Something a little bit nautical

So as you are all well aware, the royal wedding happened yesterday. I didn’t watch it, because I think the very fact that we have a royal family is an abhorrent affront to justice and democracy. Wait, that sounds familiar… bugger, I’ve done this before. Well, this is awkward.

Here’s the prologue to a series of short stories that I want to write about a recurring character.

“Captain! Captain! Over there, on the starboard side! Look! On that island, there’s a person on that island!” Jamie yelled, his bare feet slapping on the wooden deck as he ran towards the captain. “It’s a little girl! We have to save her.”

 “No Jamie, we don’t. Best that we stay away from her,” the Captain replied, punctuating the last word with spite.

 “But, she’s just a little girl, she’ll die out here. That’s barely an island, it just a rock. You can’t leave her there.”

 “I can, cabin boy, and I will. She’s more trouble than she’s worth, that little girl.”

 “How do you know? She’s just a little girl.”

 The captain turned to look at him, a deadly serious expression fixed to his grizzled face. “She’s more that just a little girl, boy. I’ve been sailing for longer than you’ve been alive, trust me, you don’t want to get involved with that girl. The seas are vast and mysterious; they hide secrets and truths that no mere mortal can understand. We are only a tiny spec, travelling in something so vast that we cannot even begin to comprehend it. We are strangers here, travellers, alive only by the grace of the seas. There are things out there that don’t want us to be here and will do all they can to get rid of us. Trust me when I tell you that little girl is one of them. Now get out of my sight and don’t think on her any longer.”

 “Yes, captain,” Jamie said quickly and scampered off again, avoiding the starboard side of the ship. He went down below deck and started on some chores, trying not to think on what the captain had said.

 Not long after, Jim Porter lowered himself down the ladder and sat close to him, fiddling with an old pocket watch. Jim was as old as anyone on board and had been sailing for as long as anyone could remember. There wasn’t a lot about the sea that old Jim didn’t know.

“Don’t let the captain scare you, boy,” he began in a husky voice, “that girl’s not as bad as he makes out.”

 Jamie looked into the ruddy sailor’s face. No matter what expression he wore, Jim always looked ugly. His smile was broken by a rude scar that rose from his chin all the way through his mouth and up through his right eye, dissecting the closed and ugly socked. He had lost most of his teeth as well and half he left ear had been chopped off. “What do you mean?” Jamie asked.

 “That girl doesn’t cause anyone, any harm. She only tells them what harm will befall them. She’s a prophetess, as old as time itself, appearing to sailors and telling them of all the ills that will befall them. Nothing you can do will stop her prophecies from coming true.

 “When I was barely older than you, a ship I was sailing in, The Duchess I think, picked her up once. She was sitting on a rock in the middle of the ocean, just like you saw. We brought her on board, despite the warnings from some of the older crew members. She didn’t say a word, so we assumed that she spoke another language, or was dumb or something. Even so, we fed her and gave her something to drink and she seemed content enough. Some of the men, though, looked into her eyes and swore they saw hatred dancing in them. That night, she came to Bill Jameson, a new sailor, just like I was at the time and spoke to him in riddles. I was sitting right next to him and I remember her words like it was yesterday.

 “‘Homeward bound, William?’ she whispered. He tried to speak, but she cut him off. ‘Your house is a home no longer, brittle, broken by lust and hate. You should never have gone to sea, William Jameson. The flames of hate will consume you, butcher.’ She told him, spite in her voice. Bill just sat there, unable to say a word. She walked away and none of the crew saw her again that night.

 “When we got back to port, Bill went home – he was married, with a little daughter and wanted to see them again more than anything, more than he wanted to get drunk with the rest of the crew. Well, he came back not long after and launched into the rum like no-one else. Didn’t say a word to anyone, just drank till he could barely stand, then he left with a pistol in his hand. Later we found out that he’d gone home to find it empty. A neighbour had told him that his wife had gone off with an old friend of his who’d promised to look out for her for him. Apparently she couldn’t bear to be away from him for so long while he was at sea. So he got blind drunk, took a pistol and hunted them down. Shot them all, his wife, his friend, his own daughter, then put a bullet in his own head, all as the little girl has predicted, if you think about it.”

 “Who is she?” Jamie asked, his chores forgotten.

 “No-one knows for sure. Some say she’s a witch, some say she’s a demon, some say she’s a goddess, some say she’s just a damaged little girl. All I know is that she don’t like sailors much and enjoys telling them that evil is coming their way. Best not to go near her, boy, she’ll only tell you what you don’t wanna hear.”

 “But surely what she says is going to happen whether she says it or not.”

 “True,” Jim paused for a moment, “thing is, poor Bill fretted for the rest of the journey home, wondering what she meant. Some of the older sailors told us all about the girl and Bill was filled with the worse sense of dread over what she meant. That’s why he hurried home so fast. That’s not something you want to be tortured with for any amount of time.”

 “Is that why the captain snapped at me like that?” Jamie asked, the thought occurring to him out of nowhere.

 Old Jim roared with laughter. “Well, boy, you do see some things, don’t you? More that just a slight hand and a turn of speed on you, eh boy? You’ve got something up here that most sailors wish they had,” old Jim tapped his head a couple of times. “You’ll go far on the high seas, boy, I can see that now. You’re right, of course, the captain’s seen that little girl before, years ago. He’d never told anyone what she told him, but he’s been mighty cautious ever since, watching over his shoulder, looking for something to come and be the death of him. Not many of the crew know this, though, it’s no good for sailing if you think your skipper’s got a bloody destiny to look forward to.”

 “Aren’t you afraid of what’ll happen, Jim?”

 Jim shrugged. “whatever happens, happens. I’ve been in plenty of storms and fights, seen plenty of dark destinies envelop ships and crews. I figure if it’s my time to go as well, I might as well go without trying to run from it. I’ve seen too many men run from that little girl’s words to know it never ends well.”

 With that, Jim rose and climbed the ladder back up on deck. Jamie returned to his chores and tried to get the image of that poor little girl sitting helplessly on the rock out of his head.

Obviously the girl is the recurring character. She had an interesting story that I’d love to tell, and there are a lot of other stories about her that I want to tell as well, obviously most of them won’t end particularly well…

The United... Republic?

A couple of weeks ago the UK and indeed most of the rest of the Commonwealth was hurled into a torrent of joy, patriotism and nostalgia with the news that Prince William was to marry Kate Middleton; his long term girlfriend. I know this is old news, but one blog a week isn’t enough to keep up sometimes. I’m also sorry that this is so late; I’ve had a busy weekend.

Anyway, I think I was about the only one in the Commonwealth who wasn’t either very excited at the prospect of a royal wedding or at least apathetic to the whole thing. Ok that isn’t strictly true, but doubters were pretty hard to come by. The fact that so few people seem to think that the continued existence of the royal family is an affront to justice and democracy is almost as worry as the continued existence of the royal family.

‘An affront to justice and democracy’ is a pretty bold statement to make, so it deserves some form of explanation. Let’s define terms first; justice is the concept of getting what you deserve. If you work hard, you’ll be more successful that if you bum around; if you commit a crime, you will be punished; if you treat other with dignity and respect, they will treat you likewise. It’s a basic concept which forms the basis of any society. When if fails, you are left with either tyranny or anarchy. In short justice forms the basis for society.

One born, or indeed married, into the royal family is born, or married, into undeserved and unearned privilege. Palaces and luxury are yours by birthright. From the moment you first draw breath you are destined for wealth and high office. Royalty are destined for privilege that no other citizen can even dream of attaining, no matter how hard they work, and yet they have to do nothing to earn such honour.

Unearned wealth and privilege goes against any rational definition of justice and the royal family embody unearned wealth and privilege. Of course the same can be said of any kind of inheritance, and I would agree with you, however this inheritance is such a gross and overwhelming one that all others pale in comparison. There is no way that any of the royal family could possibly attain what they inherit by their own efforts.

We must not forget also that royalty does not only embody wealth, but also high office. Here is where the democracy comes in. The ideal of democracy is that those deemed most able by the populace is appointed to lead them for a select period of time. It is, in many ways, an extension of justice – a collective choice of leader is made of he who is most deserving and, depending on how good the decision was, the people are either served well or badly. If things go badly, they only have to blame themselves.

The royal family are destined for high office. Prince William, so long as he doesn’t die before hand, will eventually inherit the throne. That means he becomes the official diplomatic, military and political leader of the UK and the rest of the Commonwealth. The people over whom he rules have no say in the matter and have no constitutional capacity to depose him. He will have done nothing to deserve it beyond simply being born for it. His wife will have done nothing beyond being lucky enough to be the object of his affection.

Unelected, indefinite power is not democracy. Sure the King/Queen has no real power – that lies with Parliament, but they still have a significant diplomatic and official role in the country. They often act as our spokesperson and act on the world stage in a very significant way. We cannot possibly call this democracy.

So the royal family is clearly and demonstrably undemocratic and unjust, so why do so many people celebrate their ongoing existence? Most of it is a rather fond nostalgia, harking back to the days when Britain was the world’s only super-power, rather than an increasingly isolated and insignificant island, neither in Europe, nor outside it. This is complemented with a rather large dollop of conservatism.

These arguments are impossible to refute, because they are, at heart, an emotional response that can only be refuted with introspection. There are some arguments, largely straw-men, which can be tackled head on.

The most significant of these is the appeal to tourism. It is argued that the royal family and all the pomp they represent are good for the tourist industry. They are a veritable magnet for visitors to the UK and Buckingham palace is on every tourist trail worth following. The problem is that if you go to France, the Palace of Versailles is just as popular, and yet no living monument to bygone days squats there. No tourist would shun the palace if it were to become an empty shell of our history, rather that a living piece of it.

I don’t think we should shun and forget the rich and long history that the UK has, of which the royal family has played an integral part, but there is a different between celebrating history and living in the past. Just like the monarchies of ever other European country, the gross injustice of monarchy belongs in the past. It should be remembered and the deeds of the great men and women who occupied the position should be celebrated – just as the deeds of the rather worse men and women (of whom there are just as many) should be bemoaned.

The rulers who occupy the pages of history should be studied so that we might understand how the UK came to be the way it is today, but they should not continue to be written into the history books. They have no place in a modern society in which justice and democracy rule, because they contradict both. No amount of nostalgia can fix that.

Speaking of nostalgia and how it is no excuse for progress, you might notice the rebranding. I have a new name for this blog because I didn’t like the old one. The content will not change, but now I won’t be quite so embarrassed by the title. 

God save the Queen?

Early this week it was revealed that British Royal family spent £1.5 million more last year that the year before, taking the total to £41.5 million. This figure does not include the ‘Civil List’, which pays for the running of the Royal household (£7.9 million per year) and the undisclosed cost for protecting the royal family. All told the total amount that the Royal Family costs the British taxpayer is almost certainly over £50 million. This figure is set to rise as the Royals have been digging into a reserve fund in order to make up a deficit in the Civil List for several years now. When the current deal expires next year the Queen will almost certainly have to go cap in hand to the government and ask for money. If whoever is in government at the time has any backbone they should refuse her.

£50 million is small change compared to the billions that the government has been pouring into the banking sector to try to prevent a wholesale economic meltdown. Nevertheless, the Royal Family remain a meaningless, archaic relic of a bygone era. The Queen performs no real constitutional purpose; she is a figurehead whose place as Head of State is merely for the sake of meaningless and every more irrelevant ceremonial formalities. Essentially the Royal Family represent £50 million which might as well be thrown into the ocean.

It would be unfair to say that the Royal Family do nothing of any use; they do extremely valuable charity work and provide a constant source of amusement and ridicule, but this is not the point; we supposedly live in a country which adheres to the principle of democracy, freedom and justice. Maintaining an unelected Head of State with unearned wealth and privileges completely discredits these ideals. The Royal Family is absurdly rich when you take into account the value of the multiple palaces and stately homes, all by virtue of being born; they have done nothing in their lifetimes to deserve the wealth they own. This unearned wealth is obscene when you consider the millions of people struggling to make end meet across the globe.

This is not to say that I abhor wealth; I regard entrepreneurs like Bill Gates; men who have earned their wealth by virtue of their own ingenuity, to be among the greatest men alive. I do abhor unearned wealth; wealth gained, not by virtue of your own intellect, but through force, fraud or by the chance of your own birth.

The only man who deserves his inheritance is the man who has no need for it; if he could make that inheritance on his own, without the help of those who have come before. There is no way that any member of the Royal Family could and ever would be able to create the kind of wealth that they inherit. There is no way any of them could even create the £50 million grant they get every year from the taxpayer; they couldn’t make it in a lifetime, let alone a year.

The Royal Family is a pointless drain on the taxpayer and it is time that we shook of the needless burden of a redundant and increasingly absurd relic from our history. The only thing keeping them there is a vague sense of sentimental patriotism; we should not allow our emotional attachment to our past to stop us from moving forward. The Royal Family is a nostalgia inducing relic which reminds us of the time when Britain was the greatest superpower on the planet, we need to get over our imperial hangover and start moving forwards if we are ever to be more than a pushy ex-power with an overinflated ego.

We currently strut around on the world stage, pretending that we still matter, throwing our weight around in an attempt to fool ourselves into believing that anyone still cares. It’s time we moved on and we should start off with getting rid of the most redundant institution of them all; the monarchy.

This is not to say of course that the beautiful palaces and statues of former greats should be removed. We can and should still remember our history; it can teach us a lot about ourselves and the way the world works. Our history reminds us that greatness is fleeting, it reminds us just how fickle and world can be. It can humble us and drive us onto to do better than our forbears. These are valuable things that everyone needs, however it is equally important that these things stay exactly where they belong; the past.

By allowing our past to live on into our future is potentially extremely damaging; it is the kind of sentimental attachment to our past that allows extreme nationalist like the BNP to get a foothold. It may seem rather innocuous, but the sentimental patriotism attached to the Royal Family can be directly harnessed by extremists and used to make themselves seem more plausible. To refuse to increate the money afforded to the Royal Family would be a small step on the way to revitalising the country and combating the dangerous rise of extremist nationalist groups. Unfortunately I doubt any government would have the backbone to tackle the monarchical relic and hence drastically change our constitution for the better.

Laptops and royalty

No longer do I have to wait several hours for my computer to warm up enough to actually do anything. No longer do I have to sit staring into nothingness as I wait for my computer to do rudimentary tasks. My laptop is here and I am happy! I won’t sat it’s perfect but let’s face it, what is? I haven’t had any major problems with it so far apart from transferring my music library across, but I put that down to Sonic Stage freaking out when you take it out of its comfort zone.

I do not even hate Vista like everyone seems to think I should. Maybe I’m not nerdy enough to know what is wrong with it, or maybe I can adapt to change better than your average computer geek and can accept new features, even if they are stolen almost completely from apple. It’s really odd how, as soon as Vista came out, computer geeks the world over were preparing to march on the Windows headquarters and demand the severed heads of everyone in charge. It’s not that bad. In fact it’s better than XP is many ways (cue many angry emails from my many adoring fans…); it has helpful features like the panel at the top that allows you to access all the things you need without having to even press the start button.

Moving away from Vista, the laptop itself is very nice, although the touchpad can be somewhat temperamental and the speakers are woeful, a problem that I solved by stealing the speakers from my old computer. The nicest thing is that the keyboard has roughly the same dimensions as a normal desktop one, so I’m not constantly missing buttons like I normally do when I use a laptop keyboard.

Well that’s my new laptop, I didn’t want to talk about it for too long because some other things have been bothering my lately, namely the ‘scandal’ over the royal family being ‘racist’.

In case you have been living under a rock for the past week, or not in England I suppose, let me fill you in. Last week Prince Harry called an Asian friend a ‘paki’ in a documentary about his time in the military or some similarly pointless piece of television, then a few days later is came to light that Prince Charles had been calling a black friend ‘sooty’ for years. The press, as you can imagine, immediately leapt on this story like a very clingy whore and started throwing accusations like ‘racist’ like monkeys hurling poo. As they normally do, the press conveniently ignored both context and the concept of banter. In both cases the princes did not mean offence and both ‘victims’ have publicly said that they don’t mind the nicknames.

I would like to take this opportunity to say that I in no way think the royal family have any place in our constitution and should be forcibly removed, inbred bunch of over-privileged toffs that they are. However they are human beings (barely) and so deserve a little privacy. The press in this case has simply ripped a quote out of context and spun it into a scandal so that they can sell newspapers to the gullible public who will leap wholeheartedly on the bandwagon of political correctness.

It is important to not the difference between racism and banter. Racism is when you discriminate against someone because of there race. This can often entail verbal abuse and the word ‘paki’ has often been used in this way, much like the word ‘nigger’. Obviously I think that sort of behaviour is abhorrent and anyone who uses it should be kneecapped and they beaten to death with the corpse of a porcupine (there has to be a fetish like that somewhere). However when it is used between friends it is generally banter with no ill feeling whatsoever. I have quite a few ethic minority friends and we do this all the time. If I was being really pretentious I’d call it irony, but it’s best not to over think things that much or you get dragged into a horrible spiral of stupidity. Much like the press has over this story.