Johann does a bit of lèsing the majesté
Johann don’t want no activist King Chuck, for very good and compelling reasons.
Charles says the “responsibility and authority of his position” – and the “wisdom” it entails – requires him to “speak out” and “pressure” our elected representatives. A bevy of fawning pundits have responded by crying – yes!…Charles’s position stems from one thing and one thing only: he emerged from Elizabeth Windsor’s womb 60 years ago. That’s it. He has no “responsibility.” He has no legitimate “authority.” He has no more right to “speak for the nation and to the nation” – and pocket £7m a year for the bother – than you, me, or the next person you see at the bus stop.
Well exactly, and obviously; yet the man seems to be weirdly oblivious to this glaring fact. One can see how he would get to be that way, of course, what with all the ridiculous ‘specialness’ that surrounds royals – but if he were actually as clever as he thinks he is, he would have been able to figure it out at some point before age 60.
If not for that fortuitous journey through a royal womb, Charles Windsor’s “wise” arguments would be gathering dust in the reject bin at certain newspapers’ letters pages. If his advocates didn’t keep praising him as “a public intellectual” I wouldn’t be rude enough to point it out, but Charles Windsor is a strikingly stupid man. Every time he has been put into a competitive situation where he is judged according to objective criteria, he has been a disaster…And what of his arguments? They are garbled, uninformed, cliché-ridden repetitions of what the last person who spoke to him said. His very sympathetic biographer Dimbleby admits that his staff “were uncomfortable with his tendency to reach instant conclusions on the basis of insufficient thought”…What do these “interventions” really consist of? Charles Windsor scorns modern science, attacking it for its “lack of soul” and for “playing God”. So he uses his position to attack qualified life-saving professionals who earned their position, like the General Medical Council – and says he knows better.
Precisely. That’s the bit that really gets up my plebeian nose – the thinking he knows better than people who have actually done the training as opposed to simply reading an article in Quacks’ Gazette.
I guess you’re not to keen on the autocrat formerly known as prince.
Ophelia, an honest question nagging me: why give him so much prominence here? I have yet to find anybody that takes him seriously, that has another interest in him (them?) than the type of interest I had for Fawlty Towers.
JoB – He is a prominent figure in the UK and his exertion of temporal power through the media is very troubling.
The British Monarch’s power is given by God, and Charles implicitly claims that authority for his interventions. His intervention in public life is anti-secular in effect and raises old questions about the relationship of church, monarchy and state in the contemporary UK.
He needs putting back in his box as soon as possible.
JoB…the fact that you have yet to find anyone who takes PC seriously does not mean that no one takes PC seriously. He’s the future king; when he says things, the things he says get in the newspapers and other media, and they have effects. He ruined an architectural firm by saying things, and he gives lots of extra credibility to ‘alternative medicine.’ He gets enormously more ink by attacking GM crops or evidence-based medicine than any scientists can get by defending them. This is both harmful and thoroughly illegitimate and absurd. That’s why.
Plus what dirigible said.
It’s not clear to me how a politically engaged king would work in the British constitutional system. His government speaks in his name, and his loyal opposition also speaks in his name! So, what’s left for kings to say?!
Better Charles should mind his crowns and sceptres and it wouldn’t be a bad idea for him to get into practice now.
It’s not hard, Chuck. All you have to do is say nice things about choral societies and charitable organisations, meet with the Prime Minister every week, and keep your mouth shut on important things about which you really have no idea. Even though you’re sixty years old, it shouldn’t take long to learn. Start now, and when your mother exits, in the next twenty years or so, you’ll be a master at the sport! And the pay is good!
He also has to put on the clothes that his valet lays out for him, and brush his teeth with the toothpaste his valet has put on the toothbrush for him. His role is really rather demanding.
OK-OK – I never think of him as having that type of influence – his silliness always strikes me as a Blackadder-kind of satire of which he is unwittingly & unwittily a prime character. Certainly a valid target, just wondering whay he was a prominent one – my curiosity has been satisfied, thx.
Well I wouldn’t dream of denying he’s also a joke.
A very big joke!
Hey, I actually voted not to have the man as king. Unfortunately, a majority of Australians including a bunch of professional dope-smoking wannabee left-wing activists didn’t. Apparently because Chuck says ‘organic’ a lot the dingbats thought he was on their side.