Yes –
you heard it here first.
Actually,
privatising the Royal Family is an idea that I first heard back in the late 80s
(and it wasn’t new then) just before young people disappeared under the toxic
cloud of low-expectation education, the curse of access-all-areas consumerism
and the heavy boot of pre-adult debt; a time when they could still think about
the world around them and believe in things and protest. Now that we live in a
world of regurgitated ideas and fake reality this is a winning combination.
Notions are recycled so quickly you can still see the arse end of them as they
are forced down your throat next time around. Ideas are about the only things
that get successfully recycled so let’s combine this one with the celebrity
obsession, media mediocrity and pungent nostalgia that’s currently clogging our
national pores.
What’s
not to like?
Everyone
can take part. Fortunately our economy is set up so that you don’t have to have
money or even any prospect of financial stability to spend like a maniac.
Also –
we have nearly run out of things of real value that used to belong to the
country that the government can sell off to their mates.
Railways
cost tax payers more now than they did when the nation owned them and if your
experience is like mine – when a train turns up on time you feel blessed,
that’s if you can afford train travel and the train isn’t so crowded that you
can actually get on.
As for
BT - don’t start me on the shite communications skills of the privatised communications
monolith.
Gas and
Energy (covered that issue in blogs 56 and 59)
Water
(presumably it will be air next) now in French hands
And
most recently the scandalous underselling of Royal Mail (blog 55)
We are
told that the Windsors are a national treasure, a benefit to the nation. People
lucky enough to earn sufficient salary to pay tax but not rich enough to evade
it pay for them.
Now – I
hear a few nasty cynics screaming that the royals are neither use nor ornament
to anyone north of Watford with a pulse – shame on you.
I for
one propose, in the interests of inconsistency, to put aside my repulsion of pernicious
unfair, dishonest, nationally disastrous practice of privatising anything that
is of any use or value and cede my stake in the royal family. I wholeheartedly
support them being floated on the stock exchange (or on a leaky barge down the
Thames when it has subsided).
Let’s
say at the same price per share as Royal Mail.
Depressed
folk who watch day time TV could buy shares instead of getting pay day loans at
100,000,000 % per hour to play on-line gambling. Instead of giving away money they
don’t have to unknown bastard swindlers hiding behind internet anonymity they
could own a bit of Liz. How cool would that be?
Those
who believe the crap – sorry – informed view – that the royals are worth every
penny can put their delusions where their mouths are and buy all the shares.
There
would be a new Royal privatised name – Royals-4U
or Monartrica! Perhaps some Russian
oligarch who got blindingly rich by inveigling the natural resources of his own
country or an Arab prince – ditto – could buy them and use them to offset their
tax liabilities.
Or
maybe we could swap them for some well staffed hospitals, old people’s homes
and schools that teach our kids to read and more humane prisons.
Sorted.
There
is a cartoon this week but on the subject of the T.V. abomination that is Benefits Street – in the usual place