Futuring the Royal Family

Whenever the media try to stir up anti-Royal feeling, I suffer the usual knock on consequence of having to answer for the existence of The Windsor’s. Just for the record, I look at the British Royal Family as I do about Christmas:

It is traditional, has nothing to do with me except gets me a day off, it creates some business, and makes us look at ourselves in a different way.

 

A recent state visit by The Prince of Wales and The Duchess of Cornwall had the usual negative media spin that proved the entire edifice of the Royals was crumbling, and no one could save it. Considering this point, I was surprised by the sheer amount of bytes and print inches, the visit caused. It was obviously the biggest story of the entire 10-day time period they spent in Canada! Ten days, of ‘nothing to see here’, and ‘no-one cares’, all shot in front of crowds of people, and breathless reporting about the importance of the stay.

 

So, just for the record, here is my take on the present and future of the Monarchy.

 

Prince Charles has had a massive effect on pop culture over the lat 50 years. No-one hugged a tree, saved a whale, or thought green before him, then had the balls to announce it to a World calling him nuts for doing so. He does a far better job where he is, rather than being the Monarch, when he has seen his Mother button her lip for her entire life. He should abdicate the throne when the Monarch dies, and pass it to a younger person with more in common with a modern world – a criticism frequently levelled at the institution.

The Princes’ heroes through out his life have always been the quieter, more influential ‘powers behind the throne’ such as Lord Mountbatten, so he can support his sons while he is slipping into a dotage. Let’s be honest, he has had his life, he has finally got his love next to him, who needs the hassle? He could be 80 before he gets the job, anyway.

 

The first order of business for King William should be to thin out the Civil List that is the line of royals supported by the British taxpayer. Earlier in the Century, we all had larger families, and there is an incredible amount of hanger’s on from Elizabeth’s cousins, etc. Once they pass on, lets ask their kids to get careers – most of them do anyway. This should result in large properties becoming free. Let’s put them to a social use that will benefit as many people as possible. Both ‘heir and spare’ have a job to do promoting Britain. They will both have spouses, and offspring, but there shouldn’t be any more people doing this important job.

 

This should make them ‘relevant’ to the majority of us, cost less, and modernise the institution with no hard feelings, or hardship to anyone. See, I am a royal supporter, but even I see that believing in them as they are is a little like believing in Father Christmas. We have already modernised the annual gift giving festival, let’s move on to another ancient tradition.

The Olympics: Inside the Inner Circle

If you are looking for the perfect job, or a change of career, you could do a lot worse than joining the Olympic movement as a member of the board. Not only are you responsible for promoting amateur athletic sport both in your country, and around the globe (a very worthy endeavour), you will also live the life of a Banana Republic potentate by everyone you meet on the planet, with the possible exception of your wife. When you also consider many athletes are no longer amateur, but millionaires from their day jobs, you don’t even have to be very successful at your main purpose, either. It’s one of the easiest jobs on the planet – especially when you consider you are paid one of the best salaries in history, and are on expenses. But why are you treated the way you are?

 

Ever since the politic debacle’s of the early ‘80’s, when politics dictated an amateur athlete’s career arc, consider the size of the venues that have hosted the games. On the winter games side, Calgary, Lillehammer, and Nagano, and Atlanta and Athens in the summer months weren’t’ exactly global metropolises. After Moscow and Los Angeles, it looked as if a leaner, more stripped down games would soothe the diplomatic wounds we were all suffering from, and also get back to basics for the quadrennial celebration. Unfortunately, it also opened the experience of actually ‘getting’ the games up to local governments. In many cases these meant the very first time that the venue in question were going to be the focus of the world. So anything spent at the time to sway people’s minds, would be repaid exponentially in future tourism and investment cash. Therefore whatever these cities could do ‘above the table’ the better. Unfortunately, as is usual with human nature, these lessons were well learned by future venues, expanded, and therefore expected by the inner circle of a few thousand that make up the Games’ secretariat.

 

For this Olympiad, we have been shocked as host cities what we have to do when this Star Chamber gets here. First class travel, complimentary tickets to final events, penthouse hotel rooms, changes of traffic patterns in their favour, and member’s individual choice of meals during official Olympic events are not only expected, they are demanded – a necessary part of the host’s responsibilities. This is all for the handful of decision makers, and their support staff, and secretaries, their whole families, and members from their own countries. All in all, about 2% of all expenditure expected to be made by us proles on the sidelines is given away in order to make these people feel at home. Unfortunately, Vancouver is the largest city ever to host the winter games, so we are now using a different set of rules – and we have to do this by trying to make money from a much larger visitor number than those smaller towns. At what point is it our job to maximize profits? I guess it greasing palms after your product is bought, trumps any support the Olympic movement owes us for soldiering on through a huge global economic explosion to continue to present their product, and make less money from it. While paying more for it after these members of the sporting royal family have left for pastures and troughs anew.

The Olympics from the inside: 100 days to go

At the time of this writing, we are only 100 days away from the Opening ceremonies, and here are a few headlines from the last few weeks to show how we are doing.

The Olympic Village debacle: The construction of venues required was finished very early in the process. Thank God! With the recession hitting us last year, we weren’t trapped in the situation of having to complete at the last minute the way that Athens appeared to. While we are using a lot of existing venues (Look for changes at the hockey tourneys.), there was a fair bit of building to complete and we apparently did all of this under budget and early. The only sore point was one of the two Olympic villages built in the downtown core (The second one is in Whistler itself). This was always going to be a large project – imagine a small town centre being built on downtown soil – but thanks to the collapse of world-wide economies, it got very nasty. The builder ran out of money, the debt sold to secure financing suddenly couldn’t be serviced, and the hedge fund looking after it went insolvent. Of course, the tax payer is going to have to pick up the built, because the payments outstanding on the site match the annual budget of the entire council, or something just as alarming.

As of today, it is unfinished, but work continues apace, and it is to handed to the Organising Committee today. The apartments were going to be sold to individuals after the games anyway, so at least the City will reap the benefits of that, but not as much as originally planned. Also planned was a plan to earmark a percentage of the apartments as low income housing. While it is a tough pill to swallow, I believe we shouldn’t be doing that, now. We should get as much money back as we can from this ‘investment’. Financially, we are still in good shape, and very high-end purchases, such as ticket packs, and travel plans, are picking up. I think the hundreds of residents that thought they could earn a vacation by renting out their homes for the games are going to be disappointed, though.

THE TORCH RELAY: The Olympic torch touched down last week, and has started on it’s cross country tour. WAY too much First Nation involvement for many people’s liking, especially as it was held back by native people’s protests (see last blog), the first evening it travelled, but definitely a sense of pride about the country, and a sudden alert that we are only a few weeks away from the puck drop to this thing.

SECURITY: It was announced today that 90% of Security personnel have been hired. Now the fears start that these were mostly recruited from Craigslist, and may be ‘the bottom of the barrel’ as far as employers go! It must be nice to feel you are respected as you work for almost nothing in the coldest time of the year, pissing people off, and NOT enjoying the once-in-a-lifetime experience that you are guarding!
Considering the U.S. has spent millions securing their border, and the overall security bill is $1 Billion, it’s a pity we couldn’t be more positive about the front line folks we hire.

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