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Does anybody know when it is? or what it is? or even, what it signifies?
No. Thought not. But you will. Pretty soon it'll be inescapable. Millions of people who live in this country will deck out the bunting and hold parties to celebrate 50 years of life under the Queen's high heels. And millions of others grow quietly furious at having to live in such a backward nation.
There’s a four day weekend - the only thing the Royals have ever given us by the way - in June and tubes will be running all night that weekend. Even though tubes should run all night anyway. To celebrate 50 years of living under the flag.
But all of Britain loves its gracious little Queen. And the Queen Mother (expired). And Prince Charles. And Prince Edward. And Prince William. And Prince Harry. Oh yeah, and Prince Andrew. And Prince Philip. And Camilla. And the Duchess Of York. And the Duchess of Windsor. And that other Duchess. And The People’s Princess.. Raced to death by idiot hordes of paparazzi. Even Prince Alice, the Duchess of Gloucester hit her 100th birthday the other week.. Who? I hear you say. Yes. Me too. We’re propping up the walking corpses of people who we don’t even know exist.
Incidentally the Princess who died recently, and dominated the front page, the Queen’s Sister, I forgot about completely. That’s how important she was. Not one person I know expressed any feeling except that of vague satisfaction at her passing. Even the death of a Royal was of no more consequence - the British public just couldn’t be bothered.
Some of the reactionary, Daily Mail readers were up in arms about the shocking coverage that the BBC apparently gave to the Queen Mothers death - all because Peter Sissions wasn’t wearing a black tie. But 870 people complained there was too much coverage of her death, compared to 2, who felt it wasn’t enough. Looks as if the public have spoken. But will anyone in power listen?
Of course not.
Then again, millions of people I don’t know die every day. Some at the age of seventy something from strokes, others in their mid-thirties from Breast Cancer. They had no impact upon me, I never met these people. And I don’t mourn for them. Even less for one born into money, privilege, and security.
Whilst a few hundred thousand sheep queue to see the body of the dead old Queen Mum, all I hope for personally, is that these sycophants who love their poverty and kneel gratefully at the feet of their oppressors hurry up and join her or get off this rock and travel back to the 1700’s where they belong.
Britain likes to think of itself as a democracy. But we have no constitution. And we cannot influence who the Head Of State is. And our media is censored so that criticism or negative comment about the Royals is silenced. A dictatorship by default.
As I type this, I’m watching BBC2’s allegedly impartial coverage of the 1977 Jubilee Celebrations - an hour of old footage of bad hairstyles, and gleeful memories, from people in ages past, cackling like idiots as they celebrated 25 years of being oppressed. And how things were so much better then, weren’t they? Not like now. You could go out then and not be mugged for your watch. It was a gentle time where things were safer wasn’t it?
Why the hell should we celebrate half a century of being looked down upon by one woman? Why should we support our own oppression? Why should I feel proud for having my taxes pumped against my will into supporting a family of inbred toffs who do nothing except sponge off the labour of others and wave at cameras for the news?
The Royal Family make Britain look - as John Lydon says - prehistoric and preposterous. The Royal family puts the “grate” into Britain. Footage of the time sees the dazed puppets who called themselves the Royal Family trussed up like Action Man figures and waving vacantly at passing adoring masses.
Nothing Ever Changes
From an early age it seemed that there was something not quite right. It just seemed wrong for an almost inbred family to be viewed in a holy and reverent manner. For this bunch of professional holidaymakers to be allowed to lord it up at the taxpayers expense.
These people self-appointed themselves Rulers. But they don’t rule. They do nothing apart from wander around promoting themselves. Their ancestors became our so called Rulers - in effect Prehistoric dictators - by invading foreign countries, stealing land, and killing off peasants. They came to power by Mob Rule of hired armies, thieves, murderers and crooks. The Medieval Mafia, if you like. Just like our Rulers send the peasants off to war to blow people up in a foreign land for a war they don’t understand in a country they can’t pronounce.
Then it struck me. There is no way a country call honestly call itself “civilised” if it is built and endorsed on the central premise that there is a divinely chosen family of rulers who live in splendour. Inequality is an integral part of this nation, not of a civilised nation.
Of course, there are those who believe in the Royal Family as a good and great thing. They have the right to be wrong. You can’t reason with unreasonable people. The kind of people who think fox-hunting isn’t cruel, and probably think that the homeless are just the ‘bums you step over on the way to the theatre‘, as a Tory MP put it.
Nice to see our leaders showing compassion for the less fortunate.
And Who Is The Queen?
A woman notorious for her emotional reserve. The Queen once ignored a letter regarding the illness of a child that she was godmother too, but wrote back instantly with a 6 page letter when the same person informed her one of her precious Corgi’s had died in canine combat with one of the Queen Mother’s dogs.
This can’t really be seen as the mark of behaviour of a woman who has anything in the way of empathy with other human beings. Or of a woman who can be seen as particularly stable. A woman who cares far far more about the well being of a small animal than she does of 56 million people is not the kind of person I want responsible for 1 person, let alone 56 million, or to be my god-given ruler.
This is a woman who has employed someone specifically to carry Corgi’s up ladders and ferry the pets about. That is what he does for a living. And probably for a pittance.
I don’t look up to - or admire - a woman worth £4.4 billion. When I think of numbers that big, or £11.6 billion of jewels she owns - I think of how many people she & her ancestors trod on to get that kind of power and influence.
She probably learnt from her mother. A woman who, whilst alive, received £643,000 a year from the civil list. But that wasn’t enough - the Queen Mother had run up a £4,000,000 overdraft with Coutts bank by 1999, which apparently grew by £30,000 a week.
What did she spend it on, especially as she had an income of over £10,000 a week? Nobody can drink £40,000 of gin a week. Though I’m sure the Queen Mum gave it a try. Even her supporters said she was probably pickled in it.
This is a family that pays some of its servants £7,000 a year to work in Central London.
This is a family whose individual worth is a fortune worth not only millions, but £50-60million each. A family dinner could see people worth over £1 billion sitting round the table. And servants worth about £7,000 a year serving up the food. Some people have no respect for others. Even now they treat the poor like shit right on their own doorstep.
Still, the Royal family have always suffered from delusions of grandeur beyond their already obscene status. Whilst I suspect the xenophobic, and somewhat erm, intelligently challenged Prince Philip, isn’t responsible for it, the official “golden jubilee” website include a handy little form where you can submit ideas for how to celebrate half-a-century living in an archaic country that clings to the forgotten coat-tails of an empire. At random, I chose this one:
“An exhibition of 100 portraits of The Queen including one by a member of the public.”
Perhaps someone can explain to me what is so great about exhibiting one hundred pictures of a seventy five year old multimillionaire woman who wears a crown for a living? I’ve tried every approach - emotional, rational, and I just can’t see any valid argument for their continued existence.
Or for that matter picking out one done by a member of the “public”? As if we were just a normal undifferentiated mass of tissue - the faceless public - who don’t matter and are lucky to simply be recognised by our superiors?
Maybe its the things that they think make them superior that lower them morally below most of the rest of the nation.
Tourists Are Money
Think of what it does for the tourist industry. Though somehow I doubt that the money frittered away on sustaining this enormous family - and their entourage - is anywhere proportionate to the amount that the UK sees in associated tourism.
You don’t hear of masses of people flying over to Swedish royal family do you? King Carl is a relative unknown. In fact the only opinion I’ve ever heard a Swede express about them is that one of King Carl’s daughters is a bit of a babe. Did you even know Sweden has a royal family? Thought not.
In fact the UK is near enough the only “major” country with a royal family. Though the UK is not major anymore. It’s trying vainly to recreate the shadows of a long lost empire. When Britain was allegedly “great”. There’s nothing “Great” about Britain and the only thing that unites us is that most of don’t want that woman and her inbred relatives ruling over us with their sceptres, crowns, obscene spending and pompous stupidity.
In some respects its the first thing America did right. I respect the French as well, their ancestors beheaded their royal family. Just like the descendents of a bunch of rich thugs and bullies invaded countries hundreds of years ago in ancient turf wars. Disown the inbred rulers and start again. A country is only a lump of rock in a puddle anyway.
The Taxpayers View
We pay taxes for this. We fund their skiing holidays to the tune of millions and millions and millions per year.
And since when was it right that the British Public have to pay an admission charge to see the palaces that they fund with their tax payers money?
That by the way is a rhetorical question. It has never been right. I don’t know how much the royal family cost a year to run - but you can guarantee its far far more than most of the population of this country would agree to if they had any choice in the matter.
Once again the law and the government is shown to misrepresent the will of the British Public. In the same way, most of the British public believe that far too much money is allocated to military spending, and that the current drugs policies are unworkable, unenforceable, and divorced from all but a privileged minorities way of thinking. Since the legalisation will result in reduced revenue for the alcohol producers that contribute heavily to party policy, and hence lack of Party revenues, it is still outlawed. The Government may have to dissolve the people and find a new public so that it can execute its wishes.
Once again Britain tries to keep its public stuck in the dark ages through antiquated policies that are almost universally contested by the population. And because we have two choices in a democracy, Conservative Pepsi or Labour Coke, you can see that there really is no choice at all. Democracy is a failure, and every day the Government executes policies that the public do not believe in.
That’s because any human being who has reached a state of empathy with other human beings or any state of advanced philosophical existence knows that it is intrinsically an abuse of power for the royal family to exist. To make segregation and inequality an integral part of the structure of this nation is fundamentally an abuse of power.
There’s nothing, not one thing, civilised in supporting a system that teaches social segregation by birth. She is allegedly our “superior”, and we are all “subjects”. She owns us. We are lesser than her.
Does this sound civilised? fair? Something that makes Britain “Great”?
Of course not. It’s time the Government represented the people and their wishes for a change. Outlaw fox-hunting. Cut military spend. Cut the Royals off and use those millions to build hospitals, and housing for the homeless. And give me the Queens Head.
The Queens Head? probably a fine pub. But there’s only two places I’d like to see the Queens Head. On a banknote in my wallet. Or on a pole outside the gates of Buckingham palace.
suggested websites:
http://www.goldenjubilee.gov.uk/
http://www.royal.gov.uk/output/Page1.asp
http://www.fuckthejubilee.com/
