Prince Harry

[faceless]

I noticed earlier on the news that Prince Harry said in an interview 'I don't like England'. That's quite something, especially for all those royalist fans who see England as being almost holy in its value!

I'll try and find the clip, but I'm sure it will do the rounds a lot.

[11antoniacourt]

I wonder why he doesn't like England? there is a clip on Youtube but it's about five seconds long. Otherwise here's this...

[faceless]

I'm pretty sure that he meant it in the sense of not liking his life there, with all the press intrusion, but I'm sure the reactionaries who see the Royalty as something special will twist it to mean that he hates immigration or something though... personally I'll be happy to suggest that he prefers Nazi Germany! haha

This story has got long legs though; probably for as long as he lives.

[Bat]

It's like saying firemen or rescue people are "heroes". If you wanna do a job that may involve dieing then that's your choice.
If you are an average guy on the street who does something out of the ordinary then that's a hero to me.

[eefanincan]

[SpursFan1902]

They sure will...I would hate not being able to say what I want or do what I want. Priviledged life?? I don't think so....

[faceless]

The creation of a hero prince hides the true cost of war
The army and government have had good service from their most famous soldier. Pity those left behind
o Catherine Bennett
o The Observer,
o Sunday March 2 2008

Two weeks ago, the press united in mockery of Mohamed al-Fayed, who had alleged, in an unfortunate performance at the Diana inquest, that the royal family is still 'manipulating everything and can do anything. They are still living in the 18th or 19th century'. If Fayed's account of an intricate murder plot, with Prince Philip as the presiding genius, still sounds as bonkers as ever, one or two of his other remarks, when you re-read them, do accord with an uncomfortable feeling that we may have underestimated the Windsors.

After all, a fortnight ago, if someone had told you that Harry, recently a world-class piss artist in a Nazi costume, unable to string more than three words together, was about to be reinvented as 'the soldier prince', a national hero endowed with the moral authority to 'show us the way', it might have sounded no less baloney than Fayed's insistence that Harry's accident-prone family retains the capacity, with the help of politicians, lawyers, legions of BBC broadcasters, a willing press and assorted agents of national security, to reduce the nation to a condition of drooling complicity.

True, one or two journalists, following the example of notably Jon Snow, objected to the silence-for-access deal struck between Clarence House, the army and a body of editors, arguing that such a pact will lead the public to mistrust the media. But a temporary agreement to suppress information which could increase the danger to British soldiers is, surely, less unsettling than the quality of the access for which these editors traded their silence.

To judge by the results, which have been indistinguishable from army PR, the editors agreed that Harry would never be asked about anything more compromising than his living conditions, his feelings on his own heroism and what his mother would have thought (something that could surely have been conjectured from civvy street). Whether the MoD constrained reporters' questions before or after they got to Afghanistan makes no difference: the fact that virtually every Harry story could have been written by Richard Dannatt, the army chief of the general staff, showed them to be unfit for publication.

If, on the other hand, the editors' deal did entitle them to expect something more, one can only marvel at Dannatt's cunning in reducing virtually the entire British media to a state of passive prince-adulation. How was it done? Fayed would have had an idea. Drugs? Bribes? Or perhaps British hacks were temporarily replaced by brilliant, robotic, journalist-substitutes, based on a design by Prince Philip, while the originals were taken away to be reprogrammed, like the man in The Bourne Ultimatum

Something, anyway, must explain how on Thursday Harry hysteria spread within hours, from places where you expect to find headlines such as 'My War' (the Mirror) and 'One of Our Boys' (the Sun), to more royal-averse offices where layers of cynicism offered no resistance to the epidemic of simpering and fawning, twinkling and swooning.

Although it was obvious from the pictures that one or two other soldiers were out there helping Harry with his mission, reports from Helmand invariably kept him centre stage, concentrating on his willingness to wear a standard uniform and to suffer the same discomforts - dirty clothes, no baths, nasty food - as the men the press call 'ordinary soldiers'. 'The issue of not being treated differently is important for you, isn't it?' he was asked, in this updated version of The Princess and the Pea

But the grovelling has been nowhere as intense, nor as sustained as at the BBC, where royal correspondents and their editors have been determined to place their work on a scrupulously loyal, wartime footing, replacing the news for two consecutive days with illustrated accounts of the prince's adventures, delivered in a whispery, state funeral sing-song, with additional commentary from brigadiers and generals, describing the 'soldier prince' as exemplary, dedicated, distinguished, etc, etc.

Accompanying a revival of wartime news values was a return to Blitz-era class distinctions, allowing a modern audience to grasp the tremendous compliment to Harry's threatened comrades of having, as one tribute put it, 'a prince in their midst'. Supposing you could see the East End from Boujis, the prince would certainly be qualified to look it in the face.

In the interests of balance, the BBC made occasional allusions to critics of Harry's expedition, but since these were invariably George Galloway, the creepy cat-impersonator, that could only confirm the rightness of devoting bulletin after bulletin to fresh pictures of the prince, even when the only news was, unsurprisingly, that he was coming back.

This 'homecoming', in one elegiac analysis, would be 'a bittersweet affair'. Why? One couldn't help but notice that the returning hero still had both his legs. But it turns out he does not like life in England, describing conditions here, in one pooled interview, as 'pretty poo'.

In particular, as our hero stressed to journalists who had flown out to record his valour, he does not much like England, because of journalists 'and all the shite that they write'. Like poor Crawfie before them, whose tender hagiography, The Little Princesses, reaped her only disgrace and dishonour, the British media find that the willing suspension of their collective critical faculties is already forgotten, as the military blames it for blabbing about the prince's whereabouts.

As if this perfectly timed disclosure had not brought the prince home miraculously, and resplendently alive: the saviour of his family, of his country, of this government and of the British effort in Afghanistan, which we now understand to be a perfectly justifiable arena for continued human sacrifice.

Indeed, there can hardly be medals and honours enough to reward the officials whose manipulation of the media has been so consummate that in the first days of blanket war coverage, there was no room or appetite for whining about casualties, recruitment, coroners, equipment shortages, mental health, housing, compensation, the defence budget and, perhaps most extraordinary, the grotesque lack of proportion that earns a dead ordinary soldier a courtesy one-liner before PMQs, while the prince, flying home early, is treated to ever more gushing accolades from Gordon Brown, straining for his own, unifying, people's princess moment: 'The whole of Britain will be proud of the outstanding service he is giving.'

In fact, if the royal family and military are, in truth, remotely dissatisfied with way things turned out, it can only be that their real plan, masterminded from Prince Philip's secret bunker, was to have Harry killed in action: a sad sacrifice, but one that would have rendered them unassailable for generations. As it is, it should be some time before anyone complains about the battalions of security men now required to shuttle the Prince of Helmand between London nightclubs.

From the royal perspective, there has been nothing like it since Prince Charles was an action man and no one had heard of Camilla Parker Bowles. For republicans, however, that has got to be pretty poo.


-----------------

[Aja]

Aja sighs

[faceless]

In today's NOTW Harold Windsor is heard to say 'I'm not a hero' and 'It's not nice to drop bombs'. These amazing revelations have ROCKED the House of Reactionaries located in the heart of Bellshill, Lanarkshire. They were banking on him to provide fodder for blind hero-worship and inspiration for new recruits to join the army to kill by internet, so they are understandably miffed.

A press release from the organisation said 'How can we get new recruits when he's saying it's not bloody nice to kill innocent people with bombs big enough to flatten an entire city block? The ginger cunt had his fun and now he's cock-blocking the chances that the rest of our bloodthirsty trainees have of splattering some family from 12 miles away. All their training on BF1942 will have been wasted, and we had our own server running too. We plan to reinvest in our trainees the thought that killing pakis is indeed fun, and if you can do it from a cowardly distance then all the better'.

[11antoniacourt]

[faceless]

I've not one ounce of sympathy for any of them - if they don't like it they can officially remove themselves from official duties and that's that, no protection, no Range Rovers, no castles. To hear them whinge about press intrusion as they drink £1500 bottles of champagne while there are people living on the breadline is disgusting.

[11antoniacourt]

[faceless]

If he renounced it all then I'd offer him floorspace 'til he got back on his feet. He is just a 'normal person' after all.

[eefanincan]

[11antoniacourt]