Brookes on Corbyn & the Privy Council

Don't like to run cartoons back-to-back too much, and often ideologically disagree with The Times, but the choice of 'reading-material' sells me here on this genius from Brookes.

That Mitchell and Webb Look: Diana Assassination

You...No...You Didn't....But...No...

And there I was thinking the shit with Darth Lord Walker's bald spot was over-hyped...

Really ?  Seriously ?

The Duchess of Cambridge is famed for her glossy, lustrous locks.

But she has been offered some sage advice by celebrity hairdresser Nicky Clarke, who fears she faces potential "disaster" by letting them go grey.

The Duchess, 33, has occasionally revealed a small patch of silver, most recently in February when she was six months pregnant with Princess Charlotte.

But Clarke has urged her never to do so again.

"Kate needs to get rid of her grey hair — it's not a good look," he told the Daily Mail.

"She does have amazing things done to her hair and it can look great, but unfortunately it's the case for women — all women — that until you're really old, you can't be seen to have any grey hairs."

Clarke, 57, who has styled Princess Diana and the Duchess of York, claimed grey hair would be "disastrous" for the Duchess.

He added: "It's different for men. Men can go grey in their mid-50s and still be considered attractive. It's the whole silver fox thing. But it's not the same for women. Kate is such a style icon that even a few strands of grey would be a disaster, so I highly recommend that she cover it up. I hate grey hair."

If I could actually resign from humanity, and there were anywhere else the fuck to actually go...I'd do it.  And don't doubt it for one moment.


*I'm almost tempted to unleash even more ABBA on the world -- Come on, when was any problem not solved with the application of more Swedish pop from the seventies & eighties ?

Just Shut Up Old Man Or We Won't Put the Shiny Hat on your Head

Prince Charles has said that “profound changes” to the global economic system are needed in order to avert environmental catastrophe, in an uncompromising speech delivered in front of an audience of senior business leaders and politicians.

The heir to the throne – often criticised for his meddling in political affairs – argued that ending the taxpayer subsidies enjoyed by coal, oil and gas companies could reduce the carbon emissions driving climate change by an estimated 13%.

Although the prince’s passion for environmental causes is well known, the speech delivered on Thursday evening in St James’s Palace, London was particularly pointed in its criticism of companies that protected vested interests and came with a report that proposed raising taxes on them.

Speaking at a event for the University of Cambridge’s Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL), of which he is a patron, the prince complained that “the irresistible power of ‘business as usual’ has so far defeated every attempt to ‘rewire’ our economic system in ways that will deliver what we so urgently need”.
He said: “Yet if we are to limit climate change, conserve resources and keep ecosystems functioning, while at the same time improving the health and wellbeing of billions of people – including the several billion who are projected to be added later this century – then we will need to see profound changes.”

The prince also attacked what he characterised as the wastefulness of modern society. “The challenge now is to go much further and much faster, progressively eliminating waste by developing a circular economy that mimics nature’s loops and cycles, rather than perpetuating our largely unsustainable and linear way of doing things,” he said.

...

Cue the usual complaints about interfering in politics, and How dare you have an opinion on anything when your lifestyle is funded by the taxpayer.  As if Charles asked to be born into that family...into that role.  His mother, who entered the monarchy rather unexpectedly at a young age had a fairly straightforward (if unasked-for) role of maintaining relative stability between the traditional institutions of Empire and the New, which she has performed admirably, though hardly ever knowing another life, outside of her early girlhood.  Charles has grown up in the declining post-Imperial world, living entirely in the shadow of his mother, and rather than simply accepting a future (if now, ever) role as figurehead, has tried to find some way to make the monarchy relevant beyond the role of pure figurehead, a role that could just as easily be filled by a stuffed doll, by a religious icon, by a tamed zoo-animal.  For which I can't blame him.

He's tried to find a niche for himself, and had greater success in some areas, such as those relating to the environment, than others, such as when he's interjected himself into discussions of architecture or popular culture.  I rather suspect that Charles sees himself as future-monarch as 'The Conscience of Britain'.  His son on the other hand, I suspect* would willingly toss anything potentially political or controversial aside, and accept his role as being granted a handsome lifestyle with the price being that he has to wave at the commoners periodically, give up more than a little of his family's privacy, and give a political speech once a year or so in which he is a puppet into which the words, however outrageous, of the ruling party at the time are poured.  Can't blame him for that, in his way.

With his own advancing age, and the continuing absurd desire of some in the public to see him forsake the throne for his son, in the name of Saint Diana, we may never see what sort of king Charles would make**.  I for one, would welcome Charles' final ascendancy to the throne, if only to see which particular individuals' heads explode, and how.


* Lot of suspecting going on here, huh ?

** We still don't know of course what his actual regnal name would be.

The Telegraph's Princess 'Spare Tyre' Diana Mark II

Once she has a name, will we finally stop going on about the royal baby ?

I get it.  A lot of Americans and a certain percentage of Britons are obsessed with Royalty, and aristocratic systems generally.  And due to the insane obsession of like-minded idiots globally, there is money to be made in tourism, which thanks to the lunatic commitment of Anglo-Saxon countries to extremist capitalist free-market ideologies, is alongside banking and retail, one of the few meaningful sectors still standing in the British economy.  But the non-stop coverage in the media is ridiculous.

So a certain couple in a certain family, which was once known as the Saxe-Coburg-Gothas has had a second child.  A child, which if the increasingly symbolic institution of the monarchy still exists many many decades from now, could theoretically be queen, depending on the deaths, abdications, or other misfortunes of her nearest relatives.  So the fuck what ?

I'm no anti-royalist, but the monarchy is, whether one likes it or not, an institution of dwindling importance in the everyday lives of the monarch's supposed subjects, and increasingly the role the political elites want the monarchy to play would seem to be a combination of providing cover for unpopular political decisions by the ruling party (and really, the fact that the Queen is trotted out every year and forced to give what is increasingly little more than a party-political-broadcast on behalf of whatever party currently controls Number 10 is frankly disgusting) and serving as a shiny object to distract the gullible masses from the problems affecting their everyday lives, largely as a result of the decisions of those same political elites.  And boy, could those elites ever do with a distraction right now.  Which brings us to:

This shit, from the front page, online and print of the Telegraph.

I don't really care personally that much what the couple in question (it's William isn't it, and one of the Middletons...Kate, I think ?) call their daughter, but in so far as I will engage with it, there's two ways of looking at this: a) They call their daughter what they want, without any consideration for the politics and optics thereof as representatives of the aforementioned political institution, or b) They take into account the politics and optics thereof, in which case, as a Christian name at least (nobody cares about middle names), calling the child Diana is one of the stupidest things they could possibly do.

The passage of time, the elevation of William over his father in the attention of the media and the public, and the marriage and subsequent children from said marriage of William & Kate have done a great deal to heal the wounds of that particular era of the British monarchy.  Why rip them open anew by giving the poor child the name of her grandmother, and reminding everybody of just how toxic that era was ?  And no, whatever you might think of Charles or the Queen, 'Saint Diana' wasn't exactly blameless in what went down all those years ago.  If as a purely personal matter, the couple want to name their child 'Diana', 'Elizabeth', or 'Mongo the Magnificent' for that matter, then hey, more power to them.  But if we must turn this into a symbolic political decision, then fer fuck's sake, just about the only stupider choice of name with which to burden the poor child would be probably 'Camilla.'

I mean, c'mon Telegraph, make up your mind what business you're in.  Is it providing consistently half-arsed tabloid-journalistic propaganda on behalf of the Tory party ?  Or is it just trolling the entire nation for shits and giggles ?

Oh, and lest you might be under any illusion that the Telegraph actually gives a shit about the actual female child who recently entered this world, contemplate this (complete with multiple pictures of seemingly far-more important older brother):

So, the poor child must not only be named Diana, but be Diana, as in some sort of symbolic re-incarnation of the now be-sainted and fictionalised princess of yesteryear.  Although, in the meantime, we'll unofficially just call her 'the spare.'  As in spare tyre.  As in disposable easily replaceable cog.  Wait...hey, the Telegraph finally found a way to make the monarchy relevant to the modern economy and the ordinary working experience.  Result !


Update: Charlotte Elizabeth Diana.  Fine.  Can we more on now ?