Thursday, November 18, 2004

Too funny

Found this over on Transblawg. It seems that a former royal secretary, Elaine Day, is claiming Prince Charles' assistant sexually harassed her. That's not the funny part, of course. The Guardian covers the story:
A former royal secretary told an employment tribunal today that Prince Charles is the head of a "hierarchical and elitist" workplace where staff are expected not to "rock the boat."
It's a monarchy, for Christ's sake, Elaine! The whole system is predicated on an elitist hierarchy.

The story goes on to explain that Day suggested that personal assistants with degrees should be able to train for spots as private secretaries, a notion apparently ghastly to Charles who responded with this memo:
"What is wrong with everyone nowadays? Why do they all seem to think they are qualified to do things far beyond their technical capabilities?

"This is to do with the learning culture in schools as a consequence of a child-centred system which admits no failure. People think they can all be pop stars, high court judges, brilliant TV personalities or infinitely more competent heads of state without ever putting in the necessary work or having natural ability.

"This is the result of social utopianism which believes humanity can be genetically and socially engineered to contradict the lessons of history." The memo concludes: "What on earth am I to tell Elaine? She is so PC it frightens me rigid."

How funny is that? Prince Charles complaining that people believe they can be competent heads of state without credentials. Um...and you're qualified why? Oh, right, birth and lineage, that's it.

Can I tell you how nice it is to be reminded we're not the only fucked up country in the world.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Here's Steve Bell's cartoon on the subject:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/cartoons/stevebell/0,7371,1354647,00.html
Margaret (Transblawg)