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Friday 29 April 2011

The Royal Wedding - a Union symbolising a divided nation?

Celebrations across Britain? Technically true, but in fact concentrated on London and the Home Counties.

Anglesey and St. Andrews effectively had to stand for Wales and Scotland, for obvious reasons - the royal couple live in Anglesey, and went to St. Andrew's - a Scottish University that is predominantly the province of rich English students.

This was a wedding attended by the rich and privileged (plus a few brutal tyrants), the British Establishment and a few token peasants. It was almost exclusively white - apart from the dictators - and entirely unrepresentative of the United Kingdom. It was a huge expensive PR exercise for the British Establishment, militarism and organised religion, mainly Christian.

It was reported in either hushed reverential tones or a nauseatingly jolly jingoistic and patronising manner by the BBC and ITV both nationally and regionally, and grossly distorted the reality of the widespread indifference of Scotland, Wales and the Midlands and North of England.

Only Channel 4 offered any kind of realistic debate and critique. We expected little else, and it's over - till the next time.



4 comments:

  1. Peter well said. I escaped to the hills yesterday because the wall to wall coverages was nauseating.

    Back campaigning today.

    Bread and circuses keep the masses happy?

    ReplyDelete
  2. I avoided it mostly, DIY, anything but it annoyed me the whole day long.

    The Sun tried awfully hard to pretend that the Scots were street partying and waving wee flaggies with their front page article 'Scotland the wave'. Looking at the photos however : two photos were from St Andrews and hardly a flag in sight; one was someone's living room (flags there); someone's front garden (a handful of people, no flags but a union flag table cover); Balmoral castle (a fair number there, free champagne, hardly a flag insight) and finally Edinburgh (the mass of people was about 80 apparently and hardly a flag in sight).

    I understand the women wishing to see it, after all most girls grow up dreaming of being a princess but it was clear that most men yawned and did DIY.


    My only worry is that this Brit nat love-in will hit the SNP vote.

    What do you think?

    ReplyDelete
  3. Alex was at the wedding, natha,the SNP policy is a continuation of a constitutional monarchy, and many will be happy enough with a queen of Scots again.

    Peter

    ReplyDelete