monarchy Archives - thegoodwills.com

Coronation, what coronation?

How well I remember the coronation of Princess Elizabeth II on June 2, 1953. Then resident in Scotland, I was four years and seven months old and had just finished reading Das Kapital and was moving on to The Condition of the Working Class in England. I had also asked for Stories,Tales and Fables by the Marquis de Sade but faither said ‘Nae bairn should be reading that’ and offered instead ‘Noddy on the Runaway Train’.

Memories can be unreliable, as we know, certainly for people of my age, recounting the glory days of bygone youth. Just don’t ask me what I had for breakfast yesterday.

But I digress, as the world awaits tomorrow’s pageant involving the coronation of King Charles III and Queen Camilla. Charles officially ascended to the throne after the death of Queen Elizabeth. eight months ago. Now the official ceremony begins, just as many of us ask, will this ancient ritual then finally be consigned to the dustbin of history.

Charles has requested a lower-key affair than his mother’s coronation. For example, the guest list is capped at 2000 dignitaries, well below the 8000+ who attended Lizzie’s crowning at Westminster Abbey in 1953.

There’s a goodly scattering of Australians and expats among the invitees; including, of course, the Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese and the Governor-General, David Hurley. I should observe that the invitation goes to whoever is Head of State at the time, so it could just as easily have been that back bench bloke.

Mr Albanese was then asked to nominate a certain number of Australians and expats to attend. No doubt Dame Edna Everage would have been on the list, had she and her alter-ego not so recently died.

Rock singer Nick Cave’s fans were perplexed by his decision to accept the invitation. It should be noted that Cave, though Australian, has not lived here since 1980 and usually resides in England.

On his quirky blog, The Red Right Hand Files, Cave answered fans who wanted to know if the young Nick Cave would have been so inclined.

Cave answered that the young Nick Cave, like so many younger selves, was ‘young and mostly demented’. Cave, who says he is no monarchist, nor a republican, is nevertheless fascinated by the royals.

“I guess what I am trying to say is that, beyond the interminable but necessary debates about the abolition of the monarchy, I hold an inexplicable emotional attachment to the Royals,” he wrote in his blog.

Cave is not listed as one of the performers at the ‘Coronation Concert’ to be held in the grounds of Windsor Castle the day after the ceremony. Lead performers include Kate Perry, Lionel Ritchie, Take That and Andrea Bocelli. The Coronation Choir, whose members include refugee choirs, NHS choirs, LGBTQ+ choirs, and deaf signing choirs, will also perform. Ten thousand tickets were issued free via public ballot. We’ll get to watch it free via the BBC, which is producing and broadcasting the concert on Sunday.

Rolling Stone, while delving into the Nick Cave controversy, named musicians who were reportedly asked to perform but declined, including Sir Elton John, Harry Styles, Adele and Robbie Williams. Gone are the days, it seems, of being ‘commanded’ to perform.

Australia’s entertainment world will be well represented at the coronation ceremony, with invitees including ballet dancer Leanne Benjamin, soprano Yvonne Kelly and comedian Adam Hills.

The Prime Minister’s selection includes indigenous artist Wiradjuri, and expats British gallery owner Jasmine Coe, Barbican Centre CEO Claire Spencer, NHS nurse Emily Regan and Oxford vaccinologist Merryn Voysey.

The Australian Financial Review reported that Mr Albanese and UK High Commissioner Stephen Smith this week hosted a function for the Australian group at the envoy’s Kensington residence. Smith, if you’ll recall, served as a Minister in the Rudd and Gillard governments from 1993 to 2013.

Charles and Camilla have invited foreign royals to Saturday’s ceremony, as reported by People magazine. They include Denmark’s Crown Prince Frederik and Crown Princess Mary, Spain’s King Felipe and Queen Letizia, and Monaco’s Princess Charlene and Prince Albert.

After much speculation to the contrary, it is confirmed that Charles’s sons, Princes Harry and William, will attend.

Our friends in the folk music world may be pleased (or displeased) to see the motif of the Green Man used in the official invitation (see above) by heraldic illustrator Andrew Jamieson. The Royals interpret this as “The Green Man (being) an ancient figure from British folklore, symbolic of spring and rebirth, to celebrate the new reign”. We’ll take that as a win.

While Buckingham Palace is talking up the Coronation as an income-producing tourism event, economists are dubious. Bloomberg’s Tom Rees notes that the extra bank holiday is set to drag down what otherwise may be gathering momentum in the UK economy.

Forecasters warned that the additional day off on May 8 will help trigger a 0.7% slide in GDP in May and could tip the economy into a minor contraction in the second quarter.

It will be the second time in a year that royal events have weighed on growth, but analysis suggests the impact of those events is declining.

The Centre for Economics and Business Research estimates that extra tourism and spending in pubs, (which are allowed to stay open later over the weekend), will provide a £337 million boost to the economy.

Britain’s GDP was down 0.1% in the three months through September, after an extra day off at the end of the period for the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II.

There has been inevitable criticism of the cost of the coronation (upwards of £100 million). It comes at a time when Britons are battling a cost of living spiral (inflation of 10%), a nurses’ strike for higher wages and other dramas.

Despite a budget dramatically lower than the equivalent spent in 1953, there is still the largesse of the gold carriage.

After the coronation, the couple will take part in the Coronation Procession, seated in the Gold State Coach. The coach is 260 years old and used at every coronation since William IV in 1831. According to Yahoo News, which should know, the coach was commissioned in 1762 for a then cost of £7,562. Today it is worth over £3.5m.

Comparisons are odious, I know, but last year the Trussell Trust, which administers Britain’s biggest food bank, spent £7.5m, £4.5m more than in the previous year, replenishing food bank stocks for the needy. The Guardian explained that this is due to food donations from individuals and local charity food drives failing to keep pace with demand.

The coronation is undoubtedly an historic occasion and should be rightfully observed as such, even as members of the Commonwealth such as Australia may soon consider a referendum on whether we should become a Republic. Charles had reportedly asked that the coronation budget be a modest one, in light of tough economic times. Not that Charles will have to put his hand in his purse* – the coronation is funded by the British taxpayer.

As British songwriter Leon Rosselson said in his sarcastic 1979 song, On her Silver Jubilee:

‘Oh, the magic of the monarchy, the mystery sublime
Growing gracefully and effortlessly richer all the time’.

*King Charles inherited $500 million in assets from his mother and is overseer of a vast portfolio worth $46 billion. (Forbes magazine).

Public holidays irrelevant to retirees

public-holidays-Queen — The Queen’s coffin leaves Westminster Abbey. Wikimedia cc

I’m afraid to say the one-off public holiday to mourn the death of Queen Elizabeth II passed me by. This was partly because we are both in isolation after testing positive to Covid.

Also, the concept of a public holiday, when you get paid for not going to work, ceased to be relevant to me about 2005 when I quit my full-time job. As happens in the media and many other organisations, some people are rostered on to work a public holiday. This is paid at double time and a half, compared to ordinary time if taking the day off. This is only so for full-time or part-time employees on an industrial award. Casual workers can take the holiday off, but they don’t get paid.

Public holidays in Australia (there are up to 16 national and State-based public holidays), have their own special act of Parliament. The act decrees at what rate an employee should be paid, if he/she takes the day off or has to work on a public holiday.

Public holidays are controversial in Australia, starting with Australia Day on January 26 and the ongoing debate that it is culturally insensitive to celebrate the day white people invaded the country and engaged in frontier wars. Queens Birthday is another holiday subject to the whims of whatever brand of politician is in power. Some states hold the Queen’s birthday in June, September or October. Ironically, the Queen’s actual birthday was April 21. I expect that in 2023 this holiday will either be gazetted King’s Birthday or perhaps we will celebrate both?

Labor Day was traditionally celebrated on the first Monday in May with union marches and music. But some states and territories moved the date to March, September or October. Only Queensland kept the tradition.

National holidays come in a bunch (two around Christmas and New Year and another two at Easter), despite some 10 million Australians reporting to the Census that they have no religion at all. Christianity decreased by more than 1 million people in the 2021 Census, but is still Australia’s most common religion. Other religions continue to increase.

Then there is Anzac Day, which is becoming more popular rather than less, given that it mostly commemorates the fallen in WWI. As songwriter Eric Bogle famously said: ‘someday no-one will march there at all’.

Back in the 1990s, when careers and work/life balance were on our minds, we assembled as much annual leave as we could find and embarked upon a nine-week tour of the US and Canada. I was taken around a daily newspaper in Vancouver and the editor, on learning that Australian journalists (then) got six and a half weeks leave a year, pleaded with me not to share that with his staff. Canada, which is less generous than some, pays two weeks a year (if you have been with the employer for a year). This extends to three weeks if you stay for five years and so on. In Australia, the powerful federal Australian Journalists Union negotiated six and a half weeks, which was meant to reward the employee for working unsociable shifts. In the US, workers have no paid federal leave entitlements at all. Yet 77% of employers informally offer leave to their workers, along the lines of the Canadian model.

That still means that 23% of employers in the world’s biggest economy either cannot afford to pay workers who are not working or they don’t much care.

Compare that with some of the Nordic countries. According to whoseoff.com, which ranked countries by the quality of their annual leave, Spain, Austria and Finland emerged as the top three. The latter allows 25 days a year for annual leave and another 11 days for public and religious holidays. Spain offers 39 days a year (and a daily siesta) and 10 public holidays. Austria’s 39 holidays include 25 days’ paid leave and 13 public holidays. Austrians who have worked for the same company for a long time can take as many as 35 days annual leave.

You can see that this is not by any means a level playing field. In Japan the annual leave entitlement is 10 days. Workers who have been employed continuously for at least one and half years are granted one additional day of leave for each year of service to a maximum of 20 days. There are no legal provisions for pay on public holidays, despite Japan having 16 national public holidays. Japan’s leave entitlements may seem niggardly, but ironically employers find it hard to convince salarymen to take holidays. There is a culture of ‘attendeeism’, which could be interpreted as a fear of someone replacing you while you are holidaying in the mountains.

So how does Australia stack up? For each year of service an employee is entitled to a minimum of 4 weeks of paid annual leave. If the employee is a shift-worker, they are entitled to a minimum of 5 weeks of paid annual leave. Every employee is also entitled to 10 to 13 paid public holidays depending on the state and territory. Long service leave, which varies by jurisdiction, is also available to long-standing employees.

In researching this topic (under duress, dear reader), I came across a report based on a Unicef study on maternity leave. As you might have come to suspect, the US has no national scheme for paid maternity leave. At the other end of the scale are Estonia, Austria, Japan and Sweden where women can take up to 88 weeks of paid leave (Estonia),

As The Guardian story says, the UK rates in the bottom third of OECD countries. Australia is ranked second-last. Maternity and paternity leave in this country both fall under parental leave which is 12 months’ unpaid and for which parents can claim 18 weeks leave pay (at the national minimum wage). Only one parent at a time can take unpaid job-protected leave.

State public holidays are a bonus – for example Melbourne Cup Day in Melbourne, Brisbane’s Ekka show holiday and so on. Australian workers are perhaps known, but not exclusively so, for taking a day either side of a public holiday. For example, I’d love to know how many Australians didn’t go to work today, parlaying the mourning for Queen Elizabeth into a four-day weekend. Some people do this officially (taking a day off their holidays). Some just call in sick and hope their boss doesn’t spot them at the footie or the cricket.

As we’ve been told, yesterday’s national day of mourning is a one-off event. I’d have thought most of us would have had our fill with the blanket coverage on TV channels (ongoing). I’m still trying to work out if the bird’s eye view of Westminster Abbey was a camera or a drone. I did so feel for those eight sturdy chaps who carried the Queen’s coffin for what seemed an unreasonably long time. They didn’t waver, even when you read that the lead-lined oak coffin weighed something between 250kg and 317kg.

Meanwhile I struggle to carry a box of tissues from one room to another. I can’t believe we went all this time without getting Covid and now here we are.

Make sure you wash your hands after reading.

Safe from harm while Nanny’s there

Born two weeks or so before King Charles III, Bob reflects on the only monarch we have known in our lifetime and the phenomenon of ‘recreational grieving.’

Queen-Nanny-Monarchy — HRH Princess Elizabeth (aged 19) in the Auxiliary Territorial Services, 1945. Image from the Imperial War Museum cc

When I was still in the womb, my mother was keen on the idea that she and Elizabeth II would give birth on the same day. I made an entrance two weeks ahead of Charles, so whenever our birthdays roll around, I reflect on our status as 1948 babies, born on opposite sides of the track.

I did so chuckle at the meme on social media with a picture of Charles and the caption: ‘73-year-old finally gets a job’.

Like most people in Britain in the 1950s (and obviously even now), Mum was a royalist. There was much excitement upon the green and pleasant land and in neighbouring countries like Wales and Scotland ahead of the Coronation in 1953. I shall leave others to comment on Ireland.

As I recall (I was four), each household received Coronation souvenirs – a mug, a tin of Cadbury’s milk chocolate (it may have had the royal crest embossed on the chocolate but I can’t vouch for that). There were also flags and bunting. (Rule Britannia was one of the first songs I learned (the marmalade and jam version came much later).

The picture I’m painting here illustrates the genesis of the mass mourning which has accompanied the death of Queen Elizabeth II on September 8. The ABC dispatched Michael Rowland to provide daily updates to ABC Breakfast, which included vox pop interviews in London’s Green Park. The loyal subjects who wished to leave floral tributes, cards and letters were re-directed there after it was clear that soon you would not be able to see the Changing of the Guard behind the massive wall of floral tributes.

Ordinary folks were interviewed ‘Well, she’s always been there, inn it – she’s like our Mum’ and similar sentiments that demonstrated the depth of public love expressed in the memory of the 96-year-old monarch known fondly as ‘Nanny’.

My Facebook feed filled up with tributes by friends I might have assumed would be republicans in the true sense of the word. Greens leader Adam Bandt was rightly chastised for his too-soon statement:

“Rest in peace Queen Elizabeth II. Our thoughts are with her family and all who love her. Now Australia must move forward. We need a Treaty with First Nations people, and we need to become a republic.”

All the same, some of the emotional outbursts over the death of a woman in her 90s (that tends to happen), have left this Scots-born champagne socialist a little stunned.

The death of Lady Diana Spencer in 1997 sparked a similar, if more dramatic outpouring of what psychologists call ‘recreational grieving’.

In 2012 The Scotsman wrote about this phenomenon of mourning the ‘intimate stranger’.

“It’s an apt term for something that allows us to indulge in the ceremony of grief without feeling particularly upset. We mope, wallow and wail en masse, but we needn’t lose any sleep over our ‘loss’”.

The writer related how he ended up weeping in the shower while listening to Daydream Believer, after hearing that Davy Jones (of the pop band The Monkees), had died.

As he says, this is not a new phenomenon. When heartthrob actor Rudolph Valentino died in 1926, 80,000 people lined up in New York to file past his coffin. Just think back a few years to when we lost David Bowie, Prince, Robin Williams, Leonard Cohen, Amy Winehouse, John Prine and Mr Spock.

Although I am not a monarchist, there was much to admire about Elizabeth the Last (as poet Denis Kevans dubbed her). She worked with 15 UK Prime Ministers and 164 Commonwealth Prime Ministers during her rule. Her daily duties as Crown were never-ending, yet she never wavered (even during the furore that arose after her Australian representative sacked a sitting Prime Minister in 1975). (Still outraged. Ed.)

Much has been written over the decades about the concept of colonialism, inherited wealth and title. History would tend to suggest that the Scots, as one glaring example, should be the least likely people to be gnashing their teeth over a wealthy woman who only started paying tax in 1992. There have been sporadic reports of protests; people with placards saying: ‘Not My King’. One person carrying a sign that said ‘F*** the monarchy’ was arrested.

But they are a minority, as European correspondent Rob Harris explained in the Sydney Morning Herald:

“Thousands of mourners lined streets in Scottish towns and cities, as the cortege made the 281km trip from the Queen’s favourite Highland retreat to the capital. Her daughter, Princess Anne, dropped a curtsy as her coffin was carried into the palace (Holyrood House) in Edinburgh, where her mother had stayed only weeks before.

“From Aberdeen to Dundee and along the motorway verges around the River Forth, veterans, army cadets, school children and families stood quietly or applauded, clutching flowers and Union flags.”

As wakes go, this one is only getting started. Such is the level of staged planning going into this production, we run the risk of important domestic news being relegated below the fold. As it is, our parliament has been suspended for 15 days so PM Anthony Albanese can attend the funeral. Morris dancing sources tell me that, in the UK, all dancing will stop for as long as the royal wake lasts.

As a former newspaper journalist, I know full well that this is one of the stories of the century, akin to a Pope dying. Every section of the newspaper is allowed to exercise creative process and contribute to the story. Hence business writers confirmed that the $5 note, on which QEII’s effigy is etched, will continue to circulate. A new coin, with Charles III’s profile, will circulate in 2023.

By tradition, details of the Queen’s will remain private. Despite Buckingham Palace publishing details of the Sovereign Grant (what it costs to keep the royal machine ticking over), estimates of the Queen’s wealth come from outside sources. Forbes Magazine calculated Queen Elizabeth’s personal fortune in 2021 (investments, jewels, art, and real estate) at $US500 million. Most of the real estate will be simply passed on to the next monarch.

When living in Edinburgh in the late 1970s, I was astonished to find that the Palace of Holyrood House, just down the road from the Royal Mile, was used by the Queen for only one week a year, in summer.

People I met in pubs and at folk clubs told me about the homelessness situation in Edinburgh. You would not want to be sleeping on the streets in that cold and ancient city, summer or winter. Yet just down the road from the tourism mecca of Edinburgh Castle sat the (empty) 16th-century historic apartments of Mary, Queen of Scots, and the State Apartments. The palace at that time cost 368,000 pounds a year to maintain, according to a 1978 Hansard record.

The palace is open to the public (for tours) throughout the year, except when members of the Royal Family are in residence. While Historic Environment Scotland maintains the Palace of Holyrood House, it is owned by Charles III, King of the United Kingdom.

Almost seventy million pounds was spent maintaining the other seven royal palaces in 2021-2022, expenditure drawn from the aforementioned (annual) Sovereign Grant (102.4 million pounds/$A175 million).

I’m leaving the last word to the venerable English songwriter, Leon Rosselson. He wrote a caustic song in 1978 about the monarchy’s profligacy – On Her Silver Jubilee.

(Advisory: this song contains references to a person who has died and may offend monarchists.)

Oh, the magic of the monarchy, the mystery sublime; Growing gracefully and effortlessly richer all the time; She’s the rock of hope and glory in the quicksand of despair; For although the pound may tumble, although panic fills the air; Although governments may crumble, and the cupboard’s nearly bare; Though the stairs begin to rattle, and the rats begin to stare; She enfolds in mystic unity her subjects everywhere; And we know we’re safe from harm while nanny’s there.