THE phenomenally expensive soap opera which is the royal wedding should be an eye-opener for us all.
Firstly the massive expenditure on the nuptials of a relatively minor royal in succession terms is justified by many royalists because of the tourists it brings in. We are all aware that it is easy to prove anything with statistics and I doubt their numbers as in all my working life all over the UK and abroad I have never met anyone who said their reason for visiting the UK was to see the royals or indeed their palaces. At most they talked of passing royal palaces as being incidental to their main reasons for being here.
Surely we should hang our heads in shame that it was official policy of local politicians in Windsor to remove all those sleeping rough on their streets of Windsor during the pageant with no interest in providing proper assistance to these unfortunate citizens. Is it not blatant hypocrisy that as long as those who assemble to show their subservience to the royals are permitted to sleep along the procession route as long as they are wrapped in the Union flag? Should we all chip in to buy the homeless a flag each so they will become acceptable to those in authority?
Those who tell us that having a monarch and all the hangers-on protects our democracy are guilty of the worst form of deception. To site just one incident of political interference: prior to the independence referendum the Queen while leaving a church service at Balmoral spoke to a woman in the crowd who immediately repeated to the press that the Queen had warned subtly against a Yes vote. Amazingly the woman disappeared and no one knew who she was. We would be incredibly gullible if we did not suspect a set up to influence democracy.
I wish the couple well and hope that one day soon we will become a society where we do not slavishly worship a group of individuals who are no more than ordinary human beings.
David Stubley,
22 Templeton Crescent, Prestwick.
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