Lord Rogers complaints over Prince Charles are hypocritical

 This morning I heard Lord Rogers on BBC Radio 4, Today program complaining that Prince Charles had overstepped his remit. Lord Rogers was tipped to build a new luxury apartment block on the site of the old Chelsea Barracks overlooking Hyde Park and Prince Charles has written to the sites owners complaining that the plan was unsympathetic.

On the Today program Lord Rogers was puffed with self riotous indignation (PUWSRI) and said that Prince Charles has broken the “constitutional understanding” governing the role of the monarchy. He also said that there could be “a dangerous political clash” unless the power of the royals is re-examined.

Home of the Future by Lord Rogers

Lord Rogers is famous for controversial structures such as The Lloyds Building and The Millennium Dome and accuses Prince Charles of preferring classical designs. Lord Rogers said in the interview: “I think there’s a dangerous precedent that the Prince has entered into, which is very much about how he sees style,” and Lord Rogers said a committee of constitutional experts should be set up to examine “the powers of the Prince and his ability to change the political direction” and complains that Prince Charles is not an expert in the field of architecture. Lord Rogers makes mention of The Prince’s Trust which helps  disadvantaged young people. Presumably this also is unconstitutional and dangerous?

It seems to me (ISTM) that the construction of any public building is a matter for public debate and that one need not be an expert to express an opinion because large architectural projects affect thousands, if not millions, of people.

It’s interesting that Lord Rogers is so interested in democracy now that he is having problems getting one of his designs built. I don’t recall him arranging any referendum on The Lloyds Building or any of his previous buildings. Come to think of it, I don’t recall Lord Rogers expressing any interest in democracy when he was created Baron Rogers of Riverside in 1996.

In actuality Lord Rogers is part of an unelected establishment which feels free to, not only comment on, but make laws in The United Kingdom. The same unelected establishment which has the British monarchy at it’s head.
Lord Rogers does not care a fig for the British constitution or democracy but only about his own balance sheet. I wonder if Lord Rogers would quietly accept defeat if the criticism had come from Gordon Brown. Ah, but of course he wasn’t elected either.

British Summer Time

Last week was exhausting. An English friend who has moved to Melbourne visited. Having built up enough air miles on his credit card he had a whistle stop visit to England to see his family and dropped in to see on Monday night.

I saw him at Christmas but other than that not for years. He dropped his bag, we opened a couple of beers and within minutes were talking about solar power and cellular automata – I guess people don’t change. Well, maybe we do, we both seemed to have grown more stubborn. After an excellent Indian at Noori’s in Ship Street, we found ourselves in The Fishbowl pub and my friend attempted to talk to some locals while I attempted to photograph him and them. The people objected and asked me to wipe the pictures. This sort of pettiness depresses me and makes me recall the time I spent in California and the open, friendly way that people talked to each other. I recall entering Mel’s in Santa Barbara with a friend one evening singing New York New York at the top of our voices. Someone in the bar bought us both a beer for what must have been an awful performance. – as Tony Hancock said: “Not here though” . We left the pub and found ourselves at home dozing in chairs by 1:30am.

On Saturday night I joined some friends in The Quadrant for a few beers. They had some comedy going on upstairs and so we paid our fiver and went up to a wonderful comfortable room. Big arms chairs, an open window. Small but not cramped a perfect contrast to The Komedia.
The comedian came on and predictably began asking people where they were from. He seemed to settle on Australia for a while. In fact he seemed stuck on Australia. His style was frantic, never leaving time to breath. Sadly, we left before he finished his act.

Monday I visited London to see the Picasso exhibition at The National. Clever man Picasso but I wasn’t too impressed by viewing lots of his old drawings which seemed to have been created before he figured out what he was doing. The chunky nude was good but I think I may have been spoiled by visiting Reina Sofia in Madrid a couple of times.

The real star of the show on Monday was the weather. Brighton had been rainy but by 1:30pm in London it was warm and the sun was burning it’s way through the cloud. Trafalgar Square was gorgeous.

Trafalgar Square

I walked along to Piccadilly Circus and then along Piccadilly and up to Speakers Corner. Here I found one fairly vanilla Christian with some placards, two Muslims, who appeared to be having a break, and a lone communist.

Hyde Park

Walking along Bayswater Road I reflected that central London can resemble a ghost town on Sundays and bank holidays. Despite the beautiful balconies on the houses along the Bayswater Road there were no French windows thrown wide. No families enjoying the sunshine. The windows were all closed and it appeared that nobody was at home.

I walked down through Kensington Gardens and watched a heron catch a fish then down to The Albert Memorial with it’s fantastic gold finish and amazing statues.

As I walked around the back of Buckingham Palace along Grosvenor Place I wonderred who exactly owns the buildings which cluster around Her Majesties rear entrance. I started noting down the names on the brass plates:

Hemsley Fraser Group – Management & Leadership Training Courses
Trafalgar Management Services Ltd.
Adrenaline Advertising – Billboards
Weldon Walsh Chartered Architects and interior designs
The Irish Embassy
Tata
HSBC

I shall go no further with that metaphor.

The Telegraph’s expose of MP’s expenses continues and The Archbishop of Canterbury complained that the revelations could undermine faith in democracy. It’s odd how the establishment always trot out this argument when they’ve done something wrong. It amounts to: “We’re too important to be prosecuted”. It would be interesting to see a teenage shoplifter use the same argument: “You can’t prosecute me m’lord, it would undermine the public’s faith in the youth of today”.

It occurred to me that the editor of the Telegraph must have an overall strategy for his stories. He must have decided to start with some explosive revelations about Labour ministers, follow this up with an illumination of the dealings of the Tories and then continue on to cover the liberals. Having got the best out of the way at the start the public may now be somewhat inured to the scandal and the occasional revelation appears no more than a damp squib. However, like any good firework display the activity should increase dramatically toward the end and we await the final blast of one enormous air bomb. I wonder: who will it be?

Eurocrats show contempt for the Queen Mother

I have been trawling through some old articles. This was from a newspaper around the time that The Queen Mother died:

Staff at the European Commission continued to chatter jovially while Great Britain observed a minute’s silence for the Queen Mother’s funeral yesterday.

Though Sir Bernard was rebuffed when he asked that British staff be allowed to stop work for one minute at 11:30 loyal Brits down tools anyway. Sir Bernard was ordered to attend a meeting on quotas all morning but refused to speak from 11:30 until 11:31.

“It was intolerable” said Sir Bernard, “At 11:31 and 5 seconds the French delegate deliberately asked me to comment on Mackerel but I maintained a dignified silence despite an Italian poking me and asking ‘has the cat got your tongue’”.

“The Queen Mother said that she could look the East End in the face when she risked her life in the Nazi blitz but we wonder whether these Eurocrats could look the Queen Mother in the face even if she is no longer with us.” said an outraged Sir Bernard.