By now we’re all used to the hypocrisy of the Prince of Wales, what with his gallivanting all over the world in luxurious style to tell the rest of us to take the bus and stop using light bulbs that actually enable us to see stuff. He’s kind of like Al Gore with even less of a resume. And he’s still at it!
According to The Independent:
Capitalism and consumerism have brought the world to the brink of economic and environmental collapse, the Prince of Wales has warned in a grandstand speech which set out his concerns for the future of the planet.
The heir to the throne told an audience of industrialists and environmentalists at St James’s Palace last night that he had calculated that we have just 96 months left to save the world.
And in a searing indictment on capitalist society, Charles said we can no longer afford consumerism and that the “age of convenience” was over.
The Prince, who has spoken passionately about the environment before, said that if the world failed to heed his warnings then we all faced the “nightmare that for so many of us now looms on the horizon”…
Despite his attack on the materialism of the modern age, the Prince has been criticised for his own indulgences, including dozens of staff to run his homes and hundreds of thousands of pounds spent travelling around the world. While his private estates on the Duchy of Cornwall generate record profits his tax bill was lower than the year before.
Well, he’s being consistent, at least. Last March he was saying we had 100 months before it’s too late, so he does know how to count. Er, I mean calculate! Yes, he’s performed the calculations, hasn’t he? And just like a calculator, he has limited problem-solving ability and is increasingly obsolete.
Sorry, Chuck, that you’re so bored because you don’t really do anything, and that your ego is taking a pounding because everybody knows you’re a useless anachronism. Tell you what: You start living the way you want me to live, and maybe I’ll start listening to you. Give away all your worldly possessions, stop flying around in private jets, get a real job if you have any sort of actual job skills, etc. Then we’ll talk.
Or you could just shut up and enjoy your ridiculously charmed life. Either one.
P.S. He really is like Al Gore! “Prince Charles: Climate change fight is like war against Nazis”
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You know, if I was a modern day royal, I would be so scared of my own shadow that the only thing anyone would hear from me would be the crickets chirping as I walked by. I mean, it’s not the old days, we know they’re not empowered by God to run our lives for us.
I figure it’s only a matter of time before some of the more cash strapped of these countries realize the fortune they could save (not to mention the snickering from those of us manly enough to send our own royals packing) if they stopped paying for people within a specific, and often recycled, gene pool to play national mascot.
Hell, could you image the profits from selling off some of that real estate by itself? Let alone all the jewelery, the wardrobes, the money you’d save on honor guards, ect.
Come on Europe, I know you have it in you to do something right for a change. If you really crave some moron who doesn’t understand what he’s talking about telling you what to do, we’ll gladly give you Obama.
Well, we know he isn’t totally stupid. The hierarchy is nothing but a bunch of titled people living off their country’s upper echelon welfare system. He knows that his “subjects” really believe in him so therefore he yaps about environmental stuff because they are stupid enough to swallow it hook, line, and sinker…hell, they swallow the whole damn fishing pole too.
Just remember, when he eventually goes toes up he CANNOT take it with him. When he is fertilizing the daisies THEN I will believe he is as “green” as he claims to be.
Aw, today it’s y’all’s turn to get hearts shot from my eyes. It hurts, but you’re worth it.
I think it just might be possible that one reason the pampered and privileged are so keen to get the rest of us to go slumming permanently is because it would leave more resources available, so that THEY can continue living just as they always have. It would have the added benefit (for them) of making them feel as though they’d really accomplished something.
I also think the existence of a middle class really bugs those who are incredibly wealthy, both in the UK and the US. Here are all these common people, enjoying luxuries and privileges that only the wealthy and highborn “deserve”. Sort of takes the shine right off their wonderfulness, really. How much better for inbred snots like Chuck, if we were all reduced to living in shantytowns. Because starving, filthy poor people are ennobled by the very possibility that someone like Jughead or Gwyneth might notice them, and take pity, and toss them a coin.
I’ve lost count of how many airheaded actors I’ve heard/read, going on about how people in Third World hellholes “don’t have ANYTHING, but they’re so happy, always smiling”. Yeah, douchebag–they’re smiling, at you, because they’re hoping you’ll maybe throw them some money, so maybe some of their kids can EAT tonight. Then these same celebrities show up in some monstrosity like “Revolutionary Road” or “The Riches”, yarping about “skewering suburbia”. Apparently, suburbia is too uppity, what with the paychecks and the lawnmowers and the taxpaying and presuming to educate their kids instead of begging for some noblesse oblige from the elite.
I hate these dumbasses with the blazing intensity of a million white-hot suns.
You sure are an opinionated arse yourself, gee whiz, open your eyes.
But I bet you just love to bash at people via this medium, what is your job anyways?
An leave Al out of it, he surely does more and better things than you denialists.
This result of selective inbreeding talks down Capitalism? His wealth came from pillaging by the British Empire. If he gives away all his money and lives in a council flat I’ll call him an idiot, but at least I won’t be able to call him a hypocrite.
And his title came from generations of Incest…
Indeed. Chuck and the rest of that inbred family did not earn their wealth by *producing* something of value. No wonder they hate capitalism. How dare those uppity commoners get rich by using their brains and producing things that have value.
You know, I don’t believe they take the thought process that far.
Think about it, when your primary job is recounting your piles of cash, it’s easy to say “I can live a simpler life” because “simpler” is so far removed from “eatin’ dirt”.
Take your average task, like laundry:
I gather mine in nice plastic baskets, drop it into a large machine which heats my water, swishes the soap, and wrings it all out for me before I pop it into a magical dryer. If I were forced to live a “simpler” life, I’d be scrubing stuff with a brush in my kitchen sink and hanging it on a line to dry. Even “simpler” takes me out to the backyard where I boil laundry in a big pot and spread it out to dry on the grass. One more step down and I’m out at the river beating my items with rocks.
I’m three steps away from a third world condition.
Now take Prince Chuck who drops his undies on the bathroom floor where they quietly disappear. He puts absolutely no thought into the life cycle of dirty clothing.
Make his life “simpler” and Chuck only has to find the hamper.
One down and Chuck must tell the butler to tell the laundress to come take care of the laundry.
Another step down puts Chuck in the position of personally talking to the laundress.
Yet again means Chuck gathers his own laundry for the butler to do.
Even “simpler” has Chuck running his own loads the way I do every day, which I’ve said is only three steps from the third world.
Chuck has 8 steps of simplification between him and the rocks by the river.
When you’re that far removed from hand to mouth existence it’s easy to suggest living greener. Look how far one has to go to even burn any extra calories. It’s no coincidence that the primary greenies are affluent, they’re the only ones who can bend more than halfway without rippling the surface of an easy lifestyle.
Beige,
Thank you for spelling out what I’ve been thinking for a long time. There’s very little difference between modern environmentalists and medieval feudalists. Both want a tiny elite chosen by God, er, Gaia to rule over the unwashed masses.
Thanks, Disco Stu. Just had to get it off my chest.
Hmmm. That comment #5 reminds me: I totally forgot to pick up any Purina Troll Chow at Sam’s.
Would someone please hide the royal DVD of Wall-E from Prince Charles once and for all?
Doesn’t that picture look like Chuck just saw his bulldog wife in a swimsuit?
Well if the world does heat up bonnie prince Charlie and Obama should be able to dissipate all the extra heat through their ears.
I hate David LEtterman but he did have a good joke on last night’s show that was reran on today’s Bob and Tom Show. At the G8 everyone finally agreed to help with the global warming problem and then they all took off for home in their private jets.
Yup, Al does do more things than we do….we don’t own several residences, we don’t fly around in private planes, we don’t travel to foreign countries in the aforementioned private plane to shmooze with their dignitaries……….
WE also don’t dine, apparently, on “lost” Girl Scouts. Wrapped in bacon.
Beige! I loved your comment today. You put into words what I’ve been thinking for a long, long time.
Thanks!
@Minnow: I never thought of it from that perspective, but your theory totally makes sense. Unfortunately.
This is what my husband calls SCA* Syndrome. Not all, but most, of the people we’ve ever met who were into the whole dress-up-and-roleplay-as-knights-and-ladies bit made sure to create personae who were aristocratic, who could wear finer clothes and jewelry. Haven’t met too many SCA members who roleplay that they’re the poxy peasants scrabbling in dungheaps.
A good 99.9% of utopian idealists are going to posit themselves as members of the elite, not as part of the rank and file RULED by that elite. All the gits stomping around, bitching about how people are bad for the earth? Well, they want you and me dead. So that they can go on just as they always have. If they really had the courage of their convictions, they’d eat a bullet, but I haven’t heard of any of them doing so. I’d even spring for the bullet, just to aid them in their noble quest.
We so totally are not members. Seriously.
Beige, that SCA thing is a bit like all those people who claim to be a reincarnation of Cleopatra or Queen Elizabeth I. No one ever says they were ’starving illiterate serf John Smith’ in a past life.
EXACTLY, MC Mom. It’s hilarious how many people claim to have been Cleopatra or Napoleon. Nobody ever claims to have been a toothless, syphilitic rentboy on the London riverfront in 1847.
FROG TIME FOR OUR LITTLE PUNTZ SITTING IN A SWAMP CROAKING ON A LILYPAD