Monday Moan 16

Protests spread over shocking insult to Royalists

Royalists around the world have reacted against the publication of photographs of The Duchess of Cambridge sunbathing topless in the garden of her holiday home.  Protesters in every corner of the world have taken to the streets to demonstrate their opposition.

 "Those who should be held accountable, punished, prosecuted and boycotted are those directly responsible for these photographs and those who stand behind them and those who support and protect them, primarily the French," a leading protester said.

He said that British and Commonwealth governments should press for an enforceable international law banning insults to the British and other royal families.

There have been protests over the photographs in cities around the world in recent days, with spontaneous demonstrations by mobs of angry old ladies, who have made fairy cakes and set up bring and buy stalls outside French embassies. When questioned, none of the protesters had actually seen the photographs, but they had read about it in the Daily Mail so knew it must be true.

The “tut-tutting” could be heard from miles around.

The obscure, poor quality photographs at the centre of the row show the Duchess as a beautiful, if rather thin, young woman, comfortable with her body and with her new husband, apparently deeply in love and unaware that she is being spied upon.

The world needed to know Royalists "would not be silent in the face of this insult", said the protester, who branded the photographs the most dangerous insult to Royalists ever.

 

Didn’t take long, did it?

Oh dear, the Guardian's columnist Simon Jenkins has become the first journalist I have seen to break with the self-imposed restraint code operated by the media during the Olympic and Paralympic Games.

In his column on 11th September  he takes a number of huge swipes at the "sobbing with joy and weeping with ecstacy" of the London media and politicians. Nice touch to suggest it was a London issue - that should help garner support from everywhere else.

He makes numerous references to "throwing public money" at problems and contrasts Danny Boyle's entertainers and the athletes with the "nasty taste of the International Committee, it's ZiL lanes and fats cats" - lovely populist stuff there, particularly the mention of unnamed 'fat cats' - who doesn't despise them?

Of course, his praise for Danny Boyle's entertainers does not sit well with his condemnation of the "extra £40m on the opening ceremony", but hey, who needs consistency when you are ranting?

Wild, unsupported and contentious statements litter this apology for serious journalism - "this proves only that unrestricted public spending can work wonders" - well, yes it can, but then again it might also be just a waste of money unless it is properly controlled and with a specific aim.  "The same is true of defence. No sum is considered too great and no return too abstract". Oh really?  Why then have we had such an uproar about defence cuts? No unrestricted public spending there, surely?

And then the priceless "if it [the Government] can blow £9.3bn on sport why not shower money on intellectually rather than physically gifted young people and call it a university?". (note: it’s difficult to find official Government data, but some estimates suggest that public expenditure on tertiary education has been more that £10bn each year since the Olympics were awarded to London)

The whole article is full of statements that could be picked apart, but why bother? The press is back where it feels most at home - criticising, carping, undermining.  It was a lovely summer without this insidious nonsense, but all good things must come to an end I suppose. It would have been nice if we could have had a few more days though, but I guess they were champing at the bit for the Games to end. Normal service has been resumed.

 

 

Sports Personality of the Year (SPOTY)

According to Barney Ronay, apparently chief sports writer of The Guardian, the reason for Andy Murray having taken so long to become a real British sporting personality is nothing to do with him being sullen, scruffy, chip-on-both-shoulders, spoilt youth, but the fact that he was not born in Surrey.  He calls on the great British public to demonstrate that SPOTY can be "more than a self-serving irrelevance stewarded by a clique of home counties voters".  No sign of The Guardian pandering again to the anti-London and the South-East brigade there then.

Equally, no guidance from Barney as to who that 'clique of home counties voters' would like to see crowned SPOTY this time - so how are we to know who shouldn't get our vote?  He suggests they would chose to vote for people like Steve Redgrave and Seb Coe, as if this was somehow wrong.  How can it be wrong to support people who, in their eras, were the best in the world at times when Britain was not endowed with many who deserved that title?

It's all very well writing humorously Barney, but have an eye for factual accuracy and at least a modicum of logic.

 

 

Downton Abbey

Apparently, I am not allowed to say anything about Downton Abbey, the story of every-day, simple folk now set in the years after the First World War.  It is a national treasure above lampooning.