Royal Wedding Dress Designer Revelation by Brian Haw

The revelation is that if you care about royal dresses, royal weddings or royalty in any manifestation, you're very sad and irrelevant and life is passing you by. So let's ditch the shmutter yak.
The only real question worth an answer is How will the TV coverage censor out Brian Haw? Even if the Golden Fertility Carriage doesn't pass the Peace Camp, the world will be expecting comprehensive shots of the billions swarming the streets, and right in the middle, heroically planted before the statue of Oliver Cromwell, 100 yards from the Abbey, is Brian Haw and his legal, honourable, decorative appeal to stop death parting other married couples all over the world. How embarrassing. So how will they erase Haw from history? Anyone who spots him in the TV coverage please report back.

The crazed delusion seems to be that once The Big Day is over, Middlebrow'n'Windsor will be allowed to walk their dogs on Anglesey in windswept peace and tranquillity. She's a nice girl. The press would never make 'the same mistake' again.

This is to pretend that Willenkate are something other than a vast feeding trough for the media. A key source of cash in a time when property advertising is still slow. 

Cameras are now much more advanced than in the 1990's. And the means of image-distribution in another dimension. So to expect the media to ignore this Royal pot of gold and respect the privacy of the newly-weds is insanity. And if there are assurances of 'self-regulation' and 'restraint', then why doesn't the England football captain (say) deserve the same respect as the descendant of a robber-baron? Why does it take a corrupt piece of improvised law to cater for Commoners, but merely a nod and a wink to pander to the needs of Royalty?

Washing Away Protest - Damian Thompson, Neo-Fascist Christian

The Toffocracy's Event of the Year approaches, and with it demands for the 'exhilarating sight' of 'anarchists being blasted out of their pigsties by water cannon.' Or the right to free speech blasted away in the interests of tidiness and sadism. The 'anarchist' in question being the lovely Brian Haw and his epic anti-war camp outside Westminster Abbey. The squalid little fascist calling for this crime being one 'Damian Thompson', who is some kind of overpaid apologist for God, apparently. And they talk about waste in the NHS. From the delirious rambles on his blog, it is obvious that here is Father Seamus Fitzpatrick made flesh. Or 'incarnate', as he would prefer. 
From the Queen's point of view, of course, nothing could be less British than the use of force against unarmed innocent protestors. In fact, the presence of Brian Haw's peace tableaux will be the crowning glory of the day, as far as the image of Britain abroad is concerned. And the only worry for Haw himself might be that his protest is actually exploited by the government to endorse the intervention in Libya on behalf of the same rights Haw is demanding.
Either way, the best photographic angle will be the one which includes both Haw and the wedding coach leaving the abbey, if it goes that route.
Perhaps someone should ask Kate Middlebrow and Prince Whatsisname whether they would like their bridal path to be cleansed of legendary British tolerance by an act of cynical brutality, and whether this is the omen they want to invoke at the start of their Journey Together Through Life. That when someone disagrees with you, you just say "Free speech be damned" and blast them away. Might is Right.

No Honeymoon In Paris

The royal wedding announced. William Windsor and Kate Middleton to marry in the spring, so that hubby can go to the Rugby World Cup. Does she have the X-Factor? Will Simon Cowell produce the ceremony? Only time will tell, but either way it will be a publicity plague of all plagues. The deficit crisis can only sell papers for so long, whereas a Walt Disney dream of courtly love shifts advertising space like nothing else. Because they have a schedule, a 'narrative arc', they're much better news than disasters where thousands are killed overnight.

Incredibly, we still have a fairytale royal family. An ultra-celebrity, media-magnetic elite, pumping out tacit endorsement for the concept of exclusion and hierarchy. One reason this is such a potent media cocktail is because we still allow royalty to retain some power, and lots of wealth, of course.
Were they like some of the continental cycling day-job royals, their media rating would fall, and they would not be worth much as a franchise. But Diana Spencer would probably still be alive, and even happy.
You pays your money and you takes your choice. If we were responsible custodians of our royal family, and their children, we would de-sanctify them as much as possible. But they are a profitable industry, so we are told. And so we must expect to incurr a few business expenses along the way at the hands of the baying media. Some collateral damage.

Guardian letters. 1/9/1997

"Surely it is now time to reassess the validity of the royal family. The powerless European monarchies are evidence that without political power the fairytale disappears, leaving those families in relative peace to pursue fulfilling real lives.

The press has instantly been cast as the baddies in this sad incident. This misses the point entirely. The British people pay those who photograph royalty. But now the royal fantasy must end, and we must face up to the real world unaided.

There is justifiable concern for the future well-being of the two princes. A responsible nation which really cared about them would now start to examine the possibility that tourist dollars and cosmetic pageantry do not justify the torment which waits these tow boys as they grow older."

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"...We should ask whether it is reasonable to expect one family to make this sacrifice simply for the convenience of providing us with a head of state. Princes William and Harry deserve an early answer to this question and one which respects their needs as children rather than their role as servants of an institution."

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Meanwhile, the internet forums and messageboards are crammed with Monarchists praising the bargain price of Royalty to the taxpayer. Roughly £1 a week for all that foreign tourism, they claim. These are often the same people who froth at paying the same for the BBC. They are willing to be forced to pay for an institution which enshrines the values of privilege and inequality and the lie of elitism, but fume at the idea of one dedicated to broadening the scope of human achievement and enlightenment. Not to mention bringing in vast amounts of revenue in merchandising and franchise sales overseas, and acting as a catalyst for much of British culture.

It's as if the Civil War never happened. But then, some people stay children for life, and will always need a nanny to guide them. The same people, again, who rail against the 'Nanny State' (i.e. the N.H.S, Housing Benefit etc) Their political correctness simply won't allow them to think beyond their own inhibitions and childhood traumas. Sad.