Swearing at the Kingzilla’s special day

Most Scots have plans other than attending the expensive King’s coronation, which costs £100 million and is funded by the public, despite Charles III receiving public benefits and tax breaks.

A re you all getting ready for the Kingzilla’s special day? People in Scotland are either not interested or actively repelled by the festival of compulsory British nationalism.

At the weekend, fans at a Celtic match were filmed singing, “You can stick yer coronation up yer arse,” Scotland’s official entry in this year’s Eurovision Song Contest.

BBC Scotland is getting increasingly desperate in its attempts to find someone who gives a toss.

In a report which hurriedly glossed over an opinion poll which found that three-quarter of people in Scotland intends to be washing their hair that day, including those of us who are bald, the BBC interviewed some posh wummin who is apparently the Lord Lieutenant of Ross and Cromarty, which is a real thing in Britain in 2023.

80% of people in Scotland don’t care much about the coronation, compared to 64% for the entire country.
CREDIT: YOUGOV

As the official royal representative in the far north of Scotland, she was naturally keen to tell us that contrary to popular belief the royal spaniel is really deeply Scottish, as evidenced by the fact that he likes to put a kilt on when he’s not even attending a wedding.

Following this, we were treated to the opinions of some character who heads up one of Charles’s rural development charities, a charity which probably wouldn’t be needed if the spaniel coughed up some of that personal fortune of £1.8 billion he reportedly has. Anyway, apparently the king loves nothing more than channelling his inner crofter, and talking to the tatties he’s planting with his sausage fingers while the wind whips round his nads under his kilt. Apparently, you can’t get more Scottish than that. Who knew?

But the BBC kept the best for last, it then presented us with some ridiculous figure who was cos-playing a court herald from one of those movies about a teenage American girl who finds out that she’s really the heir to the throne of Buggerovia. Presumably, he felt that the fancy costume gave him an air of authority as he assured us that Scotland is really deeply involved in the Coronation and not just in the next game of Dungeons and Dragons that he’s organising. Disney herald guy told us how he’d be accompanying what may or may not be the real Stone of Destiny to the ceremony, but he said nothing about the Pebble of Fortune, the Rock of Doom, or the Briquette of Next Week’s Lottery Numbers.

This charade is costing the public purse some £100 million while billionaire Charles continues to rake in millions annually in public funds, benefits from lucrative tax breaks and the ability to influence legislation that might have an impact on his vast personal fortune. But according to the British media, this petulant and bad-tempered man with several palaces and an enormous retinue of staff, who once commandeered a Canadian RAF jet to fly a thousand miles and back to retrieve a shoe horn, is famous for his frugality.

We then had respected historian Professor Tom Devine claiming that due to the current travails of the SNP, ‘independence is dead for a generation’ and Charles faces no immediate threat to the unity of his kingdom. However, as the good professor of history is very fond of observing, “The future is not my period.” What all of this has to do with Scotland’s lack of interest in the coronation is not entirely clear. Tom Devine’s speculations about the timing of independence are no more valid than anyone else’s, and it’s highly relevant that support for independence does not seem to be affected by party issues within the SNP.

It’s almost as though the people of Scotland understand that an independent Scotland will be a democracy in which they do not have to vote SNP. That’s a lesson that the media in Scotland don’t appear to have grasped. But trust the BBC to turn an opinion poll showing a growing disconnect in public attitudes between Scotland and the rest of the UK and how this royal event is actively repulsing many Scots into an attack on Scottish independence.

North Korea?

Anyway, this weekend we learned that the public is to be asked to give a ‘great cry’ in a mass swearing of allegiance to #NotMySpaniel. This is the very definition of a great cry for attention. North Korea called, it wants its personality cult back. It’s all a bit sad and desperate and definitely not a cult, oh no. There will certainly be mass swearing, just not the kind that Charles might enjoy listening to. I’m rehearsing my swearing already. I’ll also be raising something to welcome the new king, it will be a hand with the middle finger extended.

We’re in for an entire week of this sycophantic bollocks, regaled with pseudo-mediaeval rituals which were invented by Victorians off their faces on opium and this entire high camp charade of dressing up in silly and outlandish costumes will be treated with po-faced reverence by the very same people who pontificate about the immense damage done to impressionable young minds by drag queens. Still, if nothing else the pantomime has the merit of diverting the attention of the Scottish media from its favourite diet of SNP bad stories.

Back to politics

That would be the same media which hounded the SNP about accountability and openness and then virtually ignored how the Conservatives tried to prevent journalists from questioning Rishi Sunak after his recent appearance at the Scottish Conservative conference. It’s only some parties which are expected to be open to press scrutiny it seems, just like it’s only some parties which are to be hounded until they reveal their membership figures. In an interview over the weekend Douglas Ross yet again refused to answer when asked how many members the Conservatives have in Scotland.

We all know the reason for the reticence. It’s because the answer to that question is an embarrassingly small number. If the Tories, or Labour for that matter, had anywhere close to the same number of members in Scotland as the SNP they’d be proclaiming it from the rooftops as proof that the SNP does not speak for Scotland. But the truth is that they are both minor parties in Scottish terms who enjoy a disproportionate amount of influence and favourable media attention only thanks to their strength in England.

The likelihood is that the combined membership of the Labour and Conservative parties in Scotland is but a small fraction of SNP membership, a tiny number of people, even fewer than the number of those who are interested in the ludicrously costumed display of sycophancy and entitlement at Westminster Abbey next weekend.

GOING FURTHER:

— AUTHOR —

▫ Wee Ginger Dug, also known as Paul Kavanagh. Blogger who writes and talks about UK Politics and Scottish Independence.

Sources

▪ Text: This piece was originally published in Wee Ginger Dug’s blog and re-published in PMP Magazine on 3 May 2023, with the author’s consent. | The author writes in a personal capacity.
▪ Cover: Bing.