The wacky gomer with the azure blood and the freaky New Age beliefs actually said something reasonable.
“We are now seeing the rise of many populist groups across the world that are increasingly aggressive to those who adhere to a minority faith. All of this has deeply disturbing echoes of the dark days of the 1930s,” he said.
“My parents’ generation fought and died in a battle against intolerance, monstrous extremism and inhuman attempts to exterminate the Jewish population of Europe.”
Citing UN statistics, he added that a “staggering” 65.3 million people abandoned their homes in 2015 — 5.8 million more than the year before.
“The suffering doesn’t end when they arrive seeking refuge in a foreign land,” he said. “We are now seeing the rise of many populist groups across the world that are increasingly aggressive towards those who adhere to a minority faith.”
I think what it means is that our situation is so perilous that it has cracked through the adamantine crania of privileged royalty.
No, what it mean is that you haven’t been paying attention.
He’s long been a combination of thoughtful/insightful and off-the-wall. Nothing new here …
Well, I have lost count on the times I agreed with Merkel this year, so there’s that…
Yeah, I concur: He says moronic things, is part of an even more moronic authoritarian cultish institution (admitted by careful choice of parents), but does also say seemingly “thoughtful/insightful” things, and not all of his actions are completely loony.
In this particular case I may be tempted quibble with “We are now seeing the rise of many populist groups across the world that are increasingly aggressive to those who adhere to a minority faith” — The quibble being the aggression not restricted to “minority faiths” but instead “anyone who disagrees, is different, hasn’t paid protection money, or otherwise has not kowtowed to the populists”. His point is valid, possibly fits in the context better, is perhaps better stated, but is too limited.
Even a broken clock is right twice-a-day
I wonder if the firm will celebrate their 100th anniversary next July?, up until then they went by the name of Saxe Coburg and Gotha .
Unlike his middle brother, the heir to the throne does seem to have turned out all right. Surprising, really, given the awful shit his dad says, but he’s also taken the family weakness for religion and homeopathy and lurched out into the realms of hippy weirdness too. Maybe that’s a reaction to the bad time he had at boarding school and to being obliged to do a stint in the Navy (a member of my family shared a wardroom with him, but refuses to comment on how Charlie-boy found Navy life).
The British Monarchy? Shall we get started on the British Monarchy???
Where shall we begin? No, seriously folks: This guy is no better or worse than your next door neighbour. Just like all of us, he sometimes has moments of perception, at other moments he spouts a complete load of shit. Whether the rest of us should attach more weight to his opinions than to somebody else’s is debatable.
The person who is remarkable is his mother.
De Gaulle, Kennedy, Thatcher, Reagan, and Khrushchev have all come and gone, and she and her family have spent sixty plus years on top of a class system that she herself embodies. Nobody else in the world has managed to retain such a privileged position for so long in modern times.
I’ve always lectured people on the drawbacks to having a hereditary monarchy compared to an elected Head of State, on account of the fact that if you find yourselves with a total asshole, then you’re stuck with them.
But then you elected Donald Trump.
Somehow the Windsors don’t seem so bad after all.
@ 7 johnlee
I’ve always lectured people on the drawbacks to having a hereditary monarchy compared to an elected Head of State
Strange, it seems to have worked fairly well for many countries, not just the UK Sweden, Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, a good part of the Commonwealth, and so on. A restored monarchy in Spain seems to have helped defeat a coup. Heck with some reservations (WWII) it seems to have worked acceptably in Japan.
Personally I find a constitutional monarchy a lot more comforting than an elected Head of State. Of course, I have never lived in a country with an elected Head of State and, frankly, the idea of doing so makes me very nervous.
That’s because those royal heads of state have been pretty much stripped of all power. The German president isn’t elected directly, but their job is comparable to that of most kings/queens: Be nice and representative, plus you can get rid of them when they fuck up.
I often wonder if Charlie is being prompted by the establishment to say something relevant, to make him relevant in today’s society. Does he write his own stuff, or is it done for him? The way Betty is going, he’ll be 80 before he ascends to the throne. His sons seem much better, some out-breeding having done them a power of good. Charlie has to be ‘Defender of the Faith’, and that particular faith is becoming a minority religion.
It’s not a coincidence that neo-Nazis are emerging just as the last of the people who fought the real Nazis are passing away. Charles is too young to remember the War, but you can bet he heard more than his share of stories from the participants.
Davem @10: Charles writes his own stuff, but it goes through a gantlet of editors that I do not envy him.
What world is “wearing Nazi uniforms and doing the HItlergruß” better?
My proposal for improving the British monarchy is quite simple. We wait until 2066 then call an end to the establishing millennium and re-run the cycle from the beginning. (Yes, I’m quite aware that England had kings before 1066, but we’ve settled on that date as the only one people are capable of remembering and this is an exercise in pageantry, not historical accuracy).
So in 2066 we start again with William the Conqueror. He gets a second go until 2087 when we replace him with William Rufus. Henry I again in 2100, Stephen in 2034, and so on right up to 3066 when the third cycle begins. We don’t have to dig the relevant monarch up and stick them in a robe on the throne, but frankly everyone would be disappointed if we didn’t. There are still a few bits of Billy the Bastard left in Rouen that we could put in a spangly box, I’m sure. As an added bonus we will all get a guaranteed decade of monarch-free rule when it comes time to replay the Interregnum.
The monarchy is almost entirely symbolic, after all. A dead king can do pretty much everything a live one does – better in some cases – and is much, much cheaper. The Royal Christmas Message would be more fun – we could get some plummy-voiced thesp to read out something the monarch said for five minutes while the camera slowly pans round the corpse, decorated with tinsel and glitter to make it a bit more festive. Those who keep banging on about how important it is tend to say that it brings in tourism money – well how many more gullible Canadians and Americans will we be able to file through the fleecing stations if we offer them a chance to see an actual medieval king in the flesh (some of it, at any rate)?
What about the War of the Roses? . And we have only been joined to Scotland since the early 17th century .
Scotland can have its own cycle of kings. I think it would be a bit harsh to insist that they start halfway through Malcolm III, so they can go back to Duncan I and the start of the House of Dunkeld in 1034. Or they could just use the Stone of Scone as their monarch in perpetuity, given that it is probably a damn sight more sensible than any of the previous human incumbents.
The royal situation in Wales is rather complicated, since they were never a united nation before the English annexed them and had three main monarchies. But the Welsh tend to be sensible, level-headed people and tend not to care about monarchy very much, so they would probably go along with the English cycle just as they have for centuries already. If they do decide to kick up a fuss they can come up with their own solution that is mutually agreeable.
There is no solution that would satisfy Northern Ireland. None at all. Can’t be done.
As for the Wars of the Roses… we could put all the remaining bits of the appropriate claimants together in a pile and just let that greet visiting foreign dignitaries during the appropriate years. Same goes for the Anarchy with Stephen and Matilda, or the kerfuffle with John and Louis of France in the early 13th century.
Anyway the British royal family is so interbred i think God save the Queen /King should be replaced with I ‘m my own grandpa .