Mrs Windsor’s Christmas

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By Jason Michael

THERE WAS NO AVOIDING the annual Christmas message from Buckingham Palace this year. It so happened that I was in a place at the time of its broadcast where silent attention for “Her Majesty” is an essential Christmas Day ritual. Everyone had eaten, the post-turkey snooze was over, and everyone was awake and alert for Mrs Windsor’s obviously very expensive pearls of wisdom. Having earned my fag break, I headed through the kitchen and out the back for a fly puff. Thankfully, I wasn’t alone. All the cool kids were already outside sparking up. Though, strangely enough, we were probably more interested in the Queen’s Speech than were the viewers within. For those watching it, we suspected, it was just tradition. To us outside, it was just hatred – and with good reason.

Let me be clear, I don’t hate Mrs Windsor. I couldn’t care less about her. She has plenty of people to worry about the perfect weave and thread-count of her toilet silk. She doesn’t need me to like or dislike her. So, I’m indifferent to her and her entire family. But I loath her entitled Christmas Day intrusion. I despise the institution of the monarchy. It makes me sick to my stomach. This is the one part of Christmas Day that reminds me that I’m not the Christian I ought to be, but, then, the Christian that I am compels me to speak out against her arrogance. It’s a balancing act.

Yet, no sooner than her silly little performance was over than social media was flooded with images of her seated, giving her speech, on a golden seat, in front of a golden piano – a golden piano, a golden clock, gold trimmed walls, gold ornaments, a gold fire-guard, gold, gold, and more gold. There was even gold on her Christmas tree. There was so much gold surrounding her in this expansive and lavishly decorated room that it managed to look as cheap as Donald Trump’s lift. My first reaction was laughter. But there were people with us who watched it who had recently been sanctioned by the DWP. There were people who were still waiting for payment after Universal Credit had been rolled out. They lapped it up. All that gold and this old woman had some kind of meaning for them. Me, not so much. The whole thing just left me stewing.

Civil disorder, rioting, “contingencies,” call it what you will; the United Kingdom is on the brink of revolution. The Prime Minister hasn’t put troops on standby to deal with ordinary politics. The establishment is bricking it. We can all feel it in our bones, 2019 is set to be a rough ride. With any luck this is going to be the annus horribilis of annus horribilis’ for Britain, its political establishment, and the monarchy. We’re all predicting a riot. They’re expecting one.

This is the hungriest the UK has been since the 1950s. People working two jobs in this country are experiencing food poverty. Malnutrition and diseases related to poor nutrition are making a comeback. By now much more than 120 thousand people have died as a direct consequence of British government driven austerity politics. Cuts to welfare, social care and health care, wage stagnation, unemployment and underemployment, the sanctions regime, and rising taxes amount to nothing short of a policy of aggressive class war, targeting the poor and the vulnerable. It’s no secret that the wealth of the country is being soaked up by the richest and most powerful and secreted away from the taxman in exotic tax havens. Your ordinary woman or man is the subject of a premeditated and well-planned economic war of annihilation.

The “change of diet” expected when food supplies stop coming in from the continent will, as the government expects, be the last straw. Theresa May is a moron, not just, as Jeremy Corbyn allegedly called her, a “stupid woman.” She’s an actual moron. She imagines that if the shit does hits the fan with a no-deal Brexit the sight of the army on the streets will cool people’s tempers. She’s in for a rude awakening. Ask anyone in Belfast or Derry, angry people will throw stones and plastic bottles at the police – but when the army shows up, they start throwing petrol bombs. One wrong move, one mistake, by one trigger-happy, nervous, or inexperienced soldier will send a shockwave of reaction across the whole of the UK that will see every major urban centre up in arms and burnt to a crisp. Hungry people don’t protest. They rampage.

Now, considering that this is the Britain her nibs was addressing on Christmas afternoon, it beggars belief that some clown thought it would be a good idea to dump her in the gold room for her to prattle on nonsensically about being a granny – let’s face it, she hasn’t babysat a real human child in her puff. We know she never came up with this dim idea; she’s not paid to think.
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Goodness knows what the propaganda office was thinking with this choice of location. We know the Palace is dripping in diamonds and gold, of course it is. What we don’t need, when people are dying on the streets, is to have this obscene wealth – the fruit of centuries of theft – rubbed in our faces. There was a time when I would have been content with independence for Scotland, not caring particularly about the status of the monarchy in our new Scotland. Not now. Nothing would please me more than to see all of their grand houses and palaces burning. There is something toxic, cancerous about the masters of the British state thinking the sight of an elderly Saxe-Coburg und Gotha woman addressing the country in Scrooge McDuck’s counting house would pacify a population on the verge of revolution. They must have a death wish.

There was no justification for this show. There is no justification for the monarchy and its mind-blowing wealth (and power). But, having said all this, my rage is not directed at Mrs Windsor. She’s not important to me. I am angry. There was no way to see this and not feel angry. I’m angry at Scotland, England, Wales, and the six counties for tolerating this for so long. Part of me is deeply embarrassed for Scotland. It makes me see Scotland and my fellow Scots as foolish. It makes me feel like an idiot. Why have we put up with this for so long? What’s wrong with us? It’s time for us to start putting things right, and, if Brexit plays out the way it looks like it will, I’d like to see the monarchy corrected. Give them a pension and send them packing.

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Mrs Windsor and her Gold

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