I couldn’t help thinking about Mary Poppins when I saw the headlines regarding the Royal Wedding this week, particularly the song “A spoon full of sugar helps the medicine go down”!
We can always count on the Royal Family to offer up one of their own as a decoy to hide bad news from the people. A sacrifice for self interest.
For example in 1981 at the height of one of the worst recessions and Tory onslaught, the ‘Charles and Di fairytale’ was thrust upon the nation.
“A Republican conspiracy theory” I hear you shouting, “ just trying to spoil the fun for the rest of us. We might even get a day off out of this, so keep your mouth shut Roberts!”
An extra day off work is always welcome, but isn’t it odd that at a time when public sector workers face a pay freeze; a pension robbery; public services are being cut to shreds; the welfare state is being abolished; the NHS is up for sale; thousands may lose their jobs; their houses; their dignity; their children’s future, and all of this based on a monumental lie to the British people about the deficit, what we have is not outrage on the front pages, but pictures of smiling Royal teeth.
A coincidence?
My argument has nothing to do with the Royal Family as people, but has everything to do with a system that creates a Royal Family and turns us into Subjects and not Citizens. The institution of Monarchy does not make us free citizens, it makes us subservient subjects.
 It gave me some hope when I saw one newspaper article headed “Commoner To Marry William”,  and I thought ‘ good for her, she has done well for herself ‘, thinking that it must be one of the girls from where I was brought up! I wondered if they had met at the laundrette.
How wrong can you be? On investigation I find, in the first place, that Kate Middleton isn’t a Kate at all: but a Catherine! She has had a private education by all accounts and her parents are millionaires.
Her paternal family came from Leeds where at some point in the mists of time they were big cheeses. Her maternal family came from County Durham where at some point in the mist of time her great-grandfather (on her grandmother’s side) worked down the mines.
This is starting to sound like a Ken Dodd story about the Cheese Mines!
This has really turned my world upside down. If she is a commoner, what does that make me?
I have been happily minding my own business all this time thinking that I was common and trying to make the best of it. Now I find out that I am even lower than that!
One other spooky thing is that Kate/Catherine’s middle name is Elizabeth, just like the Queen, and her brother’s middle name is William, just like Prince William! She has a sister called Pippa who is not a Pippa but a Philippa, which is similar to Prince Philip!
These commoners inhabit a strange world, a world a million miles away from the hardships and struggle that working people face. Are we ‘all in it together’ as the Coalition states?
As we wave William and Kate off on their honeymoon sometime in 2011 and turn back from the quayside let’s just hope we haven’t taken our eye off the ball.
For instead of humming Julie Andrews’ A Spoon Full Of Sugar we may well be forced to hum Bob Dylan’s Desolation Row!
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On November 9th an American video game went on sale. This game, Call of Duty: Black Ops! has as one of it’s central themes the assassination of Fidel Castro, as well as murdering Cuban people on the way. It is loosely based on the Bay of Pigs invasion. I say loosely because at the real invasion in April 1961, the Cuban people defeated the overwhelming might of the United States.
Fidel Castro is still a living world leader and whatever people’s views about him, to glorify his assassination in a game is not only wrong but immoral.
No other world leader is treated like this.
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I saw that a bottle of wine was sold at Christies this week for £190,000! I was shocked until I found out that it was what they call an Imperial size bottle which is the equivalent to 6 normal size bottles.
That works out at just over £31,000 per bottle. That’s alright then, it’s similar to buy one get one free at Tesco isn’t it!Â
Deficit – what deficit!
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I saw the future of our Union this week. I went once again to speak to the Stewards on our in-house Organising Course we are running at the National Union of Teachers headquarters in Kings Cross.
It is good that members of that calibre our stepping up to take responsibility to be leaders in their own way within our Union.
We are in good hands.
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We are stronger together.
Eric Roberts
Branch Secretary
