the royal organisation. Plenty of foot soldiers willingly do their dirty work.
A few years ago I wasn’t bothered one way or the other about the royals but Lizzy’s deliberately overheard conversation, at Crathes, in the weeks leading up to the referendum did it for me. When she shuffles off this mortal coil the Windsor business should be wound up and its assets distributed to the shareholders, her “subjects”.
David,
There is a huge rump of the population that would take issue with you. I am not one of them, but, the concept of monarchy, or god on Earth, appears embedded in the land of the proletariat of Great Britain.
Frankly it is ridiculous, but we teach children fairy tales about wicked witches trying to take power away from royalty, and, as a victory story, failing.
You are right, the Wizard of Oz was a fake, our Royal family is a fake. Cindarella would have been better finding a proper man rather than an archetypical wanker. The Sleeping Princess should have woken up and told Prince Charming that, well thanks, but..
The stories we are told are all about aspiring to be ‘one of them’.
Personally I hate that.
.
As the late Terry Pratchett observed at the end Discworld novel “Hogfather” ( a satire on belief) we teach our children to believe the little lies (Father Christmas; the Easter Bunny; a plethora of fairy stories) so that when they grow up they believe the big lies.
True, but he goes on to name those ¨big lies¨ as abstractions like Peace, Justice, Mercy and so on …
If war and peace are terms that have no truth value in your mind I can only say I’m glad I don’t have to inhabit such a place!
Alex Salmond seems awfully keen on the Royal family. Queen of Scots and other such pish. Look I think the monarchy is absurd but it is not the cause of ever greater inequality in the UK. Denmark is a monarchy yet is one of the most equal society’s on Earth. Facts trump rhetoric – or at least they should.
Aye. Unless you’re a refugee when you need to hand in your phone, keys and wallet at their border…
Yes Denmark has border controls. I had no idea that an independent Scotland was to have open borders to anyone in the world, no questions asked. How “evil” of the Danes to put the interests and quality of life of their own people first!
Refugees are not Danes – but for Danes Denmark is a wonderful place to live. Top of the Human Development Index I believe.
Gotta say, missed both events and really don’t think I’ve missed anything to be honest. Too damn busy just trying to stay in a job and keep a roof over my head.
Don’t wish any harm to one of the worlds most affluent pensioners, but frankly she and the rest of team HRH live in a different universe from me. So why I should celebrate that an eye-wateringly wealthy bod is yet another year older is beyond me. I know plenty of pensioners.Strong, brave folk who were born in times of depression, lived through wars and took everything that a life born without wealth could throw at them.
If I were to throw a celebration for anyone of advanced years…
Well let’s say there are folk more deserving.
Here are some extracts from the Archbishop of Canterbury’s contribution at the “National Service of Thanksgiving at St Paul’s Cathedral today for The Queen’s 90th birthday”:
1. “No one at The Queen’s birth knew for what she was destined. Today we recognise that God knew. ”
2. “Sixty-three years ago at the Coronation, again in the words of the Psalmist, God uniquely laid his hand upon Her Majesty, anointing her as our Head of State, our Monarch.”
Signs of divine right in the 21st Century! Ridiculous on so many levels in the 21st century.
Get rid of the TV and silence the radio and there is no Queen’s birthday.
I didn’t realise that Freddie Mercury was still alive, never mind 90 years old!
I know the whole Independance movement has a broad choice of opinions but I am 100% for a left leaning republic without any involvement of these chancers. I can live without their English pound if it came to it. (I’m old enough to remember my parents changing their money for holiday’s down south in the 1970’s.) I am getting frustrated by the slow, slow progress and to be honest I don’t know if the result would be that much different if we called a second referendum tomorrow. We need something new to pull over that soft 6%, to turn the corner. (Well done France tonight, I wish we were there. Ca plane pour moi!!!)
The question is, without a monarchy who would be top dog? Maybe it should be a lottery, indeed in a sense an heredity monarchy is a kind of lottery.
I hate the idea of monarchy as much as WGD, but I shudder of the likes of Tony Blair as some kind of Il Presedente, complete no doubt with a mafia-style bodyguard of machinegun toting thugs in shades.
Maybe we should see the position as entirely tokenistic, a carnival impersonation of the ¨The Nation¨. Then we could simply employ an out of work actor/actress to play the part whenever necessary. Cheap at the price, no?
Does the Jelly Bean live in Brigtoon or Larkhall? Can’t remember which.
Is the Jelly Bean much nicer when the Lumpen Pairty is in power?
Why don’t we make Tricia Marwick (my hero of the week for refusing to get in line with celebrity pseudoscots and celebrity sporting uncletams for a grubby award) our new Queen for few years. She may not want it though.
Another brilliant piece. Vive la republique!
“We’re going to be stuck with the world’s most highly paid benefits claimants for quite some time to come, yet oddly Channel 5 is bereft of programmes shaming them for their oversized social security claims and multiple cooncil hooses.”
Yip.
I ranted and ranted aboot the absurdity o the sycophancy for the upcoming weddin o Wull’nKate to my wife but, as she is the embodiment o peace, love and harmony, (mi wife, no Kate) said that they were a young couple madly in love and we should all just be happy for them.
“Okay” I thought, I’ll stop being a dick and try and enjoy it.
On the day o the wedding I was cleenin the windees o a hotel and they had it on the telly. There were a few fuwk in watchin it.
I reluctantly watched, or more listened to it in the background when Nicolas Witchell said “And this, this is what Britain does best.”
I turned to see what it was that Britain did best.
“Flag wavin? Standin on a street fuckin flag waving!!!” I said, a wee bit louder that I should’ve.
I got a few dodgy looks and tuts but also a few laughs.
Subservient, subjects, royal bairns, royal weddin’s, huge fuckin palaces a ivir the country, over a BILLION pounds worth o artwork in they huge fuckin palaces, “Your Majesty”, Sir, O.B.E., M.B.E……
But it’s a worth it coz some tourists come here. Git thum ti fuck!
Some people huvnae goat a Queen.
Just a couple of points to make WGD. Firstly, in your first paragraph you stated, among other things:
“…an obscenely wealthy 90 year woman with access to the best health care money can buy…”
That should have read:
“…an obscenely wealthy 90 year woman with access to the best health care OTHER PEOPLE’S money can buy…”
Secondly, in your seventh paragraph, you commented about the Sky News poll which alleged that 70% of the people in the YUK wanted to keep that wee German wummin. However, there is no mention of where that poll was taken or the numbers polled. It seems likely to me that the poll was probably taken in the south of England, which is probably the only place you would get 70% of the people wanting to keep her.
Other than that, an excellent article which exemplifies why, when Scotland regains our independence, we should have a referendum on getting shot of these German benefits scroungers, once and for all.
What Guga said:)
She is the head of an evil all consuming snake that is slithering through all our lives helped by a copious supply of happy clappers and flag wavers.I wonder if anyone could produce a visual aid showing herself and the establishment and all the hangers on etc,in the form of a pyramid with proper percentages with all people slotted into their place on the chart.You could also include the ladders of life chart of health wealth and intelligence and see what appears.
Did you know they only eat food they produce themselves, and have been receiving medical hemp treatment for decades even though it is illegall for us to use. They must hate the common man so bloody much and think of us as servile dirt.