Cricket, Biden, The Royals

 

A Country Cricket Match
John Robertson Reid (1851-1926)
Photo Credit: Tate [CC BY-NC-ND]

... Alas, with the rise of television, football, Pot Noodles and the internet, people's ability to concentrate on anything longer than a beer commercial declined desperately and, as a result, cricket fell into disrepair. It wasn't anything to do with Sky TV - it was everyone suddenly being too busy to make time for cricket and too dim to understand it.

But we're not so busy now, are we? Since lockdown everyone has got into long-form fiction again and massive great TV serials - anything to kill a few hours and hasten the end of this misery. So what better than a sport that can blow away whole weeks?..

And if you're worried about Britain's imperial legacy in a diverse modern world, well, as a cricket fan you need worry no more! The whole point of the game was to give the former colonies something to beat us at. And, by God, they do. Nowhere have the English had to show more post-imperial humility over the years than on the cricket pitch...

There's no need to go pulling statues down to right the wrongs of the colonial past when you've got the England cricket team... And as for issues of class access, it's simply not true that the England team is full of private school boys. There's Ben Stokes, for example, and . . . um . . . oh, don't tell me . . . there's, er . . . look I'll talk to you about getting state school kids into the England cricket set-up when you fill the football team with public school boys, OK? Swings and roundabouts, mate. Bloody hell. Some people...

(Giles Coren, The Times, 2021)

Biden

L'Americaine
Walter Richard Sickert (1860-1942)
Photo Credit: Tate [CC BY-NC-ND] 

...It's very clear that Biden will actually love the UK. Here are the reasons why:

1 Joe Biden is Irish, and the Irish are noted for their love of Britain. In the 1970s, some Irish people were so devoted in their love of the British state that they would attempt to detonate parts of it just so the British would pay them the attention they craved.

2 Both "Biden" and "Britain" begin and end with the letters "B" and "N". This will create a powerful subconscious urge in the new President's mind to befriend our nation. The countries of Bahrain, Benin and Bhutan will also be relying on this effect.

3 Biden's dogs are called "Champ" and "Major". This is clearly a tribute not only to Britain's fourth-most-recent Conservative PM, John Major, but also to the "Champagne" which is drunk at all Conservative dinners.

4 Biden had a stutter as a child. Our own Prime Minister's habit of starting sentences with " I, I, I, I, I..." or "Well, er, um, er, um..." will seem charmingly familiar to him, as a result.

5 Biden is a Catholic. Catholics have lots of children. Boris Johnson has lots of children. Therefore Boris Johnson is essentially Catholic, and when Biden visits the UK this summer  the two of them will have a wonderful time kissing the Blarney Stone in the Confessional and dancing a Four Leaf Clover jig to the sounds of the Lucky Potato band.

(Christopher Hope-We-Get-A-State-Visit, Private Eye, 1540)

The Royals

The royal family has used a secretive procedure to vet three parliamentary acts that have prevented residents on Prince Charles's estate from buying their own homes for decades...

Cornwall
Benjamin Houghton (1865-1924)
Photo Credit: Portsmouth Museums and Visitor Services [CC BY-NC-ND]

The prince's £1bn Duchy of Cornwall estate was later given special exemptions in the acts that denied the residents the legal right to buy their own homes outright.

Under the opaque procedure, the Queen and Charles were allowed to vet the contents of the bills by government ministers and approve them before they were passed by parliament.

The exemptions have left people living in homes that have diminishing or no financial value. Residents say they cannot borrow against their homes to pay, for example, care fees.

Jane Giddins, who lives in one of the prince's houses in a Somerset village said a "feudal and anachronistic" system had unfairly favoured Charles to the detriment of her family...

The exemptions enable the prince to preserve the financial value of his estate and also bring in income as the tenants have to pay him rent annually. The residents say they have been unable to find out why and how he was able to secure preferential treatment from the government.

The prince declined to comment when asked whether he or his family had lobbied the government for the exemptions in the three acts...

The monarch has vetted more than 1,000 parliamentary bills during her reign to check whether any affect the crown or her private interests... The same procedure [known as Queen's consent] allows Charles to screen proposed laws in case they damage his real estate, the Duchy of Cornwall, which gives him a private income of about £22m a year...

(Rob Evans, David Pegg, Michael Barton, The Guardian, 2021)

How is it in this day and age that the Queen and Charles are able to vet parliamentary bills? More importantly, perhaps, why has parliament not acted to sweep away that right? The words "feudal" and "anachronistic" sum it all up.

(See The Royals, December 8, 2020)

*The revelation that the Queen has been using the royal consent rule to ensure her own interests are protected hasn't shocked me all that much, although the detail is fascinating as it is shocking. We've known for some time that Prince Charles also benefits from dozens of exemptions and privileges afforded to the Duchy of Cornwall in laws passed over the last 40 years.

Make no mistake, this is an abuse of power by the royals. There are also wider and very serious implications of this abuse, given the close relationship the royals have with powerful people both here in the UK and abroad. Given the excessive secrecy surrounding the royals, how can we know that they aren't also lobbying on behalf of Middle Eastern kings or American billionaires, all under the guise of protecting their own modesty? Royal consent needs to be abolished, and the palace needs to release all correspondence relating to its lobbying of government going back to the start of the Queen's reign. Otherwise how can we have any confidence that our own head of state and her family haven't been abusing a constitutional loophole on an industrial scale?

(Graham Smith, Chief executive officer, Republic, The Guardian, 2021)