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THANK GOD IT'S FRIDAY

BC PIRES

IT’S PROBABLY not an exaggeration to say I speak for millions when I say I’m queened right out!
Her Majesty’s a pretty nice girl, as the Beatles sang, and I am saddened by the death of anyone’s mother – but when American television networks screen near 24 hours a day of mainly old folks in usually old buildings in always dark clothing speaking in monotones, it makes me yearn for the pre-therapy radio shock jock version of Howard Stern. At least with the old Howard there was always the potential for lesbians.
I’ve felt sorrier each day for BBC, Sky TV and LBC Radio presenters challenged to wring even more blood out of a long-dry stone for yet another 24 hours.
Her Majesty’s a pretty nice girl for the Beatles and she held her job for 70 years, longer even than the Rolling Stones, and all lives should be put in perspective – but a solid week of the queen is what Spinal Tap at Elvis Presley’s grave called “a little bit too much firetrucking perspective.”
And chances are it’ll go on even longer!
I’ve collected several buffs already for gently reminding people, when they’ve been swooning over She Majesty, that queen paid millions of pounds to protect the royal formerly known as Prince from the consequences of his actions. (Whether in London or Laventille, mothers of criminal sons are always convinced theirs is a nice boy.)
Yes, it is infra dig to cuss the queen royally at the Buckingham Palace gates – but it isn’t treasonous – or even wrong – to remember that, whatever else she may have done, she also did that.
I’ve been surprised at how many people who have a “Rebel” T-shirt for every day of the week have become monarchists since September 8. These are people who understand that, minus the pageantry and spectacle, almost everything the queen stands for is negative.
But the same people who usually ask, “If not now, when?” tell you, “Not here, not now."
Lost in all the pomp and circumstance – the superficial – is the essential: the queen represents the institutionalisation of inequity. A privileged monarchy has no place in modern liberal democracies aspiring towards meritocracy.
You don’t have to say this kind of thing aggressively at what is genuinely a period of national mourning for the United Kingdom (or at least England).
But you forget it at your peril.
The English Vote Leave government is about to impose on its people their harshest winter ever. New PM Liz Truss is in the act of protecting vast windfall profits of energy companies, safeguarding the wealthiest people in England at the expense of the poorest. Old people – like the late queen – will die like flies all over Britain this winter. But the energy companies’ shareholders and executives will be able to burn cash to keep warm.
The British Parliament should be in emergency session right now, using every day that isn’t freezing to prepare for the crisis that will hit British people harder the poorer they are.
But the 12 days of national mourning must take precedence over the commoners, just as Her Majesty herself would.
Not here! Not now! Wait quietly and someone will bring you a crumb.
And many of the people thronging the streets of London praising the queen and what she represents – institutionalised inequity – are going to be the ones freezing to death.
It beggars belief and belies beggars.
But it’s not new.
Since Donald Trump came down that escalator in 2016, the cable news companies haven’t stopped following him. Without the free coverage CNN and the rest gave him, Trump could never have hoodwinked so many Americans. (You want irony personified? Look at the working-class Americans who say Trump speaks for them.)
Nor is it foreign. In Laventille and in Caroni, the poorest people in Trinidad are respectively PNM/UNC till they dead.
But the 24-hour news machine must be fed all day long, whether on a moron like Trump or a woman who stands for everything wrong in the world like the queen.
But tell this to people who’ve been flogging their own rebellion all year long (up to last week) and they get teary-eyed.
She reigned for 70 years, they weep, clutching their pearls, and we’ve known nothing else and, oh, pass my hanky, she was such a wonderful woman.
Who collected millions for being born lucky. And forked out millions. And we all know what for.

BC Pires is an unmannerly pig who should forget disgusting poverty and inequality and focus on delightful pageantry and spectacle
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