Man in a Shed: A memory of the Royal Family in East Germany

Saturday, April 30, 2011

A memory of the Royal Family in East Germany

Just reading about all the foreign media interest in the Royal Wedding.

The Royal Family is like Dave Listers (Red Dwarf) famous curry friend egg sandwich - it all seems wrong, but somehow it works.

It made me think of seeing as a boy the outside of the British Embassy in East Berlin, when communism was still a going concern.

What did the diplomatic staff put in their window to wind the commies up ? An explanation of how the Royal Family worked and how wonderful he Queen was of course. Guaranteed to have any keen communist chocking on his 5 year plan cornflakes ( or oat based gruel - frankly I don't even want to think about it )...

The Iranian media is wrong - the Royals are far cheaper than our politicians - just look how much "the son of the manse" cost us.

Imagine the self righteous politicians let lose with palaces, private jets etc.

Yes somehow you wonder about having a monarchy in the 21 century - until you think of the alternative.

1 comment:

Woman on a Raft said...: Exactly.; 9:13 pm

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The pound in your pocket

"We used to think that you could spend your way out of a recession and increase employment by cutting taxes and boosting government spending. I tell you in all candour that that option no longer exists." James Callaghan

“The trouble with theoretical economists is that they don't understand that when you have a deficit, you can only finance it by borrowing, and you've got to persuade people that it's worth lending money to you and that they'll get their money back... there's no way of escaping it.” Dennis Healey during the 1976 Stirling Crisis.

"Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the Capitalist System was to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens ... Lenin was certainly right. There is no subtler, no surer means of over-turning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose." John Maynard Keynes, 1920.

"To preserve [the people's] independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our selection between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude." Thomas Jefferson, President of the United States of America,1801-1809.

Inflation is taxation without legislation .. Milton Friedman