ARISE SIR BRUCE AND GIVE US A TWIRL

Happy Birthday Elizabeth, Queen of Scots.

I note you spent your official birthday in your English capital, as you always do, Trooping the Colour in London, even when the colour in question is of a Scottish regiment. I don’t suppose you ever thought that, if the regiment was Scottish, it might be nice for you to do it in your Scottish capital in front of your Scottish subjects. Just a little courtesy to families who might not be able to afford to travel to and stay in London. Not all people have loads of money and free transport.

Congratulations too, to Phil, or as we should now call him Lord High Admiral Phil, for being 90. What a nice present to get from the state to celebrate, and for the Queen to say thank you ...for ...erm, being married to her, getting to live in palaces, being able to have servants and shooting estates and cars and trains and, for a lot of the time, a yacht...

If I make it to 90 I’d like to be the Lord High Executioner, or some other Gilbert and Sullivan character...

Nice too, to see that the honours list hit its usual highs, with titles for such deserving cases as Bruce Forsyth for presenting a tea time tv show with a whole raft of bitchy men and hard looking women and getting paid cartloads of our money. Isn’t he good for 83, though, so I suppose he deserves it? And Jenni Murray who has held down a job with the BBC for 20 years, I’m told...well worth that damehood then.

Then there’s Michael Howard, whose main claims to fame are that his deputy, when at the Home Office, one Anne Widdecombe, said that there was ‘’something of the night’’ about him (I mean, how weird do you have to be before Anne Widdecombe thinks you are weird?), and the fact that he led the Tory party to a defeat against a very unpopular Labour Party, and had to resign. He becomes a Companion of Honour... HUH?

What a disgrace that honours are handed out to these people for doing their jobs, in some people’s opinions not particularly well, and a guy just home from Afghanistan with a leg or two blown off has to fight for some sort of compensatory money so that he can rebuild his life before some bastard from the DWP comes along to tell him that as he’s been claiming for a year he will get him benefits cut.

What a country.

SOMEONE IS HAPPY THE TORIES ARE IN POWER

The royals must be delighted to have the Tories in power for, while bad things are happening daily to people like us, it has been unmitigated joy at the House of Windsor’s house (if you get my meaning)...well I should say houses really, for there are many.

Yes, Dave has rained down (see that: clever use of rained/reigned) benefit after benefit on the family to which he is, I’m told, distantly related. But then, why not? After all, the story goes that when Dave decided that he wanted to be in politics, and the natural party for his sort was the Tories, they showed little interest in putting him forward for a seat. Well, they wouldn’t. Unlike most politicos, Wee Willie Hague for example, he had shown no interest in politics, or in the Tories, at Oxford. His politics, such as they were, were right wing, but they would be. I mean if you had his money wouldn’t you want to keep your hands on it?

Anyway, I ramble. The point is that the Tories weren’t interested in Davie, until one day the Tory chairman got a call from someone at the palace. No, not her, don’t be silly. It was one of her flunkies, but a top flunky it must have been for, lo and behold, the next thing is that Dave is an MP.

So it’s payback time Cammy. And the payback has been big. First the chancellor announced, hidden at the end of the budget, that the Civil List was to be scrapped and a new system of payment for royals initiated. Of course no one imagined that, in a budget so full of bad news for “ordinary” people, that this would mean a large pay rise for the Queen. Apparently Charlie, who is at the bottom of everything avaricious and profligate in the royal family has been writing to ministers for 20 years trying to get them to do this. All have resisted until Georgie who was a pushover and tent folded right away.

So next, it appears that “one” (Charlie) is fed up with one’s private business being known by all and sundry. So...letters, emails and documents relating to the monarch, Charlie and Willie will no longer be disclosed even if they are in the public interest. Yes, you read that right. Even if it is in the public interest!

Again this was tacked onto plans called (ironically) “opening up public bodies to public scrutiny". No one noticed its inclusion as “added protection" for the royals in the small print. You couldn’t make it up.

And now, when unions on the Tube have threatened a strike on April 29 when William and Kate are to be married, Dave’s spokesman has blamed the unions for undermining a day of national celebration. Celebration? What?

His rail minister said “most people” are looking forward celebrating the wedding. Again, what? Most people don’t care squat. I know not one single person who is interested.

Half the population doesn’t give a toss for a start. Guys may be appy to have a day off, but after that....pfffffffff?
And do women want to spend the day gazing at what other women, with a million times (literally) more to spend on clothes, are wearing. Dave is happy because it’s just before local government elections in England, which they want to win. Of course he’ll get a free feed at the palace afterwards.

So never mind all these people being thrown out of work, cold, hungry. We MUSTN’T have the royal wedding ruined... (like they will be using the Tube!!!)

Well, it's an ill wind......

Pic 1: “How awfully clever of you Charles, you doubled the money and the prols aren’t allowed to know how we spend it. Your father always said you’d come in useful for something if we kept you long enough. It's just a pity it took you 20 years to do.” Pic 2: “Sorry I’m late ma’am, the damned tubes are off.” Pic 3: “Ah yes, this is one’s garden; you paid for it, you stock it, you maintain it. Splendid, isn’t it? Take a good look; you’ll not see it again.” Pic 4: The Tent Folder General, hiding with a friend.

State Opening of Parliament in England: Let's Hope that it's Value for Money

So six months before we were due to do it all again, this morning Her Majesty the Queen made her way in procession in a coach to the House of Lords (she is the Duke of Lancaster after all, so maybe that earns her a place there) and reads a speech prepared for her by Prime Ministers David Cameron, Nick Clegg and their teams.

For the second time in 12 months the show of fabulous wealth, of a crown whose sale would go a fair way to clearing our debts and save millions of people suffering deprivation, is given to the people from all over the world. The best we can hope for is that, as it’s happening at this time of the year, thousands of tourists in the London will be treated to a real live view of the Queen in her finery, as she rides to Westminster.

How much will all this cost? It seems ironic that this Queen’s Speech which is all about austerity; all about cutting to pay back the unimaginable debt that the last government and its mates, the City, got us into, should be flanked at both ends by this display of grand wealth. Doubtless millions of people catching snatches of it on tonight’s tv news will be warmed by that memory when they are shivering next winter, out of a job and with less social security money to keep them from hunger and cold.

The Queen will introduce the theme of David Cameron’s Big Society, according to The Times, saying that the measures will herald a stronger and fairer society that encourages individual and social responsibility. Small government is good of course, but the fear is always there that those less fortunate are left unprotected, while the rich pay for the services that the state would have provided.

The Queen will highlight the Government’s priority to reduce the deficit and restore economic growth and to accelerate the reduction of the structural budget deficit, with five Bills from the Treasury. It’s bad news then that the last quarter’s figures actually showed even smaller growth than the one before.

There will be measures to block the rise in employers’ national insurance contributions; return supervisory powers over the City to the Bank of England; and set up an Office of Budget Responsibility, all of which sounds sensible to me.

Another theme is expected to be “freedom, fairness and responsibility”, with Nick Clegg’s Bill to get rid of Labour legislation opposed by the Tories and Liberals over the last years, including the rolling back of the “surveillance state”, scrapping ID cards and regulation of CCTV cameras and DNA. Again, I can’t argue with any of that. I just hope that where the cameras are removed, there will be suitable policing, as cameras were often a cheap method of crime control.

Legislation requiring referenda on future treaties of the EU is also anticipated and, in my opinion will mean that the UK will end up blocking all future movement on the union for good or bad.

A pensions and savings Bill is thought likely to restore the link between pensions and average earnings, which, nearly 40 years after Thatcher removed it, is welcomed. The misery and poverty that that measure has caused over the years is incalculable, but of course none of it ever hit the millionaire Thatcher.

According to The Times we can also expect legislation to provide compensation for victims of the collapse of Equitable Life and to provide support for armed forces families along with, very rightly, much domestic English legislation. It’s a pity that the parliament will not bring forward legislation to create an English parliament.