#the daily mail was excoriating | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

mim526 · 1 year

Text

How Do You Solve the Problem of Harry

From Daily Mail:

‘Our country is judged globally by the state of our Press and our Government — both of which I believe are at rock bottom. Democracy fails when your Press fails to scrutinise and hold the Government accountable, and instead choose to get into bed with them so that they can ensure the status quo.’ ~~ Testimony given in court June 7, 2023 by Harry Mountbatten-Windsor, 5th in line to British throne

Now he's done it. Harold has truly set the fox among the chickens.

Excerpts from one of the best summaries I've read of the situation with Harry and what needs to be done to address it:

"...what he wrote about [the Government] being at ‘rock bottom’ amounts to an unprecedented attack by a senior member of the Royal Family (Harry is fifth in line to the throne). No such royal broadside against elected politicians has ever before been delivered during the history of our constitutional monarchy. It is deplorable — and dangerous.

"...Yet here is the highly privileged Harry, who wrongly accuses the Press as a whole of not holding the ‘rock bottom’ Government to account, doing his utmost to curb newspapers — so that they won’t be free to hold rich and powerful people like him to account. It’s mind-boggling. "This spoilt and entitled man can say whatever he likes, however self-serving. I don’t even mind too much his ignorant attacks on the Press since the Fourth Estate can look after itself, and has survived more formidable foes than Harry

"What I do object to is his assault on the Government — not because I like this crew very much or esteem their competence, but because they are our elected representatives, and shouldn’t be publicly excoriated by an unelected, and foolish, senior member of the Royal Family. "Our constitutional arrangements are a delicate organism, the product of past divisions and compromise. We tolerate — some of us may revere — an unelected head of state, and a Royal Family with all the trimmings, on the firm understanding that they stand apart from politics. "It has worked well enough for the past 200 years because, with a few exceptions, we have had monarchs who have understood the limits of their powers, and respected the right of elected politicians to govern, albeit with the benefit of royal advice. "Of course, no one better understood the importance of safeguarding this precious relationship between Crown and Parliament than our late Queen, Elizabeth II. How Harry’s coarse political invective would have grieved her. "He’s like an unguided missile, sighting enemies here and there, emitting a good deal of smoke and making lots of noise, before finally crashing to earth with an inevitable explosion — and then mysteriously taking off again, seeking some new target. "In short, he’s potentially lethal. If he describes the Government today as ‘rock bottom’, next month or next year he will unearth another disobliging adjective in defiance of our constitutional traditions.... "Or he may direct his rage once more against the royal institution that nurtured him and endowed him with such significance as he will ever have in this world. His father the King hasn’t been immune to his criticisms in the past, and won’t be in the future. "Harry is a divisive figure. He sets people against each other on issues ranging from the Press to the Royal Family to racism and now, his latest bugbear, the Tory Government. "We can work on the assumption this tumultuous character isn’t suddenly going to learn how to behave. That’s never going to happen, with him 6,000 miles away in California, and Meghan by his side. Their future income depends on fomenting controversy. "Harry is the King’s number one problem. And it is not, as Charles should know and his mother certainly realised, primarily a family problem, though it’s partly that. Harry is chiefly dangerous because he is a constitutional liability. "The King loves his errant younger son, despite the lack of respect he has shown to him. I’m sure he hopes Harry will one day return to the fold. But think of the damage he could do before that happens. And of course he might never return. "If the two of them were still close, and spoke to each other, a way might still be found of persuading Harry to stop stirring. But he is alienated from his father, and the rift inevitably widens with every inept public intervention. "There’s only one way. It may be hard for the King as a father, but it should be easy for him as a monarch and head of state. Prince Harry must be told that if he wishes to remain a member of the Royal Family, he will have to behave as members of the Royal Family are expected to. "If he can’t accept this ultimatum — and I don’t imagine he could — Prince Harry must become a private citizen, in which role his facile declamations will soon be barely noticed, and cause no more damage to the country he once served."

What this journalist did not say is

Even if he agrees with Harry about the government -- King Charles needs to initiate action as monarch/head of state to a) give Harry the ultimatum to behave as a royal then b) work with Parliament to divest Harry of his royal status if he refuses to comply.

The Prime Minister as head of the government needs to view Harry's comments re: the government given in court as the constitutional crisis they are and accordingly, advise the King to take this action

What could/should happen to Charles as monarch if he does not deal with the legitimate and serious constitutional crisis a senior member of the monarchy has created.

Interesting discussion of monarch/prime minister roles: What role should the monarch have in a constitutional crisis? | The Constitution Unit Blog (constitution-unit.com)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

We are way past W&C vs. C&C fandoms now. This journalist is absolutely correct that Harry is Charles' number one problem for which there is but one solution. We can debate whether Charles was a good father; he certainly was and is a loving one.

Being a good monarch is more than charitable works and long hours on the job. I would argue that more consequences for bad behavior as a child could have addressed the uber entitlement/arrogance underlying Harry's foolhardy, but dangerous activities as an adult. There weren't consequences, however, so here we are. Harry's responsible for Harry now, period, full stop.

I hope Charles can be persuaded to firm his resolve and do what he won't want to but needs to do to preserve the monarchy. It cannot survive if Harry is allowed to continue pitting it against the government. That is not an exaggeration: Harry made very clear he was acting as an HRH and senior member of the royal family when suing the British press and speaking against the British government. Word to the wise, Harry will not stop with the British government....

#Harry #MirrorGroupTestimony #ConstitutionalCrisis #It'sCrunchTime

108 notes · View notes

ingek73 · 2 years

Text

OPINION

By Yasmin Alibhai-Brown

i columnist

Meghan and Harry’s Jubilee visit will confirm they were right to leave the UK

The undeniable racism that has been and still is directed at her, as well as the intrusiveness, never ends

June 1, 2022 6:44 am

FILE - This image provided by Harpo Productions shows Prince Harry, from left, and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, during an interview with Oprah Winfrey. (Joe Pugliese/Harpo Productions via AP, File)

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown: ‘What the couple told Oprah Winfrey in that interview was absolutely true, which must be why patriotic Britons found it so intolerable’ (Photo: AP)

Dan Wootton, a GB News anchor and Daily Mail columnist tweeted this week: “I find it unimaginable that Meghan Markle would travel the length of the US for a tacky photo opportunity at the sight [sic] of the Uvalde school shooting but refuse to see her stroke-struck dad…”

Wootton, a wannabe Piers Morgan without the charm, tirelessly excoriates the mixed-race, beautiful, intelligent, world famous woman whom he has, I assume, never met. This week he invited her half-brother, a nonentity, on to his show to denounce his sister. Sadly their father is too ill to appear and do his bit to drag down his daughter.

Other sections of our media have also cursed Meghan for visiting the bereaved Uvalde families – the same lot who extolled the Duchess of Cambridge when she went to the vigil for Sarah Everard last March. That, apparently, was not a photo op, but proof that the future Queen cared deeply about the murdered woman and about female safety.

Over the next few days, when Meghan, Prince Harry and their children are here for the Platinum Jubilee, tabloid haters will go into a frenzy. Ignominies and infamies will be relentlessly piled on the couple. That is to be expected. Harry and Meghan have long been vilified far more and far more often than the real bad boy, Prince Andrew, who, it is rumoured, will be paraded by his mum who is keen on getting him re-established as a proper prince.

And the self-exiled family will once again understand that leaving was the right, indeed only, way to live a sane and happy life. The undeniable racism that has been and still is directed at her, as well as the intrusiveness, never ends.

Royalists and right-wing hacks say that she brought all this on herself. That the nation and the media rejoiced when the couple wedded in the bright sunshine. That there isn’t a whiff of racism in the way Meghan and Harry were and are treated by the “free press” and the Windsors, “who have done everything they could and more to welcome her in with open arms”.

Those are the words of a tabloid diarist I was on a programme with last year. A whiff? It’s a stench now, all around us, a stench no perfume or freshener can cover. Yes, newspapers and TV channels gave us countless pics and much tittle-tattle about the wedding, mostly because royal weddings cause a spike in sales and viewing figures.

What the couple told Oprah Winfrey in that interview was absolutely true, which must be why patriotic Britons found it so intolerable. Prince Harry candidly described the UK tabloid media as “bigoted” and accused it of creating a “toxic environment”.

He also, rightly, observed that racist and biased information about his wife “filters out to the rest of society”. And, furthermore, his birth family did not give them any support.

Two things to clarify here: I don’t think all tabloid journalists and editors are biased and cruel. I write for some of them. Secondly, some of the most bitter and prejudiced articles I have read on this couple were published in illustrious broadsheets.

In Revealing Britain’s Systemic Racism, a recently published book, sociologists Kimberley Ducey and Joe Feagin interrogate the myths about racial progressiveness in Britain.

Meghan Markle is a key case study, first presented as proof that the nation and the royals had become wonderfully inclusive and then, swiftly, turned into an ungrateful wretch and wicked witch. The authors observe that “the political is always personal for women of colour in the limelight” and argue that hers is a story of elite racism.

I think it is also a terrifying story of populism, of Britons being goaded into venting fury against a “coloured” royal, an interloper.

Just as unfair are the constant intrusions into Meghan’s life. What gives journalists and commentators the right to demand that she should placate her father, who did not raise her and who has insulted and stalked his child for money ever since her engagement?

In a recent interview, the broadcaster Kirsty Young said she had been long estranged from her birth father. I don’t see moralistic hacks going after her. Or the Scottish film and TV star Alan Cummings, who described his father as “tyrannical” and cut him out of his life. Why do Meghan’s father, half-sister and half-brother keep on blame-shaming her?

Perhaps, it’s her fame they want to share, perhaps her fortune, too. Perhaps they are envious. They may feel she owes them, but what? And why? Who knows? Not our business.

Meghan’s black mum, Doria Ragland, educated and self-contained, never publicly intervenes in her daughter’s life. But Markle, his son and daughter from his first marriage never stop. These career whingers get airtime, encouragement and credence. Meghan gets no respect and is trashed.

Even now, in so called post-racial Britain, white is right and black always suspect and shady.

#meghan markle #prince harry #duchess of sussex #duke of sussex #brf #yasmin alibhai-brown #racism

18 notes · View notes

tachtutor · 4 years

Text

Former Chairman Of The Joint Chiefs Mike Mullen Says President Trump's Orders Cannot Be Trusted

Former Chairman Of The Joint Chiefs Mike Mullen Says President Trump’s Orders Cannot Be Trusted

[ad_1]

Former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Retired Admiral Mike Mullen warned of the military being ‘co-opted for political purposes’ Tuesday

Daily Mail: Former chairman of the joint chiefs Mike Mullen excoriates Donald Trump saying his orders cannot be trusted, warning president will ‘politicize’ the troops and saying: ‘Citizens are not the enemy’

* Mullen writes it is ‘impossible’…

View On WordPress

0 notes

lodelss · 4 years

Link

Soraya Roberts | Longreads | December 2019 | 12 minutes (2,912 words)

I wouldn’t call Canada racist. I’m not being nice when I say that, I’m being polite. Canadians are like that. That kind of polite where you hear a racial slur and pretend it didn’t happen. Or you see some bro get too close to a woman and you walk right by because it’s not your affair. This is not a confrontational country. I remember one recent Toronto subway ride where a white workman fresh off some job site, boots muddy, reflector bib on, interrupted two men — one brown, one white — who were about to brawl. You could feel the entire car getting progressively more tense as their voices escalated. But the workman got between them. “Come on guys, we’re all tired. Chill,” he said. And they did. And when it was my turn to get off, I thanked him. “It’s just what you do,” he said. I assume he was from out of town.

With all the free health care, the gun control, the less-extreme wealth disparity, Canadians can convince themselves that they’re superior to Americans. But none of that makes them any less racist, it just makes the racism easier to overlook; with a country that does so many things right, how can they be wrong? Our media is a microcosm of this denial, a lesson in what happens when your industry contracts to a handful of major newspapers and magazines, one major national broadcasting corporation, a smattering of websites, and one watchdog — and is only getting smaller. More than one fifth of Canada’s population is made up of people of color, but the popular press acknowledges that about as much as it acknowledges that the industry itself is overpoweringly white. The result is a media landscape that is overwhelmingly conservative — politically, and in every other way — and overwhelmingly lacking in perspective about it.

Outside of broadcasting, our newsrooms are supposed to self-regulate and yet there are no — zero — updated reports on their demographics. But a new study published by The Conversation last month analyzed two decades of the country’s three biggest newspapers, looking specifically at news and politics op-ed pages where journalists’ identities are clear. “Over the 21 years, as the proportion of white people in Canada’s population declined, the representation of white columnists increased,” Asmaa Malik and Sonya Fatah reported. Since 2016, whites have been overrepresented by 11 percent in these newsrooms. As Maclean’s Andray Domise, long one of the few black columnists in the country, writes, “Too many of my white colleagues in journalism still seem to believe their profession and the assumed stance of objectivity places them at a distance from white supremacy.” That these journalists can’t see their own means they can’t see anyone else’s. This is why I don’t work in Canadian media. It doesn’t really see me or anyone else who isn’t white.

* * *

I was genuinely shocked to get this job. I had written one story for Longreads — fittingly, a reported feature about Justin Bieber’s vacillation between Canada and America — and a few months later, the site’s editor called me from New York and offered me a weekly column. For most of the phone call I was confused. I think I literally said, “So this is an actual job?” I didn’t understand how this could happen. Thirteen years into a journalism career and I had never once been handed anything. Not even one story. I was inured to 13 more years of proving myself over and over and over again, even with the same editors at the same publications. And yet this guy had decided, after I had only written once for his site, that I deserved an actual job. That would NEVER happen to me in Canada. It HAS never happened to me in Canada.

In a now 14-year media career, I’ve landed 14 job interviews in Canada (that I can remember) and only once secured a position. I was repeatedly told not to take it personally, but from my first internship on, it’s been Sisyphean. I was recently told by an old journalism professor, unprompted, that I was one of my graduating year’s most promising, but the industry kept insinuating the opposite. I just assumed the white guys in my class, and a good number of the white girls, were getting jobs because they were exponentially better than me. I wrote for white editor after white editor, met with white exec after white exec, and nothing seemed to stick. Not too long ago, a friend of mine at the CBC — an older white guy — helped me get a job interview, which went well … until it veered into the details of my Pakistani history. Another (white) editor asked me to coffee, invited me to pitch, and never took anything I did, while their (white) spouse continued to appear prominently in their pages. Yet another group of editors, all white, declined to give me a job (which went to a white journalist), then offered me a short series of articles — about race, obviously — one of which they mismanaged so badly that we never worked together again. One major newspaper commissioned so many features from me in a row that I asked my editor to be made a permanent employee; they tried to lower my rate instead. As the years passed, I watched white woman after white woman, younger, less experienced, get staff job after staff job and thought: Oh, shit, do I just suck?

Canadian media is designed so that journalists of color give up. In 2017, black columnist Desmond Cole loudly resigned from The Toronto Star, having had his space reduced and his activism questioned. “My contributions to the Star are in sharp contrast with the lack of tenure, exposure, support, and compensation I have received in return,” he wrote on his blog. (Cole’s first book, The Skin We’re In, is out next year). Also in 2017, freelance journalist Septembre Anderson revealed she had given up journalism and was turning to web development after hitting her head against a walled-off industry for seven years. “Racialized voices just aren’t being heard,” she wrote in Torontoist. “They aren’t making decisions nor are they carrying them out.” In 2018, The Globe and Mail reporter Sunny Dhillon also resigned, despite having nothing else lined up. “I have worked as a journalist in this country for the last decade and with the solutions as obvious as they are unacted upon — hire more people of color, hear their voices, elevate them to positions of power or prominence — I cannot say I am particularly optimistic,” he wrote on Medium. Shriveling newsrooms usually shed their newest, usually more-marginalized staffers first, but a 2017 Public Policy Forum report on Canadian media questioned “exactly how many jobs have been lost in journalism — and how much frustrated talent has fled.”

I’m still in journalism not because of Canadian media but in spite of it. It was the editors outside of the country who hired me for their newsrooms: as a film and art editor at Time Out Dubai, as an entertainment editor at The New York Daily News. In Canada, it was the women who threw me a bone, mostly freelance assignments (though one woman actually hired me as an editor for AOL Canada). To fill in the blanks — too many to count — there was my mother. Because as much as this is about media with a dearth of opportunities for nonwhite journalists, it is about which journalists have the financial support to keep going anyway. Early last month, an Excel sheet circulated in which a number of American journalists anonymously revealed their salaries. Most of the journalists were white, and many of them reported wages too meager to survive on in the big cities where they were living. A number of people noted the discrepancy and wondered what kind of financial support these journalists were getting from their families that so many people of color were not.

So here it is: I am a woman of color and my mother is the reason I could do an unpaid internship in California, which got me my first job, which got me my second job, which got me my third — and, in between, she floated me when I couldn’t quite make ends meet. I wasn’t living off of her, but she was keeping me alive. On the one hand you could call her a patron, on the other hand she’s a vexing reminder to a number of journalists who are probably better than me that they do not have this extra support — a disproportionate number of whom are people of color like me. An extreme version of this leg up, of course, is nepotism, something I have not experienced but that so many white journalists in Canada have. Highly positioned media people whose families are also highly positioned in media, include: Toronto Life editor in chief Sarah Fulford, whose father, journalist Robert Fulford, has the order of Canada; former Walrus editor in chief Jonathan Kay, whose mother is National Post columnist Barbara kay; not to mention all those CBC staffers’ spouses who secured CBC contracts.

In September, the publicly funded Canadian educational channel TVO aired an episode of current affairs program The Agenda with Steve Paikin, asking, “Is Canadian Media Losing Its Touch?” The panel was made up of Paikin, who is white, and two other journalists, a man and a woman, both also white. All three of them focused on the shrinking industry, never once mentioning its racism. But just three months prior, several mainstream media organizations were excoriated for belittling the landmark National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls Final Report, the more-than-1,000-page document of 2,000+ testimonials outlining how colonialism in Canada has systematically destroyed First Nations communities. Instead of white Canadians grappling with the country’s long-awaited admission that they not only live on stolen land but have also helped decimate the people to whom Canada actually belongs, they diverted attention to the term “genocide.” Canada’s two largest newspapers, the Globe and the Star, published board-wide editorials denying those three syllables, while the Post had a Catholic priest doing the same. As journalist Justin Brake tweeted: “Colonialism is ubiquitous. Even in journalism.”

That was already clear two years ago when the (now ex-)editor of the Writers’ Union of Canada magazine, in an issue meant to celebrate Indigenous writing, called for white journalists to aspire to a nonexistent “cultural appropriation prize” in order to enrich their work. In response, high-ranking members of the country’s leading media companies — the Post, Maclean’s, CBC, Rogers — offered cash for its coffers. More recently, there have been several incidences in which newsroom photographs have circulated on social media showing a sea of white faces. In October, the Globe was side–eyed for hiring a white woman, Robyn Urback, from the CBC to add to its prodigiously white team — reporter Robyn Doolittle quipped, “Robyn, I look forward to everyone confusing us in the years to come.” — which only got whiter once South Asian columnist Denise Balkissoon left earlier this month for a higher-ranking position at Chatelaine magazine.

“Since working my first paid jobs as a journalist in 2007, I have been constantly told, explicitly and implicitly, that nobody will care about stories about people who are elderly, Aboriginal, racialized, queer, living with a disability or chronic health condition, or living with an active addiction or mental health concern,” University of British Colombia writing instructor and former magazine editor Jackie Wong told rabble.ca in 2016. This irresponsible coverage is being predominantly identified by journalists of color, who are also the ones principally assigned to write racialized articles. The Star’s Tanya Talaga has named the requirement to constantly advocate for and be a workplace’s symbol of diversity “the invisible workload.” Journalists of color are often siloed into multicultural media spaces like the Aboriginal People’s Television Network or smaller publications. Vicky Mochama, now the culture, society, and critical race editor for The Conversation, had a column for Metro until 2018, while Sarah Hagi wrote for Vice until she didn’t, then a site called Freshdaily, until it unceremoniously dumped its entire editorial staff after two weeks. Meanwhile, Kyrell Grant, the freelance writer and Twitter deity who coined the term “big dick energy,” occasionally publishes in places like Hazlitt. “Black women are consistently thought leaders whose uncited ideas regularly appear in mainstream media,” Anderson wrote in Torontoist, “but it’s increasingly apparent that our bylines don’t.”

White journalists, meanwhile, are increasingly insulated from critique. Maclean’s’ Domise apologized for being a gatekeeper, for instance, while those who actually created the gate to keep the likes of him out remain silent. It’s virtually impossible to fix the problem in mainstream Canadian media because it won’t even acknowledge that there is one. What it will do is apologize for suggesting that white people could be at fault for anything. Last month, correspondent Jessica Allen of The Social (Canada’s The View) was forced to apologize for saying hockey players tended to be white and tended to be bullies, both of which are true. “We would like to apologize to everyone who was offended by the remarks,” CTV announced in a statement. In a recent interview with the newsletter Study Hall, BuzzFeed’s Scaachi Koul admitted she was professionally ostracized after she tweeted in 2016 that BuzzFeed Canada was looking for pitches, particularly from “not white and not male” writers: “I cannot tell you how many conversations I’ve had with executive-level editors in Canada who wouldn’t work with me because they thought I was racist against white people.” Koul now works in New York.

* * *

I suppose it follows that my favorite place to work in Canada is not in fact a media company. Hazlitt is an online literary magazine run by a publishing company, Penguin Random House, and its long-form nonfiction skews experimental. It’s probably no coincidence that Hazlitt is where Koul got her start and where plenty of other people of color like me can write long, rambling essays on the nature of everything, something a media landscape as homogenous as Canada’s has no appetite for. Both of the editors I worked with — the editor in chief and senior editor — are white, but they’re what you might call allies if you’re so inclined, and they understand writing at a molecular level. Hazlitt is equivalent to a magazine like The Believer or a site like Grantland. It’s there that I got my only National Magazine Award nomination in 2016. But the site is small, and you can’t live off it. My job search to supplement my work there included a failed interview to write news for an elevator screen and naming 500 color swatches for a marketing company. Then Longreads called. Did I mention the guy who hired me is not white?

I’m not really sure what to say to Canadian journalists of color who don’t have that opportunity or the support to create it. Because it’s not really about them. It’s about the white Canadians who are hogging all the power positions and refusing to admit that, let alone step aside. It’s about their refusal to make it a priority to hire people of color from top to bottom because they refuse to see these journalists’ absence as an issue. Domise has credited his column at Maclean’s to a “handful of editors” who recognized the magazine’s lack of diversity. But the columnists around him are still majority white. Our media seems to have a really hard time reflecting 20 percent of our population, of not overrepresenting whiteness to the point of implying its supremacy.

In June, the CBC and Radio-Canada announced that by 2025, they would have at least one non-white person working as a key creative — producer, director, writer, showrunner, lead performer — on each of their programs. One. More recently, a friend who works at one of the bigger media companies in Toronto mentioned that they were hiring but that all of the applications “sucked.” Knowing the number of journalists who have lost their jobs over the past 10 years, I was baffled. Considering the same white people are often shuffled around the industry over and over again, I asked if they had gone beyond submitted applications to ask peers, to check social media, to look into other publications that have recently closed down. My friend looked at me in embarrassment. That’s the look that I think every white journalist in this country is missing.

Canada is racist: there I said it. My country is racist and its media is racist and its journalists are racist. Not saying it doesn’t make it any less true. Canada is multicultural, yes, that doesn’t mean its media is; the industry that is supposed to inform this country is whitewashed, and its information is whitewashed too. Politically, socially, economically — in every way — Canada misrepresents itself. What results is an entirely misinformed public but, more than that, a public represented by an industry that cloaks itself in white and believes that saying nothing will make it invisible. You’re not invisible. You may not see us, but we see you.

* * *

Soraya Roberts is a culture columnist at Longreads.

#IFTTT #Blogger

0 notes

biofunmy · 5 years

Text

What to Know About Prince Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, Stepping Back

On Wednesday, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex made a big announcement. We are still figuring out exactly what it means.

What exactly are Prince Harry and Meghan doing?

It’s not fully clear and it depends whom you ask.

In a message posted to both the couple’s Instagram page and their new stand-alone website (one of two websites they have introduced in the last few months), the Duke and Duchess of Sussex announced their intentions to “carve out a progressive new role within” the “institution” of the British monarchy; to “step back as ‘senior’ members of the Royal Family”; to “work to become financially independent while continuing to fully support Her Majesty The Queen”; to “balance” their time “between the United Kingdom and North America”; to “honour our duty to The Queen, the Commonwealth, and our patronages”; to launch a “new charitable entity”; and “to collaborate with Her Majesty The Queen, The Prince of Wales, The Duke of Cambridge, and all relevant parties.”

The message seemed to suggest a desire to relinquish some (public) lifestyle funding in order to be less beholden to the strict protocol and de facto traditions of the royal family without sacrificing titles, influence or access.

According to a frosty statement from Buckingham Palace, this is all still being negotiated:

“Discussions with the Duke and Duchess of Sussex are at an early stage. We understand their desire to take a different approach, but these are complicated issues that will take time to work through.”

No bad ideas in a brainstorm.

Is “senior” royal a job?

No. It’s a designation applied to those adult members of the royal family closest to the throne in the line of succession, and their spouses, who tend to carry out the majority of public engagements alongside and/or on behalf of the queen. It currently refers to Queen Elizabeth II and her husband, Prince Philip; Prince Charles and his wife, Camilla; and Prince William and his wife, Kate. One could argue that, since Prince Harry has neither removed himself from the line of succession nor given up his title, he and Meghan remain senior royals.

Announcing a plan to “step back” from being a senior royal is sort of like declaring an intention to recuse oneself from being famous.

Why are they stepping back?

Specific reasons mentioned on their website include enabling themselves “to earn a professional income, which in the current structure they are prohibited from doing,” and handling their own media relations. On that second point, they particularly emphasized their decision to operate independent of the so-called Royal Rota — a key feature of royal family press relations that grants perpetual special access to journalists from seven British publications, including some tabloids.

Harry has long been critical of the British press. In October, he and Meghan initiated legal proceedings against the publishers of multiple British newspapers. He explained their decision in a statement posted on one of the Sussex websites, in which he excoriated the media and drew a connection between the royals’ treatment at the hands of the press and his mother Princess Diana’s death.

And let’s not forget the 2017 interview with Newsweek in which Prince Harry mused, “Is there any one of the royal family who wants to be king or queen? I don’t think so, but we will carry out our duties at the right time.” Not a glowing endorsement of the enterprise.

Has anyone in the royal family ever done this?

Not exactly. The last couple to reject senior royal life was Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson, the original divorced American duchess for whom he relinquished the throne in 1936. But he was, you know, the actual head of state, so the decision prompted a full-blown constitutional crisis.

Other family members have also scaled back their public duties for a variety of reasons. Prince Philip retired from public life in 2017, at the perfectly reasonable-to-retire age of 96. After her divorce from Prince Charles, Princess Diana gave back her HRH title and quit her role with 93 charities. And this January, Prince Andrew stepped back from public duties after an interview with the BBC about his friendship with the convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

What does the British public think?

More Britons currently appear to have a view on Megxit than they did on the royal wedding itself.

At first, there were clear and loud rumblings of support. Then a few questions arose about cash, given that quite a lot of it had been thrown about in the last few years. The wedding. The house. The bodyguards.

What really roused Brits was the statement from the palace, which implied that couple had not fully discussed their retreat from royal life with the queen, whom we love. How dare they?

The tabloids, however, had a field day. “They didn’t even tell the Queen!” fumed the Thursday front page of the Daily Mirror. “Queen’s fury as Harry and Meghan say: we quit!” read the lead headline of the Daily Mail. (Other institutions got in on the drama, too: Madame Tussauds in London separated its wax figures of Harry and Meghan from those of the rest of the royal family.)

The term “Megxit” got a lot of airtime. “Harryverderci” has yet to catch on.

What was public sentiment toward the Sussexes like before “Megxit”?

Mixed? Very positive around the birth of baby Archie. Less positive around all the private jet hopping last summer. But most Brits haven’t been paying much attention. Between the recent general election, Australia being on fire and Brexit, the prospect of Megxit had not crossed many people’s minds.

Please tell me no one’s birthday was ruined because of this.

Harry and Meghan made their bombshell announcement on Jan. 8. Seeing as Jan. 9 is Kate Middleton’s birthday, and multiple members of the royal family were photographed arriving at Kensington Palace, for what multiple British websites described as a planned birthday celebration (in the middle of the day, on a Thursday), we cannot state with full confidence that no one’s birthday was ruined.

How many royals does one royal family really need?

Some say: not so many. Last year, the Swedish royal family streamlined its ranks; the king announced that five of his grandchildren would no longer bear titles or be expected to carry out royal duties. They would also no longer be paid the sum royal family members receive each year.

Being royal is expensive, and income inequality is a hot topic. The idea of trimming the royal fat, if you will, is to keep the focus on those in the direct line of succession and minimize the degree to which the family can be criticized for using public funds.

How much does the British royal family cost taxpayers?

Members of the British royal family are fond of sharing the following statistic: The contribution from U.K. taxpayers toward the full overhead of the British monarchy is equivalent to approximately £1 per British person per year.

For argument’s sake, one could note that the French royal family costs French taxpayers nothing, because it was abolished. One former royal palace became the Louvre.

Will Harry and Meghan keep their titles?

They have expressed no intentions to relinquish their titles. Their new website consistently refers to them as “Their Royal Highnesses The Duke and Duchess of Sussex.”

Where will they live?

According to their statement, Harry and Meghan will split their time “between the United Kingdom and North America.”

Earlier this week, the couple visited an official Canadian residence in London “to thank the High Commissioner Janice Charette and staff for the warm hospitality” they enjoyed on a private vacation over Christmas, according to their Instagram page. The caption of the post included multiple neutral statements about Canada seemingly intended as compliments: “The Duke and Duchess have a strong connection to Canada. It’s a country The Duke of Sussex has visited many times over the years and it was also home to The Duchess for seven years before she became a member of The Royal Family.”

For those reasons, and because it’s part of the British Commonwealth, Canada seems like a safe bet for a North American base. There is also speculation that the family could spend more time in Meghan’s home state of California, where her mother resides.

This story will be updated.

Sahred From Source link Fashion and Style

from WordPress http://bit.ly/2NrgaSP via IFTTT

#IFTTT #WordPress

0 notes

gyrlversion · 5 years

Text

Supervision of freed criminals who pose a threat is sub-standard

Prison reforms ‘putting the public at risk’: Supervision of freed criminals who pose a threat is ‘sub-standard’, says watchdog

Dame Glenys Stacey, chief inspector of probation, said there were too few staff

She also identified an over-reliance on unqualified staff and flawed IT systems

Chris Grayling created a National Probation Service to deal with offenders

By Ian Drury Home Affairs Editor For The Daily Mail

Published: 20:01 EDT, 27 March 2019 | Updated: 05:31 EDT, 28 March 2019

The public are at risk because of major flaws in a flagship scheme to tackle re-offending, a watchdog warned yesterday.

Supervision of freed criminals who pose a threat is ‘sub-standard, and much of it poor’, according to the damning report. It said 80 per cent of the part-private community rehabilitation companies that monitor 200,000 medium and low-risk offenders were inadequate.

Dame Glenys Stacey, the chief inspector of probation, said there were too few officers, over-reliance on unqualified staff, flawed IT systems and judges had lost confidence in community sentences.

Dame Glenys Stacey also said there were too few officers, over-reliance on unqualified staff, flawed IT systems and judges had lost confidence in community sentences

The report also found that 80 per cent of companies that monitor the 200,000 medium- and low-risk offenders were inadequate

The withering annual report from Dame Glenys is her last before stepping down in May. She said: ‘If probation services are delivered well, there would be less reoffending, fewer people living on the streets, and fewer confused and lonely children, with a smaller number taken into care.

‘Men, women and children currently afraid of assault could lead happier, safer lives.’

The scathing criticisms will make embarrassing reading for the Ministry of Justice, which shook up the regime for managing criminals in the community in 2014.

Under the flagship £3.7billion ‘Transforming Rehabilitation’ programme, then justice secretary Chris Grayling created a National Probation Service to deal with high-risk offenders, while the remaining work went to 21 CRCs.

Under a payment-by-results scheme, the companies check whether criminals are meeting court requirements as well as helping rehabilitate them.

Chris Grayling created a National Probation Service in a £3.7billion ‘Transformation Rehabilitation’ programme to deal with high-risk offenders

Dame Glenys said while probation is a professional, complex service, contracts ‘treat it largely as a transactional business’

But the firms claim they were given fewer offenders to supervise than they were promised, making the deals unviable. The cost of reoffending to society is £15billion a year.

Dame Glenys said: ‘Probation is a complex social service, with professional judgement at its heart, but probation contracts treat it largely as a transactional business.

‘Consequently, there has been a deplorable diminution of the probation profession and a widespread move away from good practice.’

Prisons and probation minister Rory Stewart said: ‘I am grateful for this incisive report, which redoubles my determination to continue working towards a probation service that puts public protection first, commands the confidence of the courts and breaks the cycle of reoffending.’

But Liberal Democrat justice spokesman Wera Hobhouse said last night: ‘We’ve seen many damning reports about Chris Grayling’s probation reforms, but none as excoriating as this.

‘The chief inspector is absolutely right to say that we need a whole new approach to rehabilitation.’

Share or comment on this article:

The post Supervision of freed criminals who pose a threat is sub-standard appeared first on Gyrlversion.

from WordPress https://www.gyrlversion.net/supervision-of-freed-criminals-who-pose-a-threat-is-sub-standard/

#Entertainment News

0 notes

furynewsnetwork · 7 years

Link

LISTEN TO TLR’S LATEST PODCAST:

Jack Crowe

Interim Democratic National Committee (DNC) chair Donna Brazile placed blame for the party’s financial woes squarely on former President Barack Obama and Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz in a Thursday column, excoriating the pair for handing over complete control of the party to the Clinton campaign almost a year before she secured the nomination.

Soon after taking over as interim chair, Brazile set out to determine whether the DNC had improperly assisted former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in securing the party’s nomination, as leaked internal emails suggested.

She quickly determined that the DNC was in serious financial peril and the former chair, Wasserman Schultz, had relinquished control of the party to the Clinton campaign in exchange for a monthly allowance that would cover the operation’s day to day costs.

“Debbie was not a good manager. She hadn’t been very interested in controlling the party—she let Clinton’s headquarters in Brooklyn do as it desired so she didn’t have to inform the party officers how bad the situation was,” Brazile wrote in Politico Magazine.

Brazile realized the extent to which the DNC had jettisoned its independence upon discovering a joint fundraising agreement, signed roughly one year before Clinton had officially won the nomination.

“The agreement—signed by Amy Dacey, the former CEO of the DNC, and Robby Mook with a copy to Marc Elias—specified that in exchange for raising money and investing in the DNC, Hillary would control the party’s finances, strategy, and all the money raised,” Brazile wrote. “Her campaign had the right of refusal of who would be the party communications director, and it would make final decisions on all the other staff. The DNC also was required to consult with the campaign about all other staffing, budgeting, data, analytics, and mailings.”

Obama and Wasserman Schultz are largely to blame for placing the DNC in such a perilous financial state that they were forced to rely on Clinton campaign money, according to Brazile. She points out that Obama “left the party $24 million in debt” and charges Wasserman Schultz with exacerbating the party’s financial strain by refusing to trim down the DNC staff during non-election years.

“The party chair usually shrinks the staff between presidential election campaigns, but Debbie had chosen not to do that. She had stuck lots of consultants on the DNC payroll, and Obama’s consultants were being financed by the DNC, too.”

Ultimately, Brazile claims to have identified a significant lack of grassroots enthusiasm surrounding the Clinton camp weeks before the election. When she called Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders to report her findings on the entanglements between the DNC and the Clinton campaign, she issued a stark warning.

“I had to be frank with him. I did not trust the polls, I said. I told him I had visited states around the country and I found a lack of enthusiasm for her everywhere.”

Follow Jack on Twitter

Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact [email protected].

WATCH TLR’S LATEST VIDEO:

The post Donna Brazile SLAMS Debbie, Obama For Running The Party Into The Ground, Giving Hillary Control appeared first on The Libertarian Republic.

via Headline News – The Libertarian Republic

#IFTTT #Headline News – The Libertarian Republic

0 notes

domesticflight · 8 years

Text

Operation London Bridge

Breakdown of Operation London Bridge, borrowed lovingly from https://sometimesitsjustacigar.wordpress.com/

1] Charles and Phillip will not be available to meet some helpful officials from the DWP who need to explain that a crisis loan may not cover the full cost of the funeral,and that they may need to check if there are heirlooms to cover the shortfall.

2] It is true that the corgis won't be fed for three days after the passing of Her Majesty; this is not just to make sure they look suitably sad and bewildered at the loss of their spiritual mother, but also so that their wan and underfed expressions give the lie to the inevitable rumour that a closed coffin funeral is advised because of how long the queen lay unattended before someone found her. Starving the corgis, even with the attendant risks (since they're snappy little bastards and dangerous in a pack) is better than explaining that dying alone and unattended except by hungry pets is what happens to poor people who reach that age. BBC Radio have confirmed that Marie Prevost by Nick Lowe will be removed from their record library for the duration of the mourning period.

3] Border Agency officials who wish to question Phillip's right to remain since he is, technically, a foreign national now his British spouse has gone will be shot by Guardsmen. In a bid to secure community commitment to the funeral and its hideous expense Phillip's view that everyone should have the right to do this to cynical bureaucratic bastards breaking up families in their time of need will be leaked to every pirate radio outlet in London, giving presenters who secretly crave a job on the BBC a chance to make up demo tapes of their riff over a suitably slow groove reminding listeners that the royals are just another immigrant family trying to make their way in Britain.

4] Ofcom will send a strongly worded circular to Babestation reminding them that performers must wear black armbands at all time, and must not in any circumstances take the armbands off and lick them suggestively.

5] Secret discussions between the Daily Mail and the Palace have secured a promise that only 30% of the Sidebar of Shame will feature the well turned legs and gorgeously suggestive mourning outfits of Z list celebs, clapped out actresses and under age members of the royal family supporters club queuing for the lying in state. In the event of inclement weather the 30% does not cover bonus shots of nipple pokies or a wet top suggestively outlining the womanly curves of a 13yr old seventh cousin twice removed of her majesty.

6] It is true that, on the day of the funeral, the Queen's commitment to the environment will be marked by Drax B power station burning all records, photos and souvenirs of the queen meeting Jimmy Saville. It is expected this will generate 1% of the nations's energy requirements and will offset the climate change impact of everyone fucking off to B&Q to avoid the wall to wall sanctimonious outpourings on the television.

7] The Dutch economy is expected to grow by 1.5% in the short term as a result of her majesty passing, as millions of people queue at petrol stations to buy cheap imported bouquets to place on improvised memorials in every town and village. Local authorities have prepared plans to collect these for composting, and the Taxpayers Alliance will issue an entirely untrue accusation that each such collection was vetted by an army of equalities and diversity consultants who were utterly unnecessary given that we have been ruled by a woman since 1952.

8] A BBC late night DJ on Radio Fens (tagline 'Flat out to nowhere') will be ceremonially excoriated by the popular press and then sacked for playing Tom Jones's version of St James Infirmary Blues and saying 'now that's how you do mourning' before a respectful silence and reading the fish market price report from Lowestoft. The DJ in question has already volunteered for the job and accepts that his generous payoff and pension is a small price to pay for stoking the fires of righteous outrage.

9] Tony Robinson and the family of the late Professor Mick Aston will receive a small payment in lieu of repeat fees after Discovery Channel promise not to show any episodes of Time Team featuring digging up past kings or high status burials in general, lest it give people ideas.

10] Government has not risk assessed the economic impact of Her Majesty not dying on the commemorative plate industry, since it cannot question the idea that her majesty's immortality is a god thing. In any case,said an official, if we could prove she is immortal,we'd need a shed load of plates to catch Charles's tears.

As a footnote, the Palace refused to confirm or deny that it has asked the Sun to spike the story about a DNA match between James Hewitt and Prince Harry until after the funeral.

#operation london bridge #bbc #dwp #queen #prince charles #prince harry #discovery channel #bones #prince philip #daily mail #babestation #border agency #corgis

0 notes

lodelss · 5 years

Text

The Great White Nope

Soraya Roberts | Longreads | December 2019 | 12 minutes (2,912 words)

* * *

Soraya Roberts is a culture columnist at Longreads.

from Blogger https://ift.tt/2Pzwml9 via IFTTT

#IFTTT #Blogger

0 notes