William on Graham Norton

[viques]

Poor Harry. As if his week hasn’t been bad enough he has now had to watch his brother appearing on the best talk show , holding his own, looking comfortable and relaxed, keeping up with the banter, making half decent jokes, telling stories against himself with humour.

Makes Harry’s attempt at tv chatting seem even more uncomfortable.

“Call me William” versus “I am a prince.”

You’re welcome. HTH

No shit

I heard they don’t take advice. Maybe we could focus on PR for easy clients that people already like. William and Catherine seem to be taken.

How about puppies?

Yep, very few are buying what the Republicans and Sussex fans are selling, they appear to be a bit stretched on the ground working their anti William and Catherine narrative,

They really need to change tactics but I’m afraid their emotions get in the way.

We’re apparently not allowed to question the institution because our highest authority, the elected representatives of the people, has been effectively bought off by ingrained tradition, accrued privilege and the lure of royal favour. Meanwhile, when MPs dare to raise awkward but entirely legitimate questions, the Speaker is there to slap them down. So much for parliamentary sovereignty and holding power to account.

As Tony Benn who I met on many occasions during his long life famously argued, anyone exercising power should be asked five simple questions:

1. What power have you got?
2. Where did you get it from?
3. In whose interests do you exercise it?
4. To whom are you accountable?
5. How can we get rid of you?

Apply those questions to a hereditary monarchy and the democratic deficit becomes glaring. The power derives from birth, its privileges are sustained by tradition, and meaningful accountability is severely limited. And the final question? We cannot vote the monarch out.
If our elected Parliament cannot even scrutinise the institution properly, without challenge being curtailed or deflected, then we have to ask: who really holds whom to account?
As Benn observed, if you cannot get rid of those who exercise power over you, you do not live in a fully democratic system and he resigned his hereditary peerage to serve the people. A great man and he was responsible for snazzy postage stamps to boot.

.

I think the Republicans will have to discredit William in order to bring forward their agenda as he remains relatively popular. The polling shows that support for the monarchy sits around 55-60%, but crucially is as low as 34% in the 18-35 age bracket. I’m guessing William is quite key to bolstering that section of society.

You are kind of talking into the void, you have the wrong audience. Maybe a good PR strategy might help toget your message tothe right audience, just a suggestion 🤷‍♀️🤷‍♀️

I’m not exactly a fan of the RF, but I’m certainly not a fan of the Republican movement, nor the Sussex’s

The answer for 2-4 is in theory ‘the people’, thought that is rather like arguing that the Russian public elected Putin. The answer to 1 is interesting because it seems to vary between ‘none’ and ‘total’ depending on your source!

You're not wrong I'm just having a short sojourn here which I do from time to time - I was @vera99 a few years back and ended up trashing my login to prevent me back sliding and wasting time. @Roussette was a titan of the cause but she has long gone. I should probably leave it to the hobbyists and the over invested. Or wait for Spare 2 comes out when you will have a flood of interlopers disturbing your peace.

@Arjan I agree and I’ve not personally not accrued any favors.

That’s… inaccurate.

eh ?

@andyburnhamhere
Thank you for the Tony Benn refresher ! Good to see .

Good people are still out there and there are MPs questioning the Windsor set up more , I do believe that .

I am still amazed by the timing of the observer article .

There’s William delivering his ( made up in my opinion) story about being mistaken for Prince ( the real Prince lol) and hey I’m just one of the guys ..
PR going well

Then within hours we are shown the reality of his corporation throwing people out of homes and farms and has never even visited them . Sent them a trite postcard with a helpline that tells them to get antidepressants.
’william can go to hell’

That story is gaining traction and is spreading among the younger generations probably because they know what it can be like to live with the threat of eviction

Hmm ...I think you are right to be sceptical

“Yes, that happens quite regularly actually. I went to a place in Somerset and was looking around some of the local communities there and one lovely gentleman looked up at me from his seat and said ‘when are you going to sing?’

“I've had many requests over many years for all ranging parts of society and I said ‘I'm sorry what do you mean?’ He goes, ‘when are you going to sing your performance?’

“And a lady behind tapped his arm and went ‘no, no he's not that prince.’ It turned out he wanted me to sing Purple Rain — which I don't know the lyrics for.”

Ooh - I rather think H has got problems of his own just now because- I don’t think he’s bothered about kicking W’s backside just at present 😄.

I must say, kudos to W for dressing respectfully on his appearance- H could learn from that.

@andyburnhamhere

I remember you Vera!
yes I debate with myself about why I even bother here.

I boycotted it for a long time after the treatment of Roussette.

this section should probably be left to be the dead back water it was before Windsor critics arrived.
Look what happens when there are threads that Windsor critics won’t touch with a barge pole ( 56 is it now? Best leave them to it

Thanks ukgaslit - who were you then ?

Definitely. I’m here to discuss the OP but the derails are tedious.

I would love to hear him to do karaoke, Purple Rain

Wrong quote

@andyburnhamhere

i can’t remember. I read more than posted . I only use mumsnet on my phone and have been Ukisgaslit for a while . If I ever change my username you shall know me as ‘williamcangotohell’ !

I liked the story of William being a DJ. I seem to remember that he set up a club in the basement of Highgrove with Harry when they were teenagers. There was probably a bit of karaoke going on back then!

The ranting republicans just don't get that we simply don't agree with them. They think we're brainwashed and a guy being nice and charismatic on TV is just a PR stitch up and we're too stupid to see through it.

The actual truth is we believe that for the United Kingdom its constitutional monarchy is the best system for providing a head of state for this particular country. Switching to a presidential system would not be as representative of the country's history and culture nor be as unifying and will lose value for the UK in its foreign relations. That's why only a fringe minority want to switch the monarchy for what would most likely be a drab former politician. Banging on with completely inaccurate figures about the alleged cost of the royal family to the taxpayer (which is about zilch per head annually) doesn't swing anyone.

Try as desperately hard as you want, but your weak arguments only strengthen the case for the royal family.