A right royal carve-up

by Alan Tyers

MPs, failed but lavishly pensioned Speakers, BBC executives, bailed-out bankers...and now the Queen as well? Has EVERYONE got their hand in your pocket?

As her subjects battle through the biggest recession in a generation, the cost of keeping the Queen in corgis and formidable hats has risen. The total annual cost of the monarchy is up £1.5m to £41.5m.

The Queen’s Civil List, which includes staff, cost £13.9m in 2008. £7.9m of that came from the Government (i.e. the taxpayer) and a further £6m came from a reserve fund that was built up during the 1990s with unspent (i.e. taxpayers’) money.

That pot now stands at "just" £21m, so even the most mathematically challenged royal (no doubt a strong field) should be able to work out that, at the current rate of spending, it’ll all be gone in three years or so.

And so the Royal Family will be wanting more money.

As the Government - this one, the next one, whatever - effects huge public spending cutbacks to fund the bailouts of their chums in the City, the beleaguered taxpayer will have to dig ever deeper to support an anachronistic bunch of losers, freeloaders and no-hopers.

The Queen, Gawd bless her, has done a magnificent job, but once she goes, it’s time for this obscenely-funded monarchy to reform, massively. They have assets and earning potential, so let them pay for their own keep: scrap the civil lists and let them sink or swim.

There is just no justification for having an already vastly wealthy man like Prince Charles and his Hooray Henry sons suckling on the public teat – let alone the also-ran 15th in-line nobodies.

If they want to stay on with people bowing and scraping before them, they can do it without enjoying the largesse of their supposed social inferiors.

Why nasty Nick should shun the Queen

by Greg McDonald

The media storm over nasty BNP leader Nick Griffin being invited to tea with little old Elizabeth II shows our corrupt political elite up for the self-serving hypocrites they are.

If anything, Griffin, a man standing for democratic election, should shun the Queen as a totalitarian whose family represents a thousand years of brutal violence, religious oppression and white supremacy.

Now before anyone thinks I’m advocating hanging swastikas in Trafalgar Square, let’s be clear: the BNP's policies (more hitting of defenseless children, less of those awful darkies who give us Olympic glory and our national diet) are an embarrassment to anyone who understands what it means to be British.

Yet should Griffin and co gain seats in June, much of the blame will lie with the self-serving greed of a corrupt mainstream political elite guilty of upholding the undeserving at the expense of the unrepresented many.

As Fred Goodwin enjoys his pension pot, Lord Michael Martin arises, and the rest of us suffer on their financial and political watch, what’s required is genuine representative democracy. That means proportional representation, four-yearly elections, the abolition of unelected Lords and heads of state, and representative governance.

We must not let the corrupt mainstream use the threat of the BNP to distract from the rot at the heart of our system – and there couldn’t be a better symbol of that rot than a woman who’s never had a job throwing a knees-up at the Palace.

Name-Kolin

by Alan Tyers

Like idiot father, like idiot son: it emerges that Prince Charles calls his polo pal Kolin Dhillon ‘Sooty’.

Graham Smith, of anti-monarchy organisation Republic, said this shows that “the Royal Family are not a symbol of unity, they’re quite divisive. People are saying they are not racist but on the evidence in the public domain I think that’s to the contrary.”

He’s right: the evidence in the public domain is that they are racist. Both father and son think it’s okay to refer to their friends and co-workers by racist nicknames. That’s racist, that is.

People will say: “At my job, everyone calls [the Indian/Nigerian/Japanese guy] ‘hilarious racial nickname’ and he thinks it’s a great laugh.”

Yeah, maybe. Or maybe referring somebody to a nickname based on the colour of their skin – Sooty, to pick an example not at random – is a way of belittling a person who is different, of cutting them down to size. If that person wants to fit in with the majority, he has to suck it up. What a laugh.

To those who would say: “There’s no difference between calling someone 'Sooty' and calling them ‘Taffy’ or ‘Jock’ or ‘Aussie’,” I would say – give over. You know there is.

Graham Smith, though, is wrong on one count. While the concept of a Royal Family is indeed divisive, this in fact makes the Windsors an excellent symbol for our country. Why, we can’t even agree that it’s wrong to racially abuse each other!

Harry's not so flash

By Greg McDonald

While this weekend’s Royal Racism scandal is a disgrace, it’s disingenuous of politicians and commentators on all sides to personally blame a nice but dim little prince for shaming Britain.

The blame lies with our own complacency in retaining an inherently racist 11th century monarchy in the democratic 21st century.

Those smug enough to dismiss racism as a fuss over nothing don’t understand that Harry’s loose lips didn’t just sink the good ship Recruitment in the UK, they floated a Queen Mary II of Islamist volunteers in Pakistan.

For while we may know the modern Royals are little more than panto for Japanese tourists, how closely do you think Osama bin Laden will be spelling out the fineries of the British constitution before his Jihad class watches their new educational DVD of Britain’s warrior-Prince slandering the “ragheads”?

Yet while stupidity may be no excuse for prejudice, Harry’s particular brand of idiocy is perfectly understandable. A life of unearned privilege would make complacent buffoons of most of us – and as long as our heads of state are selected by birth, it makes fools of all of us.

Founded on the ethnic cleansing of Britain’s native Saxon population and rewarding white, male, first-born heirs, the monarchy as an institution is racist, sexist, ageist and classist. People with a modicum of self-respect don’t tolerate bigoted fools lording it over them, and a thousand years on from their arrival we’ve no excuse.

Until we have the self-respect to bring the curtain down on the brute prejudice that sustains the Royals as heads of state, we’ve only ourselves to blame for the shame brought on us by Prince Harry.

Seeing red

By Greg McDonald

“I’m not ginger, I’m auburn, that's what I've been told."

So says red-headed royal Prince Harry. I’m no fan of Harry – less so for this failure to stand up for himself here – but one thing you’ll never find me attacking the lad for is the colour of his hair.

In fact, people’s willingness to excuse slurs against ginger hair is as inexcusable as making allowances for offensive remarks about skin colour.

If a British public figure quipped “I’m not black, I’m tanned,” as sleazeball Italian leader Silvio Berlusconi recently described Barack Obama, there’d be an outcry – yet the bullies who mock ginger hair get away with it, and those who stand up to them are told they can’t take a joke.

So, in contrast to Harry’s cringing, props to Simply Red firebrand Mick Hucknall for recently giving “gingerists” both barrels, rightly calling out those who mock another’s hair colour as the bullies they are.

Let’s be clear. Attacking people because of their hair colour is not racism – but for a bullied seven-year-old child, the difference matters about as much as whether Stars or Life was Simply Red’s definitive album.

Of course, if it were just celebrity egos at stake, “gingerism” might all be a great giggle, but abuse is no joke. Recently a family of red-heads was driven out of a Newcastle home, 2003 saw the first anti-red hair hate crime, a stabbing, and 99% of ginger people say they have suffered abuse.

Bullying is bullying – whether fixed on someone’s gender, age, the tone of their skin or the colour of their hair – and bullying must never be tolerated.

Not so clever Trevor

By Greg McDonald

Trevor Phillips, chairman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, may be wrong that a British Barack Obama couldn’t become PM, but while surveys show ordinary modern Brits would happily vote for a black man, Mr Phillips is tragically right about Britain’s extraordinary, outdated system of appointing a Head of State.

For whereas American democracy has rewarded Obama’s hard work and faith with election to the highest office in the land, Britain’s undemocratic and backward methods make it impossible for a black man to be King here.

So while every child of America’s democracy can today rightly say “nothing is impossible here with a bit of graft”, not so in Britain’s institutionally unfair, unequal constitutional monarchy, which rewards not hard work, faith and the human spirit, but keeping it in the family – both in office and in bed.

The British people, and the British political parties, have long left racism in the past – yet while modern Brits are open-minded and decent, the tabloid pantomime which we call our Royal family is an endemically racist, sexist, Medieval embarrassment fit only for the 21st century world to snigger at.

It’s a sad day for Britain when our American friends celebrate the triumph of hope, even as our equality watchdog damns the UK system. But we should take inspiration from Obama’s success and move towards an equal, democratic Britain with an elected Head of State whose breeding is not an issue. That’s change we Brits can believe in too.

The Price of Princes

By Alan Tyers

Prince William is off to Afghanistan, where he will, er, meet people and ask them, "Have you come far?" and, "What do you do?"

At least he won't be popping in to Binky Twistleton-Ringbinder's stag do, or doing his best to impress a smashing filly with his chopper-handling skills.

We hope.

Whatever it is that second lieutenant William Wales is doing in the war-torn country, it seems a safe bet that protecting him while he does it won't come cheap to us, the taxpayer.

We've already had the fiasco with his brother having to be yanked away from his sinecure. Is it not time just to dismiss this fantasy that the brothers are just regular soldiers like the rest of the grunts?

They both seem like decent enough chaps, and it's not their fault who their parents are, but it would be preferable for Wills and Harry to find some way of filling their days that’s a bit less cripplingly expensive.

Let Diana go… please?

Posted by Alan Tyers

Finally the verdict is in. Diana and Dodi were not murdered: they died in an unfortunate accident.

The court found that the demise of Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed was caused by a variety of factors: the drunk chauffeur driving too fast and the pursuing paparazzi. The fact that the Princess and her boyfriend were not wearing seatbelts contributed to the fatalities.

This inquest, the cost of which runs into eight figures, has finally told us what any sane person surely knew all along: no murder, no conspiracy.

On the other hand, there’s the front page of the Daily Express, still flogging that dead horse with a headline insisting: “Verdict Is A Blow For Millions” – and lashings of quotes from Mohammed Fayed about the “murders”.

It wasn’t, as the paper claims, a “sensational verdict”. It’s the obvious truth. Let’s put an end to this nonsense now and let the poor woman rest in peace.

Oathish behaviour

Posted by Alan Tyers

What do teenagers really need? Better schools? Tougher parenting? More skills? No – they need to be proud of The Queen!

New Government proposals on the thorny issue of citizenship and what it means to “be British" suggest that school-leavers should pledge an American-style oath of allegiance to Her Maj.

And "citizenship ceremonies" for recently naturalised foreigners could be spiced up by platoons of school kids. The little angels would apparently "re-energise the events" by singing hideous ‘80s pop dirge We Are The World.

Emigrate! Emigrate!

There are also plans to overhaul outdated treason laws, including abolishing life imprisonment for sleeping with the wife of the heir to the throne.

With Diana gone, that seems less of a pressing issue, as does the mooted possibility that some of the lesser-performed verses of the national anthem may be (letters to the Daily Telegraph at the ready)… scrapped.

The report is the handiwork of former Attorney General Lord Goldsmith, whom you may remember from such hits as the BAE-Saudi row and having an affair with Britain's first Asian QC.

This is another needless, empty, half-baked idea – and for what it's worth, I'd say there are few things more "un-British" than pandering to ghastly children or standing up and shouting about how passionate you are about something.

The Butler did it

Posted by Alan Tyers

Paul Burrell's secret is finally revealed: he's full of it.

The publicity-crazed butler has ensured that the Diana inquest has descended into farce, refusing to tell the jury the "secret" he alludes to in his money-spinning book, then claiming to have forgotten.

The coroner wasn't having that, sending Burrell to get the letter containing the "secret", which he couldn't find, meaning Burrell had to spill the beans in a note to the judge.