With Flunkeys Like These...

[steepholm]

Next time Brutus is looking for someone to help out with a funeral oration, perhaps he should consider calling Mr Grieve (who deserves the gig on the strength of his name alone):

"Prince Charles's letters are so partisan, reactionary and frankly nutty that if you saw them you would probably consider him unfit to be king. So I'm stopping their publication, and that way you will never know just what an interfering, unconstitutional, right wing bigot he is."

Job done, Mr Attorney General. My mind's entirely at rest.

Comments

[lamentables.livejournal.com]

That's a curious understanding of 'in the national interest'...

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

It is, isn't it? It's hard not to conclude that the way Grieve announced it was designed to undermine Charles, but it certainly insults the intelligence of the public along the way.

[karinmollberg.livejournal.com]

Not mine, these news worry me. I now do want to read those letters. It´s only logical, as are Mr. Grieve´s action and explanation of said action. Also, I have been worrying alot http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.fr/2010/04/alot-is-better-than-you-at-everything.html, lately. Though not so much about the flaws of the swedish king, including his disturbing dyslexia, because that has never stopped him from being one and greeting say, the population of a town he is not visiting at visiting another town, while being there himself travelling the land on his King´s Road, if you know what I mean? But, now that we also know, how M. Malaise sadly passed away http://theboringclub.livejournal.com/74526.html while Messrs Grieve and Maladroite are still alive and kicking, all these pressing issues should finally come to a rest, maybe even before the end of the world takes place.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Fittingly, he attended Madgalen College...

[karinmollberg.livejournal.com]

The Viking King? I didn´t know that, but it´s most reassuring "Dyslexians of the world untie" or as Kurt Vonnegut put it: "telekinetics of the wor()d: raise my hand!

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Aha, I see what I did there... Mad Galen was a Greek doctor, I think. Or possibly an ape.

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

So as long as the Prince of Wales only writes to Ministers, he is politically neutral; he only forfeits his neutrality if we find out what he said?

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Schrödinger's cat meows again.

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

Grieve....that's a very Orcadian name indeed!

[calimac.livejournal.com]

This kind of "if you don't know what their opinions are, they're neutral" fallacy has a flourishing life in the US as well. Judges are required to recuse themselves if they have a known personal connection to the case, because that might lead to a perception of bias; but if they have no personal connection, they are free to have all kinds of bias, and frequently do. Some journalists believe their code of political neutrality requires them to refrain from voting. This is particularly odd, since the ballot is secret, and if you have an opinion, it's not going to go away if you don't express it in that manner.

I'm a lot less worried about Charles. He can have all the opinions he wants, but he would have no more opportunity to impose them as king than he does now. Surely the present Queen has many opinions, which she expresses in private meetings, but who knows what they are?

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Surely the present Queen has many opinions, which she expresses in private meetings, but who knows what they are?

Indeed - unless someone happens to give them away.

I tend to agree about Charles. That a man who employs a servant to put toothpaste on his toothbrush should hold bizarre opinions is no great surprise. Rather, it seems to me that the manner in which Grieve "protected" him (the complaint being levelled by some) was calculated to undermine him. If he really was trying to deflect constitutional worries, he did it in a singularly inept way. I see this as a shot across Charles's bows, against the time when he does become king.

[dorianegray.livejournal.com]

Not at all the point at hand, but still..."10-page summary"? 10 pages is not a fucking summary. 10 paragraphs is pushing it to constitute a summary.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Couldn't agree more - but if the issues were written about at less length, we might begin to imagine they were comprehensible to someone other than a highly-paid lawyer, and that would never do.

[lilliburlero.livejournal.com]

When I saw "Grieve" I immediately thought "Hugh MacDiarmid"...

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

As cmcmck points out above, it's a very Orcadian name, but this Grieve seems not to have any very immediate connection. (And Sir Geoffrey Howe is no relation to Maes.)