For those not aware of it, yesterday's attempt by the Royal Family to pretend all was well with the Princess of Wales backfired pretty spectacularly.
As should be apparent from this blog, I am not much into royal tittle tattle, unless it matters. But even I could not fail to notice three things.
The first is the absence of Kate's wedding ring. For a person who secured her status through marriage, that is extraordinary. I really doubt that this is an accident.
Second, as even the Daily Mail has noted, Charlotte's hand had been photoshopped in the picture, which was pretty weird. The major photo agencies have withdrawn the picture as a result.
Third, there is the fact that the Mail has noticed this when it is usually their job to be sycophantically loyal.
I am commenting because there might be something going on here. I am hoping all involved are well, but if the Royal Family is falling apart, as seems possible, then a part of the supposed constitutional settlement of the UK might be failing too.
What I will note is that this is happening at the same time as the Tory establishment is very obviously collapsing. So too, though, is Labour which has abandoned everything it seems to stand for, leaving the much of England, at least, without any realistic left-of-centre option available in elections at present. This threatens the idea of democracy itself.
I am not suggesting that the country is in any way dependent on the Royal Family. In a very real sense it is not. But, it's not the family as such that I am referring to here, but rather more the constitutional relationships in the UK. If too many of these fail at the same time, what happens? It seems to me that this is a risk that we face, and I think that matters.
A missing wedding ring appears insignificant. But, if the constitutional settlement fails there is a real issue to consider, and I am not sure many are thinking about it.
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Thank you for the link to the Daily Mail. Interesting paper if you like tittle tattle with your boiled egg and soldiers.
I think you rather miss the point.
If you don’t understand what those you might disagree with are saying and why you have little to say yourself.
It’s a sweet photo, albeit manipulated. It seems incredibly inept to have released such a poorly edited photo. It is worrying that the Royal Family, still, appear to have little understanding of how to work with the press. An incompetent Royal Family is worry. If they mess this up can we rely on them in the most important role of vetoing unconstitutional legislation (like the Rwanda bill). I doubt it.
I am also concerned about the content of the photo. Many people are realising that it is not appropriate to post photos of young people on social media. It is an intrusion, arguably an abuse, of their privacy, at an age where they can’t give informed consent. Schools and youth organisations are very careful about photographing children. I question whether it is appropriate for the Royal Family to release this sort of photo. Perhaps it would be more appropriate not to release any photos of their children.
I agree with your suggestion re children and photos.
Buy how otherwise can they (and we) be prepared for them to claim their eugenic entitlement, leading no doubt to Louis being appointed a Knight of the Thistle by his brother? It is, apparently, what you give your little brother ion his 60th birthday.
I also note that two of the children (possibly all) have their fingers crossed. Charlotte’s Photoshopped hand appears to be covering hers. Very odd. But I agree, something feels wrong and we should be concerned.
On the subject of threats to democracy I note that the Tories intend to define extremism as “undermining liberal democracy”.
Based on the actions of Tory governments and their supporters in the last forty years I have always assumed that was their Primary purpose.
Even today the Daily Mail is trying to whip up hatred because councils have spent money promoting equality and diversity.
Since the country’s democracy has declined in terms of individuals and organisations in important positions being accountable to its citizenry trolling has become increasingly important to mask this fact. Indeed I’m surprised we don’t talk more about the growth of jobs in the “dead cat” industry! I’m especially looking forward to the “dead cat” Thames Water and its politician defenders will troll forward to cover up its refusal “to commit funds to a £180m industry-wide initiative to fast-track efforts to reduce pollution in England’s waterways”!
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/mar/11/thames-water-absent-industry-anti-pollution-sewage
Excuse my language but FFS I thought these agencies were set up under Thatcherism (Neoliberal Market Fundamentalism) to better serve the public and at lower cost. I really must stop reading Abby Innes’s book “Late Soviet Britain” she’s “trolling” the anger part of my brain!
🙂
Thank you and well said, Richard.
One could add the Tory Party at prayer, not just over Palestine, and the new Tory Party at prayer, the BBC.
I don’t know the Saxe-Coburg-Gotha’s personally, so I couldn’t care less about their possible travails. What I do object to, is them ruling over us, Scotland, and the head of the family handing out meaningless titles to his siblings. What for? Oh, Just to demonstrate his hold over us, and they can do as they please no matter what the majority of the population of our country think of them.
Many inconsistencies in that photo have since been pointed out other than the little girl’s sleeve and I must say I didn’t notice any of them.
The youngest boy’s right hand is very strange, his fingers being crossed in a weird way which is difficult to do, and his index finger appearing to be a stump. His left hand – around the chair arm – is too small to wrap around it but it has been manipulated to do that. His right trouser leg has the shape of the stairs in it – it looks like ripples – suggesting he wasn’t standing there.
Someone zoomed into (I know, weird) the oldest boy’s teeth and his bottom teeth appear to be a double row. There are others, the youngest boy’s sweater pattern and the mother’s right boot is also really odd looking.
The photo that was meant to dampen down the speculation about this lady and has done quite the opposite. It’s an amateur-ish, sloppy job – done in haste?
Re: the absence of wedding and engagement rings which are always on show. She might have lost weight due to her surgery and has left them off in case they slip off.
Maybe
But there is not even a hint of a band on that finger and I am told that it takes month for these to disappear when a habitual user stops wearing a ring for a while.
My own ring finger is deeply marked by decades of rings wearing.
Good thing you’re not looking for a ring mark on her other hand. It’s out of focus and obviously added.
Expert jewelers can expand and contract rings to fit your finger. It can be quite expensive, depending on the value of the ring, bu I’m sure the royals could afford it.
It’s a weird photo. Without dissecting its errors, suffice to say a more convincing job could have been done easily. It probably shows that panic has set in. The Palace has rushed out a bodge job that practically begs conspiracy theorists to begin their work. It can only further undermine the legitimacy of the monarchy. If we are heading towards its end then the explanation for its demise will concern the sustenance of an impossible fiction. No amount of photoshopping can fool people their best interests are served by an unelected elite in a country where everything is falling apart.
“But, it’s not the [Royal] family as such that I am referring to here, but rather more the constitutional relationships in the UK. If too many of these fail at the same time, what happens? It seems to me that this is a risk that we face, and I think that matters”.
The Union is threatened by the failure of the country by Government, and Parliament. The response by the ‘authorities’ is a well established precedent; I term it the ‘Parnell Protocol’. In Scotland this means selecting the FM, searching for a weak spot (real, imagined or just made up), and undermining the target’s credibility, by any means. Thus the ‘Telegraph’ article on the Scottish FM’s decision to make a Scottish Government a small financial contribution (£250k) to a United Nations aid agency operating in Palestine. The ‘Telegraph claimed the FM, a Moslem with family which at the time were trapped in Palestine for several weeks, had an unacceptable personal conflict of interest. The Unionist media in Scotland are now bottom-feeding in a frenzy of divisive, populism to stir the imagined public outrage. The response of Ian McWhirter, a supposedly articulate and literate Scottish journalist, is to place a tweet that exploits the political possibilities, dismissing the guilty smear as a “nothing burger”, whatever that is (other than a good illustration of Mc Whirter’s rudimentary idea of a telling metaphor); but deftly turning the story into the inappropriateness of the FM’s indignant public response to the smear, transforming a dubious story into an alternative line of attack on the FM out of the same ignoble source, and exploit opportunistically the populist anger, for the advantage of the Unionist case.
BBC Radio Scotland News, GMS meanwhile, interviews Keith Brown MSP, the SNP deputy leader, to advance the argument that the FM has a serious ‘conflict of interest’ case to answer in Holyrood; a case already made by the arch-populist, barrack-room controversialist Conservative MSP, Stephen Kerr; which Kerr has already refused to qualify in any way, visibly spoiling for the fight in Holyrood, in which he invariably vents spleen and shouts finger-pointing outrage, as a matter of established routine, about anything at all that raises him to his feet.
The intent of Conservatives to stoke bitter controversy in a problematic area of discontent seems clear; and the only apparent beneficiary of this unseemly turmoil is, as far as I can discern, a form of demented, win-at-any-cost Unionism that now obsesses a bitter and broken Conservative Party. On one hand the Scottish Conservatives attack the FM with venom; on the other; Rishi Sunak does not just ignore the direct, provocative opposition of the Scottish Conservative leader (Douglas Ross MP) to his Government’s Budget, over oil policy; Sunak simply ignores Ross, as if he isn’t there; which in real power terms, the realpolitik that Scottish Conservatives are known, weak vessels with nowhere to go; so in reality Ross politically isn’t there at all. He doesn’t even exist in the great scheme of things.
That is how the Parnell Protocol is executed. If not this time; next time. Under cover of the seething public anger over almost everything, confusion reigns; few are ‘thinking straight’. Something will turn up to allow the State to exploit again the Parnell Protocol, as always – sooner or later. Something, somehow, somewhere – the dirt will stick.
“he invariably vents spleen and shouts finger-pointing outrage, as a matter of established routine, about anything at all that raises him to his feet.”
Kerr also spat out his own teeth whilst venting in Parliament!
God, do any of you have anything productive to do? You are like a bunch of gossiping old biddies..
Half the commentators here are retired, maybe more.
And my job is to create ideas.
Your problem is? Is it you’d rather we were despoiling the planet?
My view of royal tittle tattle is much the same as Richard’s. I no more care about it than I would ever actually stump up to buy a copy of the Daily Heil or visit it’s ghastly website.
I take his point however that this may be important because the constitutional settlement of the UK might be failing too, at the same time as the tory establishment that has supported it and been supported by it (know your places, English serfs, etc etc) is also collapsing in on itself.
So I see no harm in seriously discussing it, though I certainly wouldn’t bother studying the photo all the fuss is about. Incidentally, since you object to the contributors on here gossiping like a ‘bunch of old biddies’, can you tell us what it is you are dong with your so valuable time?
Calm down everyone – it is just Kate playing around with editing, she reportedly says.
Perhaps you have seen the adverts for the new AI enabled phones that allow you to stitch together parts of several photos of the same scene to correct things such as people’s heads pointing in different directions.
Of course, if she just walked out of the door and waved to the cameras that would solve all the speculation…
Dreadful pic.
The kids all remind me of John Wyndham ‘Midwich Cuckoos’ facial expressions but corrected with that new Google smily face AI app.
It is entirely relevant that the constitutional settlement is constantly under review, especially given that it constantly reinforces the disparities in the social order.
However peripheral the monarchy is to the daily lives of the great unwashed, Richard is right that this is one underlying issue we need to watch.
Guilty as charged. Happily retired and no longer doing 12-hour shifts + my birthday, Easter, Christmas, New Year and other Bank Holidays in the NHS.
So sue me, I commented on a badly manipulated photo.
I’m not interested in the Royals but, like many people I appreciate good photography, and once pointed out and looking closely, the photoshopping is very badly done. Quite unusual for them.
Hang on everyone. This is surely getting things raher out of proportion. This is a photograph – not reality. A comparison of this stushie with medieval arguments about the authenticity of holy relics is more than tempting.
What is the constitutional reality? The wife of the heir to the throne has already performed her only significant constitutional function; she has borne an heir to the heir – and the proverbial ‘spare’. If her marriage falters or fails that is a personal and private matter. The constitution could not care less and in this case husband has his father’s experience to show that this is so. If that seems a brutal conclusion, it is only at one with the crude illogicality of monarchy.
If her rather long period of absence from the public eye means anything, it is far more likely to have a medical – and therefore personally unhappy – cause. The coincidence that this comes at a time when the poltical legs of our unwritten, and much myhtologised, constitution are mired in scandal, public contempt and incompetence means exactly nothing. By any reasonable view of the facts, she is unwell and the matter should be left alone.
I am not going to speculate on illness, or not. Who knows? The role would be enough to make most people ill.
My concern is that this is another part of the Constitutional Settlement crumbling, and that matters when democracy itself is doing so.
As far as I can see….
Queen Elizabeth was on the throne for 70 years and there is on;y about 25% of the population whe were even alive during her fathers reign.
Even those opposed to The Monarchy thought she performed her role as head of state well.
When she died the crown was passed to her 75 year old son who clearly was not going to enjoy as long a reign as she did.
He is then diagnosed with cancer while at the same time The Princess of Wales has ‘major abdominal surgery’
Ignoring any other issues and the inevitable speculation that accompanies so much as a Royal Stubbed Toe we have gone from a position of Stability at the top to a slightly more ‘Fluid’ situation and anything is inevitably siezed upon.
It is much more than that
Even the Telegraph is now sharing its doubts
I think they may have blown the myth
I hope it is nothing more than that
But that is enough to blow apart this farce
The royal family is supposed to do nothing, not get involved, have no authority except to ask the party with the most MPs to try and form a government. And they meet the leaders of other countries.
I have long thought that all their duties could be performed by a wooden statue, carried on the shoulders like a Virgin Mary statue being paraded around a catholic town. And the other leaders: our statue could meet their statue, with fireworks perhaps, or puppies, it doesn’t really matter.
The other unstated role of the Tory party is to be implicitly Tory.
Tory in their cultural choices, Tory in their lifestyle and Tory in their unstated support for the view that There Is No Alternative.
When they move even slightly from this position the Tory party erupts.
Two good examples are Charles Windsor’s mildly daffy support for Green issues and the mixed marriage within the Royal family that are subjects of constant right-wing fury.
As the Tory party increases its embrace of the Fascist gutter this rift between them and the Royal family will only grow and as Richard has suggested this is not necessarily a positive development for the British constitution.
An incomprehensible typo in my first sentence in my previous comment.
It should have read.
“The other unstated role of the Royal Family is to be implicitly Tory”
Apologies for adding to your workload.
… and the Speaker of the Commons could take the job of asking the largest party to form the government.
Indeed
But suppose there wasn’t one?
Although, thinking about it that is incredibly unlikely.
You are right.
The chief judge?
What photograph?
🙂
A missing ring may be insignificant but a Prince missing the memorial service to his godfather seems rather more so. William cancelled at short notice and without explanation, other than it was a personal matter.
I don’t know whether it is significant for the constitutional settlement of the UK but I mind being taken for an idiot with this photo. As with anyone, I hope that their marriage is not in trouble but I also resent the way that media speculation will blot out any other news.