Actually existing news

Here's something you can save for people who insist the Royal Family are a harmless institution.

Both the Queen and the Prince of Wales are entitled to veto bills in parliament that might affect the property of the Crown or the Duchies of Lancaster or Cornwall. In recent years the monarch and monarch-to-be have been offered 39 bills for personal approval, one was vetoed (a 1999 bill proposing the transfer of war powers from the executive to parliament was blocked by the Queen). Other bills offered for approval, include the 2004 Civil Partnership Act, the 2004 European Union bill, the 2005 Work and Families bill and the 1997 Merchant Shipping and Maritime Security Act, to name but a few - the last one was because Prince Charles owns the harbours on the Isles of Scilly.

Madness, isn't it? It's an incredible affront to what little democracy we do have. Two very wealthy landowners are given extraordinary executive powers because nearly 1,000 years ago some French bandits won a battle in a Sussex field.

Meanwhile in the actually existing world

A little late, but never mind

"Silent celebrity" is a phrase cropping up round our mass media. The Queen, apparently, is a silent celebrity. Here is the Graun on Her Mutedness. Apart from missing the fact that all celebrity is proportional to silence, it hits the nail on the head (desperate acts of self-disclosure destroy celebrity, even if it's aimed at achieving it).

Celebrity is considered self-realisation in modern capitalism. A celebrity is an icon. An icon has strong definition but little detail. The Queen is a powerful icon in part because she is a personal non-entity. She is not enigmatic, she is hollow. The richest woman in the world (probably) with enough time to cultivate some kind of personality or recognised talent: she likes horse racing and corgis.

If you follow the propaganda you realise the Queen is whatever you want her to be (or whatever you value in yourself). The Queen is not a nice little old lady, or a constitutional rock, nor is she an elegant affirmation of Britain's wealth and power, she is a potent political weapon for the ruling class. The monarchy cultivates an image, in particular an impression of ancient history and grandeur, despite the fact that most royal institutions date back to the 19th Century and no further. This image is projected onto the greater ruling class. It accustomises people to their rule, teaches them to be deferent and grateful.

All of this is mildly obvious. The question is then, do we really want to be ruled by such blatant hucksters and a crowned non-entity?

No royalists in space

All I wanted was a once in a lifetime cosmic event to balance out the weeks and weeks of incontinent royalist propaganda, and I couldn't even get that... That's Cameron's Britain for you... Never mind... Here's is a link (I'm having trouble with posting pictures at the moment) showing the Transit of Venus as seen from various parts of Eastern Europe and Asia. In January Venus was as far from the Sun as it could appear from Earth. It took months to reach this point, but the actual transit took less than two hours. Once you get a vaguely appreciable context you can see just how fast these objects are moving but how far they have to go.

More Jubilee Nostalgia

From 1935.

Jubilee!

The most interesting thing about King Charles the First was that he was five foot six inches tall at the start of his reign, but only four foot eight inches tall at the end of it.

In other news...

The Queen's something-or-other jubilee is coming. Oh, it's going to be bad, annoying and bad... and come then the Olympics; men with guns, helicopters, social cleansing, wall to wall advertising and bloody flags everywhere.

Burning questions of our time

The British Government wants to give the Queen a yacht. Yeah, yeah, it's not going to be paid for out of the public purse, but that only begs the question: what does it have to do with the government then? Maybe it's because the Tories just like discussing the finer things in life, like love, gay love and screwing the working class; but enough crudity, back to yachts.

You might be interested to know that Prince Charles and Princess Anne back the idea of a new Royal Yacht (you remember electing these two...? No...?). With that kind of backing the yacht's almost certain to go ahead:

Gove wrote to the prime minister on 12 September, again supporting the project: "I believe that approving this ship to become a royal yacht would be an excellent way to mark the Queen's diamond jubilee and to thank her as a nation for her long and untiring service to this country."

In this letter he stated: "No money should be made available from the public purse", but in a second letter dated 11 December he did not make this point writing instead: "My suggestion would be a gift from the nation to the Queen thinking about, for example, David Willetts' excellent suggestion for a royal yacht – and something tangible to commemorate this momentous occasion. If there is not sufficient public money available then we could surely look for a generous private donation, for example, to give every school child a lasting memento of the occasion or possibly to allow every school to buy a permanent reminder."

Another lasting memento to go with the abolition of EMA, £9,000 annual university fees and selective free schools. In other news there's a million young unemployed - but what can you do about that eh?

Ruled by loonies pt 2

David Cameron wants to make it even harder for unemployed people claiming benefits to refuse work. Now you may be thinking, with 2.5 million registered unemployed and some areas of the country where an average of 50 or so people apply for each vacant position, you may be thinking that work is refusing people, not the other way round.



But what kind of ideas are they actually weighing up...?

Ideas pushed by No 10 included measures that would force the unemployed and those claiming jobseeker's allowance to spend an entire working week in the pursuit of finding a job. But on Friday lunchtime the Department for Work and Pensions said that particular idea had been ruled out as "not workable". By Friday evening the department was instructed that the idea could be a possible candidate for tightening the welfare regime.

You hear that? You need to spend 36 hours a week, every week, looking for work and, presumably, be able to prove it as well. If you run out of jobs to apply for why not stand on a street corner with a sandwich board: "will vote Tory for food"?

Treasury officials had also been keen on a suggestion that would see those people without a history of national insurance contributions unable to turn down suggested employment opportunities.

So thats what young people are called these days!







But they're right folks. It's time to take on the workshy, make the feckless and decadent classes pay, egregious, idle, thieving, born with a grotesque sense of entitlement... after all they caused the recession.



Meanwhile, in totally unconnected, separate piece of news this is David (son of an investment banker) Cameron hanging out with the royal family (distant relatives) in Scotland on Saturday.