UK News

from John Lloyd:

A yacht not fit for a queen

Her Majesty Elizabeth the Second, by the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and of Her other Realms and Territories, Queen, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith … is in want of a yacht.

She had one, the Royal Yacht Britannia, which she loved very much. When the Labour government of Tony Blair said it was too expensive and decommissioned it soon after assuming office in 1997, she was seen to weep at the ceremony. Last year, Blair was reported as saying he regretted the decision, pressed upon him by the then-chancellor, Gordon Brown, and inherited from the previous, Conservative administration. It cost £11 million a year to run, and a necessary refit would have cost some £50 million. So it was put out to the nautical equivalent of pasture. It’s now on show at a dock in Leith, the port of Scotland’s capital, Edinburgh, where it’s in much demand as a venue for “occasions."

If in want of a yacht, Queen Elizabeth has never lacked for gallant courtiers. Michael Gove, the secretary of state for education, earlier this month wrote to the prime minister suggesting that for her Diamond Jubilee, to be celebrated in June this year, she should be promised (the event is too near for her to be “given”) a replacement yacht, to express the love her subjects bear her. After a little to-ing and fro-ing, Gove clarified that he had not meant that the expense – which might be some £80 million to £100 million – should be borne from the public purse, but rather would be raised from her (presumably better-heeled) admirers. The prime minister said he was all for it, on that basis. The deputy prime minister, Liberal Democrat Nick Clegg, made a not-too-bad joke, saying the world was divided into the “yachts and the have-yachts."

This is a storm in a royal teacup, to be sure: The money may not be raised, the yacht never built. Already, a grand river pageant is planned for June 3, when the Diamond Jubilee will be celebrated with a four-day weekend holiday for all. The star of that show will be a luxury river boat, the Spirit of Chartwell, transformed by the film set designer Joseph Bennett into a gilded, garlanded royal barge. Bennett did the sets for the grandiose TV series Rome, so he may have had in mind the lines heralding Cleopatra’s watery arrival to meet her lover, the Roman general Antony, in Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra: “The barge she sat in, like a burnish'd throne,
 Burn'd on the water."

Is not the barge enough? It will cost £10 million, the cost to be met by private sponsorship and donations. Are there enough generous royalists left after that to put up some £80 million to £100 million for a yacht?

Even if there are, it’s a bad idea. Gove, a former journalist and one of the sharpest minds in the British Cabinet, has allowed his affection for the queen to nudge him into making a rare presentational mistake. The queen should not have a yacht -- and it is the royalists who should be most concerned that she should not.

First, it puts her among the superrich. She is, indeed, very rich: Her fortune is estimated at just under £2 billion, which makes her the 19th wealthiest woman in the world and the second richest woman monarch (after Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, who tops £2 billion). But her style, her activities and above all her public relations have kept her removed from the yacht set – a set led by a near neighbor of hers, who lives a mile or so west of Buckingham Palace and who owns the Chelsea soccer team. Roman Abramovich’s Eclipse, the largest yacht in the world (557 feet) and the most expensive (nearly £1 billion) is one of four he has, the Eclipse having two swimming pools, two helicopter pads and a small submarine. Abramovich was embroiled till last week in an effort to strike down a suit against him from former fellow oligarch Boris Berezovsky. He has just lost his bid to defeat the suit, and so the substantive case will go to a full trial in October. The sight of these two enormously wealthy men, whose riches were torn from an impoverished country, brawling over billions is at once fascinating and melancholy. The queen shouldn’t join that class.

from Royal Wedding Diary:

Press faces royal wedding day dilemmas

Media companies, particularly from Britain and North America, are pouring a lot of resources into covering the April 29 wedding between Prince William and Kate Middleton in London. The amount of money they are spending, and the temptation to decide what their millions of viewers want to see, could cloud editorial judgment on the day should things not go according to plan.

One potential problem could be if a small number of protesters turn violent, and attempt to "hijack" an event which the British government believes will be watched in some shape or form by more than a quarter of the Earth's population. This happened only recently in London when a march by up to half a million people protesting at spending cuts by the government was overshadowed by the violent actions of a few hundred "radicals". The British broadcasters generally focussed more closely on the few than on the many, but would they do the same later this month?

Certainly the royal press teams and the monarch herself will be keen for media companies to stay "on message". They will see the wedding of the generally popular young couple as a good opportunity to bolster the royal family, and anything to spoil the big day would irk them no end. So far the press has been generally compliant, giving Middleton and William a relatively easy ride and producing overwhelmingly positive coverage of the marriage. Of course, there may be no violence on the day at all, but were things to turn nasty, would the broadcasters point their cameras away from the pomp and pageantry of the royal occasion to capture smashed windows and police in riot gear?

Another temptation may be to give the impression that there are more people lining the streets than is actually the case. There is no particular reason to doubt the event will be well attended (the wedding between Prince Charles and Diana drew an estimated crowd of 600,000 people to the streets of central London), but should it "flop" in terms of numbers, would this be accurately reflected in coverage? Graham Smith, who heads up the anti-monarchy Republic group, said he would be watching broadcasters like the BBC carefully on the day, ready to make a formal complaint if what he sees on his TV screen does not reflect what is going on on the street.

The royals on tour

Prince Charles is in Canada, the Queen is expected to go there next year and William is preparing to go to New Zealand and Australia – but are there signs that the locals are revolting?

Polls published in advance of Charles’ visit show support for Canada’s constitutional monarchy is weak, even if the public’s frosty opinion of the Prince of Wales himself has begun to warm just a bit.

Sixty percent of Canadians felt the constitutional monarchy was outdated, although 80 percent said it was an important part of Canadian history.

Polls in New Zealand show people generally in favour of the monarchy even if it seems to have little relevance to their lives but when William heads off afterwards to Australia he will find a much more developed republican movement.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is an avowed republican whose announcement of William’s trip made it crystal clear that the young royal was coming because because he asked to, not because he was invited. Foreign Minister Stephen Smith says a split from the monarchy is inevitable in the next decade.

William, travelling without girlfriend Kate Middleton, can expect to bask in the lingering “Diana factor,” but this enduring phenomenon may actually work against the older couple in Canada.

Do you believe such royal visits have any point?

So farewell then Princess Diana?

**Read our special report about the Diana inquest**

Watching the Diana inquest unfold, you sometimes felt that the lunatics had taken over the asylum.

With an extraordinary cast of characters straight out of central casting, it would have been rich fodder for any scriptwriter on a surreal soap opera.

Or maybe it was more of a roustabout pantomine with a cast of starkly drawn goodies and baddies.

John Loughrey, the only member of the public to attend every day of the six-month inquest, got through seven boxes of paint writing the words “Diana” and Dodi” on his face each morning.

His appetite never waned — even when the word count from the 278 witnesses reached a staggering total of three million words over six, at times seemingly interminable months.