… knowing the cost of everything and the value of nothing

 

It’s raining, as it ought to on a Bank Holiday Monday, this one being the crowning (sorry, couldn’t resist …) finale to Saturday’s Coronation. Today is about ‘Big Lunch’ and making people enthusiastic about volunteering. More on that below. First, the ‘papers’, full of more Coronation news.

Today, we can celebrate another ‘first’: the astonishing fact that the top spot on Auntie Beeb’s compilation went to the Sun!  Here’s the  headline “Newspaper headlines: William’s pride in ‘Pa’ and UK open to ‘political’ King” (link). Except for the Star which ‘celebrates’ ‘top women astronauts’ (no, me neither …), they’re all full of Coronation News. 

However … now that the most important part, the actual coronation, has been done, the ‘angry voices’ of the usual suspects are being given breathing space. There’s the outcry about ‘racism’ and there’s the mean-spirited moan about how much it all costs. Both complaints show the mean-spiritedness displayed by both the chattering, mostly anti-monarchist ‘classes’ as well as those in the Westminster propaganda outlets who give them space. Here’s the ‘racists!’ outcry:

“One place there were none, of course, [‘coloured people’, that is] was on the Buckingham Palace balcony, as was observed by the Bridgerton actor Adjoa Andoh – who contrasted on the ITV coverage “the rich diversity of the abbey” and “a terribly white balcony”.” (link)

Does it not occur to those people who want a ‘less white balcony’ that there are no ‘black working royals’? Do they in fact demand a ‘diverse’ person simply as a token? There’s of course this professor of Birmingham University, the go-to critic of all things British “because: slavery! Colonialism! Imperialism”. This is what he told the grauniad (my emphasis)

“What the diversity reminds us of is that the British empire has always been pretty diverse. The Commonwealth, which is just the empire rebranded and another good example of this charade, has always been predominantly black and brown people. It’s not progress, it’s just the same thing with a PR spin. The idea that you could have a coronation of a British monarch that was anti-racist is frankly ludicrous. It’s something that just can’t be reformed. You just need to not have it. It shouldn’t exist.” (link)

Yes – let’s scrap our Monarchy which has been ‘hideously white’ for a thousand years because it’s not racist at all to eradicate the history of a people in the name of a minority. Perhaps he’d care to explain why the infamous ‘Benin Bronzes’, returned to Nigeria by the German government, has now ended up in private hands – the hands of the progeny of the Benin kings who received bronze as payment for the salves they sold to the Portuguese in the 16th century?

Will he and the other ‘diverse’ celebrity representatives next bemoan that the organised ‘Big Lunch’ parties are also hideously white – or will the grauniad show us a few photos of ‘diverse’ communities celebrating today? The fact that the National Lottery apparently was giving grants for such parties should have been of help –  after all, we keep being told that yon diverse communities are so deprived. 

This brings me to the other moan, raised already on the day of the Coronation: the cost of it. This outcry is the go-to argument of ‘republicans’ and lefties who dream of abolishing the Monarchy. There’s an extensive report in The Times: “How much did the King’s coronation cost — and who pays?” (link, paywalled). Why is that question never asked when it’s about lefty pet issues like ‘poor refugees’? The subtitle is a bit more detailed:

“The famously frugal monarch wanted a slimmed-down event — we are, after all, in a cost of living crisis. But will the taxpayer be happy to foot a bill that is estimated to have come in at between £100m and £250m?” (link, paywalled)

I’m glad they mention us tax payers and the ‘cost-of-living crisis! After all: ‘food banks still exist’, don’t they! So why not have this event reduced to some symbolic gesture? A nation which is not only starving but should also go in sack and ashes because of ‘racism’ and all that jazz surely cannot be permitted to reaffirm their connection to the Crown? How dare all those hundreds and thousands pack the Mall for the hideously white balcony event! 

The coronation apparently ‘cost’ £100m or, writes the Times, according to ‘unverified sources’ £250m’. I’ll not even touch the convolutions with which The Times tries to fabricate a comparison with earlier coronations. I’ll just mention in an aside that the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II took place during a time of true, actual austerity in the wake of WWII, something the wailers never have experienced themselves. 

While readers and comment posters on The Times report and elsewhere ask how these costs were actually calculated, I have a different question: where is the outcry in the Westminster Press about the cost of our wonderfully diverse, non-racist ‘support’ for all those ‘poor refugees’? The Coronation cost the nation between two and five weeks of ‘housing’ yon illegal migrants!

“We” can “afford” those ‘refugee’ costs but are too poor to afford the one event which actually brings the Nation together, in a reaffirmation of Crown and People? Really? Does the ‘cost-of-living crisis’ not exists in that case as well? Perhaps all those ‘republicans’ might explain why they’re happy to shell out similar costs every four or five years for an elected ‘head of state’, like the US president. Perhaps they might also ponder the ongoing costs for all those past presidents  – or PMs in our case: security and for their ‘pension rights’. From a monetary point of view I think we’re far better off with a monarch: two coronations in 70 years surely is good value for money!

That’s all I have for today. I find the speed with which the ’diverse’ new citizens have taken on board the spirit Napoleon lambasted us with: “A nation of shopkeepers”, i.e. a nation which calculates the cost of everything while achieving nothing but mean-spiritedness. Have a good day.



Print Friendly, PDF & Email