Thursday 7 November 2002

The Ongoing Monarchial Weirdness

Here's a wild thought, maybe Her Majesty is actually one of the good guys... Certainly if one reads all the coverage of the Burrell saga she comes across as a very human person with real concerns about the state of her Kingdom. It strikes me that the Queen must have given Burrell the warning she did; the fact that the palace isn't screaming for blood is testament to the veracity of that claim. This whole story gets weirder and weirder, one side trying to smear him with lies, the other side trying to defend him. Me thinks the Establishment might be having a mild attack of schizophrenia, there's definitely some weird shit happening. I would just love to be a fly on the wall in Buckingham Palace right now. We all assume that Her Majesty is all powerful and knows everything but the chances are that she's being manipulated just like the rest of us by the same shadowy bunch of quasi-fascists that are out to destroy Diana's memory and with it what little democracy which we as a Nation are entitled to have...

Let me take this opportunity to commend The Mirror for it's handling of this affair, the newspaper has suprised me a lot since 9/11. They used to be just a Maxwell propaganda rag but they seem to be rediscovering their roots. The fact that John Pilger is writing for them again is testament to that. Well done guys, keep it up.


Listen To Those Chiling Words

Intelligence author and former government operative

by Richard Bennett

It has been the clearest hint so far that even the Queen is uneasy at the power wielded by an unelected and secret cabal made up of the so-called "permanent government" and elements within the security services.

The words she uttered to Paul Burrell are now set to reverberate around Whitehall and perhaps even penetrate Thames House, the headquarters of MI5.

The Queen has watched over a Britain dominated for 50 years by a paranoia largely generated by MI5 and a Civil Service mentality forever unwilling to accept the loyalty of generations of working men and women if they belonged to certain trade unions or left wing pressure groups.

The Queen saw Harold Wilson's government fatally undermined by right-wing security service officers at a time when renegade MI5 officer Peter Wright admitted the service had "bugged and burgled its way round London" for much of the postwar period.

Full story...

UPDATED NEWS REPORTS:
Royal flush (Updated: 17:09 GMT)
Crook, chump, scoundrel or hero? The events surrounding the collapsed trial of Princess Diana's butler Paul Burrell are as baffling as they are gripping. Why did he stash away a weird collection of several hundred of her belongings after she died? Why did the police claim falsely that he was planning to sell them? Why did the queen suddenly, and very belatedly, tell the police that the souvenir snatch had been with her knowledge? Most bizarre of all, did the queen really tell Mr Burrell in the course of a three-hour tête-à-tête after the princess's death, as he claims, that “there are powers at work in this country about which we have no knowledge”?

The Queen and the Dark Forces
Royal watcher: Butler story 'bizarre'
Butler feared plot against Diana
So what were the powers at work?
Queen: Beware the Unknown Powers
More power to the Queen
Butler rocks Britain
Does this sound made up?
Royal butler attacks Spencer family
Paul Burrell's Verdict on Earl Spencer