Rebel Man
Your boy Chuck is funny, isn’t he – I mean really, really, fall down and roll around funny. Like a John Cleese routine. He just cracks me up. I mean you have to admit, there is something hilariously funny about one of the richest and most overprivileged men on the planet thinking (and even talking) of himself as a ‘dissident’. Aw, honey, won’t they listen to you then? Are you all excluded and ignored and not paid attention to? Aw, diddums, that is such a shame. Of course there’s that architect whose career has never been the same – but never mind, never mind, never mind, if you want to call yourself a dissident, you go right ahead. I have every sympathy. I do love a good pout; I’m a world-class pouter myself; so if you want to spend a few decades pouting at public expense, why that’s just fine, all part of the job. Victoria pouted, the dear Duke of Windsor pouted, so you just carry on, you lovely man. Nobody understands you, nobody appreciates you – it’s shocking, isn’t it?
You have to admit. There was that time he made a fuss about unqualified people expecting to be promoted. I did find that, coming from him, irresistibly funny. And then there’s all the pontificating about ‘alternative medicine’ and Gerson therapy, for which he gets plenty of attention and publicity, because he is the Air to the Phrone, while medical dissent from his pontificating doesn’t get nearly the same attention. Does that make him a ‘dissident’? Does someone who gets respectful attention as well as plain attention out of all proportion to his intrinsic merit, deserve to be called a dissident? I wouldn’t have thought so, myself. I would have thought otherwise. But there, I don’t understand the whole monarchy thing, so don’t listen to me.
But there is something ever so slightly disquieting about the fact that the future king, however limited and notional his remaining power may be, feels a need to whine to a government minister about the Human Rights Act. There’s also, actually, something more than slightly sickening about it. More than a whiff of let them eat cakeism.
Prince Charles wrote “rubbish” on a letter defending the Human Rights Act, a leaked copy of the document showed today. The letter was part of an exchange between the prince and the former Lord Chancellor Lord Irvine of Lairg about a perceived rise in litigiousness in British society…He expressed concern that the Human Rights Act risked promoting an “American-style personal injury ‘culture’.”…The prince underlined a statement beginning: “[I see the challenge we face as ensuring that] as we become a society more based on responsibilities and rights …” According to the Times, he dismissed the claim with the handwritten comment: “But this is rubbish – we’re a society based on rights alone.”
Huff huff huff, chummhaw – that won’t do at all old boy, not at all, riffraff and ordinary people mustn’t have all these bloody rights, they’ll only use them to put coal in. Oh, he’s a trip, that prince. I saw him interviewed by a US journalist recently, and his air of barely controlled disdain was something to behold. He actually used that phrase ‘people like you’ – you know, peasants, underlings, inferiors, commoners, vulgar little men from that vulgar big country. Every inch a dissident.
I hear that Charlie said in 1994 that he wanted to be ‘Defender of Faith’ not ‘Defender of THE Faith’. Sounds about right. ‘Defender of the Wilful Abdication of Human Reason’ Yep. Fits like a glove, i’d say. Still, it’s the only abdication he is ever likely to be in a position to make.
Heck, if George W Bush can be a “Rebel” (I love how roger calls him “Rebel in Chief”) why not Prince Charles?
If Chuckles told me
The sun comes up in the east
I’d check and make sure
I’m sure I’ve heard this discussion of rights without duties being meaningless on B&W before. Was it the thesis in a philosopher’s recent book?
Chuck disagreed with the statement that we’re a society based on responsibilities and rights…
If you are a tad old-fashioned and reactionary (surely no-one here) then you might feel that Britain would be better if there was much greater emphasis along the line, “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country”
and that people should take more responsibility for themselves and scream less about their rights.
Personally I don’t know whether I agree, but the Guardian deliberately misuderstands his position IMHO. They seem to take every opportunity to bash the monarchy.
Seems to me you deliberately missed the intent of his remark OB. (I know you are too astute to not see his meaning.)
He is saying that our society has greatly diminished the esponsibilities of an individual (to the state or society) and left their rights as dominant.
It is a most trivial piece of conservative cant, but it does seem to me to be not at all decrying the rights; just whining about the loss of responsibility of individuals to their society.
He could raise plenty of evidence to support his view; probably gets it from Theodore Dalrymple columns.
Which leads me to ask, why you found this WORTH your valuable time to comment on?
ChrisPer, fair enough, but still – if we abolished the monarchy, we’d be faced with the possible proposition of a presedintial race between old gits like Kinnock, or Thatcher. I’d rather have the doddering old Deutcshe clowns frankly.
I find it much creepier that Saint Diana managed to find a posthumous tag of being a ‘feminist icon’, with commentators such as Bea Campbell bigging her up when they should know much – much I say – better…
Remarks about supposed ‘rights’ taking precedence over responsibility would only be a “trivial piece of conservative cant” if they weren’t true. Unfortunately they are. This society manages to preserve the right of the rich to do as they please; that of the poor to wallow in their own ignorance; and that of the festering petty-bourgeois Daily Mail reader to complain about it all, but what it does not foster is the sense that anyone needs to do anything at all about anything… The total refusal of anyone to discuss taxation, for example, as anything other than a burden to be legitimately resented and evaded is a standing affront to sense and decency… I could go on, but I feel an attack of dailymailitis coming on if I do…
Dave – go for it ! I agree with the tax thing. I almost – almost – feel sorry for the chancellor of this govt because the nation – since Thatcher – has acted like a spoilt teenager – whinge like f@ck when they don’t get 1st class roads, rail, nhs, edcuation systems, but don’t want to stump up a penny more than the barest minumum for it. (Being middle class of course, I already feel overburdened by those Tory pretenders in New Labour. What about those rich b@stards with their immoral property portfolios Gordon?!! ;-))
Also, apologies to any intelligent, responsible teenagers who may be reading this thread; you are of course, not all drug-addled hoodies.
Tim, I think there have been several discussions of rights here, prompted by – who knows: articles, books, tea leaves. And sure, Chuck may have a reasonable point, but I do think it comes oddly at best and disquietingly at worst from him. I do think monarchs of all people should hesitate before sneering at other people’s rights.
Chrisper, why did I find it worth my time? People keep asking me (or themselves) that. What an odd question! I found it funny, peculiar, interesting. Why wouldn’t I find it worth my time? Chuck isn’t just some random guy, after all – he has influence.
GT, he was ‘right’ about architecture? (And what he said was unfashionable? In which circles?) In what sense was he right? What qualified him to pronounce as he did?
But Chuck did his mouthing off at a RIBA event without knowing anything of the process that had gone into getting the National Gallery wing approved, the compromises that had been required for reasons the architects had no control over; and he ruined the firm in the process. A grotesque abuse of power, I call it. He’s ignorant, he pronounces publicly on subjects he knows nothing about and gets them wrong, he is heeded because of who he is, not what he knows. Watch it, he’ll be after the engineers next.
Given that he likes railways almost as much as his mother (who is definitely a train freak)
I think not ……