The new Queen of Hearts
Miranda Devine – Saturday, April 30, 11 (02:47 am)
LONDON: The moment yesterday when plain Kate Middleton from Bucklebury, a regal vision in ivory lace and diamond tiara, said “I will “ to her Prince Charming and became Her Royal Highness, The Duchess of Cambridge, was as magic as real life gets.
Does it also demean Ralf that I open his tin of Pal?
Andrew Bolt – Saturday, April 30, 11 (08:36 am)
Glad the big problems are sorted out, now that we’re down to these:
Animal lovers should stop calling their furry or feathered friends “pets” because the term is insulting, leading academics claim....
Domestic dogs, cats, hamsters or budgerigars should be rebranded as “companion animals” while owners should be known as “human carers”, they insist.
Even terms such as wildlife are dismissed as insulting to the animals concerned – who should instead be known as “free-living”, the academics including an Oxford professor suggest.
The call comes from the editors of then Journal of Animal Ethics, a new academic publication devoted to the issue.... It argues that “derogatory” language about animals can affect the way that they are treated.
“Despite its prevalence, ‘pets’ is surely a derogatory term both of the animals concerned and their human carers,” the editorial claims.
Too right. Each time I feed Ralf, underlining his subservience, I can tell how offended he really is. How demeaned be must feel when I rub his belly, not respecting his personal space.
And, really, calling him a pet is indeed derogatory of me, too, loading me with all kinds of duties like I was some kind of servant.
I’m reformed. As of now, Ralf is just my companion, in a relationship of equals. Which means tonight it’s his turn to get us dinner.
(Thanks to reader Owen.)
With what does Robertson powder his wig?
Andrew Bolt – Saturday, April 30, 11 (07:59 am)
Good heavens, and the man is a QC:
Geoffrey Robertson in Fairfax’s National Times yesterday:
It is an open secret at the Commonwealth Secretariat that they do not want Charles III to be the next head of the Commonwealth when the Queen retires—they are looking for someone more inspiring. Mandela, once the favourite candidate, is now too old. But there is an even better candidate whose name is being mentioned as an alternative to Charles in due course, namely ex-President Obama, with his Kenyan ancestry (as some believe, Kenyan birth). There are rumours that the palace’s refusal to invite him to the wedding was neither oversight nor overslight but a fear that Barack and Michelle would appear to the “black Commonwealth” as superior to Charles and Camilla as future leaders of the Commonwealth.
Rightio. The Associated Press had another theory on April 23:Palace officials said that only crowned heads of states are traditionally invited to royal weddings and that political leaders who are not from the 54-member Commonwealth of nations, such as President Barack Obama or French President Nicolas Sarkozy, weren’t sent invitations.
Hyperbowl of the week
Andrew Bolt – Saturday, April 30, 11 (07:44 am)
Christopher Pearson identifies not just a touch of a hysteria, but the infantilising of a publication run by an order once considered the intellectual elite of the Catholic church:
The Jesuits’ online journal Eureka Street published a piece by Ellena Savage, the immediate past editor of Melbourne University’s student magazine Farrago.
What’s more: “Its effective ban on democratic media representation provides a welcome jolt back to reality. British monarchy is not the benevolent and benign institution we pretended it was, but a neurotic, self-perpetuating liability.
“It was their benevolence alone that guaranteed our unquestioned support, or at least tolerance, of their persistence as anachronistic figureheads in our parliamentary structure.”
Rio to Gillard: er, why are we cutting our own throat?
Andrew Bolt – Saturday, April 30, 11 (07:39 am)
Now it’s mining giant Rio Tinto’s belated turn to question the madness of making useless and damaging sacrifices ahead of the rest of the world:
In an exclusive interview with The Weekend Australian, Rio Tinto chairman Jan du Plessis urged the Gillard government to rethink its carbon pricing policy and timing, saying it threatened the Australian economy when other leading economies appeared to be stalling on climate change action.
“The question is, how and when does Australia move in the light of the disappointment of the Copenhagen conference and in light of the fact there are very few signs the big gorillas - the US and China - really are going to be moving,” the London-based Mr du Plessis said in Sydney.
What chance that Eastley is a sceptic?
Andrew Bolt – Saturday, April 30, 11 (07:35 am)
No doubt the Climate Commission will next ask me to MC a meeting - or is the position only for ABC types who thoroughly support the warming cause?
Eastley, who hosts the ABC’s flagship AM current affairs program, chaired the first of the commission’s NSW public meetings, in Port Macquarie, on Thursday. He introduced the speakers and invited questions from the audience....
The ABC did not respond to questions about whether Eastley was being paid to conduct the forums, or whether he’d have to declare a financial interest when introducing climate change stories on the ABC.
How much is our hospitality costing?
Andrew Bolt – Saturday, April 30, 11 (07:18 am)
Would an Australian government even dare ask the question that the Danish Government has:
The (Integration Ministry) report—initiated by the right-wing populist Danish People’s Party (DPP)—came to the conclusion that by tightening immigration laws, Denmark has saved €6.7 billion ($10 billion) over the last 10 years, money which otherwise would supposedly have been spent on social benefits or housing. According to the figures, migrants from non-Western countries who did manage to come to Denmark have cost the state €2.3 billion, while those from the West have actually contributed €295 million to government coffers.
(Thanks to reader rgmx4u.)
A wedding of state
Andrew Bolt – Saturday, April 30, 11 (06:54 am)
WE cry at a good wedding, and, boy, were there tears with this one.
There was the ABC, sobbing with fury at having the BBC veto its plan to have the Chaser comics host the ABC2 coverage of the wedding of William and Catherine.
Wah, wah, wah. How could the nasty royal family object to having the TV rights to its big day given to a broadcaster who’d use the footage to spend three straight hours trashing this celebration and the royals hosting it ?
How dare those royals not help an ABC to tell “jokes” like this:
Queen Elizabeth II (watching a film of Adolf Hitler): What’s he saying?
Prince Philip: Oh, I’m not sure. But if it’s about Jews, I agree with all of it.
Laugh? We nearly cried, too.
Then there were the ABC talkback callers also in a crying rage that so many stupid Australians were actually loving the whole royal wedding vibe.
And how the republicans howled, too. Take Stephen Haseler from the anti-monarchy group, Republic, who stormed on ABC radio: “I think Britain is turning itself into a medieval theme park, really, with fairy kings and fairy queens and princesses…
“It is demeaning, slightly vulgar and Hollywood, basically.”
In the end, even I was in tears - but of laughter - at reading Geoffrey Robertson, the “human rights” barrister and celebrity republican, damn the monarchy as “absurd”, “primitive” and “medieval nonsense” in an Age article, at the bottom of which he pompously noted he was a “Queen’s counsel”. Despising that on which you feed, Geoffrey?
See, “Queen’s counsel” confers a dignity and authority to a barrister that helps him to extract thousands of dollars a day in fees from awed clients.
But just as the royal family’s imprimatur helps out a poor barrister like Robertson QC, adding the wig of borrowed wisdom to his blow-waved locks, so does it give a venerable varnish to much that is of far more import.
Take the royal wedding, and note especially how it did what no republican wedding could. Marvellous things. Useful things, and civilising.
Of course, at its heart this was still “just” a wedding between two people in love, as intimate a ceremony as you could expect with two billion bug-eyed strangers watching on TV.
Most of the 1900 crammed into Westminster Abbey were in fact family and friends. The music was personally chosen by the couple and Prince Charles, who rather prides himself on his taste and was tactfully allowed by his son to help pick.
The address at the service was given by a friend of William’s family. The bridesmaids and page boys were all young relatives, along with two godchildren and the son of William’s private secretary.
All right, so the scale was lavish and the titles grand, but this ceremony was indeed William and Catherine’s. In that way it was intimate, and with heart.
True, all these elements, if not the proportions, you could find in any wedding, but then came the rest of the show. The bits that only a royal can do.
Make mine Edna
Andrew Bolt – Saturday, April 30, 11 (06:25 am)
Your choice of wedding coverage last night?
The TV guest who brought the most disdain on Twitter was expat writer Kathy Lette, who kept churning out the same crude jokes in every interview. Dame Edna on Nine provided some nice moments, giving cheeky little insights into the royals.
Every network took the mixed BBC, ITV and Sky feed of the royal wedding, but most put their own commentary on the top.
Only ABC1, which decided not to send any extra hands from Australia, stuck with the BBC commentary during the wedding ceremony.
“It’d be a waste of taxpayers’ money if I tried to replicate it,” ABC1 controller Brendan Dahill said. “They’ve got all the experience organising these events and they do it brilliantly.”
Network Ten, which sent 14 people to cover the event, had an alternative commentary by commercial radio broadcasters Fitzy and Wippa during the ceremony and at 9.30pm broadcast the female equivalent of a post-match analysis from morning show presenters on The Circle.
I’m sorry, but you couldn’t pay me to watch Kathy Lette, even for reviewing purposes - so I must leave the comments on her performance to you. But who on earth thinks she’s a talent? Even the best of puns are always awful, and Lette’s are the worst.
The highlight for me was Dame Edna, who can forget an invitation to the Lodge any time soon. That said, it was appropriate that she was ushered out before the ceremony turned serious.
And while it sounds like the ABC not trying, Dahill was right. Why try to replicate the expertise and gravitas the BBC brings to such occasions?
Some credits:
- Whoever dressed Westminster Abbey with all that greenery (and easy on the flowers) did a most splendid job.
- The priests rivalled the women for the best-dressed, and good.
- British fashion was supposed to be an oxymoron. No longer. Check out the bride’s mother, just for a start.
- No country in the world does military uniforms like the British.
- The simple affection shown between the bride and groom suggests these are people both warm and serious, and this will last.
- I have no idea why they were at that particular spot, but the two grey-clad nuns sitting next to splendidly attired Prince William during the Bishop’s sermon made an arresting juxtaposition. A touch of humility.
- Almost every charity recommended by the couple in lieu of wedding presents helps people, not “the environment”. Not one charity campaigns specifically on global warming.
One thing, though. The very physical Prince Harry seems to be just the man to make a fine soldier, but seemed more nervous than his brother and at times appeared to be trying to shrink inside his uniform. God save him from being King.
UPDATE
The cartwheeling verger takes the prize, though:
Bond, Prince Bond
Andrew Bolt – Saturday, April 30, 11 (06:15 am)
The man has style:
PRINCE William delighted crowds of stunned well-wishers in central London last night when he took his new bride Kate for a spin in an Aston Martin with the number plate JU5T WED on the back.
UPDATE
And the other side of this most impressive man - the prayer he and his bride wrote and which the Bishop of London read out during their wedding service:
God our Father, we thank you for our families; for the love that we share and for the joy of our marriage.
In the busyness of each day keep our eyes fixed on what is real and important in life and help us to be generous with our time and love and energy.
Strengthened by our union help us to serve and comfort those who suffer. We ask this in the Spirit of Jesus Christ. Amen.
If they’re in, Bowen is out
Andrew Bolt – Saturday, April 30, 11 (06:15 am)
Let’s see if it was just a press release:
A guard called for help from Australian Federal Police at the Christmas Island immigration detention centre on April 21 after allegedly encountering a partially dressed detainee being held down by three others…
On Tuesday, (Immigration Minister Chris) Bowen announced that anyone who committed an offence in immigration detention would fail the “character” test and would not be given a permanent visa under proposed changes to the legislation.
Whatever the legalities and the standards of any test, the fact remains that there would be almost no one in this country who would back the issuing of a visa to these three men, if the allegations against them are true.
Abbott destroys Labor as the natural Labor choice
Andrew Bolt – Saturday, April 30, 11 (06:05 am)
Paul Kelly remembers when Tony Abbott accidentally took over as Liberal leader by a single vote:
Frankly, no opposition leader has been so under-estimated. From his election as leader in December 2009 Labor’s key players were privately scathing of Abbott. They saw him as intellectually third rate, arguing that of the three contenders, Malcolm Turnbull, Joe Hockey and Abbott, the Liberals had taken their worst option.
Fast forward:
The symbolism was stark - on the same day a beleaguered republican Prime Minister Julia Gillard was in London for the royal wedding, Tony Abbott, the conservative pro-marriage monarchist, was sitting in the dirt with some of the nation’s most damaged communities at Alice Springs.
The contrast is unfair. After all, Gillard was merely doing her duty as Australia’s leader. But Abbott was also at work on his principal mission - tightening his massive political wedge on the Labor government. It now runs into multiple dimensions…
Abbott is throttling the political lifeblood from Labor in a relentless campaign that has seen Labor’s primary vote fall to 32 per cent, heading further south, a campaign no alternative Liberal leader could have mounted.... He sank Kevin Rudd and now Gillard is half submerged....Whether Gillard can halt and reverse Abbott’s momentum is doubtful.
This week offered the perfect demonstration of the Abbott technique. He visited Christmas Island to campaign on asylum-seekers, Whyalla to turn unionists against the carbon tax and Alice Springs to put Gillard under pressure over social dislocation in indigenous communities.
Each issue folds into Abbott’s central narrative: that Labor’s policies are failing and constitute a betrayal of ordinary people.
Gillard looking forward to sharing “sense of delight” of wedding
Andrew Bolt – Friday, April 29, 11 (01:53 pm)
Just passing it on:
AS she prepares to attend the wedding of the century, Julia Gillard has playfully suggested it might be time for long-time partner Tim Mathieson to pop the question.
Proving , perhaps, that even the Prime Minister is not immune to the pageantry of the event, Ms Gillard said she was looking forward to sharing Prince William and Kate Middleton’s “sense of delight” as they married later today.
Asked whether she might also be preparing to take the plunge, Ms Gillard gave her strongest hint to date that a prime ministerial marriage could be on the horizon.
“A very good friend of mine has joked with me that before answering these questions, I should indicate it is customary to wait to be asked as to whether you want to get married before you start burbling forth views about it,” she told ABC television.
Think that’s offensive, commissar? Then hear this…
Andrew Bolt – Friday, April 29, 11 (01:30 pm)
Last week, Commissar Murray Geiger-Adams of the British Columbia “Human Rights” Tribunal pronounced stand-up comic Guy Earle guilty of the novel “human rights” crime of putting down lesbian hecklers in a homophobic manner.
The judgement is horrifying in its presumption, it’s arbritrariness, its contempt for free speech, its disdain for a certain old-fashioned thing called “proof” and its sheer sense of Call me God. But Steyn’s column - unusually angry - does all that’s required to punish the wicked and this enemy of freedom.
Kevin of Arabia
Andrew Bolt – Friday, April 29, 11 (01:19 pm)
Remind me, but of which superpower or Middle Eastern country is Kevin Rudd the Foreign Minister?
Finally, both in Paris and London, I have been in discussions with French Foreign Minister Juppe and British Foreign Secretary William Hague on the unfolding situation in the Middle East: Syria, Libya and elsewhere.
A comment or two on Syria: the Australian Government, together with those of France and the United Kingdom, condemn absolutely the deployment of violence by the Syrian regime against its own people.... Furthermore, we believe the time has come for the international community now to consider the use of sanctions against the Syrian regime… I will be writing to the UN Secretary General requesting the UN Secretary General consider the deployment of a UN Special Envoy to Syria…
Finally on Libya, ... it is important that we pursue a consistent diplomatic, political and military strategy in our dealings with the campaign in Libya. Australia remains the third largest humanitarian contributor to the Libyan people…
I am heading out to Jerusalem and Ramallah this afternoon, in fact as soon as I leave you good people in six minutes time, and I will be in discussions there with the Israeli Government and the Government of the Palestinian Authorities, so that’s where I will be through most of tomorrow.
Whose interests is Rudd serving?
(No link to the transcript of Rudd’s press conference in London.)
Yet another boat, yet more trouble
Andrew Bolt – Friday, April 29, 11 (01:06 pm)
Yet another lot of people who will soon have access to our courts and to berths in already bulging detention centres:
THE navy has intercepted another asylum seeker boat off Australia’s northwest coast…
Initial indications suggest there are 77 passengers and three crew on board the suspected irregular entry vessel.
That makes 66 boats and 3747 people since the election, when Gillard promised us the East Timor detention centre to stop the boats.
Meanwhile, I’m told by a guard that there have been almost daily protests, scuffles and acts of vandalism in Melbourne’s immigration detention centre at Maribyrnong. Two days ago the detainees were informed of the latest edict from Immigration Minister Chris Bowen - that protesting detainees convicted of any offence whatsoever would be stripped of their right to a permanent visa. The announcement was allegedly followed by another violent protest.
If Lewandowski has the facts, why resort to such smears?
Andrew Bolt – Friday, April 29, 11 (10:35 am)
A warmist on a taxpayer-funded website for academics uses a false analogy to smear and marginalise a sceptic.
Stephan Lewandowski continues, not only likening an evidence-based scepticism of warming alarmism to a mafioso’s breaking of the law, but likening a Cardinal to a Mafia don:
Imagine what would happen to a country when the head of its national broadcaster accused the police and courts of “group think” and suggested that the Consigliere’s paralegal writings should be given more weight by the judiciary.
Imagine a country in which the leader of a major party called the law “crap” and met with one of the Godfathers for an extended private chat.
As for those who dare to criticise the Greens’ scaremongering, Lewandowski cannot contain his outrage at this impiety:
But the Greens are readily labelled “extremist” by our gutterati and the Liberals are considered mainstream and “serious”.
Note that Lewandowski has form on smearing.
Note also that the man who says we shouldn’t listen to a well-informed cleric about global warming is himself not a scientist but a psychologist.
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