Tag Archives: Queen

Serfing on a Wave of Royal Jubilation

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What is everyone doing to celebrate the Jubilee? Painting a Union Jack on your pet dog’s face and then sending it to attack foreigners? Donning an Armani cap then fanning wads of cash at your economically disenfranchised neighbours as they die from scurvy before your very eyes? Having a family meal at Pizza Express in Woking? Sending warships to the Falkland Islands? However you choose to celebrate it, just remember – as you stand there snuffling your face into a bowl of Eton Mess or quaffing strawberry-bobbed flutes of Prosecco – that you’re perpetuating an archaic, deeply unfair system of class privilege that’s prevailed for millennia. You’re also teaching children everywhere to venerate wealth and hereditary titles above all else. But still. Wave your wee flag, eh?

Never mind the offensive ridiculousness of subsidising such an obscene occasion from the public purse when many millions have just been thumped below the poverty line like a crooked tent peg: why is the Royal Family still a thing, here in the supposedly enlightened 21st century? The Royal Family is like a sick old farm-dog that no-one quite has the heart to take out into the backyard and blow away with a 12-bore shotgun – which would almost certainly have happened if the owners had been French.

Gawd bless ya, mam

The Queen and I in happier times

I’ve listened to various vox pops and dispatches about the Queen over the last few weeks, and I’ve heard the usual sickening platitudes. Apparently she’s worked hard. She’s a grafter. As if she’d spent 70 years slaving down a mine with a pick-axe and a pit-canary, instead of travelling the world waving at people, and reading out an annual Christmas message to the nation with all the warmth and sincerity of a hostage reading their kidnappers’ demands. I guess, in a way, she is a hostage, trapped inside a high gilded cage, simultaneously looking down upon the stinking masses with a sneer of contempt on her face, as we in turn look up at her and her family like they’re sad, exotic animals in a zoo. It’s tempting to say that we’re all losers in this game, except they’re losers with scores of palaces and a multi-million pound fortune. If the Queen was really struggling with her gas bills they’d probably just let her burn Peckham to the ground.

Apparently the Queen is also like a mother to us all. Someone who’s spent 70 years ‘looking after us’. The people who say these things never cite specifics, mainly because they can’t. They’re just spewing out the sort of candied, bum-tonguing nonsense they feel is expected of them when asked questions about their ‘betters’. I’m being unfair here, though, because Auld Liz has reputedly got the common touch as well. So they say. Although quite what Simon the salt-of-the-earth scaffolder from the East End of London thinks he’s got in common with a nonagenarian who wears a million-pound hat on her head, and spends the year flitting between seven castles, is beyond me. What does he imagine they’d talk about over a few jars down The Queen’s Head?

“Ayl tell you one theeng, Simon. One is ebsolootlee fucked. One’s spent all morning auditioning butlers for Sunday’s dinner with the Danish Royal Family.”

“Bladdy tell me abaht it. We’ve ‘ad it up to eer wiv that showra mugs. Yoo wan’ anuver pint, sweet’art?”

“Meek it a treble vodka. And one has some ching in the Range Rover.”

“Phwoar! Must be amazin’ to snort some Colombian froo your own rolled-up face. Two’s up, darlin’!”

Ah, but I’m forgetting everything the Queen does for tourism, amn’t I? Clearly the UK would be an urban wasteland reminiscent of a deserted North Korean super-city if not for the Queen bringing in those visitors, who absolutely insist on a living Royal Family to complement their sight-seeing trips. After all, since the French murdered their Royal Family not a single foreigner has ever visited Paris. The Grand Canyon, too, suffered a severe drop in foot-fall when prospective visitors discovered that there were precisely zero monarchs living at the bottom of it. And they had to close Edinburgh Castle, because it just wasn’t the same being in a castle without the tantalising prospect of an old woman waving at you from a balcony.

“Do you know, I stood outside that bloody Buckingham Palace for eight hours, EIGHT HOURS, and that snobby old bitch never ONCE came to the window. My mate Kev said he saw her doing juggling and show-tunes over the balcony when he was down here last year, and in 2018 my mate Bruce got a glimpse of her silhouette through the bathroom window as she was nudging out a shit.”

I’ll concede that the Queen does a lot for tourism when I see her handing out flyers for Pirate Island on Blackpool promenade.

Why does one give a shit?

I can understand the fawning obeisance towards the Royals exhibited by the masses back in the middle ages. If they hadn’t cheered for their King or Queen’s birthday they would have had their head lopped from their neck and kicked into a shrubbery. That’s a pretty strong incentive to celebrate. But now? The Royals may have a woolly, wholly symbolic constitutional role in our society, but their days of guillotining are over. For instance, I could dress a hyper-realistic Japanese sex doll up like the Queen and have it greedily fellate me as I sat on a throne made of burning fifty-pound notes, and the worst that would happen to me is that I’d probably get my own Netflix special. So why do people still behave as if they’re 13th century serfs?

I think I get it. I was scrolling through a megaton of flags and Jubilee articles on Facebook when I spied an online commenter, his profile-picture more flag than human, throwing his patriotic weight behind the Queen by charging forth with the rousing comment: ‘May she reign over us for another 50 years!’ I asked him to explain in what manner she reigned over us, and what precisely that reign entailed. Rather than engage with my question, he said: ‘Like her or not she is still your Queen so just be grateful your British.’ (The grammatical error, dear reader, was Mr Flag Face’s) This, I think, strikes at the heart of why so many people seem to deify the Queen. In their minds and hearts her reign is as immutable as it is unquestionable. It’s just something that is, was, and always will be: a holy trinity of traditionalism that fuels the wet dreams of conservatives with a small ‘c’ everywhere, not to mention Conservatives with a big ‘C’ – or C***s as they’re sometimes simply known.

All the pomp and pageantry of the Royal Family is absorbed into the soul of the flag-shagger like Sunday school psalms, or verses from the Quran, and defended just as unblinkingly. Their brain is a swirl of triggers, rituals and symbols, recalled and relayed by rote. For those of us who aren’t Royalists, an occasion such as this can make you feel as though you’ve woken up inside a 1950s sci-fi film, and everyone has been possessed by the tendrils of sinister space pods. What the fuck is everyone doing? Why can’t they see that their passion is misplaced to the point of absurdity; that they’re taking up metaphorical arms for a family who literally wouldn’t piss on them if they were on fire?

It’s all so mad, so arbitrary. Like religion. Brain-washing. In some bizarre parallel universe there are crowds of middle-aged men being whipped into a violent frenzy by the unfurling of a giant banner with a picture of a carrot on it. Our universe is no less ridiculous for its grown men and women singing loudly and defiantly at scraps of cloth.

Childhood is where this eerie group-think begins. To paraphrase Aristotle – and indeed that, em, sage philosopher Adolph Hitler – you can inculcate anyone, anywhere, into any mode of thought imaginable, so long as you start them young. That’s why the government has spent £12m securing a boot-licking book on the Queen for every primary-age child, and why most of your kids have spent the last few weeks eating strawberries and colouring in pictures of the Queen’s million-pound crown with a one-pence pencil.

Know One’s Place

The Royal Family, much like death and taxes, appears to be a constant. In a rapidly changing world they’re an anchor to the imagined past, a world where everyone knew their place. You remember the hierarchy. It goes: The Queen; rich white men; rich white women; poor white men; dogs; cats; seahorses; cockroaches; anal warts; poor white women; AIDS; cancer, and, lastly, everyone everywhere else. And then brown and black people.

It’s about time we removed our white-lilly-tinted spectacles, and started to think – really, genuinely think – about the sort of world in which we want to live. The people we want to be, and the things we want to prioritise. Do we want a kinder, fairer society in which we all work to help those less fortunate than ourselves, or do we want to wave flags and throw money at the feet of a family who have enjoyed entitled and protected status since their ancestors first made a career out of executing peasants and looting the nation’s wealth? And who even now think nothing of withdrawing from the Bank of Peasantry to pay-off the victim of an underage sex scandal perpetrated by one of its members?

Happy Platty Joob Joobs everybody.

Em, you know the Royals aren’t the underdogs, right?

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I’m largely ambivalent about the Royal Family as a collection of human beings, but none-the-less wish them every health and happiness. I just wish they’d pursue health and happiness on their own time and (if I can be excused an Americanism) dime. Part of me can’t believe that we still have things like royal families in this supposedly more enlightened age. I guess privilege is a hard thing to give up, for its flag-waving worshippers as much as those weaned on it.

Despite this ambivalence my last two posts have been reasonably brutal, very childish and none-too-subtle send-ups of the monarchy and Harry’s wedding, shot through with a cold, caustic, all-consuming anger. I’ve been thinking about this, and I’m certain that my anger is a reaction to the Royals being cast in the twin roles of saviours and victims, in the newspapers and on social media respectively. For the Royals are clearly poor, noble souls who shouldn’t have to put up with mean-spirited criticisms and name-calling from us proles when all they’re trying to do is inspire us with their diamond-studded benevolence.

Again, I don’t hate any of the Royals individually, but I do hate political, social and economic systems that encourage the veneration of inherited wealth at the expense of compassion. I also hate viral posts like the one below, one of scores I came across in the run up to Harry’s big day:

This sort of thing acts as kerosene upon my anger and indignation.

In a nutshell, the man above would rather help finance a Royal wedding than continue to support free healthcare provisions for Kelly-Anne’s children. He doesn’t elaborate too much on Kelly-Anne’s socio-economic position, but I’d wager she’s a stand-in for poor single mothers everywhere. We all know the short-hand. We’re all used to hearing the beat of that particular drum. Beat, beat, beat, down upon the heads of the poorest and most vulnerable among us.

Michael’s a military man, so I can understand why he would be ready to praise (what he perceives as) Prince Harry’s valour; why he’d want to gravitate towards people who’d endured some of the same extraordinary life experiences. The sharp end of the military must give soldiers such a powerful sense of symbiosis that once it’s taken away it must make society appear in contrast a dark, lonely, incomprehensible place.

In any case, whether the Prince’s presence in Afghanistan was part of a risky PR stunt orchestrated by Clarence House to raise the Royals’ profile among serving soldiers and those who support them, or whether it stemmed from Harry’s genuine desire to break with modern tradition and serve on the front line, there’s no doubt that it takes great reserves of bravery to enter a combat zone. I certainly don’t possess such bravery, and have no desire ever to acquire it, for reasons of not wanting my bollocks shot off.

But to suggest that Prince Harry’s brief stint in Afghanistan somehow makes him a better, braver, more worthy human being, not just more worthy than Kelly-Anne, but more worthy than all those actively serving in the military (after all, why isn’t our tax money paying for their weddings?) is elite-scented jingoism at its finest.

How many times has it been implied that while the dynastic millionaires deserve our sympathy and support for having been born into the thankless ranks of privilege, the disadvantaged have only themselves to blame for squandering their opportunities and not making the most out of life? This sort of deeply conservative thinking presupposes a level-playing field, something that has never existed in our societies, and perhaps never will, certainly as long as this deeply unsettling world-view persists.

Whether it sprouts from naïve aspiration or deluded arrogance, a lot of middle-and-low-income royalists profess a greater kinship with the 1%  than those suffering a rung or two below them on the socio-economic ladder. The reality is that the vast majority of people – those who weren’t birthed on to an ever-unfolding red carpet of privilege – are only ever one bad day away from losing everything.

The newspapers’ propaganda doesn’t help. They promulgate a yin and yang view which sees the elite venerated and the poor condemned. The tabloids, which claim to serve the interests of the working classes, are usually owned by billionaires and staffed by the affluent middle-classes, a cross-class collusion that keeps the ‘lower’ classes at each other’s throats.

Bluntly, the Royal Family neither needs nor deserves our protection from criticism. And it certainly doesn’t need – or deserve – our money.

However we feel about ourselves, or the Harrys and Elizabeths and Kelly-Annes of this world, we must never forget the direction in which our sympathy and compassion should always travel: everywhere.

But especially sideways.

And down.

Cunt of the Week (02 July 2012) by Euan Meikle

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Greetings fellow citizens. When Jamie asked me to nominate a Cunt Of The Week, I had to think long and hard (two words not normally found in the same sentence as Jamie Andrew). This world has a plethora of ‘see you hen teas’ to choose from, names such as Jeremy Clarkson, George Osbourne and Pastor Fred Phelps all came to mind as being worthy of weekly cunthood. However, I decided not to waste time venting bile on such small fry and so have opted to line up her Majesty the Queen in my crosshairs (metaphorically speaking, of course, as no doubt MI5 are taking notes).

Firstly, I want to state that I don’t believe Elizabeth Windsor, an 84 year old granny, who no doubt loves her friends, family and corgis, is a particularly bad person. She’s certainly not up there with Hitler, Freddy Krueger or whoever came up with the Go Compare adverts. My beef is with this imaginary entity that centuries of tradition and ritual, pomp and circumstance have created: The Queen.

It gets my goat that in the 21st century a perfectly ordinary woman, with the standard number of heads, legs and genitals, is somehow perceived as superior to the rest of us purely because some of her very distant ancestors won a few battles. Since Tharg hit Zog over the head with a club in order to steal his woolly mammoth burger, humans have always tended towards hierarchies of some sort. However, in this day and age, surely our leaders ought to have to earn the power, respect and fancy hats that come with the position.

The weirdness of the whole concept is best summed up by taking a look at ‘God Save the Queen’ (the original, not the Sex Pistols’ song). I’m not even going to go into the offensive verses about ‘rebellious Scots to crush’, and ‘beating up Welshmen who look at you a bit funny.’

This song is essentially a request that God, who made the whole universe and all of time and space and reality, take time out from his busy schedule to take a personal interest in the health and well-being of this one, wee old lady. Later verses get even more surreal, imploring the almighty to rescue her from any potential assassins, and even interfere in the politics of rival nations. One can imagine God sitting on a cloud somewhere, thinking: ‘Well, I really ought to do something about cancer, and the whole Syria situation is getting a bit sketchy, but my top priority has to be showering my choicest gifts on Lizzy and confounding the knavish tricks of the French.’

Unfortunately it seems we’re going to be stuck with the royals for some time yet, barring them being outed as giant lizards from another planet. Just remember, as Johnny Rotten once sang: ‘those tourists are money.’

THIS WEEK’S GUEST WRITER: Euan Meikle was the first man in western Europe to successfully have full sexual intercourse with a musk ox. Ironically, given his hatred for the title, The Queen wanted to recognise this feat and give Euan a Knighthood for ‘Services to Extraordinary Acts of Beastiality.’ Euan now lives in Stirling, Scotland, with the musk ox, and their three children. He spends his time making the kind of music they play in Guantanamo Bay to get the terrorists to confess, and you can listen to it in all of its electronic glory, here:  http://soundcloud.com/yuan-mekong.

FOLLOW EUAN ON TWITTER: You can’t: he isn’t on Twitter, the technophobic slag.

The Rain in June Falls Mostly on the Toon: Grangemouth Gala Day 2012

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We just don’t do carnivals, fairs or fetes with as much aplomb or on the same grand scale as the Americans. Maybe it would help if we smiled occasionally, but we’re genetically incapable of such a facial contortion. We Scots would only smile if God proved his existence once and for all by a) reaching a thumb from Dover to Berwick and squashing the English like woodlice, and then b) rounding off the miracle by replacing the North Sea with heroin.

Or, at a pinch, we’d smile if there was a special episode of ‘You’ve Been Framed’ in which each and every video featured David Cameron being stabbed in the balls by a different angry dwarf in a kilt.

Yes, the Americans like a good smile. If the Grangemouth Gala Day was held in California, USA, (which would be rather unlikely, I’m forced to admit) it would be a non-stop, 24-hour, noisy orgasm of vim, streamers, colour, mariachi bands and pomp, featuring half-naked back-flipping pom-pom girls – with smiles so blinding they could down aircraft – jiggling their breasts with the enthusiasm of a force 4 earthquake. There would be a 50ft-tall animatronic Mickey Mouse shooting fireworks out of its bell-end into the hungry, gaping mouth of a robot Pluto, as sixteen million children wept with joy. And somewhere, somehow, there would be guys in red bell-boy jackets playing trumpets on the backs of motorbikes – upside down and through their arses.

This year, in Grangemouth, Scotland, the Grangemouth Gala Day looked like… well, it looked like exactly what it was: a procession of miserable cunts in anoraks shuffling through the rain in search of the most suitable cliff for an act of mass suicide. It looked like there’d been a delivery of crepe paper and face-paints to a funeral march. If you haven’t visited Grangemouth before and find yourself wondering what it looks like, have a gander at the drug-riddled communities in HBO’s ‘The Wire’, but imagine that everybody’s white.

So What is the Gala Day?

Well, it’s technically a Children’s Day, which makes me a bit of a cock for slating it. It’s not really meant to be enjoyed by the likes of me, childless interloper that I am. What’ll I be doing next? Telling you how shit I found the latest episode of Sesame Street because it wasn’t nearly as good as One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest?

The galas themselves started off as annual celebrations for miners and mining communities, but the focus of the celebrations was shifted for the following wonderful reason:

In the late Nineteenth century, some Miners’ Gala Days were given over to children in order to reduce drunkenness.

Resources for Learning in Scotland website

And we all know how successful a strategy that turned out to be. Here’s the zinger:

Gun Terror of Oilman 

A teenage thug pointed a gun at the head of a man who told him off for breaking bottles in a kids’ play area.

Gary Martin told 45-year-old oil rig worker Jim Kelly: ‘You’re dead.’

But Mr Kelly grappled Martin to the ground and got the air pistol off him, Falkirk Sheriff Court heard yesterday.

The terror attack happened on Grangemouth Gala Day in June.

Lawyer Andy Bryson said Martin was ‘exceedingly drunk’ at the gala day.
www.thefreelibrary.com

Ah, yes. The only flaw in that plan was that by 2012 all of the children would be alcoholics, too. Alcohol does indeed still play a huge part in the Grangemouth Gala Day. Like they say of the 1960s: if you can remember what happened, then you weren’t actually there. Grangemouth has other things in common with the 1960s, in that it’s full of incredibly racist people with shite haircuts taking drugs and having unfussy sex with strangers.

(actually, a joke I used to tell on-stage about Grangemouth is that it’s a lot like Amsterdam: in that it’s completely flat, and filled with drugs and whores.)

So What Happens ‘an That?

No smart alec remarks: this arch is pretty fucking cool. And The Muppets was the only TV show that made me shut up as a child.

What happens is this: each year a ‘royal family’ is assembled from one of the local primary schools, a different school having the honour of doing this each year until it’s back to the start of the cycle again. Kids at the year’s chosen school are then asked if they’d like to volunteer themselves to be one of the gala’s persons of special significance. Those who do are then whittled down by their schoolmates by means of a popularity contest, until each of the main roles are filled: Queen, Ladies in Waiting, Paiges, a Flower Queen etc.

The girl elected Queen (Republicans take note) then has the arduous task of selecting just one of her classmates to be sealed inside a BMW and slammed into a wall by a drunk driver. OK, I made that bit up.

There’s no King of the Gala Day, but one lucky boy does get to be the Prince, whose role it is to follow the Queen around muttering increasingly unhelpful racist remarks. OK, I made that bit up, too. But they should introduce that role. It’d be so easy to find viable candidates amongst the people of Grangemouth.

Dustbin Beaver is actually slang for a Grangemouth girl.

The parents of ‘the royals’ then have to spend £80 million trillion pounds building an arch display over their homes. If they’re poor, they simply steal the necessary materials, or just selotape bits of A4 paper that read: ‘ALL HAYL THE QUEAN’ to their windows. Some of the displays are incredible. You know, fairy-tale castles, enchanted forests, 1940s cinemas. And some of them are shit.

On the day itself – where it’s usually raining despite the event taking place towards the end of June – trucks filled with children (that makes it sound like a pogrom: no concentration camps are involved), and floats prepared by other schools and local businesses, and pipe bands, and brass bands, and veterans, and such like, all form a long procession through the streets, before arriving in the central park for the crowning ceremony. And, as we’ve already established, lots of people get drunk.

Oh, and there are lots of flags everywhere. Or bunting, as they call it. Which sounds to me a little too much like a sex act. And a jolly good one at that.

In closing, as I’ve already stated, it’s actually a grand day out for the folks of Grangemouth, especially for those with relatives taking part in the procession. And some of the arches have been super-awesome in this and previous years, as you’ll see from the pictures below. (OK, part of this, like with the Skinflats article, is life-insurance, but I mean it, too, honest!) Actually, my niece was in the procession this year, and she was awesome, so get that roond ye.

GALLERY

Graceland in Grangemouth, circa 2008.

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And, of course, this happens at the Grangemouth Gala Day shows every year, and must be shared with the world:

BEHOLD… COBO! Urban dance legend of Grangemouth! Enjoy the video…

watch?v=x_pcZctvizQ