POMP, CIRCUMSTANCE AND DELUSIONS OF ADEQUACY..

Well, Friday tomorrow and the big wedding.   Seems to me that with the exception of myself and my mate up the road, the whole nation is going wedding bonkers.   Hordes of media people have arrived from all over the globe, the BBC has allocated over 800 staff to bring the wedding into every home in the land either via television, countless radio stations, even more regional programmes, online, twitter, f***book, semaphore, alldis lamp and any other media outlet you care to name.   So it`s wall to wall coverage.   Never has QVC been more inviting.

Now, we`re told that it won`t cost much, as a large chunk of the expense will be met by the happy couple and their rather well to do families.   However, we taxpayers are having to meet the cost of `security,` which will clearly run into £millions, and no doubt a load of other `incidentals` the details of which are likely to be covered by a super injunction so we`ll never know how much.

But I think my most troublesome beef is the sheer incongruity between all the pomp and pageantry, all the lords-a leaping, the ladies dancing and the golden rings set against the true state in which this country of ours finds itself.   For a long time now we have been something of a spent force.   We are demonstrating all the classic signs of an empire having declined and been lost.   To that extent, we are simply following the pattern of history which tells us that every empire there has ever been enters decline and fall and that we have not been immune to that inevitability.

And yet we kid ourselves that we are still a great power in the world, that we have a role to play on the wider stage, that we have influence over world affairs when the reality is that our economy has been shot to pieces and our military strength is close to breaking point, despite which we still rush headlong into conflicts that these days are either best left alone or better left to others.   We have social decline on a massive scale, a national morality that has seen better days and a here and now, me-me society which brings despair to whole generations.

And yet, somehow, we find the money, the time and the inclination to get excited about a royal wedding, with all its class ridden pretension that is so out of place with our millions of unemployed, our housing crises, our benefits culture and our armed forces dying in a corner of some foreign field that will forever never be England.   If there was any sense of proportion, reason or propriety, then Wills and Kate would be directed to the nearest Registry Office, blessed and wished well but invited to have their moment quietly and humbly with friends and family.

So I`ll give tomorrow`s fol-de-rols a miss, thank you very much and whilst I`m sure the majority will rail against my rantings, I am equally sure that there are quite a lot out there like me and my mate up the road who have better things to do tomorrow than get immersed in this costly and unnecessary distraction. The grass needs mowing, but I just know it`s going to rain.  That`ll teach me!