Monarchy can’t rely on a stupid bear to save it

ACTUALLY, I didn’t enjoy the Jubilee that much, thanks all the same. It seemed to be aimed mainly at people who don’t believe that constitutional monarchy is a good thing. Worse, it was an attempt to strengthen monarchy by making it popular. But anything popular can just as quickly become unpopular. Someone who likes the Queen because she appears in a stupid video with stupid Paddington Bear, one of the most pointless children’s book characters there has ever been, isn’t going to be a reliable supporter of the monarchy.

There was another thing that annoyed me a lot. The clergy of the Church of England know very well that the Queen and Prince Charles both prefer traditional prayers and the beauty of the King James Bible.

So when they devised a service to mark 70 years on the throne, why did they ignore these preferences? I thought it bloody rude, and don’t blame her for staying away.

The Bible passage the Prime Minister read is, in the original, one of the most beautiful in the English language, beginning ‘Whatsoever things…’ I read it at the memorial service for my brother (the only passage of scripture heard at that atheist event). He read it at our father’s funeral.

Yet the version given to Johnson sounded like someone announcing the buffet car was closing on the train to Manchester Piccadilly. Why do so many people hate beauty?