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.

Faster, Higher, Greedier

Any Blog dealing with how the modern World has been corrupted by the corporatization of everything, and the spectre of global puppeteers affecting our lives, has to mention the Olympic games. As pointed out by the brilliant journalist, Doug Sanders recently, the IOC needs this games to be run by an authoritarian regime like China. It needs this immense quadrennial exercise in self-promotion to get bigger, but there aren’t many governments left that can support it.

I went through most of the 90’s hating the nostalgia of the 1960’s that washed through our popular culture: Movies, trends, and TV that celebrated ten years in the lives of writers, producers and actors alike; almost God-like reinventions of Political, Artistic and Business figures, and the presentation of basically everyday decision to the importance of The Big Bang. I now realise that these movies, trends, songs and virtually everything else were exercises in nostalgia when these current day human megaphones were younger, more easily impressed, and who felt cheated by the decades since their ‘golden age’. From Oliver Stone’s fantasies about Vietnam and the US at the time, to the agenda pushed on us that if JFK, Bobby, and Martin had lived, the World would have been different. Of course, as I now reach their age, I am beginning to feel the same.

I wasn’t even 10 years old in 1970, so while my cohort saw the other side of the coin (Nixon, Northern Ireland, Airline terrorism etc.), my childhood was full of two great movements: The Space Race and the Olympics every two years: It seemed to me the fact that we were going to the moon, and could put live TV pictures of amateur athletes battling each other for nothing more than a hunk of metal at the end of a ribbon were both examples of a not-too-distant future when we could bury all known hatchets, and live together as grown ups, not squabble like bored 3 year-olds at your Aunt’s house on a Sunday afternoon. It has only recently that it has become clear to me that these two great human endeavours were simply part of the Cold War that haunted my life for 30 years. The Olympic Games as a political tool? Yes! And being promoted by one of the largest, and unaccountable, movements on earth.

In Mexico in 1968, the two ‘Black Power’ salutes on the podium was a way that the old USSR could crow about how America was at war with itself. The US was embarrassed and forbade anything like that ever again, but by the time Munich ’72 came around the sheer amount of USSR and US athletes marching in a paramilitary fashion reached proportions only seen on May Day parades in Moscow. Only the missiles and tanks were missing. The slaughter of Israeli athletes was – in a way – proof that while these two nations stared each other down, other smaller nations with political agendas and a disregard for human life could grab their own headlines. With Security a major issue for 1976, Montreal was chosen as a safe haven that the Americans could ‘look after’.

If the Americans could salve it’s conscious over Vietnam, and make sure that all of its athletes were safe, it was to boycott the Moscow Olympics, and the Soviets returned the favour in Los Angeles. It is not a stretch of the imagination to understand that the US supported Seoul’s bid for the 1988 Olympics in order to protect ‘everyone’ from the North and the evil empire. They got a break when the USSR went bankrupt, so we had a Spanish Olympics and then an Australian one. Neither of which were as successful as 1984, which, in a turnaround from 8 years earlier, did nothing for sport in the States, or LA in particular, but were a huge financial success. The Athens games almost bankrupted the entire country, so the IOC needed a large nation to step forward and re-start the Cold war – especially as the European Union would help out the London bid for 2012. That is why China is hosting the largest peacetime movement of people in human history, and hosting it in an architectural centrepiece that is the largest indoor space ever built on the planet.

Heroes will be made (and you know it’s Michael Phelps, thanks to the amount of ink and pixels spent on him), and hunks of metal on ribbons will be won and lost. Billions of TV’s will watch the games – probably the most ever but this isn’t ‘China’s coming out party’ or anything else so altruistic. The real winner will be the advertisers opening up new markets for luxury goods that people cannot afford, and – most of all – the money held in trust by the IOC. They have gone through 10 Olympiads growing their brand to the most recognised on earth, and raking in Billions of dollars. They have nowhere to go but up, but is there anywhere left to go? Is there anyone rich enough to host future games? Is there anyone that can afford it?

If not, it’s going to simply end – the most successful business model of all time. One whose logo is understood by every person on earth, and whose public aims are completely  misunderstood. “We will support war if it means making money.”