RANDOM FOTOS ON FRIDAY

Brave decent man.

Let's be honest, neither of you gives a damn...

Oh my.... would you look at the state of that nonsense? I bet Chic was tempted with that sword; I know I would have been. This is how the other half lives, while the rest of us are worrying about the electricity bill.

No wonder the Brits wanted them on the Human Rights Council. When they bring in their English Bill of Rights for those with titles, the Saudis will rubber stamp it.

Eh Cameron?

FOUR MILLION POUNDS FOR TROOPS' FAMILIES' HOME HAS TO BE RAISED BY CHARITY

I was watching the BBC news (rare for me) last night and I noticed that Rothsay had opened a home in the grounds of a hospital in Birmingham, England, where relatives of injured UK soldiers can stay while they spend time with the soldier in the hospital.

It's a wonderful idea, adopted from America. It removes massive worries financial and otherwise, from the shoulders of the family, and boosts the morale and health of the wounded soldiers by the fact that they know they have their families around them when they need them, and that they are safe and being looked after.

So far so good.

Then we were told that it cost £4 million to build. And that that money had been raised by charities.

WHAT?

We send these lads off to fight halfway across the world and when they get hurt, badly, we, as a country, can't provide their families with accommodation close to the one hospital that has the proper facilities to help them, sometimes hundreds of miles from their homes?

WHAT?

In the vast budget of the fourth largest military budget on the face of the Earth, the government can't find £4 measly million to pay for accommodation for the injured troops' families?

You couldn't make that up.

They found billions to stage a 'prestigious' Olympic Games in London including unknown billions on security after their security fell flat on its face; they found millions to set up the security for G8 heads of government and state in Northern ireland and millions more to accommodate and entertain them; they spent millions on the Queen's jubilee, and £8 million for a funeral for Mrs Thatcher, all without blinking an eye.

Obviously somethings are just far more important to them than the lives of the lads they send off to fight for their glory.

And they have the nerve to imply that Scotland wouldn't be able to cope on our own.

Anyone who knows me, either personally or through what I have written, will know that I'm not a huge fan of the military. 

Indeed our future as a tiny military power is one of the (many) things that appeal to me about being independent. 

And I don't get dewy eyed about "our boys"; I don't believe that they are all hallowed heros; some, of course, are exactly that, while some of them are just thugs. 

But what I do believe is that if we insist on poking our noses where they don't belong  and in doing so we injure and maim some of our troops, then we owe these guys the best we can afford when they wheel them home. And that includes taking away the worry of what happens to their families.

That we leave this work to charity, when it costs so very very little, makes me wonder if what members of the aristocracy and royals have been insisting for the longest time is true: 

The ruling class really is another species.

WE ARE NOT CONTENT TO SIGN THIS BILL INTO LAW. IT MIGHT COST US A BOB OR TWO.

There are times when I have to admit to shaking myself in wonderment at some of the ancient laws still on statute books or rights and customs observed in Westminster in the law making process that still holds sway over Scotland.

I suppose we are reminded of this periodically when something bizarre happens... Tony B£air, instead of resigning from his seat, takes the Chiltern Hundreds, or an MP wishing to stop a debate dons a top hat and cries “I spy stangers”.

I was reminded again of this when the topic of Magna Carta, signed in Latin in 1215 was raised on the David Letterman show on tv. (You’d have thought an English public school boy would have been able to translate Magna Carta into English, but apparently Cameron couldn’t. Eton, it seems, just isn’t what it used to be.) Anyway Magna Carta is what it used to be, as its 1297 version, with the title (originally in Latin) "The Great Charter of the Liberties of England, and of the Liberties of the Forest," is still on the statute book of England and Wales.

Most of these things are a lightly amusing, a bit time wasting, but don't really do any great harm. 

However, another anachronism is the little known powers remaining to the Queen and the Duke of Cornwall, to scrutinise laws that may affect them personally, to have proposed laws altered, and for this to be kept secret from the public. That is slightly more serious, and yet another chip in the veneer of the so called democracy that we live in.

Now the Cabinet Office has been ordered, by the DeputyCommissioner for Information, to release details of how this system works as laid out in a government manual “The Crown and the Duchy of Cornwall”.

This is no ancient and no longer used right and privilege. In the last two years Charles has been asked to consent to at least 12 draft bills on everything from wreck removals to co-operative societies. Between 2007 and 2009 he was consulted on bills relating to coroners, economic development and construction, marine and coastal access, housing and regeneration, energy and planning. The Queen has had changes made to law concerning the employment of apprentices, on the basis that it would affect her as an employer.

The government has yet to decide whether to appeal the decision of the Information Commission. If it does, it is likely that the matter will go to the High Court.

Can it possibly be right that two individuals should have powers to alter Bills that may impact on millions of others every bit as much as it impacts on them, just because of an accident of birth?

When I was sorting out the link for this article, I noticed the following comment on the Guardian story:

Good news. Hopefully this will shed light on the nonsense in the Scottish Parliament whereby no Bill can be debated at Stage 3 unless the Queen has consented to place her prerogative and interests at disposal of Parliament. As, for example, in relation to the Alcohol (Minimum Pricing) Scotland Bill.

Any ideas what this is about?

YOU'D BETTER SIT DOWN BEFORE YOU READ THIS!!

Even when you instinctively dislike someone and abhor their self importance, you have to give that person credit for a good day's work when they do one.

So, although I bet you never thought I'd say this...

Well done to the Duke of Rothsay.

Yes, I mean it. Well done, Charlie. (I bet he's spluttering in disbelief as he reads this!)

Sensible words and a generous gift at the end of a day touring Croydon gets my vote.

I don't approve for a minute of this guy getting involved in politics, but I don't think this intervention was particularly political, and, for England these riots have been so life changing that maybe something out of the ordinary was called for. Additionally, his personal donation in these extraordinary circumstances is, I think, not out of place, and unlikely to create a precedent.

Even Mrs Parker Bowles appeared to get involved and look as if she understood that there was a deep seated problem to be dealt with there.

In the meantime, playing for all he's worth to "The Sun" and "The Daily Mail" flog 'em and lock 'em up for 25 years brigade, Cameron and his cabinet look more and more out of touch with reality.

The Liberals are at pains to distance themselves from Cameron and Pickles on the 'rip up the rule book' sentencing policy, which is completely out of control, with some people imprisoned for taking £2 worth of water, and others, far more involved, being admonished and sent home.

It might be as well at this point to note that the "rule book" on sentencing is there for a reason. Expect appeals to most of these sentences, which will add to the clogging of courts and the expense. And in the end the judiciary will look as stupid, as ineffectual and as inefficient as the rest of the establishment.

Good Lord, it says something when even Clarence House knows more about what's going on in the streets of England than their prime minister.

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Note to Rothsay:

This is a one off matey. Don't get too used to praise on Munguin's Republic.

And....We're still Scottish Republicans, OK?

NO INVITATIONS FOR BLAIR AND BROWN TO THE PREDICTED DELUGE

So, at last, presumably thanks to the duke of Rothsay, who seems to have had a lot to do with invitations’ list, the true political colours of the royal family have been made clear.

There are four ex-prime ministers of the England and the UK living; two of them have been invited to the wedding and two have been ignored. Strangely the most recent two have been ignored. Not so strangely perhaps, they are Labour.

The palace says that the reason for this is that the two Labour ex-prime ministers, unlike Mr Major and Mrs Thatcher, are not knights of the garter. Neither, however, is Tara Palmer Tomkinson, nor Posh Spice, Rowan Atkinson, Elton John and a vast array of other people. They are, however, and no matter how bad they were, ex-prime ministers.

So clearly the duke of Rothsay is a Tory. (Well, no wonder when you consider that in the short time that Cameron‘s boys have been in, the chancellor has given them vast amounts of money and they have been given total secrecy for the Queen, Rothsay and Willie.)

While on the subject of the wedding, I read in the Telegraph this morning that:

Royal wedding: heavy rain forecast for big day

It's the news the country had been dreading

No it’s not Telegraph, you vacuous, sycophantic muppets. The news the country is dreading is another soldier killed in Afghanistan; a plane shot down over Libya; another increase in VAT; another rise in petrol prices, food bills, gas and electricity bills; another round of cuts; a letter from the inland revenue telling us that once again they have made a mess of our taxes and we owe them more money. I suspect that most of the royals can afford a dry pair of shoes, which is a bloody sight more than some of their “subjects”.

Maybe the palace was worried that Blair and Brown, being... ahem... 'socialists', wouldn't have a spare pair of shoes.

Pics: Bonnie Prince Charlie ... oh go on, we need a laugh; Tara Palmer Tomkinson (I bet she can't say that when she's legless...although looking at the pic, it seems that she'd have to go some to lose these legs... not quite the same story about her nose though... She's had to have it rebuilt for the wedding, having disolved it in cocaine. Bless her, she does so much good with her money, keeping plastic surgeons in work.

CARRY ON CHARLIE

At the risk of crossing swords with my dear bloggy mate Dean, I feel obliged to put down my feelings about the Duke of Rothsay, Earl of Carrick, Great Steward and Lord of the Isles, and his use of his position and connections to intervene in matters well outside the remit of the Royal family.

This time it has ended in tears as a high court judge described his opposition to building plans as "unexpected and unwelcome".

Justice Vos ruled that Charles's intervention in plans for the £3bn Chelsea barracks redevelopment placed the rulers of Qatar, who owned the site, in "an impossible position" and had an impact on the views of the elected politicians charged with deciding on the plans' merits.

The whole story is here, but in essence Voss found that Qatari Diar, a property development company owned by Qatar's royal family, changed its plans for the prime London site as a result of the Charles's direct complaint to the Emir that he did not like the designs by the firm of Lord Rogers.

Charles made clear his opposition to the plan at a meeting with the Emir and he wrote to the prime minister of Qatar saying the designs were part of a "gigantic experiment with the very soul of our capital city".

He wanted instead something more "old-fashioned" like the buildings in "Bath or 18th-century Edinburgh" in its place.

Justice Vos said that Qatari Diar was "caught between a rock and a hard place" as a result of Charles’s intervention and that the company had been forced to make decisions with "diplomatic and political implications".

The judgment said that the Duke had used his powerful influence lobbying fellow royals and was prepared to put pressure on the mayor, Westminster city council and the media. This put Qatari Diar in a very difficult position and left Qatari Diar executives trying to "calm the political waters and prevent royal feathers being further ruffled".

Vos also ruled that even after the Qataris had decided to pursue an alternative scheme, Charles's position continued to have an "impact on the views of the officers and politicians (but primarily the latter) at Westminster city council and the Greater London authority".

This is absolutely insupportable. The role of the monarch is to be aware, to advise and to warn her Prime Minister, in private, without ever expressing a public view. The role of her family is to support her in this.

The people who deal with planning consent are elected not bred, to do so.

I predict that when Charles takes over as head of state he will have the delicately balanced relationship between government and monarchy tumbling down round his ears within a couple of years, possibly sooner if he insists on having that woman that the Church, of which he will be head, does not recognize as his lawfully wedded wife, crowned as Queen Camilla Parker-Bowles.

It’s no secret that this blog would be happy to see the royals replaced with an elected head of state. If Charles of Rothsay continues to behave in this way we may well get our wish.

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