Update 1: Add link and correct grammar, add third para
I generally restrain from discussing Britain's constitutional affairs before the natives here in London, so I might as well comment here about Prince Charles, never a man for whom I've had much respect.
My opinion of the Prince of Wales is that his talents would probably get him a job in MacDonald's, but not on the tills or in management.
He's now calling for the Big Mac and other unhealthy products to be
banned. However, as Scott points out, the products, such as pasty
offered by his own firm, Duchy Originals, are even fattier than the Big Mac.
It's a pity that he doesn't develop another interest to distract himself, like gambling, alcohol or women. As an intellectual or environmentalist, he's about as authentic as Marie Antoinette was a shepherdess - flying to New York with a huge entourage to pick up an award from Al Gore. I supsect that part of the reason that the monarchy has been kept alive so long is that stupid, lazy and debauched royals can be counted on to act as ballast on the ship of state, seperating the government of the country from the state's most powerful symbols, as Bagehot wrote. Charles, having neither talents nor humility, is in grave danger of short-circuiting the two.
Most British people seem to respect Elizabeth II as a hard-working, judicious and widely-ranging monarch. Having an elected president of the UK on the Irish model, is, in my opinion, the only way to ensure that the country's next head of state has the experience, the independence and the strength of personality to stand up to an increasingly over-mighty central government.
The royals are also the cornerstone of two of the worst parts of Britain's feudal legacy, which nobody in Britain, apart from some on the hard left, really seem to speak about. One is the class system - without the honours system and the hereditery aristocracy, Britons may actually judge and be judged on character and achievements rather than their accents. Another is the vast centralisation of land, even in the heart of London, into vast aristocratic estates; without this concentration of wealth and power, some of the land could be released for higher-use commercial development and for desperately-needed housing. Charles is an environmentalist in this sense, preferring to preserve a rurual idyll, even though British farming has been completely bankrupt for decades and city-dwellers are packed into ever smaller living spaces, rather than see land move into productive use for housing, industry, roads or aiprports. The Scottish land reforms were an example that could be followed south of the border also. Come the revolution.....
Comments