Tag: Royal family
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Pippa’s Ugly Car Park, Bearskin Caps and a Stag Beetle
A.A. Gill, old age, the Space Race I am reading A. A. Gill’s A.A. Gill Is Further Away helping with enquiries, and I will come back to it here, meanwhile the scintillating prose, the breadth of knowledge and subject matter enthral me. I find myself ensnared and arrested by brilliant observations of the mundane, for…
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Ben Elton; the ex-prince and the royal art collection; good and bad news for nature
I have recently finished Ben Elton’s autobiography and enjoyed it very much – he is at the very least always easy to read. He was at Manchester University not long before me and as students we adored The Young Ones. He has of course been extraordinarily prolific and I read several of his many novels…
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Royal Babylon and an accounting error
As mentioned in my previous post, I purchased Heathcote Williams’ Royal Babylon; the Case Against the Monarchy. The only way to do so without too much expense was through Google Play Books. Very unsatisfactory – none of the pleasure of an actual book and none of the advantages of, for example, a Kindle version. It…
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Starmer, Reeves, Michelle Mone and the House of Lords – and king Charles again
Starmer and his rivers of blood I wrote earlier in this post, Being a gosling chauffeur; Tumuli and White Horses; Birdwatch magazine and Lucky Dube vs Keir Starmer – Animal Wild: “Talking of Keir Starmer, of “island of strangers” fame, inviting comparisons with Enoch Powell and his rivers of blood, isn’t it funny how governments…
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King Charles is displeased, pheasants, licences to kill, badgers, camels, plastic, water and animal sentience.
Pheasants I don’t read Hello! magazine, but someone at Protect the Wild does and has reported with great wit on a piece which records that Charles (king) is “devastated” and “livid”. I am stealing from the PtW writer’s style, but about what could it be? The rise of the Far Right in Europe, the war…
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Church & State
I have been procrastinating with this post – it is a huge subject and not always easy to write about (nor read – I am not pulling my punches here, supporters of the church and royalists might want to look away). It is a summary of much that I have said before, but I do…
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Even more fungi, the Tree Register and a not so welcome presence in my hair
A leisurely two and a half mile walk through Bowdown Woods this time, a BBOWT reserve which is surprisingly situated not far from Newbury and Thatcham, Berkshire and close to a road (although not the way my satnav tortuously sent me, through a long line of industrial estates). I saw all of two other people…
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Charlotte Dujardin, the story that keeps on giving
Update 2. Details have emerged of another incident in 2016 recorded by an allegedly shocked steward. For daring to raise her head, Dujardin shouted at the horse she was riding “you bitch”. So not exact the perfectly harmonious relationship between horse and rider she and her i lk would have us believe. It has also…
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The RSPCA and a king
The tireless Protect the Wild has deplored the appointment (perhaps I should say anointment, the royals seem to like a bit of anointing) of a king, Charles Windsor (i.e. Saxe-Coburg-Gotha) as its new patron, describing him as an animal abuser. It is the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, so I can…
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Royal Pigeons
Members of the royal family are no strangers to the enjoyment of extreme animal cruelty – their patronage of various wildlife organisations is a smokescreen of course. See Animal Trust and Animal Wild. A letter from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) highlights their abuse of pigeons. Three, from King Charles’ Sandringham loft,…