At Odds With His Position

His good points outweigh the bad many times over, and I will forgive him any number of weird stories about incorrectly-squeezed toothpaste, the boiling of three eggs to ensure that one of them is perfect, and the shipping of his Bentley to foreign parts ahead of his official visits. I am delighted that he has made an honest woman out of Mrs Parker Bowles after years of cuckolding her husband, a gallant and patient brother officer of HM's forces. The Prince's Trust is a superb organisation, about which he is very modest. His sons clearly love him and respect him and he seems to have done a good job with them, despite the obvious complications. I support the monarchy without reservation.

Constitutional monarchs-to-be of democratic countries don't do economics; this is a sound principle, for economics means politics, and politics is a no-no. Instead, the PoW has championed Green causes. For many years, this was the stuff of rainforests, sustainable development, drinking water and sensible farming. No sane person could object to his heartfelt objection to the grubbing up of hedgerows, unnecessary plastic packaging, and his encouragement of wildflower meadows. If he wanted Highgrove to be organic, so be it.

But that was then. Over the past decade, the new religion of man made global warming has taken root like ragwort and the Prince, with Al Bore and Bongo, the singing Irish eejit, has been among the most famous adherents to this new orthodoxy. Politicians, on the look out for zeitgeist currents, have paddled out to join him. It takes a political leader of rare independence of mind to row in another direction. Sadly, only Vaclav Klaus appears to have been in the queue when they were handing out cojones. What this has turned into is perhaps the major economic issue of our times, and therefore a political issue. One of limitless taxation potential.

So the Prince, mindful of his position, would be wise to retreat to a less exposed position. Instead, he is upping the ante, telling us that we have 100 months to save the world, and kicking sand in the face of the puny little banking crisis, telling us that we risk spending too much time and effort (and money?) on the economic meltdown and not enough time doing whatever it is that will, indeed, save us. Something to do with nano-technology, perhaps. I might have got that bit wrong; perhaps those nanos were going to take over the world and we should be terrified. Anyway, one of the two. He does not appear to acknowledge dissenting scientific voices and evidence.

The Prince is riding for a fall with this, and it could end in tears. His advisors need to put some bromide in the royal lapsang souchong, and quick.