Trust me, I’m a prince
Charles’s vanity and delusion are being taken out for an airing again. He
has told confidants he would like his role to “evolve” so that his knowledge and experience are not wasted once he inherits the crown.
What knowledge and experience? What knowledge and experience does he have that would be ‘wasted’ if he didn’t use his accident of birth to publicize them? His knowledge and experience about GM crops? About alternative medicine? About architecture? What special unique irreplaceable knowledge and experience does he have on those subjects?
None, right? Do correct me if I’m wrong – but as far as I can tell, the answer is none. He has strong opinions on the subjects, but so do lots of people. He has perhaps spent lots of time or some time reading and otherwise gathering information about them – but so have lots of people. What he has not done is get systematic training in any of them, which lots of people have done – so why does the world need his amateur ‘knowledge’ when it already has access to professional knowledge? What is this special irreplaceable knowledge and experience he has that it would be a pity to waste if he became king?
There isn’t any. His status doesn’t replace professional training, and his amateur dabbling doesn’t either. Nobody needs Pris Chos laying down the law about GM food or homeopathy because there are already thousands upon thousands of people who can do that much better than he can. I’m a great fan of autodidacticism, being an autodidact myself, but that doesn’t mean that I think the world needs amateur agronomists or amateur medical researchers. If Charles really wanted to be an influential expert in one of these fields he should have gotten the appropriate training to do so. It’s incredible arrogance and the most literal kind of elitism to think that his royal birth somehow makes that supererogatory.
As much is it makes me cringe to imagine this moron becoming the head of state, the one consolation was always that he would finally be forced to shut his mouth. Now it seems that even that won’t happen.
The most appalling part is that he apparently wants to represent Britain “on platforms such as the European parliament or the US Congress.” If that ever happens, I might have to renounce my citizenship out of sheer embarrassment.
Good old Charles:
‘He is vice patron of the Center for Islamic Studies at Oxford University, a center built by a US$33 million Saudi gift with the stated aim of putting Islam at the heart of the British education system’. – http://tinyurl.com/58d6jh
‘Prof Glees’s report claims that over the past five years, 70 per cent of politics lectures at the Middle Eastern Centre at St Antony’s College, Oxford, were “implacably hostile” to the West and Israel’ – http://tinyurl.com/5cagww
‘… putting Islam at the heart of the British education system’
Well, with the Anglicans splitting and the RC’s plagued by educated and opinionated congregants*… at least it’s a faith. Anything to throw back the tide of rationality.
*http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/religion/3464073/Educated-Catholics-have-sown-dissent-and-confusion-in-the-Church-claims-bishop.html
Two questions come to mind:
1. Is this correct behavior coming from a son to a mother (who is queen, still alive, and still well, queen)? It sounds rude and disrespectful to me. Also arrogant and stupid. But I don’t know much about royalty and what is done and what is not done. Still doesn’t seem correct to permit this sort of planning to become public – it makes him into a really poorly prepared ambulance chaser if you ask me.
2. To what degree do people pay attention to his weird ideas, or respect them or him? Would they pay more attention/drink more kool-aid if he were King?
“has told confidants he would like his role to “evolve””
It’s good to have such a highly-placed proponent of evolution in the UK.
But if Charles wishes to exercise more than token power in British public life he needs to relinquish his claim to the throne. Otherwise there will be a problem.
Claire,
I heard reports that the Queen has agreed to step down when Charles is 65.
Really?! I’ve always heard she wouldn’t dream of it. The monarchy is for life, period. Abdication is a horror-word to them; it’s what that awful David did. When Queen Juliana of the Netherlands abdicated in favour or her daughter, Lillibet said ‘How Dutch.’
As far as I know, all this is just media nonsense. There is zero precedent for a British monarch abdicating merely because the P of W is ancient.
Yes, it goes against past form. Upon checking I find I probably heard it via the Express, which is scarcely authoritative. I wouldn’t be surprised if they wanted her to abdicate in favour of Diana. But, as Claire pointed out, it would be rather ghoulish of him to be laying out his kingly stall otherwise.
http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/71364/EXCLUSIVE:-Charles-'to-rule-at-65%92-as-Queen-'steps-aside'/