Well it’s only weeks away and in case you forgot for one minuscule second then don’t fret, because the television set is all too keen to remind you at every given opportunity and now you can apparently add this post to the list of bullshit that keeps reminding you about the trivial legal coalescence of a billionaire to a millionaire. Are you sensing a tone here yet? GOOD.
Now I’ve no objections - in theory at least - to a family of inbreds turning the corner and extending their gene pool for the first time since whenever the last illegitimate royal child was born. Fair play to them I say, in a way that’s sort of like - “well done, that’s some exceptional self-improvement on your part” and other sorts of bollocks you say to the likes of recovering drug-addicts whom are desperately trying to overturn a myriad of poor life choices. My main objection stems from the fact that this is costing the taxpayer an obscene amount of money, security alone will cost £20m for example.
Now considering part of the reason this wedding is happening is to provide a rosy-coloured smokescreen - designed to bamboozle the British public and help them forget that the government is still only 10% of the way through bending the middle class and the poor over backwards, while they get to work shoving various large objects in places they aren’t designed to go and seeing how long they can get away with it for, as if the entire nation were one giant game of buckaroo - I’d say that charging us for the privilege too really is the definition of taking ones eyes out, only to return for the sockets too at a later date.
Now I realise some of you are probably thinking that the royal wedding has no political connotations whatsoever and if you’re not then you’re at least thinking that politics is just one in a grand number of things that has led to this union of a balding horse to a failed size zero model. Well, those of you thinking the former, I say to you: get a grip you royalist, right-wing arsebarn at which point I’d promptly slap you upside the head. Those of you thinking the latter: good point. But frankly I don’t have a vested interest in whether the two of them love each other or not, do I?
To be honest this wedding just serves to shed a light on the bigger question: Are the royal family worth ‘it’? Theres a few arguments for the Royal family but the stupidest one I can think of is “but it’s our heritage/it’s tradition”. So fuck? Now I love tradition used within a pleasant context - for example I like Sunday lunch and I too love our heritage, I think it’s commendable for example that we go to great lengths to preserve landmarks, castles, old buildings and other such stuff, but the royal family? Puh-lease. Perhaps if we did away with the royal family we could use the money to….. oh I don’t know….. actually restore and preserve the hundreds of national heritage sites I only just eluded to that in fact fall further and further into disrepair every year. In fact let’s go one better: CUT THE ROYALS, SAVE PUBLIC SERVICES!
Yes! Why bloody not? We keep getting told: “Well we would love to abolish tuition fees entirely, but the money isn’t there! Look at the deficit.” and “Well we’d love to not be closing libraries, but the money isn’t there! Look at the deficit.” Ok, that’s actually fair enough reasoning but put alongside the hypocrisy that the royal family are taxpayer funded, that argument sure loses some credibility. Now I’m not trying to draw a false equivalency here, I realise that although the royal family costs the taxpayer a sizeable amount of cash, I’m sure it wouldn’t be enough to abolish tuition fees for example. Figures seem to suggest that the cost of the royals to each individual taxpayer is around 70p a year. But imagine if that 70p went toward saving libraries or towards lowering tuition fees, obviously it wouldn’t totally solve either of those problems but it sure would go a long way towards helping, wouldn’t it? All I’m saying is I am sure that you could think of a better cause to give your 70p to, maybe even a worthwhile charity.
As for anyone worried that we would lose out on tourism should we dissect the royal family from our nation, on what basis are you arguing that? Let’s be honest, Americans more than anyone else seem to be infatuated with our monarchy, now do you REALLY think if we abolished the monarchy they wouldn’t visit Britain? Of course they would still visit. Americans I love you, I really do, but when it comes to old shit you’ll buy into anything, no matter how lame it is. They come to see Buckingham Palace and the Tower Of London, not the Queen herself. We could keep those, turn them into heritage sites and charge folks for tours and such because it’s the history that is the ultimate charm here. The present is somewhat irrelevant, tourists will come to learn about the history and see old buildings, it’s not like we currently have the queen on display in some sort of mobile glass box for everyone visiting to see just like……… er, who is that guy again……. oh yeah….. the pope. And even if we did he wears a much sillier hat and a far more beautiful dress, we can’t compete with that.
