Recently there was (yet another) post somewhere out in the world about how they will soon divorce. And my first thought was: Haven't I heard this before? which moved quickly to: how many times have I heard this (through the years)?
There were a number of questions raised which ... I don't know. I'm not a lawyer.
One of the points which has been raised is that KC would somehow be shelling out beaucoup money to get her to go "away". That he has all this money stashed away and can pull it out at a moment's notice. But does he?
He inherited a lot of "stuff" from his mother but ... isn't it a lot of tangible stuff like properties? and with that staff to maintain it and insurance. Inside said properties is art, antique furniture and other "old stuff" which may be valuable" but ... that kind of thing is subject to the whims and bank accounts of the rarified people who may be interested in it (which is not most of us in terms of being able to afford such a lovely bauble = although we still would like to drool looking at it).
Same holds true for the jewelry. (still drooling).
In reality, there can be things which are being "sold" which do not meet the minimum which is embarrassing but translates to no one wants this at this price. So ... it might make some sense to ask for cash ... but ...
But would he have that amount of cash? Maybe? He did, after all, need to borrow cash from his mother to be able to pay off Diana. Years later and the Dutchy did well under him, is one thing but hold that thought about Dutchy funds.
More recently, I seem to remember talk of the Queen Mother leaving debts and Queen Elizabeth quietly paying them off. But that was her mother, a woman of a different generation where women did not work, they married, men took care of the finances and women didn't get involved with that. That was then and this is now (pretty much everyone works in some way). But we really don't know because the estate stuff gets sealed.
Besides, there is rumor that The Queen has lent or given or something money to Prince Andrew so he could pay off Virginia or maybe it was the ski chalet or both. If any part of that is true, then that is a chuck of cash that isn't available.
I don't get to see the finances of how things roll but my guess is that the BRF are meeting their bills but soaking up a lot of extra is not happening. Things just cost more (and more and more) plus covid ripples affecting everyone PLUS the whole country is having serious belt tightening. And, the very public thinning of the monarchy (which actually started years ago). Or the cutting of the family subsidy (think Prince Andrew and so on). So ... they too, have been and are looking at cutting costs (which may or may not be sparked by a cash flow situation at the moment but more likely concerns of the potential for one in the future).
And then there is the we don't know the financial details but remember that the King gifted Angela Kelly a house which is not geographically close to Windsor. No idea about anything about the house but that was a kind thing for her. Was that cash out for him? Don't know.
One of the key things to remember (especially when the interest rate on savings is not even covering inflation) is to invest in things which bring you cash. And, they are usually linked to something people need. In short, you don't let cash sit around in some account earning pennies when it could be making way more for you somewhere else. Again, that may still be invested in something which is as illiquid as land once you buy it (think land like a parking lot in the middle of a big city where people always need parking. Or maybe a laundromat.).
So, when King Charles tried to have a conversation with his son about money (to consider having the future wife continue to work because at some point, the money from him would change) was actually an attempt to let them know (remind the son) that at some point, Prince Charles would be king and the Dutchy (which had been "helpful" to funding the son's needs up until that point) would then be under the control of PW. And that, would be that. He was thoughtful, as usual, thinking way ahead and trying to let them know ahead of time so they could plan/adjust now. The response to that early warning was not taken well or heeded (at that time or down the road as things started spinning out for them).
A question was raised about why would (somehow) legally KC be responsible for being the source of the money? (but) The real question is why should he? (Not like he's the one married to her - for richer or poorer and all that jazz.)
When then PC borrowed the money from his mother to pay off Diana at the time of the divorce, they (he and his mother) both knew that a) he would pay it back and b) that over time, the Dutchy would fund this repayment (I could be wrong about how I remember that explanation). But the Dutchy goes to the Prince of Wales and therefore is not a source of any money to people who are not in the immediate family of the Prince of Wales. So if money is borrowed by the son who is not the PoW (therefore does not have that income), what or how would a loan be paid back? A normal question by any bank loan officer. Or his father if his father were to bankroll a loan.
Thinking that the just the pure fatherly love would be enough to pay her off (just give her the money)? I don't think so. I suspect that the king not only saw how money was being spent on the lead up to the wedding, watching the bills from the first year of marriage, had vivid memories of funding his divorce and has advisors who are keeping him informed about the current and future state of the economy. We know he loves his son but would it really extend to such a huge financial payout? As of late, his public comments are few, far between and mainly come off as 'Thinking of you, Hope you are having a happy life over there.'
And, the claim of blackmail. Eh, yeah. That is a technical possibility. The problem with it is that once you pay anything - ever, there is nothing to stop them from coming back for multiple bites of the apple. And, having seen just the public behavior (not even what has been said behind the scenes, on phone calls, put in emails and texts - all that isn't coming out), would it make a lot of sense for the BRF to open themselves up for more or else I'll ... threats in the years to come?
The difficulty is having the courage to rip that bandage of blackmail off and release the information yourself, throw yourself on the ground, begging mercy and then ... you release the proof of blackmail (oh, my). People will gawk, tut-tut but your life will move on without the blackmail threat looming over your every waking moment while the blackmailer gets some tarnish at best and possible legal problems at worst.
People keep mentioning the need for an iron clad NDA. Who would really believe either could be trusted to follow an NDA and never talk about "the it" after a payout to go away quietly? Remember the court case where there were claims she/he didn't participate in the Finding Freedom? and so on. What does that past behavior tell us about the potential for the future?
Comments
The only legal way to remove an unsuitable candidate for the Crown is to do it by Act of Parliament only when their immediate predecessor, the reigning monarch, has died, ie as and when the situation arises,as and when The RF has no say in this, it is a matter for Parliamenteg. Geo VI was next in line after Edw VII relinquished the throne - and he was almost deemed inadequate for the job.
I doubt if what is published on the Royal website has the force of law so I don't attach much importance to Aldi & Lili being named there. In the event of `that' air crash, H would be deemed unfit to rule. Aldi& Lidl's chances would also be subject to what Parliament decides.
Family rivalries and casual removal of likely monarchs dogged us for centuries - hence the outlawing of usurpation.
@storiesbyjemay
Judge Fancourt: You're saying they hacked your phone, though you didn't own one, to get information you yourself provided in a recent published interview you willingly gave?
Harry: Suspicious, ain't it.
Judge Fancourt: I picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue.
(parody but very true)
https://twitter.com/storiesbyjemay/status/1666101661742292992
He also thinks that if he feels something, it must have happened, even if he is inventing some event in his mind to justify his feelings of victimhood.
I think this is the process that a juvenile mind uses to explain the outside world. Not sure if it's a sign of a simple adult mind.
Either way, he's soon going to learn that this logic doesn't hold up in a court of law.
"It was my main means of communicating with my family [including my mother who I was obviously extremely close] ... my girlfriend at the time, my friends, members of the Royal Household and those I was working with.
He started at Eton in 1998, and his mother died in 1997?
He pays the lawyer. The lawyer does as he says.
The lawyer has lost all interest after arguing hours and hours and hours with his client.
Harry loses this court case.
The lawyer gets his money.
Harry considers a court case against his lawyer.
He also thinks that if he feels something, it must have happened, even if he is inventing some event in his mind to justify his feelings of victimhood.
This is why Harry and Wife are so slippery and infuriating. There IS no objective truth for two people who decree that whatever they feel is 'the truth', even if it changes. Next Wednesday they may feel the exact opposite as they do today, but the goalposts of their 'truth' shift to whatever they want it to be that day.
Normal rational folk are expecting that Haz will be crushed in court, but his sloppy, amorphous version of reality will just slide off the immovable rock of objective truth like Jello flung at the wall will just slide to the floor. I predict that even if Hazza has his proverbial ginger arse handed to him in court, he will learn nothing from the experience that will aid in his maturation. It will be another arrow in his quiver of grievances--another example of how the 'system' is ganging up on him and conspiring to make him a victim.
It's really astounding that a person could attain nearly 40 years of age and still be behaving like a stroppy 8-year old. There is a stage of development at which children learn to distinguish between fantasy and reality, the difference between wishing something really hard and what is actually going to happen. Harry seems to have gotten stuck at a very juvenile stage of development that predates the loss of his mum and the beginning of his substance abuse. All that happened at 13, 14, but Harry very often seems even younger. He is quite a piece of work as a human being and seems to have found his dark number in his wife. They both can dress up like adults and spout large words that sound articulate until you try to parse them for meaning. But in their inner core, both of them are greedy, grasping, impatient, selfish children.
See Tourre Bakahai's comment on SMM
https://www.reddit.com/r/SaintMeghanMarkle/comments/142jmjv/a_very_good_point/
The one thing The Duke has on his side other than his fame is that being a civil matter Counsel are restrained by convention from really laying into the person they are examining.
Forgive me as I do not know the case or the law involved but as it is The Duke who is making the allegations it is surely for him to persuade the court of their accuracy. Or has The Duke been taking legal advice from that well-known Canadian lawyer and part-time actress?
Sherboorne by the way does not have any more than does any other Barrister a firm: he is self employed. the fee marked on his brief (plus refreshers) is his and his alone.
He started at Eton in 1998, and his mother died in 1997?
-------------
Exactly! That's what I thought straight away when I read your excerpt from the BBC summary. Either his recollections do vary or else that's his truth (as opposed to facts). Of course, he has to insert mummy into the narrative.
LOL. Who does he think he is?
He started at Eton in 1998, and his mother died in 1997?
If memory serves, Harry started at Eton just after his 13th birthday in 1997. Diana died on 31 August; the funeral was a week later. A week after that, on 15 Sept. H turned 13, and term started for his first year a week or two after his birthday. Of course, he's still objectively wrong if he did not receive the phone until after he went to school as it would have been a month at minimum after Diana's death. Perhaps he converses with his mother in the afterlife on this magical phone? I just don't think addicts do well with timekeeping and dates in general. He may be convinced he remembers calling his mother from school, and maybe he did, but she surely did not answer any of those calls. Could he have been calling her voicemail and got confused?
Having a child who'd just lost his mum traumatically start at a new high pressure school within mere weeks after her death seems cold, but in keeping with the British preserve of the stiff upper and just getting on with things. In retrospect, *this* is where Charles went wrong with Harry. Haz needed a mental health gap year of intensive therapeutic care, far away from the fishbowl of the court and Eton. Maybe a permanent assignment to a school in the Commonwealth specializing in children with severe emotional traumas and behavioral issues. To do so would have been to acknowledge publicly that Harold was special, more than usually damaged by his mother's death and in need of more tailored care than was given to William. Those two bereft boys were coping with so much and only now, since H got married, is the extent of his damage becoming known.
If I'm misremembering and H did have a delayed entrance to Eton . . it didn't help, obviously.
https://www.tatler.com/article/who-is-david-sherborne
https://www.5rb.com/member/david-sherborne/
I don't know much about how law offices operate in the UK, as I thankfully have never needed to employ one. I do live in residential area which houses lots of lawyers & bankers. Here in the USA, law offices are usually partnerships, sometimes employing thousands of people internationally. Senior partners can make millions of dollars a year. They get a percentage of the revenues the entire firm has brought in. To become a partner, one has to bring in a lot of business & clients. To do that one has to be very successful in the courtroom or the negotiating table, (& to have gone to a very good law school). Such firms employ armies of paralegals, clerks & secretaries. Clients are billed for every second that is spent on their cases, whether by a secretary, or the lawyer himself or herself. They are billed for time spent copying documents, mailing documents, making phone calls, etc. I assumed UK law firms operated in much the same way. I'm sure Mr. Sherborne earns large fees, but I also assume he has to pay some minions as well.
I don't think Todger is getting very good value for money spent on legal fees in this instance. I think he might win his case, as UK courts show so much deference for the wealthy & well-connected, but I've read that he will probably wind up out of pocket, win or lose. In any case, the UK courts wisely don't award the huge damages which can get racked up in the USA, (damages which are often reduced on appeal, tying up the courts for even more time).
What I'v long thought:
From https://www.reddit.com/r/SaintMeghanMarkle/comments/142g7h7/great_comment_piece_from_the_guardian/
michaelscottuiuc
•
6 hr. ago
I used to do research on national security for the US. This dude could easily be added to a terror watch list by the Five Eyes at this point. Its clear he wants regime change in the UK. Given his associations in US Government, Im concerned how far he is wiling to go in the USA now. To reiterate that he is a Prince, and that he is a member of the royal family....then to go on to trash the democratically elected government...thats a dude who wants to topple the regime from head to toe. He's trying to tear it apart from the inside out....and I'd wager he'll do it from the outside if need be.
This is an unstable guy waging a disinformation campaign against a democracy. Unhinged. The titles HAVE TO GO. MI-6 is going to be having a frank conversation with the King and his counsel because this dude is energizing radicals across the globe. There is no better time to wage a disinformation campaign than right now, with Prince Harry leading the way and absorbing the hits back.
Harry: "I KNOW they hacked me, but it's up to them to prove it."
It truly is bizarre.
It is like a replay of the Oprah interview, with tabloids listing the inconsistencies ...
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/22599158/five-inconsistencies-in-prince-harrys/
Surely his lawyers knew he would be questioned over this statement and went over it with him and prepared him? Why did they submit a statement to court that is so bad? They obviously have other witnesses who will present claims of hacking and which stories can be linked to hacking, and proof that the journalist and editor of the tabloid knew. Is their strategy to win the judge's sympathy, or did the client override his lawyers and insist on making a fool of himself?
Prince Harry never stops flogging Royal stories – at least Paul Burrell needed the money
It’s simply not tenable to have this deluded ex-Royal going around criticising the UK
Prince Harry has a point. The unlawful news gathering by Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN) and other tabloids, including hacking the voicemail of murdered Milly Dowler after her disappearance, was disgusting. We already know MGN indulged in that underhand, distressing behaviour because they settled phone-hacking claims with 44 celebrities, paying out settlements running into tens of millions of pounds. The question at issue is did they hack Harry’s phone and the phones of those close to him?
That’s as far as my sympathy extends. What the Duke of Sussex doesn’t seem able to grasp is that he is no longer in a superior moral position to anyone who has sold, or paid for, Royal stories. Indeed, selling Royal stories is Harry’s main source of income.
The Duke admitted that he would have used the phrase “two-face s—” to describe his late mother’s butler, Paul Burrell, and he wanted “to stop him selling more Diana secrets”. We would quite understand if Prince William used that colloquial term about his younger brother. Harry won’t stop flogging family secrets. At least Paul Burrell probably needed the money; the Duke has no such excuse.
For Harry’s barrister, David Sherborne, to say that an article in The People about William and Harry having a different approach to Burrell showed how “seeds of discord” had been created between the brothers, is laughable, frankly. Maybe telling the whole world in your autobiography that your brother pushed you, ripping your shirt and breaking your necklace as you fell on to a dog bowl has contributed to the “discord” with William. Just a wild guess.
The Duke clearly has a high opinion of himself, which, it is fair to suggest, is not widely shared. In court, he grandly introduced himself as “fifth in line to the throne, born into the British Royal family on 15 September 1984, to my father King Charles III, and my mother Diana, Princess of Wales”. I don’t know about you, but I no longer think of Harry as Royal at all. He gave up the right to that extraordinary privilege when he and Megalomania agreed to their interview with Oprah Winfrey going out when Prince Philip was in hospital, close to death from cancer. Our beloved late Queen was also unwell, and the worry caused by her grandson’s public confession, basically claiming Her Majesty’s family was racist, must have been awful.
Harry admitted he no longer had a role within the institution, but said that as a member of the Royal family, and as “a soldier upholding important values”, he felt a responsibility to “expose this criminal activity in the name of public interest”. This from the man who, when he was Captain General of the Royal Marines, missed a memorial service to honour victims of an IRA bomb at the Royal Marines base in Deal, Kent in 1989, to attend a Disney premiere with his wife.
You might have hoped that South Park’s satirical take-down of the Sussexes and their “Worldwide Privacy Tour” would have penetrated Harry’s skull. Clearly not. He complains that Piers Morgan subjected him and Meghan to “horrific personal attacks and intimidation”. As far as I can recall, Morgan merely said he didn’t believe a word that came out of Meghan’s mouth. A sensible precaution.
The 38-year-old prince proclaimed in court he was motivated by wanting to “save journalism as a profession”. We’re alright, thanks, mate. Focus your energy on saving yourself; you’re going to need it when the King realises you’re a total liability and does what he should have done a while ago, and takes away your titles.
It’s simply not tenable to have this deluded ex-Royal going around criticising the UK. ‘On a national level, our country is judged globally by the state of our press and our government – both of which I believe are at rock bottom”. Well, Harry should know all about rock bottom. You couldn’t make it up… but, then, they already have.
5 Raymond Buildings in Gray's Inn one of the four Inns of Court is indeed a set but it is not a business. It is just a number of Barristers who for convenience share the rent and other expenses of the chambers including paying 10% of their fees to the clerk - their fixer. The members of a set can appear against each other or with Barristers from other sets. You are to be excused your confusion for in England unlike the various American states we have a split profession that is to say divided into two types of Lawyer, those known as Solicitors who usually are in partnership or employed and account for about ninety per cent of all lawyers and Barristers whom I have just described. Most Barristers are fairly impecunious and if you seek a fair idea of how it is may I recommend any of the episodes of the television drama Rumpole many of which are available to view on Youtube.
The United States District Judge has ORDERED the government to provide information about Prince Harry’s visa application within the next week.
Judge asked government to make a decision within a week!
https://twitter.com/jomilleweb/status/1666186450130329608
this explains Todger's testimony today, by the Sun's Royal Reporter.
We haven't even got to the best bit - one guy on twitter is alleging his pro Harry evidence was falsified and he and others were threated or bribed to give supporting evidence by PHs lawyers.
Regardless of how David Sherborne is compensated, I'm not impressed with how he's prepared his client, who seems unable to present a convincing version of his claims. Harry wants the people he's accusing of harming him to prove their guilt for him. He's a prosecutor telling the defendants to prove their own guilt, not defend their innocence. Crazy.
Oh, dear, Todger, oh dear. The 5th in line to the British throne might be about to find that the former Colonies of his great-great many times removed grandfather are not as deferential to an “overseas” Royal as the UK courts. He is a resident of the U.S. on sufferance, only because he came as a package deal with the American citizen he’s married to. If not for her, I think we may have found reasons to deport him before now. It’s sticky, because of our Special Relationship and the warm residual feelings Stateside for Todger’s late mother and grandmother. But Todger is not here as an official representative of his father, the King. Not sure his family name will protect him if it can be proven that Todger has possessed and used narcotics while on American soil.
Opus,
I was a fan of “Judge John Deed” starring Martin Shaw and other British legal dramas that highlight the British jurisprudence system. In the U.S., we don’t have the distinction of “barrister” as such, but We do have varying levels of law practice. Not all of our attorneys qualify to practice trial/criminal law. What you call solicitor, we would term “family law”—wills, estates, trust funds, etc. or tax law. Firms usually specialize, so if a client was a need of a trial attorney, He or she might ask their family lawyer for a recommendation. The biggest difference is that I can see is that the KCs/Silks may be engaged to argue for the prosecution OR the defense equally. In our system, the prosecuting attorneys work for the state and the defense team is generally from a private firm. The exception is when the defendant is indigent and unable to provide for his or her own defense. In that case the state is required to provide them a court appointed public defender. Having a public defender is not a prestige like having a silk defend one. Public defenders are poorly paid and overworked, and may be either a new and inexperienced graduate or else to burnt out or mediocre to get a better job. They are they are mostly to ensure that the defendants constitutional rights are upheld and to shepherd them through the system, ideally to a plea bargain. Few would be equipped to successfully argue a major criminal case against a state prosecutor. And defense law, as in so many other places, money talks and you get what you pay for.
“Witless for the Prosecution”
From the bull* on his shoes
to the bull of his statements
Proves you can’t polish
a merde
*military term for highly
polished boots/shoes/bs
@Hikari
I love Martin Shaw
Adam Dalgliesh/George Gently…
@NeutralObserver
I enjoyed ‘Silk’ with
Maxine Peake
also ‘New Street Law’
with John Hannah
and John Thaw
‘Kavanagh QC’
IMO if there were any children, Mrs. Todger would have gone for a divorce with 20 years of significant spousal support while the children were under 18, and she would have still used her title. Charles would have been happy to kick in the $$$ just to get rid of her. But since there aren't any children, Mrs. Todger can't get a guaranteed 20 years income. She's finding out the money isn't endless.
Todger's cross examination explained.
“Witless for the Prosecution”.. another home run!
Martin Shaw is one of your national treasures. He exudes charisma. If I were asked what my pick for best British detective drama is, “George Gently” would get the nod. And I am a dedicated fan girl of all things Morse and Lewis. Oxford is lovelier to look at than Durham, but George Gently is just consistently great across the board. The partnership with “Bacchus” is unforgettable.
We shall not speak of the ending …
Just a reminder of who got hacked, and how much, back in the day of the previous case.
Jean Moir Inthe DM has an excoriating article. A few excerpts:
Trickier inquiries were met with: ‘That is a question for my legal team.’
‘I’ve experienced hostility from the Press since I was born,’ Since he was born, really. He wants to strengthen the idea that he's always been a victim.
...
In the box, the prince was frequently asked to search out paragraphs in his witness statement, in various legal bundles, on numbered pages of the box files he had to retrieve from the floor.
‘It is like doing a work-out,’ he grumbled. Mr Sherborne had to arrange for a junior lawyer to sit next to him to help navigate the paperwork – something that even Johnny Depp managed to do himself in his London trial.
...
‘Repeat the question,’ he demanded at one point. At other moments, he had trouble locating the evidence on the screen in front of him. ‘It is on the screen in front of you,’ Mr Green told him.
‘It is not,’ said Harry.
‘I think it is,’ said the lawyer.
‘If you say so,’ said Harry,...
Ouch! If Harry thought cross examination would be a breeze, maybe he's now realising that an experienced barrister, never mind a KC, is certainly no match for him.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-12166937/JAN-MOIR-five-hours-cross-examination-one-wonders-Prince-Harry-felt-buoyant.html
How much more poison
will taint their middle fingers
Determined to take the stand
media martyr
Doesn’t know if he’s
Arthur or Martha
Ginger Meggs* is all Beano**
non Sartre…
*Aussie comic strip
**UK comic
Harold caught short in a lie*
I’m wondering if haz has
summat up his sleeve
Something he’ll have
the judge believe
Otherwise
he’s out on his arse
The bloody proceedings
so far are a farce…
*Harold got shot in the eye
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/feb/26/courtroom-artists-memorable-cases-stephen-lawrence-rose-west
She's been as some of the most awful trials of recent time, Rosemary West for example.
I see that I am way behind when it comes to legal drama. Witness for the Prosecution is a wonderful play and is there a greater entrance in all of cinema history than the first appearance in the 1958 movie than that of Marlene Dietrich - almost as good as the first appearance of Baron Scarpia in Tosca - and without the benefit (with the Christie) of Pucccini's terrifying music.
`Trickier inquiries were met with: ‘That is a question for my legal team.’
Did anyone ever see the `Father Ted' episode in which Ted was trying to prepare Fr.Jack (the old alcoholic priest) for answering tricky questions in the Bishop's Enquiry? Whatever the query, he was being trained to reply `That would be an ecumenical question' This is Harry's equivalent reopy.
I've never met an entertainment or 'celebrity' lawyer here in the USA; have mostly met lots of Wall Street, corporate & intellectual property lawyers who are the opposite of theatrical or attention seeking. Such people will occasionally crack little jokes about 'billable hours,' but their mantra is usually if you have to go to court, you've failed. Why this case wasn't settled is obvious, both Todger & the organizations involved are thirsty attention seekers. Todger's barrister seems to enjoy the notoriety as well.
I have to admit I've felt a pang of sympathy both for Todger's unhappy childhood, & his current self exposure of his own shortcomings. Mr. Green has been courteous & proper in his handling of Todger, but Todger's weaknesses have made the whole thing to look a bit like bear baiting. Why was Todger allowed to do this to himself? Whose influence pushed him to this?
That is indeed entitlement. And he is right in his thoughts. His father has done nothing significant to curb his behaviour. It is difficult for a foreigner to understand how the people in the UK truly feel about all this. When will the moment of "now we have had enough of this" happen?
Don't know whether it's true, but a friend once told me that attorneys in US courts try to screen out people who seem too educated. She said, if you want to get out of jury duty, just mention you've gone to college. Have no idea if this is true in the UK.
Not a good idea, implying that his sense of what is just trumps that of the judge.
That is one of my favorite Father Ted episodes!Loved the sight of the bishop hopping into the colorful hippie van at the end.
Father Ted's treatment of Catholicism was like P G Wodehouse's treatment of the aristocracy, gently mocking, but benign.
-----
@Opus
Thanks for your 'inside' input on court proceedings as most of us, I presume, are not au fait with these legal situations.
pics of Todger entering the court house without an ear piece and leaving with one in his ear.
people are speculating that he was being fed the answers to the opposing lawyer's questions.
I agree and the Duke it must be recalled is sixth in line to the throne. One may recuse oneself from a Jury (or is that redact) for good reason but otherwise here a defendant gets what is randomly presented. I tend (like Rumpole) to regard Juries as a lower form of pond-life but again it is not their fault as they have never previously been in court. I have never been called for Jury service and neither has anyone I know but were I called I would explain why it would not be a good idea for me to be on the Jury and I would be excused and I seem to recall also that there is an upper as well as a lower age limit so I suppose my chance to refuse will never now come.
How is the Duke doing today? He seemed yesterday to forget that he is just another litigant and not an absolute Monarch with equerries to tidy up after him. He seems to me to be confused for on the one hand he is keen to remind everyone who by reason of his birth he is and yet at the same time seems to be keen to destroy the institution that gives him his position. He strikes me as both ungrateful and petulant and this case and his evidence can only reinforce that view.
We don't know what's in the `receipts' - they may contain full evidence of phone history, whose number was `called', how long they were on the line and when. Perhaps they really are damning?
It'll be quite a while before we know the outcome and I've a nasty feeling that what did (or didn't) go on in the other cases may well have a bearing on it.
In criminal cases, a jury is not allowed to know anything about a defendant's previous convictions but this is a civil case and the bar is lower. H has, in a way, been reminding us that the Mirror has `previous' in this instance.
If we can get past his `unconventional way of thinking', even though he's is paranoid, it doesn't mean they haven't been getting at him/they have been getting at him! It looks as if it could go either way, so it's better we don't get our hopes up.
H should have followed his brother's example and been careful what he said and to whom.
Sadly, it'll do little to reduce his yearning for control of the media.
On a brighter note, my husband took a load of hedge trimmings to the Recycling Centre (aka The Dump) this afternoon and tells me there's a besuited dummy wearing a Harry mask, just inside the gate. It stands there, apparently checking its watch. He wonders if it was intended as a reminder that closing time was close or demonstrating and employment opportunity for a workless Royal.
He explained that in the UK, unlike here in the USA, clients & witnesses can't be coached or prepped, & if a client wants to proceed with a case despite being advised not to, the barrister must comply. He felt that Sherborne wasn't doing a bad job, although apparently Sherborne messed up the court scheduling in some way, which is a no-no with judges.
That clients can't be coached was interesting to me, as here in the USA trial lawyers like to say an attorney should never ask a question in court that they don't what the answer will be, i.e. no surprises.
The barrister said at the end of today the Mirror was in a better position, but that was to be expected at this stage. More witnesses & evidence is to be presented later. I was a bit confused about what he said about how the other claimants' cases would affect Harry, if they provide strong evidence to prove their complaints. He seemed to say that the judge might decide in all of their favor, but Harry could still not get a complete win. He said that Todger's emotionalism wouldn't affect the validity of his claim, but Sherborne allowed it to show possible damages if they win.
Sadly, no depths of stupidity are off-limits to Todger, so I fully believe it.
Having been isolated from the Royal court and his country for three years, shut away in a gated community in SoCal which is basically a super-posh retirement home for celebrities whose heydays are behind them hasn't done a darn thing to temper his imperiousness and entitlement. (Yes, counting Katy Perry & Orlando Bloom here--Bloom was the Hot Young Thing circa 2001 - 2006 with the one-two of the LOTR movies and the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. So, nearly 20 years since the zenith. I notice he's not being discussed on
lists for the next James Bond any more. Katy was the It Girl of the Summer--in 2012. Still she got a bit of a bump at the Coronation. She was ridiculed for her Coronation outfit but I kind of liked it. It seemed very her. It also seemed that she'd been dressed for a Richard Curtis rom-com about a pop star attending a Coronation. Her whole ensemble had sort of an 'Elle Woods Goes to Westminster Abbey' vibe. And it was extra delicious having Todger's wife insisting that Perry & Bloom were attendees at Lili's birthday party when they were demonstrably still in England.)
If being demoted to a P*-whipped ridiculous entity and Handbag for his wife in a country that told his ancestor to get on his bike back in 1776 hasn't done anything to encourage some humility in the Todge, absolutely nothing will. He's like a ravening despotic Roman emperor--Caligula? Nero? No redeeming qualities whatsoever, and, since I've watched Harry grow up since his birth, I really have tried to find some. I didn't want to believe that Charles and Diana's second kid was really that twisted and devoid of human decency. That hurt little boy has become an absolutely monstrous man. He's as big a sociopath as his wife. He simply lacks her relentless drive for domination because growing up a Prince has made him lazy AF. That's why he insisted on going to court over incidents that occurred some 18 - 20 years ago. Why wait so long? His lack of urgency in seeking damages for the journalistic injuries he's suffered doesn't support his contention that his life has been ruined by them. Or that he even remembered these incidents until *encouraged* to remember in order to monetize his victimhood. He and his wife are giant wastes of air, time and resources altogether.
@Opus
the Duke it must be recalled is sixth in line to the throne
When Douche got engaged, he was fifth. The birth of Louis pushed him down a spot, but everyone got bumped up a place with William's promotion to Prince of Wales.
1. William
2. George
3. Charlotte
4. Louis
5. Todger
Further than that I don't like to go and insert fictitious at worst or at very best, constitutionally illegitimate spawn. The birth of Eugenie's second little prince pushes Edward and his heirs down a place but everyone ahead of little Ernest has actually gained a promotion with the passing of her late Majesty. Todger is still 6th if we are counting Charles as #1, but I believe the numbering starts with the sovereign's heir apparent, right?
Prince Harry v the world: the duke’s courtroom showdown
new
His appearance in court has raked up everything from his feelings about an ex-girlfriend to a night in the pub. Whatever next, asks Hilary Rose
The big question about Prince Harry’s court case, the one that’s keeping me awake at night, is: where’s he staying? Frogmore’s been repossessed. The Premier Inn on Fleet Street is full. There are a few rooms up the road in Smithfield, but Smithfield is a meat market where they used to burn people at the stake. Bad vibes.
Charles has left the country and if Camilla’s roasting a fatted calf, it’s probably to drop on Harry from a great height. And while it would be really, properly funny if William and Kate were making up the “spare” room, somehow I doubt it. Which leaves Royal Lodge, where hopefully he and Prince Andrew are arguing about epaulettes and who walks into dinner first.
And so we embark on day two of Harry versus the world. To recap so far, we’ve learnt that he expects to be called Your Royal Highness at first instance, and Prince Harry thereafter, so he’s definitely over the whole royal thing and living a life of quiet civilian contentment in California.
It’s not often that Call Me HRH makes me laugh, but then I read his witness statement. I didn’t have to read very much, which was a relief, because it’s 25,000 words and 49 pages. The best bit is right at the top, in the second sentence, which I will summarise as follows: everything in his statement is true, except for the bits that come from others, which he thinks are true but might not be. Take that, m’Lud.
Call Me is being cross-examined by Andrew Green KC, who has been a silk for 13 years. Green is described by the Legal 500 as a man with a superb mind, one of the most formidable cross-examiners at the bar, a lawyer who you would definitely want on your side and — my personal favourite — “a beast in court”.
Does he have enough self-awareness to think, “What have I done?” or is it swamped by an overblown sense of paranoid entitlement? One article, Call Me insists, was based on private information that wasn’t publicly known and therefore must have been discovered by nefarious means. But maybe Mystic Meg was having a good day, Harry? Did you consider that? You didn’t? Why not? Or maybe, as it turns out, the information was contained in a press release issued by Clarence House. Oh.
His memoir contradicted one of his claims and, on another of his theories, he conceded that he had “little to go on”. Obviously in such circumstances you make it up, or, as Green put it: “Are we not, Prince Harry, in the realms of total speculation?”
That is, by the by, as elegant a summing up of everything the Sussexes have alleged for the past five years as I can imagine. An early contender for best moment of the trial could be yet another story that Harry said could only have been obtained by illegal means. Alas, it turned out he’d said it himself. Oh. A suspicious article about his 18th birthday, a mere two decades ago, came from an interview he gave to the Press Association. Oh.
Call Me informs us in his witness statement that he is fifth in line to the throne, which is interesting. He declares that “our country” — “our” country, Harry? Really? — “is judged globally by the state of our press and our government, both of which I believe are at rock bottom,” which is also interesting.
I long to hear more of his insights on why democracies fail, and perhaps he’ll expand on them one day, when he’s finished feeding the chickens, if someone pays him enough. He has such love and respect for “our country” and its institutions that he didn’t even bother to turn up for his first day in court. Too busy. Too important. The little people can wait and that includes you, Mr Justice Fancourt, who confined himself to expressing surprise at the turn of events.
Did no one explain to Call Me that in court, feelings don’t trump facts? He’s spent a fortune getting in touch with his own, so maybe he struggles to grasp that, in this arena, they don’t matter. Hunches are not proof. There is no “my truth”, just “the truth”.
That’s what family and friends are for. Anyone could have predicted this. Anyone who loves him would surely have said: “Don’t do it.” Is Charles sitting in his Romanian potting shed, or wherever he is, with his head in his hands? His second son is under oath at the High Court, talking about what happened in a Spearmint Rhino strip club in 2006.
It’s not a great look. And where’s Meghan? Childcare issues? Keeping her own brand clean? Or is it that the only royal who she calculated could enhance her image, Queen Elizabeth, is dead, so frankly why bother with the jet lag?
A million pounds says that if he wins we get a syrupy statement from them both. Does Charles accept any share of the blame for how his son turned out? And ye gods, what must William make of the gory showdown in EC4? It’s enough to bring even Prince Andrew out in a cold sweat.
Harry, Call Me HRH, the prince of privacy, is nursing grudges from his school days instead of living his best life in sunny California. “I think he’d prefer to have a quiet family life,” Harry said of a former aide who will not be in the witness box giving evidence on his behalf. There’s a lesson for him there.
So people are aware this is the real Hazbeen.
He bloodied a polo horse with his spurs such that the horse looked like it had been stabbed. Excuses made.
Having ridden you don't need spurs as a considerate and good rider can ride by leg signals.
Allegedly shot two protected birds of prey on one of the estates. Not prosecuted as he should have been.
Rode a polo mare against advice because she was allegedly with foal. He rode the mare so hard, she started struggling so she was taken off the field and promptly died with her foal from a heart attack. Someone commented that at least they didn't see the poor mare die as it happened immediately after she came off the field. He cried no doubt because he was scared of the consequences. Hazbeen was reported to the Pony Club and no action taken, so let off for who he was no doubt because of Palace influence. The press conveniently didn't mention the mare was with foal.
He claims his brother was protected but I'm sure he was as well because the public has been well and truly hoodwinked about him and his attitude.
Any man who can treat animals like that is not someone who should be deferred to. He is scum abusing animals as people are judged by the way they treat animals, the sick and elderly people. He has form for abusing his family especially the late Queen and Duke of Edinburgh.
He got his arrogant, pompous attitude because excuses were always made for his behaviour and boundaries that should have been reinforced with consequences never were, even by authorities no doubt because of who he was.
That is why I don't like him, along with the fact that he whines about press intrusion but has never considered those he put the spotlight on in his book or in Court.
One feel pity for Todger because of his dimness & unhappiness, but that doesn't excuse him for being a cruel SOB. Harry sits on his horse like a heavy sack of cement. William is a much better rider. He stands in the saddle like a jockey when he plays polo, taking his weight off of the horse, which is making complicated maneuvers & changes in speed at the command of the rider. Todger makes his horse take his full weight & then abuses them to make them move. As the commenter says, not necessary.
Re. Pity for dim unhappy Todge…
None whatsoever. In the early days of the marriage, I did feel sorry for him because it was obvious that some shady business had gone down to get him to the altar, even though they were being presented as such a love story. But now I think whatever transpired to create this unholy alliance, he fully deserves every piece of misery he is experiencing. He really is too large degree the author of his own unhappiness. He lost his mother at a vulnerable age, but he’s been using that as an excuse for the last 25 years for his failure to do sod all with all his privileges. What happened to him when he was 12 is the worst thing that can happen to a child, but it happened to William too, and millions of other kids who are forced to cope without all the perks of Harry’s princely life. Never has a bloke who has been given so much by an accident of birth been more angry and less grateful than the Artless Todger. If his near future includes a divorce from his American wife and a return to his family, he needs to be banished to a gamekeeper’s cottage on the Balmoral estate and forced to break rocks and muck out stables as penance. I never want to see his scowling mug again but that’s too much to hope for.
no, Hikari, it's not the worst thing that can happen to a child.
I know of a family of 3 children, 2 girls and a boy, whose father was an alcoholic. Really lovely kids. The father fell on the mother while she was helping him up the stairs, killing her. Then, a couple of weeks later, the father dies of cirrhosis of the liver. The girls were quickly adopted within their ethnic community because they were lovely. No one wanted the boy, because they were all afraid he would turn into a drunk like his father. So, the boy watched his sisters grow up in loving households while he was in foster care. Nonetheless, I met him later on in life. He has a steady job, and lives in small apartments or rooming houses. He doesn't drink, he isn't a criminal, he hasn't married. He is a lovely man and tries to make the best of his life.
I also knew a handsome young man who immigrated from Slovakia. He had it all - a good job, some savings, a beautiful fiancee and a very good friend. He had an automobile accident and fell into a coma. No one expected him to survive. He was in a coma for over a year. His fiancee fell in love with his friend while they spent time at his bedside. To everyone's surprise, he came out of the coma, and made an almost full recovery. He was very hurt by the betrayal he felt from the two people he loved most, so he committed suicide leaving a note blaming both of them for his death. God saved him from his coma, and he threw it all away to hurt his betrayers!
'Prince Harry today admitted to a judge he was not aware of 'any evidence' he had been hacked by a tabloid news group.
But he said it would be an 'injustice' if he was denied victory in his High Court phone-hacking case against the publisher of the Mirror.' (DM)
In other words, he deserves to win. I'm no lawyer but I don't think that's how it works. The only winners will be the lawyers, as usual. I don't know how interested wifey is thousands of km away. Does he have to report back to her? She won't be too happy to hear/read about Chelsy.
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These events can be seen as a modern working out of a Greek tragedy, starting when the gods put Charles and Diana together. We, the Chorus, know it can't end well and all we can do is stand to one side, commenting and wailing, as the action moves, it seems, towards the inevitable ending.
We've just witnessed Harry's personal katharsis but I'm sure there are more acts to follow before the exodus is reached.
Meanwhile, we can only hope that the Eumenides have * firmly in their sights over in California.
Why Prince Harry could be addicted to litigation
Hyperlitigious people often live unhappy, frustrated lives, according to experts. But the Duke of Sussex has scores to settle
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/royal-family/2023/06/07/prince-harry-litigation-addiction/
In the late noughties ITV comedy drama Kingdom, starring Stephen Fry, the character of Sidney Snell was constantly bringing legal action against the local council. Snell, albeit fictional and played for laughs by Tony Slattery, was cited in an academic journal a decade later as nicely illustrative of “the concept of the hyperlitigious person”.
Entitled “I’ll see you in court… again”, a 2017 article in the Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law described this psychiatric phenomenon: of individuals who “frequently inhabit the doorways of law offices and courthouses, each time with a new complaint against an individual or a group of people. The cost or consequences of litigation are sometimes trivial to these clients, whereas retribution for a real or imagined slight or injustice is their foremost priority.”
Does this remind you, perhaps, of any California-based member of the British Royal family? This week, the Duke of Sussex is back in court again – this time in person – as he brings his legal case against Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN). He alleges that 147 articles published between 1996 and 2010 by Mirror titles contained information gathered using unlawful methods, with 33 of these stories selected to be considered at the trial. MGN has told the High Court in London it denies that 28 of them involved unlawful information gathering, and that it was not admitted for the remaining five articles.
To put it mildly, this is not the Duke’s first rodeo. He has, for several years, been doggedly turning litigation into something of a vocation. After voting for Megxit with his feet, publishing an explosive, accusatory, score-settling memoir, and starring in all six hours of an explosive, accusatory and score-settling Netflix documentary, Prince Harry apparently still has scores to settle.
You’d be forgiven for losing track of his various lawsuits, which have been troubling the courts since 2019, when he launched legal action against the owners of The Sun, the defunct News of the World and the Daily Mirror over alleged phone-hacking dating back to between 1996 and 2010. The following year, he sued Associated Newspapers for libel over two articles claiming he had “turned his back” on the Royal Marines after stepping away from frontline royal duties. The publisher reportedly paid “substantial damages” to the Duke.
In 2021, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex issued a legal letter to some news outlets, via Schillings law firm, accusing the BBC of “false and defamatory” reporting in an article that claimed the couple had not asked the late Queen about naming their daughter Lilibet.
The above is not an exhaustive list, merely a selection. In May 2019, the Duke accepted substantial damages from Splash News and Picture Agency for taking photographs of his Cotswolds home from a helicopter. He is one of seven people bringing legal action against Associated Newspapers over allegations it carried out or commissioned unlawful information gathering (which the publisher has denied). He is also pursuing legal action against the Government over his security arrangements.
Is it possible, then, that he has become addicted to litigation itself? It is certainly possible to argue – as some have – that he views himself as the leader of a moral crusade against what he views as the egregious conduct of the British media. He has, after all, described his efforts to change the media landscape as his “life’s work”. It also seems conceivable that the sense of purpose that drives him may have given way to obsession, if not full-blown addiction.
“Generally, addiction is when a habit tips over to the point of affecting one’s life and wellbeing,” says Dr Sheri Jacobson, founder of harleytherapy.co.uk and a retired psychotherapist.
In some cases, the very litigious person may be “deflecting away from other difficulties,” Dr Jacobson suggests. “In some ways it can be more straightforward to go for a target that’s current rather than someone in the past who has wronged you.”
While some might, by sheer bad luck, have genuinely been repeatedly wronged, others might have a bias towards seeing themselves as victims of injustice, potentially due to being victimised during childhood, she adds.
But repeatedly bringing litigation tends not to bring the fulfilment the person may hope for. “Hyperlitigious people often live unhappy, frustrated, difficult lives in which they obsess continuously about their pending lawsuits,” write Stanley L Brodsky, professor emeritus at the Department of Psychology, University of Alabama, and his co-authors of the 2017 article on the subject.
Lawyers, too, are familiar with the phenomenon of the hyper-litigious. “There are certainly people [who do this]; but those people need to have deep pockets [in order] to fund repeated litigation,” says Persephone Bridgman Baker, partner at the law firm Carter-Ruck. “At the very minimum you’re looking at hundreds of thousands of pounds on each side of [the Duke’s case], with the loser potentially bearing the majority of the winner’s costs.”
If either side goes on to appeal the decision, total legal fees could be much more than that, she adds.
It is easy to play armchair psychologist and guess what might be driving someone willing to repeatedly put so much at stake. Hard, in Prince Harry’s case, to ignore his anger over his mother’s death, for which he blames the media. Hard to rule it out as a motivating factor behind his committed pursuit of the press through the courts. But royal biographer Angela Levin is still at a loss to work out why he appears to want to “self-destruct” via the courts.
“I think he’s become obsessional now,” she says. “He’s trying to blame everything on the press and get a lot off his chest. It sounds like something he’s going to keep on grinding at and will never give in.”
When Levin interviewed him six years ago, he was “lively, charismatic, cracked jokes and was a delight to be with,” she says. “Now he’s not even a shadow of himself.”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-12171225/GLOVER-Prince-Harry-carries-facile-assault-elected-government-King-banish-him.html
Fifth not Sixth - it's worse than I thought. I suddenly come over all Kind Hearts and Coronets.
If I understand the case correctly, The Duke says that all sorts of private matters were published and the only way the information could have been acquired was by hacking ie trespass. It thus makes sense to me for the Duke to then say to the defence 'all right, if you did not hack then show me from where and how you acquired the information'. Have I understood this correctly. Somehow whatever the evidence I cannot see a red judge finding against the fifth in line to the throne especially it being a civil matter and thus on the balance of probabilities.
The fact that between Harry and the Crown, As the succession currently stands, are three vulnerable and still growing children under the age of 10 troubles my sleep sometimes and I’m not even British. Artless Todger’s wife is attributed with bragging (or threatening) that “We are only one plane crash away from the throne.”
Academically speaking, she is not wrong. Elizabeth was the third generation of second borns acceding the throne; It was an extraordinary run of contingency monarchs that worked out all right due to the caliber of the individuals who were in the batting circle, to use a baseball term, when they were needed. But if you all somehow got stuck with Todger wearing the Crown, you’d have a constitutional crisis that would dwarf both the one in 1936 and the Blitz. So whenever I think of it, I pray for the continued health and well-being of the entire Wales family. Harry makes the Prince Regent look like a sober and frugal person devoted to his father. Harry is a complete farce and tragedy at the same time.
@Rebecca
I’m a bit confused by the call for the King to “banish Harry to a private life” by that journalist. Seeing as the “worldwide privacy tour” is still in full swing, it certainly doesn’t appear this way, but the late Queen did banish Harry to a private life— That was his own request at the time, but he seems to have forgotten this. I expect that the coronation will be the last royal invitation H receives until Charles’ funeral. If H is still living by then, which I do not take as a given considering the pernicious drug use. Bumpy times still ahead for the house of Windsor.
.
I agree that Todger could win his case, especially if his fellow claimants are able to produce credible receipts & records of telephone calls & texts, etc., which Todger doesn't seem to have access to.
Previously I have thought that had he been anyone else The Duke of Sussex would have been someone to be so barred although unlike most vexatious litigants he has been able to use more than one legal system for his claims thus making more difficult the task of curtailing his litigious bent. The High Court of Justice is not to be used by the super-rich for the purpose of changing the law which seems to be the aim of The Duke. Is there a High Court Judge with the strength of character to put The Duke in his place. I doubt it. Perhaps it will stop when His Majesty cuts off the money spigot.
Fortunately there's a remedy - it comes in tubes and as suppositories under the brand name `Preparation H'.
HRH Prince Harry on the other hand honours his duty to the King (that is His Majesty King Charles III), the Commonwealth and his patronages.
Well, does Prince Henry of the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland truly honour anything or anyone?
And why are they playing these games to not to do anything to this farce= ROYAL UK?
All the royal houses around the world have correct information on their official sites, but never the British Royal Family?
`Elizabeth was the third generation of second borns' ???!!!!!
Eizabeth II was the elder of 2 girls, no way was she `second born'. Her father , Geo VI, was the second born one, like his father GEo V before him. Before that, Edward VII may have been second born but he was the first son - a rather different situation and he was always the heir - it's only very recently that the rules have changed.
My narc respondent was unemployed with no savings (that I knew of). He exploited the system as a litigant in person, apparently getting a great deal of assistance from Court staff to find all the loop holes he could, at no cost to himself. He told friends he's have the clothes off back if he could - if I wanted a divorce he'd make sure it cost me every penny I'd got.
Vicious, vindictive and out of touch with reality, have was a precursor to H.
I saw the pic on SMM and, to be fair, the `wire' could have been something to do with an ordinary hearing aid. Mine have a little `tail' of fine polythene tubing to keep the `bud' at the mouth of the ear canal. It's about 4cm long and functions as a spring; It should lie neatly within the bottom of the pinna but can pop out.
Harry may seem too young to need such assistance but I used to think that half the students aged 16-18 I met at work had already been deafened by loud music, hence their tendency to shout.
BTW for British Nutties. Before you go to a High St outfit for a hearing test, ask your GP to refer you for one. If your area has appropriate provision, and you are prepared to wait a bit, you can have the test and the aids without having to pay a penny. The basic type I have retails at about £400 and overall on the High St the average bill is £2.5K. Thanks to sales pressure.
I think you're correct about litigious individuals. In fact, I think it was rather common to have several court cases going at one point in England. Not sure if that's still the situation.
I remember reading about the life of William Shakespeare and how we know a lot about him because of the many court cases he filed. It was quite common to do so in England at the time. The thinking being that it was the courts that would settle disputes.
I think, however, that most people cases have more merit than Todger's.
Eizabeth II was the elder of 2 girls, no way was she `second born'. Her father , Geo VI, was the second born one, like his father GEo V before him.
After I posted my comment I realized I had misspoken, and I was going to be called out by the eagle eyes on this board! George V was the spare, as was Elizabeth's father. Elizabeth was never the spare; I knew that and it came out wrong. What I was thinking was, if the line of succession had not suffered two losses of the crown heir in a row, Elizabeth might have enjoyed a relatively low-profile life as the eldest Princess of York like Beatrice does currently. Elizabeth would have been far happier as a naval wife raising her beloved horses, but her destiny was to be otherwise.
We've talked about Marion 'Crawfie' Crawford's memoir of "The Little Princesses" before on this page; she's got a passage in there about how George V, whom Lilibet called "Grandpa England" and for whom the sun rose and set on her along with his senior courtiers, grew increasingly of the opinion that then-PoW David was unlikely to produce heirs, due to his penchant for cavorting with exclusively married women. Perhaps there was even a private awareness within the family that David was incapable of producing heirs. Consequently there were discussions as early as when Elizabeth was three about what would happen if she wound up being her uncle's heir. No one had foreseen the Abdication at that point, but even as a toddler, it appears that Elizabeth's destiny was always going to be Queen, even if the succession bypassed her father. Eerie similarities to Victoria's path to becoming Queen.
Grandpa England seemed to feel that the Empire would be in the safe hands of his granddaughter eventually, even though she was only a tiny girl. It appears that Elizabeth was an exceptional child from such an early age. That's why I was quite surprised to learn (from a documentary entitled 'Elizabeth Windsor' on YT, that George VI was adamantly opposed to his by-then 18-year-old daughter serving in uniform. There were arguments, and Elizabeth won the battle. . as she would do over marrying Philip, something both parents were vehemently opposed to. Elizabeth held her ground and got her way again in this, proving that she was a strong character--steel encased in a velvet glove.
Every time I hear about how Philip was reviled by his in-laws, I feel sorry for him all over again. Imagine having to endure, for 55 years, a mother-in-law who despised him, and a prickly sister-in-law too . . these two women constantly vying for his wife's attention.
It's amazing (in a dumbfounding sort of way) to think the these two Greatest Generation exemplars Elizabeth and Philip are related to such a useless article as the Artless Todger. He doesn't deserve to share their DNA.
I hadn't before heard of Elizabeth being so early identified as a potential monarch, thank you. It seems so obvious when one thinks about it, what with David and his married women - no expectation of marriage in those days. How convenient.
Margaret was quite the the little madam, even as a small child I understand, whereas Elizabeth was made of more solid stuff. As for her meeting her father's opposition to her joining up, I daresay he was afraid of her being put at risk - heaven forfend that Margaret should get the throne. Charlotte looks like a safe pair of hands as well.
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@Alianor d'Aquitaine.
I take your point about the website but any alteration, either way, to eliminate mention of the Sucksexes or to bring it up to date, is probably risking a response from Montecito.
Harry believes he has a brain and something meaningful to say. Unfortunately, that’s not the case
Prince Harry has dragged Chelsy Davy's name into court, a move both he and his feminist wife would do well to ponder
PETRONELLA WYATT8 June 2023 • 7:16pm
Ican’t keep up with Prince Lochinvar, I really can’t. His mind has become like that of God. It passeth all understanding. Just when I thought Harry had brought his hacking case because the tabloids used to call him a thicko, he popped up all chevalier-like to say it was about “stopping the abuse” of Meghan.
There are thumping paradoxes in his argument. Never mind that “abuse” is not predicated on hacking, and that the alleged hacking took place between 1996 and 2011, years before he met the Duchess
How does he square his gallant protection of one woman with his willingness to throw another to the wolves, and indeed to the tabloids? Pity Chelsy Davy, the Chandleresque blonde whose youthful dalliance with Harry is now known to people who weren’t even born when it happened. Was it right to drag her name into court?
Davy is married, and has a young child. Did it not occur to Harry, who feels every prick of life like a dagger, that revisiting the flora of their affair might distress this blameless person who, unlike Meghan, backed out of the strobe lights? Did he even bother to consult her before he sued?
According to a Davy family friend, he did not. Once again, his willingness to share details about personal relationships with women makes him less Lochinvar than louche. His constant cri de coeur is that no one comprehends how he feels. Well, Harry my boy, I do.
My phone was hacked by the tabloids in the early 2000s. I found this out from Scotland Yard, who sent detectives round to my house. They told me how traumatised and shocked I must feel. I replied I would feel more traumatised if my phone hadn’t been thought worth hacking.
(I believe one of the reasons I was targeted was because of my then friendship with Boris Johnson, with whom I worked on The Spectator, but most of my voice messages must have made dull listening. They were mostly about the literals in Paul Johnson’s copy, though the police may have thought this some kind of code.)
I was asked if I wanted to sue Rupert Murdoch, as it was a News of the World journalist who had allegedly perpetrated the crime. I said I had no intention of suing him, which confounded them. They kept asking. “Why?” “Because he’s a family friend.”
I was then offered counselling, which I refused. Having your phone hacked is not the worst thing that can happen to you. Being publicly abused isn’t pleasant, but people risk that every day on Twitter.
` I still can’t fathom what Harry is about, until it suddenly occurred to me that he thinks he has a brain, and a fine one at that.
This explains in part why he hates Britain so much, and said at his trial that it had hit “rock bottom”. Friends of mine in California say he is puffed up like an adder by having written a book and now thinks of himself as a homme sérieux.
His avowed desire to “change the landscape of journalism” takes on a sinister new meaning; Harry believes he has a mind to be reckoned with and something meaningful to express, like Shelley or Swift. It is safe to assume that any aspiring artist is against their country, ie against the environment into which they were born.
Harry obviously believes his talents have gone unrecognised here, chiefly out of spite. In that conviction he is no different from Balzac, Swift, Molière and Pope; all of them bitter critics of their age and nation.
Dante put all the patriotic Italians of his day into Hell, Cervantes painted such a picture of the Spain he lived in that it ruined the Spaniards. Shakespeare, save for his history plays, made his heroes foreigners and his clowns English. Swift finished both the Irish and the English.
Of course Harry is a highly respectable man, and respectable men are indeed, by and large, thickos, but he seems to have acquired the affectations of an intellectual, as well as the dubious morality and sexism that often singles them out.
A best-selling book was fatal to someone of his nature. That it was ghost written matters not a jot to him, and he has probably forgotten this small detail. Of course, were he to actually write a book on his own, or indeed “reform the journalistic landscape”, he would inflict such wounds on the English language that it would never recover.
In the meantime, he is inflicting pain on his former girlfriend, something on which both he and his feminist wife would do well to ponder.'
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/columnists/2023/06/08/prince-harry-chelsy-davis-court/
It's interesting that this isn't behind a paywall.
Allison Pearson: Laugh at Prince Harry, to keep yourself sane
https://archive.ph/9ws4u
'The Duke of Sussex is said to have landed in California on Thursday evening, meaning that he will have left Britain around lunchtime on the same day - the same dash he took after King Charles' Coronation in May.
He stayed at Frogmore Cottage for three nights, according to the Telegraph, but it is expected to be his last visit to the home he once shared with his wife because his father has evicted him from the early summer.'
...
'But after concluding his evidence on Wednesday, Harry is said to have opted against extending his stay at Frogmore Cottage and departed for his home in the US.
Staying with his security team, the short stay marked what is likely to have been Harry's final nights in the Windsor property, having been evicted by his father just 24 hours after the release of his bombshell memoir Spare.
Despite being given until the early summer to leave the property, the Sussexes are understood not to be planning to visit the UK before then.'
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12176083/Prince-Harry-arrived-home-California-spending-three-nights-Frogmore-Cottage.html
His full witness statement can be accessed via a link in the above post
IMO, he has a strong case for winning on most of his claims.
I do doubt his memory. But, his lawyers have lots of compelling actual evidence and we know that phones were being hacked at the time - to access voice mails and data about calls made. Those most affected, in this order, were Catherine and Chelsey, then William, then hapless. The reason why most of the court case references Chelsy is because the information was obtained from hacking her, not him. She was his closest confidante for 6 years and he told her everything.
There is nothing at all about TBW. But, there are a plethora of articles in the tabloids about them with the kind of personal information that begs the question 'how do they know?' He specifically accuses Piers Morgan of horrific attacks on his wife, but nothing published about her is part of the case. He simply reveals that a motive is revenge for narc injury.
My personal opinion: Aided and goaded by his wife, he feeds the very beast he is trying to destroy. While he is with her, he will never heal, overcome and grow up, as his brother has done, with the help of a very different kind of wife.
Something that struck me while reading through the entire statement: Charles has always been a close, involved, concerned and loving /, albeit sometimes strict, father. The entire family have always been there for him and concerned about his safety and happiness. Charles must hurt very much over the loss of his younger son. Hapless must be hugely damaged by separation from his family. What kind of loving wife does that to her husband? And why take him away from the UK, where there are now much stricter privacy laws and protection from the paps, to LA, a heaven for paps and celebrity gossip?
https://twitter.com/ArabellaRober19/status/1667192115586121733
Still trying to run a royal court from Montecito!
Re. FroggyCott, the Mysterious House
It's been my contention since Day 1 that the Sussexes have never darkened the threshold of FroggyCott. Well, maybe just, as in--they took a look at it, pitched a titanic hissy fit (particularly Madam, who thought she would be given Frogmore House upon demand) and refused to condescend to stay there. Ever. Until recently it was their 'official' address in the UK, but all of the elaborate creative fiction Madam spun in the magazines when she was 'nesting with Archie' . . going to the farmers' market, watching lawn bowls from Archie's organic painted nursery--that last bit was demonstrably false, so why not the rest of it?
Harold might have stayed there with Eugenie and Jack on the two occasions he visited the UK for PP's funeral and the Diana unveiling in 2021 but I remain skeptical. Would Euge really want to host her stroppy cousin under Covid quarantine when she had a newborn in the house, even if the house has 5 bedrooms? The whole subject of FroggyCott and its revolving door of inhabitants moving personal items in and out, hosting fictitious birthday parties for made-up babies and etc. is fantastical altogether. I believe the cottage has had extensive work done on it and it's probably lovely, but the huge bill for reno the Sussexes racked up when they allegedly lived there remains an elephant-in-the-room mystery of which there seems to be no answers forthcoming.
Toke-n Mirrors
Jiggery pokery crock
The dick stood in the dock
Like a dog with a bone
forget his tapped phone
He proceeded to embellish
to shock…
Haz appears to be the token jester,
aiding and promoting the preening
peacock Sherborne and other litigants.
The aped crusader, token for a fool,
again…
EDEN CONFIDENTIAL: No invitation to the King's birthday parade for Prince Harry
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-12179895/EDEN-CONFIDENTIAL-No-invitation-Kings-birthday-parade-Prince-Harry.html
Singalong 🎤
Apologies: Gene Pitney
Twenty Four Hours from Tulsa
Two Night Stand
Dearest Chelsy
I tried telling megs
I won’t be home anymore
But then she told me
what I will say
where I will stay
And I’m not sure anymore
Oh, I was forty eight hours
from skulker
Two days away from my tart
But I felt the claw on my back
Knew I’d have to change tack
And then, I knew
here we go again…
No disrespect to Chelsy Davy
bit of fun
SMM has discussed, at length, a `birthday gift' from a bike shop to Archie and a belated `thank you' from one of their royal flunkies.
Now the shop says they did no such thing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4a5wrb9UeQ
Why have they back-pedalled? Did it really happen? Is the `sweet present' a figment of imagination? A stunt?
@WBBM: That's in the same vein as they had lunch with the Hollywood celebs: no such thing happened.
Thank you for your fun "Two Night Stand" Gene Pitney take-off.
I loved it so much; for me it reached perfection, and was exactly what I needed today.
When the "shop says they did no such thing" they are using the words give and donate in the strictest sense...they keep on emphasizing that they "gifted", and didn't give or donate. Well, yesterday's whole word-bending word-parsing is jejune, kind of like me assuring my family that I only ate one-half of a chocolate chip cookie and they come to find out that yes that may be strictly true, but that it was half of a Monster Cookie baked in an 18" pizza pan. Sin of omission...
The British owner of the Montecito bike shop, and his wife, all yesterday afternoon kept insisting that they didn't donate a bike to Archie == didn't donate==
They keep saying they thought it would be a sweet gesture to =gift= a bike so chose a bike, gathered flowers and balloons to decorate it and a birthday card, and took photos to conveniently use on their own social media, then the British owner showed up at the Harkle's gate with balloony-flowery metallic festive gift. The gift was accepted by a staffer.
They keep insisting that the bike was a birthday gift, and not a donation. When their SM was flooded with queries about why the overprivileged kid of millionaires was given a free bike, when donating a bike to an underprivileged child would be so much more impactful, they kept saying WE DIDN'T DONATE a bike. We GIFTED a bike.
The shop owners are definitely sycophants, hence posting the "royal" thank you note and originally gushingly pushing this story on their social media. They have a big photo in their shop of Charles on a bike, their dog's name is Meghan Markle, and their shop is sprinkled with other British memorabilia.
Their mistake is in thinking that Americans consider Meghan and her handbag husband and kids to be royal. The Harkles are under the same delusion:
The one paragraph thank you note states 'Duke and Duchess of Sussex' three times, and the word 'Prince' three times. I am surprised there was space on the page for any other words.
Fun point: it took a month to receive the thank-you note from one of the Harkles' employees. Some people are speculating that this could be further proof that the Harkles don't even live at Mudslide Manor, so didn't really know or care for a full month that the gifted bike was awaiting Prince Archie.
Others are speculating that Mrs Harkle approached the bike shop herself asking for a free bike for herself (remember when she thought she was so sessy, posing on her bike at Soho Farmhouse) probably intending to flood SM with photos of the family's backs, riding on bikes. Alternatively others say that Mrs Harkle did indeed approach the bike shop for a free bike for Archie so that she could tout it on her future endeavor TIG TOTS.
The bike shop owners were ostensibly too savvy to be total pushovers so said okay, we will send over a bike, but not list it as a secret donation. We intend to gift it so we can splash our gift all over our social media, and how cute it will be to not gift it to you, but rather to little Archie for his birthday. Food for thought, yes?
Have the bike shop owners been Markled? Or were they in cahoots?
I am not sure that I care anymore.
That (they cared) came through when I read his book despite the fact that it is a long series of rants against his father, brother and any one else who he felt did not give him what it was he felt he should have been given. What ever he appears to have received was not enough or not the right thing or someone else got what he wanted.
No pleasing people who don't want to be happy. And, not everything can be fixed up to be made to go away even if the parent wants to do this - sometimes you have to live with your consequences. Like wearing certain clothing (or not). But that's what good parents have to do - let the kid make some mistakes and learn how to choose differently next time.
As a side note, I have always wondered since reading the book, what the pilot who was ordered by him to target then PC's car close enough to rattle the windows has since thought of what he had been asked to do.
Toke-n Mirrors and Two Night Stand! Very funny 😂.
@OCGal
I'm not sure why the bike owners in Montecito insist on using the verb
'gifted' and not have or donated. It's a question of semantics but it doesn't make any difference.
I love 24 Hours from Tulsa 👏
____________________
A new one from Camilla Long in The Times:
My week watching Prince Harry, Love Island’s answer to Henry VIII
So that went well, Prince Harry-wise. Hours and hours of failing to provide any evidence that he was phone-hacked by the Mirror. All he mostly said was “I don’t know” and “I can’t remember”. Towards the end of his eight hours in the witness box, though, it seemed to get the better of him. I don’t know whether it was anger over the farce of his case, or genuine fear of going back over the years of “abuse, intrusion and hate” (his words). But when his barrister cooed, in a silky, sex-mother voice, “How has that made you feel?”, the prince paused, looked down, went silent, and then his voice broke.
“It’s a lot,” he rasped.
Oh my God, I thought, he’s crying.
It’s true that Prince Harry’s case against Mirror Group Newspapers is bizarre, almost pantomimic. Tune in at any minute and you might be treated to one of the country’s top legal minds screaming, “Do you know who Natalie Pinkham was?” Or the defendant’s silk trying not to sigh as he moved through the many articles Harry claims contained “suspicious” material: “This is about your visit to Spearmint Rhino ...”
You just think: a royal hasn’t been seen in a witness box in 130 years, but when one finally is, is this what we get? Tits and bums and Paul Burrell, his mother’s former butler, being a “two-faced shit”; discussions about whether “one of the girls they asked to dance naked was a tall, statuesque blonde” who bore a resemblance to Harry’s girlfriend Chelsy Davy.
“That’s factually incorrect,” snapped the prince.
I guess every generation gets the royals it deserves, and ours is Love Island’s answer to Henry VIII.
So the whole thing is corpsingly embarrassing and funny and gripping — as my boyfriend shouted, “Harry, just stop being good material.”
But it’s also — how to put this — rather horrible. Because, amid all the mockery, the jeering and the vitriolic anger, here is a damaged, lonely, bewildered person who was, in point of fact, treated like senseless muck by the press.
Perhaps that’s what happens when you grow up in an environment that is so golden and cocooned you cannot tell when people are lying to you or wish you ill. Because the world has been so amazing to you already, you are always unprepared for it not being. You just don’t have the gear that comes with not growing up with fish fingers under silver cloches. In the absence, therefore, of any kind of sixth sense or street wisdom, all Harry has to guide him is his feelings. So what we see in this trial, yet again, is just: feelings. As a legal argument, it’s bog, but as an emotional spectacle, it’s five-star.
He can say the government is at “rock bottom”; he can say he is here to save journalism, ignoring the laughter. Who cares about sniggers when you feel this wildly powerful? Just look at the confident way he strutted into court. A day late, without any evidence, telling everyone to call him “Prince Harry” (the convention is, in fact, “sir”): it was a masterclass in spoilt arrogance.
Will he feel better for it? No. Nothing he’s done so far seems to have helped him at all: not the book, not the television series, not even the “fireside chat” in which his counsellor told him his family were “animals”. The more he gives himself over to feelings, the more only one thing happens. More vampires flock to him: quacks, PR people, totty and ... lawyers. None of them are his friends.
Who told him this case was ever a good idea? He said he ran into his barrister in 2018 in France (where? In Elton John’s yoga shala?). Why would anyone say that it was a good idea to launch a case about things that happened 15 years earlier? I’m amazed it got to court. Why are we paying for a case in which the key witness can’t remember 90 per cent of what happened? And what about his family — what do they think? A royal sitting in the box nearly crying: this is a monstrous system failure.
It’s a pity, because in his case against the papers he has a point. There is no doubt Harry was abused by the tabloids. His life was shredded; he became paranoid. We learnt that one witness for the defence, a former tabloid royal correspondent, used one firm of private detectives 900 times. That isn’t journalism; that’s dialling numbers. But all of this will get lost in the comedy mess of Harry’s life.
Vlogger River, the Internet’s most stylish drag queen posted an excoriating dismantling of the pompous AF missive emanating from “The Office of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex” in regards to the “gifting” of this bicycle for Master Archie. It’s pretty entertaining, but as much as I enjoy River’s channel, he tends to miss the forest for the trees where the Harkles are concerned. For someone who is highly educated, articulate and staunchly pro-monarchy, he takes everything the Harkles do at face value. He mocks them while at the same time never questioning their truthfulness. Maybe I’m just incredibly cynical but I think their whole life in California is a fabrication, smoke and mirrors creating the illusion of the aspirational billionaire lifestyle without a shred of truth to it. I believe that they did land Tyler Perry’s unused mansion in the Hollywood Hills in the spring of 2020, but anything that happened ever since they subsequently abused his hospitality and were forced to leave there remains for me, let us say in the realms of speculation. Including the providence and/or existence of two children, an alleged miscarriage, Alleged celebrity friendships and certainly the alleged occupancy of a 17 bathroom mansion on an earthquake fault in Montecito. Who thought of gifting a largely invisible child a bicycle for his alleged fourth birthday and the semantics of what that act is being called is just a teeny tiny drop in the bucket of Harkle fantasy world. They both obviously want to give the impression that they are running a successful alternative royal court from the exclusive enclave of Montecito, complete with mansion and royal sized entourage. We’ve seen curated photo shoots of a family life, but the whole setup is like Brigadoon— Untethered to the real world in which we live.
I don’t believe a word. The elaborately formal thank you letter issued by a signatory called “Harrison”(not kidding) on behalf of the D&D of Sussex, in a decidedly “Royal” style Isn’t composed in Harry’s wife’s signature “professional calligraphy LOL”, but I still smell her fingerprints all over it. Interesting how this faux royal-sounding missive comes to light, More than a month after the fact, but just days after Call Me HRH got his ginger behind smacked in court. See how that works? She is desperately trying to misdirect again. Doubling down on the use of the royal titles for herself and for “Prince Archie”. See, her princeling DOES exist— Somebody gave him a bike! Whether we will actually ever see photographs of an actual child riding this gift remains speculative.
I’m guessing the semantic difference between “donation” and “gift” has something to do with tax liability. It’s not an official charitable donation to the Archewell Foundation but a private gift to a little boy because they wanted to out of the goodness of their hearts. It’s like when Uncle Sam tells you you can “gift” $15,000 to someone without them having to declare it as income, but if it’s a dollar more, then tax will be assessed.
If public sentiment toward the Harkles were still favorable, I’d call this a savvy marketing strategy on the part of the bicycle shop. But in the wake of recent events like SPARE and the blatant elder abuse displayed by the Harkles toward the late Queen and Duke of Edinburgh, and now toward Charles… Any business still agitating to be associated with them in any way is committing Self sabotage. That bike shop may have just Markled itself. Who would want to patronize a store that sucks up so publicly to those two, particularly if you were a customer with a pro British sentiment— Who I would assume is the target demographic. Might as well try to market a line of bratwurst with the imprimatur of a certain fuhrer. Whether they came up with a scheme on their own or whether Lady Dumbarton pressured them into it, it comes off as pretty tone-deaf.
Robert Johnson calling for stripping of titles and removal from the line of succession ... IMO, this is not going to go away but will become uglier. I have expressed the opinion here that the duo are locked in a toxic relationship, so no divorce, and that neither is going to have a lightbulb moment of common sense and decency.
At least if him and his children are removed from the line of succession, Parliament does that so King Charles can imitate Pontius Pilate and wash his hands off any messy decisions and implementation of such.
Europe is littered with people using titles with no formal role or property attached to such titles. Let the occupants of mudslide manor run around calling themselves princes and princesses ... of trash.
Perhaps cruel of me as in this mess are two families deeply hurt ... his and hers.
Here in the UK, the verb `to give', in the sense of handing over a present or `gift', seems to have been replaced by the back-formation `to gift', at least in commercial usage. I took this to be yet another unwelcome Americanisation of our version of the language - is it American in origin? It's a usage that sets my teeth on edge. At least, when I give (ie hand) a teaspoon to someone, or give them a dirty look, I am not `gifting' the spoon of the look.
Strangely enough, in our now pathetic town library, I picked up a book, on the shelf labelled `British History', titled `It's a Pity They Speak English', assuming it was about `inward migration'.
No, the blurb revealed otherwise. The theme was `if only America spoke a different language, rather than English, we might treat it as a foreign country and understand it better'.
Please don't shoot the messenger.
Yes , Parliament can remove a monarch - in a way - if said monarchs can be presented with a choice in which their personal interest is best served by choosing what Parliament wants. Edw.VIII had to choose between the throne and giving up his paramour. The legislators can no longer separate someone's head from their body for constitutional/ political reasons.
Unfortunately, the ruling party is currently embroiled in issues arising from lockdown; the Opposition may be formally termed `His Majesty's Loyal Opposition' but I'm not sure how much that adjective can be relied upon. There was a lot of support for * from their benches.
Impeachment has been used in the past (Charles I) - that didn't end well. I can't think we've had such a troublesome royal duke since we hammered out our Constitution in the 17th century. H is even more like James II & VI than I'd imagined.
James may not have forced a conversion of the nation to Roman Catholicism as Mary I did, by Act of Parliament, but he did interfere where he had no business, in the election of fellows & masters of Oxbridge colleges, for example, by trying to force his RC placemen into their governing bodies. He escaped abroad but, in the meantime, another king `invaded' at parliamentary request.
For them to remove the ducal title, however, may create a precedent by which they could remove a monarch.
It's such a pity that H isn't a royal bastard in the legal sense, for all that he is in other senses. After all, Welby isn't `his father's son' and none the worse for it.
Last week, in a withering verdict on Harry and Meghan, he said: 'I think they've made every wrong move you can possibly make,' and pronounced, 'if you're out there too much, the public has a chance to get sick of you.'
Here, Queen Camilla's biographer Christopher Wilson sets out 20 things the couple have done which prove him right...'
Nothing we didn't know ourselves, and I 'm sure we could add to the list but it's good to see it in print. If memory serves, * was on the cover of Vanity Fair with an article, 'Wild about Harry' (I wonder if she's still wild about him, or maybe in a different sense). The article came out on 6 Sep 2017 and Carter left the editorship of VF the next day. A pity he didn't leave earlier.
https://tinyurl.com/36vw69md
Thanks for sharing the Robert Jobson story in The Independent. I think you’re right that Jobson’s opinion carries more weight than many royal reporters’. His commentary is very powerful.
I too detest 'gift' used as a verb, in the same way 'invite' is used as a noun. It has been used as a verb for the last 400 years, according to several dictionaries although it does feel like an Americanism.
The Oxford Advanced dictionary gives the following definition.
'to give something to somebody without their having to make any effort to get it'
In that sense, yes, the Harkles have definitely been 'gifted' quite a lot!
Of course, one can be gifted with certain accomplishments - be they intellectual, musical or practical-in the sense that they were originally deemed to have been bestowed by the Almighty. Clearly not applicable to the Sussexes - their abilities must have been bestowed by the ruler of the Nether Regions.
(Another of my gripes is the failure to sound the final `e' in `furore, torte, Irene and cordyline' regardless of these being borrowed from other languages. Also, have you noticed the number of younger people who were never taught how to hold a pen? Or that `H' is pronounced `Haitch' by those who should know better?
Small wonder I yell at the TV so much. Rant over!)
Reddit question posed: William's birthday is next week; what stunts do you think the Harkles will pull to distract from his day?
1. A poster replied (WTTE) that we all now know that Archie has received a new bike. This "gift" kerfuffle could have been a wily set-up so that next week on William's birthday Archie can conveniently fall off his new bike and supposedly be dramatically injured, thus taking all press away from William's birthday and putting all press onto the Montecito royals
2. A number of other posters are sure that the old false ugly rumours of a 'William & Rose Hanbury affair' will be revived, and have commented that unfortunately this rumour will probably never be laid to rest
3. Megs could yet again claim incipient pregnancy
4. Lots of other guesses, some fun, some grim
"It seems William got everything hawwy wants...hawwy got what he deserves"
That's what makes the world go 'round. In any event, I am going to try to start lathering my speech with both pronunciations and will try to adhere to the below definitions or distinctions. If it causes you furor, I apologize in advance. If it causes a furore amongst the Nutties, I also apologize in advance. /jk
"Furore usually refers to a public uproar. Furor is the American and Canadian spelling of furore, and it has additional definitions it does not share with the primarily British furore. These are (1) violent anger, and (2) a state of intense excitement."
How to Use Furor vs. furore Correctly - Grammarist
https://grammarist.com/usage/furor-furore/#:~:text=Furore%20usually%20refers%20to%20a,a%20state%20of%20intense%20excitement
The Daily Beast
King Charles ‘Frustrated’ by Prince Harry’s Behavior
Tom Sykes, Tim Teeman
Sun, 11 June 2023 at 1:34 pm BST
Prince Harry’s attack on government annoys palace
An attack on the government by Prince Harry, tacked onto the end of his witness statement in his case against Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN) for phone hacking, is “extremely difficult and uncomfortable” for the monarchy, which is constitutionally required to be “above politics,” sources have said.
Towards the end of his lengthy statement, Harry declared: “Our country is judged globally by the state of our press and our government, both of which I believe are at rock bottom.”
Speaking to The Sunday Times about the comment, a royal source said: “The Palace will find that extremely difficult and uncomfortable, because you can never fully separate yourself from the institution and it will have raised eyebrows on both sides of the park—at Westminster too—not least because it wasn’t necessary for the core of his case.
“But it only underlines the wisdom and importance of [Elizabeth II’s] decisions taken at Sandringham [the family summit in January 2020], that you cannot be half-in and half-out. Those decisions are now the royal family’s insurance—when one of its members continues to break with convention, they can point out that he is speaking as Harry Windsor, not as the Duke of Sussex, working member of the royal family representing the nation. Then, there is the deep irony of a member of the royal family talking about how the country is judged around the world, which is often by and through the royal family. It shows a deep misunderstanding by him.”
Another source, described by the Sunday Times’ Roya Nikkhah as someone “who knows Harry well,” says: “I think he’s been sitting in the Californian sunshine for a long time, hanging out with James Corden [the actor and TV host] and has lost all the instincts on how to do this, how to conduct himself carefully, still as a member of the royal family. He’s lost the knack of what he can and can’t say and there is no one around him to say, ‘No, Harry, you can’t say that, take that bit out’. It’s embarrassing for him and for Britain, for a prince to be saying, ‘We’ve got a shit government.’”
Nikkhah says that King Charles is becoming increasingly exasperated by Harry’s actions, with a source saying: “The king brings Harry up every time I see him. I don’t think we’ve moved past sad and bewildered, but there’s a bit more frustration at his behavior, because it just keeps going.”
A former courtier told Nikkhah: “I think he is seeking inner peace and this becomes the target—he thinks if he can bring the media to heel, it will cure his pain. Sadly, I don’t think it will. He’s still defending his mother. Nothing will take that pain away.”
No invite for Harry
King Charles has not invited Prince Harry and Meghan Markle to the King’s Birthday Parade (aka the Trooping of the Color) next weekend. The Daily Mail reports that it will be “the first time in Harry's life that he has not been welcome at the monarch's official birthday celebrations,” and particularly significant because this is the first such celebration of the king’s reign. A source told the paper, “I’m afraid it’s a reflection of the state of relations at the moment.”
Rehearsals for the event, the first Trooping since Elizabeth died, were conducted Saturday and included Prince William on horseback. Warm conditions caused several bearskin-sporting guards to topple over.
Overcompensating?
Charles wanted to buy his granddaughter Lilibet a big gift for her second birthday, perhaps even a custom made cubby house, but was warned off by Harry who told him to get something “less extravagant,” reports OK! Magazine.
A source told the publications that King Charles had “his aides looking at custom-made cubby houses, similar to what the Queen and Princess Margaret had when they were girls.” However, the source added the idea got a thumbs down from Harry who asked his father to do something “less extravagant.”
Parents, huh?
Am I really to believe that David Sherborne met The Duke whilst on holiday? My Father used to say that on holiday in the south of France in the 1930s he hung out at the same bar as the then Prince of Wales but he never said they met and it is hard to imagine had they met what sort of meaningful conversation they might have had. Sherborne is only a junior counsel. Something we are not being told methinks.
I am in the Hikari camp of non-believers. Even without taking account of the self-publicity seeking of the Duchess if they really were living as they say with two children and a miscarriage there would be evidence, normal, natural, every-day evidence but there is none. They go out of their way to avoid showing their life but release teasers asking us to believe a certain narrative. I call humbug on their story.
I understand your rant re. furore (although I don't seem to have heard pronounced in two syllables), holding a pen (and not being able to write in cursive) etc. My worst gripes are spelling mistakes and grammatical errors ('would of', among many others). The DM is a case in point.
Humbug is an excellent word to sum up the reaction to the Sussex mirage. I start always with the supposition that everything Madam does, says or releases through unnamed “sources” is made up. Aka “humbug”. Their tabloid-style fantasy life does not hold up to scrutiny. I suppose there is going to be some elaborate staged paparazzi encounter again next weekend to attempt to distract attention away from the Kings birthday parade next weekend, to which they are not invited. Will it be another “hike” while festooned in $20,000 worth of jewelry again? I was surprised that she didn’t claim another pregnancy/miscarriage during the Coronation. There’s got to be something up her sleeve. They both will be seething in Narc rage over their non-invitation to that event. I don’t foresee any further royal invitations for the California couple ever again, certainly not while William draws breath. By publicly denouncing the UK government as s*** in court, Harold has crossed the Rubicon. He no longer has an official Royal residence. I don’t suppose anything will prevent him from coming back to Blighty on a private jet whenever he feels like it as a private citizen to further trash Soho House accommodations. Interesting that he apparently racked up a huge bill for food and drink and destruction of property at Soho House at the same time as he was allegedly supposed to be staying at FroggyCott for the last time. More humbug.
There’s a fair chance the US could deport Harold over narcotics charges, and if that happens, where will he go? Is he going to turn it on dad’s doorstep expecting to be reinstated and given his old digs back at NottCott? I wouldn’t put it past him. Meanwhile, Mr. frequent flyer on a private jet is meant to have “warned off” his father against giving Invisibet a too-extravagant gift for her alleged 2nd birthday? The birthday that was meant to have happened last week, making her father a day late for court, that birthday? Can they even remember what birthdays they picked for their alleged spawn? As if the new monarch doesn’t have more on his mind at present then searching out Wendy houses to ship to California…Please! As if Invisibet’s mummy would turn down a legitimate gift offer like that. The simple fact of the matter is, They wouldn’t have anywhere to put a Wendy house presuming one was on offer. It’s my contention that both of them live in hotels… Separately. The Duke is very often in San Francisco which is a long haul north of Montecito. Also the most famous gay Mecca in America. What did the Duke is doing so often in San Fran and with whom one can only guess at. Safe to say it does not involve shopping for birthday gifts for a toddler daughter who is a figment of his wife’s imagination.
Humbug, it’s all humbug. Except for the trashing of the monarchy, two families, and the people of two nations by extension, and making a mockery of the court system… All of those are real enough.
"Sources" and "friends of the Todgers" are always Mrs. Todger's delirium.
Mrs. Todger continues her imaginary lifestyle.
@Hikari: You probably are correct, the Todgers live in separate hotels. No citizens have seen them in Montecito/Santa Barbara/Carpenteria going about the activities of daily living. Never. Not once.
Mrs. Todger must be taking visitors to pay her WME statements.
Which of them is the greater humbugger?
https://www.indy100.com/news/sussex-foundation-donates-ps10000-to-get-diverse-book-in-every-secondary-school
Their £10k donation is less than an eighth of the implied cost, not the total cost as hitherto implied.
Cheers Nutties
I appreciate your appreciation😘
To be honest
I’m finding it hard
they bore me
@Maneki
My pet peeve
(Chaucer has a lot to
answer for)
don’t acks…
@Maneki
My pet peeve
(Chaucer has a lot to
answer for)
don’t acks…
@WildBoar
We need the ‘e’
Otherwise we’d be heiling
that evil monstrosity
Cheers Nutties
I appreciate your appreciation😘
To be honest
I’m finding it hard
they bore me
Yeah, me too. I'll snark about them but I don't read the articles because I'm sick to the point of nausea about "sweet nods" and "sweet" anything. They have no redeeming qualities.
Harry has revealed himself to be a low-IQ and EQ individual with delusions of adequacy and mental health problems. (Before we speculated, now he has confirmed our suspicions about his deficits.) Elton John is apparently implicated in this farce per Harry. I have read that Elton's personality is best described as "bitchy", so I suppose this is why. Pity. I really liked his music in the 70s and then I grew up. I suppose he wants to remain a shit stirrer like ILBW.
Ahh, ILBW. She apparently is a completely unpleasant, manipulative individual with no redeeming qualities that thinks that she is far more intelligent than the general population. Her primary focus in life appears to be fooling all of the people all of the time. The great P.T. Barnum is remembered as great because he provided better entertainment value for the money than she does.
Their titles are meaningless here. Nobody cares about the missing kids. Nobody cares if KCIII is "mean" to them. If they OD and die, people will just shrug because playing Russian roulette with drugs of unknown origin is dangerous.
-----
Their usual MO. Donate a minimal amount and then take credit for the whole thing.
The entire amount would have been $82 or $84,000. I don't quite get why they wouldn't all of it.
But, I guess if you can get all of the kudos for donating only an 8th of the amount, good for you.
Do you remember circa June 2020 when the Todgers supposedly moved into the "Chateau at Riven Rock" and some intrepid Internet sleuths who resided in the area of Montecito took a gander down that street and found no evidence of life whatsoever . .? Guard house deserted, with seemingly weeds growing across the driveway? Not a bean. Around this time, Montecito neighbor Rob Lowe claimed in a Covid-lockdown virtual interview for a chat show that he'd tailed PH or a figure driving a black Range Rover any way back to that address? But Lowe laughed all the way through that segment so I got the distinct impression that he, sort of the unofficial mayor of Montecito/one man Neighborhood Watch was trolling the pretentious tw*ts by letting them know, on national television that he was on to them.
Another online sleuth had uncovered the realty listing for the property as available for daily and hourly rates for use as a photography and motion picture production venue. The fee was listed at $700/hr, with a minimum 7 hour booking. $4900 to have those grounds and limited access to sections of the house for a whole day seemed quite affordable by SoCal standards. I think the Todgers were renting it out for use in their various PR scams, including setting up a chicken coop in the garden. Now that Covid restrictions are over, it's too hard to sustain the illusion they live there full-time. That's why Hazzard ditched his father's Coronation early ostensibly to attend Archie's birthday party . . which must have been held in a gay strip club in San Francisco.
No children.
No mansion.
No Hollywood celebrity friends.
No Netflix, Spotify et. al deals any more. Those bridges are burnt.
No marriage, except on paper . .only contractual publicity appearances.
And probably, no money.
Mrs. Todger must be taking visitors to pay her WME statements.
Visitors is a classy way to put it. I wouldn't be surprised at all. The guttersnipe has reverted to her level like it's 2013.
Glad to see you back. As @Magatha says,
To be honest
I’m finding it hard
they bore me
I usually skim read articles, if I read past the headlines. I'm waiting for something big to happen, and have been for a long time, but nothing major really happens. There's a limit to the number of insipid, shallow, whingeing films/books/podcasts they can produce. We've lost our appetite (assuming we had any).
-----------
@Wild Boar
Are the £10,000 donated or gifted? I'm just 'acksing' (@Magatha😉).
The link to the article states 'The book’s curator, Jonathan Mildenhall, co-founder of marketing company Twenty First Century Brand, has said he “won’t rest until I know that there is a copy of this book in every single high school in the UK” and a GoFundMe has been set up to achieve that goal.'
Not sure who he is but LinkedIn says he is 'a globally respected professional in the marketing and advertising world'. If you say so. Why he has taken it upon himself to make sure there is a copy of that novel in 'every single high school' is anybody's guess. As for the Harkles, they're in the US, why do they need to contribute to the distribution of a book in the UK? Apart from keeping them in the news.
Has St Meghan Markle been removed/banned from Reddit? I can’t access it.
A lot of Redditors are shutting down from June 12 through 14 in order to protest the decision by Reddit management to shut down all of the third party apps that made it easier for people with various handicaps to access/use the content of Reddit. The apps are apparently more user friendly than Reddit directly; I've found Reddit to be glitchy. It also made it easier for the (unpaid) mods to quickly go through content to eliminate trolls posting really offensive material.
The management has argued that they did not "shut them down"; they are welcome to stay if they pay something like $2,000,000 per month in fees. My guess is that they want to get rid of the volunteer mods in order to directly impact free speech.
I don't use any apps. I know that some of the management wants St. Meghan Markle shut down and SMM are setting up other sites for that eventuality. They are on Twitter at https://twitter.com/smm_mod; also at Discord (but I lost my password for my original account and can't get back in).
SMM did say they'd `go dark'/black out today as protest against Reddit trying to shut them down and said earlier that they had detected a number of pro-Harkle posters trying to disrupt the process eg by condemning entire posts for obvious minor errors such as where reference was made to `Wm's car' when we all know it was H's boot she was rummaging through.
Fingers crossed that it'll be up and running again - I hope they haven't objected to us reposting some of their stuff, although we're careful to give credit where it's due -I don't really understand how the Reddit system works.
https://variety.com/2023/digital/news/reddit-blackout-dark-protest-api-charge-third-party-apps-1235640741/
`...every single high school'? The blanket term for our upper schools is `secondary' - is this guy an American who was conceived on that USAF base in Suffolk?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Mildenhall
Was trustee for the Prince's Trust about 20yrs ago
https://www.express.co.uk/news/royal/1779682/Prince-Harry-mocked-princess-anne-coronation
I would be surprised if they weren't all much amused, as we all were!
Some may be disappointed that harsher punishment from the family is unlikely, but for two grandiose, entitled, puffed up idiots, being treated as not important to make a fuss about is probably devastating ... hence all the ridiculous stories about extravagant gifts, all the sweet nods, etc. In the past, they do tend to spiral into being more outrageous to get attention, like the children they are, so the show is not over.
Interesting video from the BlackBeltBarrister:
https://youtu.be/32p43VRG5WY
What the barrister did not go on to say is that others in the royal family have faced the same challenges. They made different choices because of character, not because they were not also used and abused by the tabloids.
I do find hacking and the use of private investigators to dig up gossip appalling. However, the never-ending stream of people suing and seeking big payouts and the destruction of tabloids are misguided, in my opinion. Any tabloids that have to shut down because of bankruptcy will soon be replaced. Paparazzi and hacking (both that ruled in the UK before Spare met TBW) have been shut down. These court cases will not deter tabloids in the future ... they still publish gossip and speculation (along with PR for these poor besieged celebrities), but pretty much stay within the rules to do so.
Something more positive they could do is fund an organization that is scrupulously unbiased and fact checks the media. And make it trendy and popular to check and reference the organisation, and to use rational critical thinking.
But, people like the duo do not want to be fact checked in any way, and they feed the gossip industry. It is a mess .... but entertaining!
Like the thread on the Lipstick Alley site, it has gone private. Suspicious! All the threads devoted to her defence and adoration are still public.
Mildenhall seems full of himself. You'd think however that he would have known that we do not have High Schools.
https://twitter.com/jomilleweb/status/1668392131562467328
Do schools, secondary schools, still have books? Unless it is part of a syllabus why would one read it and even were it part of a syllabus I'd read the Cliffe notes or watch the Channel 4 mini-series. I have to confess however that when I was at school I came across in the school library a volume of sixteen then fairly contemporary American plays such as The Petrified Forest. Really enjoyed that and Ben Hecht's The Front Page - some diversity points there I think - but time flies, I read no further and I suppose that volume remains there unopened for decades.
Per grandkids, it depends on the school district and grade level. They have a mixture of workbooks and computers in their Florida school district.
When I was 14-15, I borrowed Solzhenitsyn's One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich as recommended on our list. My parents had a look at it and, as bad luck would have it, found a passage with one instance of `F-'.
The were appalled that we should have such a book on the school premises and devastated that we should be persuaded to read it and I thought something like `Typical! They've missed the point entirely- that's how to get political points about tyranny across'.
I do wonder how many of today's youngsters regard a book as too much effort - and an estate agent (realtor) is on record as recommending people hide/destroy their books as potential purchasers see them as `old-fashioned' and tainting the entire premises. It's a sad world today.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12188585/Prince-Harry-cheers-wounded-military-veterans-Warrior-Games-San-Diego.html
One thing, among others, that did come across from his evidence at the trial that it caused problems with Chelsey that his other interests took him away often and sometimes for extended time. TBW clung to him like a barnacle. We are so in love looked more like possession and control, increasingly. Remember there was a time when he was showing irritation at her always wanting to hold hands and using the two-claw grip when he tried to say no? Perhaps they have come to an agreement and she has accepted that if she wants to keep him, she has to give him a lot more breathing space. Of course, she has no interest in the Warrior Games, Invictus Games, the African bush, royal events where she cannot be the star attraction ... pretty much everything that was his life before he met her ... other than a photo op, a stage to make a word salad speech, and masses of media coverage.
-----
I keep coming across scathing criticism of them 'hiding their children' to the extent that people believe they do not exist. Can I be contrary without causing offence?
* Children have a right to have privacy until they are old enough to choose for themselves. Too many celebrities push their children into the limelight from a very early age.
* However, the duo want to have their cake and eat it. Not only did they 'sell' their children in their Netflix documentary, to shine up their images and take in tens of millions, but they demand that their children have titles and are in the line of succession. The children are American, and are completely alienated from the royal family, everything royal and British. They have no idea how to deal with crowds, nor what it is like to be in a castle/royal residence, filled with antiques and treasures, how to treat courtiers ... among so many other things.
* Surrogacy and all the ridiculous secrecy around their births is also problematic. It is childish and unacceptable to claim the throne and then refuse to follow rules and traditions that have been developed and changed over centuries. Eugenie waited a week or more before announcing the birth of her second child. She shared a couple of photographs (the similarity between Archie and August is startling) and there was official silence from the Palace. But, British people were over the moon delighted. Her second child is tenth in the line of succession and will drop lower as time passes, and has no royal title.
So, yes, I do think the royal children of Montecito do exist and that they should be kept out of the public eye and be allowed to find their own way in life. However, I think the children and their father must be removed from the line of succession. Whatever titles can get removed should also go ... let the litigious couple spend a few more hundred thousand suing the government and his father. If he thinks he is entitled then he knows nothing about the history of the monarchy and how a constitutional monarchy works.
I cannot be the only person who reacted negatively to the virtue signaling and I presume that today there are youngsters who likewise react against the prevailing ideism.
It's a couple of years away yet, but at some point Archie is going to have to start school. Unless she is planning to home educate him, no matter how many NDAs in place, more people are going to start to set eyes on him.
There's no indisputable evidence that she gave birth on the occasions when the children were said to have appeared in the world. On the contrary, there's enough to suggest was something very odd about the processes involved:
- Harry's `change so much in 2 weeks';
- the unstamped Archie birth certificate which suggests, at best, an interim document to cover an adopted child (the statement printed on the cert., that it's a true copy is only legally valid when the doc. has been endorsed with an authenticating stamp. This is common practice with official documents. It's like the `seal' once placed on them. My own birth cert. is so old has a physical postage stamp, representing the nominal fee paid, oversigned
by the Registrar, for authentication.)
- the suddenness with which the Lilibet's birth clinic ceased functioning suggests something odd was going one.
- Her father's reported statement that she'd had a hysterectomy
- the acrobatics performed by her bump and her way of moving as if it was of no weight whatsoever. How she can call herself an actress, with her spine vertical playing a heavily- pregnant women, is beyond me.
-and so on and so forth...
At the very best, I can accept the idea that H has fathered 2 children, not necessarily on the same woman, in either the traditional way or as surrogate carriers. In neither case is the child entitled to succeed to the throne. We may never know the truth until there is an immediate prospect of this. Until then, it doesn't matter, for all that we find it acutely frustrating.
I keep coming across scathing criticism of them 'hiding their children' to the extent that people believe they do not exist. Can I be contrary without causing offence?
* Children have a right to have privacy until they are old enough to choose for themselves. Too many celebrities push their children into the limelight from a very early age.
Although I've been in the 'Rent-a-Kid' camp since December 2018 and the debut of "Square Bump", in general, I agree with you. Miss Sienna Elizabeth Mapelli Mozzi is 2 years old like her cousin August, and we've never seen a single photograph of her. It might be nice to see a family snap of the little miss with her parents and her big brother Wolfie, who we have seen plenty of. But I respect their decision not to show her to the public, and even though she is unseen, I can believe that 1. She is a real child, and 2. She legitimately deserves a berth in the line of succession of the United Kingdom. I believe this because of who her parents are. In the same fashion, I am forced to doubt the veracity of the Sussex children because of who their parents are. For a couple so bitter, vengeful, dissembling, avaricious and full of lies, agendas and angles--why SHOULD we believe their pregnancy/childbirthing/child loss/parenting stories? They've not laid a foundation of trust in their truthfulness or transparency about any other single facet of their lives. It'd be strenuously against the (lack of) character they have shown if they were being resolutely truthful about these children. Then there's the matter of, we HAVE seen any number of publicity shots of 'Archie'--but it's been such a dizzying array of different babies/kids. Also on at least two occasions, with some debate about a third, demonstrably--an inert doll. So which of these kids is he? The Sussexes claim to be safeguarding the privacy of their children but then they (principally she, but he was also in the Netflix special) pulls these stunts. They have both posed with *little girls* and claimed that they were Archie. In the end, it comes down to character and past history--does their family life pass the smell test for authenticity? For me the answer is no.
The public thirst for images of the Royal children is nothing new. I've read that when Prince Andrew was born, his parents, feeling that Charles and Anne had been too overexposed to the press horde when they were children, resolved to keep Andrew away from the public eye as long as possible. His nanny took him out for airings on Palace grounds but he did not make a single public appearance until he was 18 months old, when he appeared on the balcony. Since it had taken so long for a glimpse of the newest little prince, wild rumors had been circulating that they baby had severe birth defects or even worse, had died. It's definitely a fine balancing act between appeasing public interest and giving one's children privacy and childhood free of intrusion.
I keep coming across scathing criticism of them 'hiding their children' to the extent that people believe they do not exist. Can I be contrary without causing offence?
* Children have a right to have privacy until they are old enough to choose for themselves. Too many celebrities push their children into the limelight from a very early age.
Although I've been in the 'Rent-a-Kid' camp since December 2018 and the debut of "Square Bump", in general, I agree with you. Miss Sienna Elizabeth Mapelli Mozzi is 2 years old like her cousin August, and we've never seen a single photograph of her. It might be nice to see a family snap of the little miss with her parents and her big brother Wolfie, who we have seen plenty of. But I respect their decision not to show her to the public, and even though she is unseen, I can believe that 1. She is a real child, and 2. She legitimately deserves a berth in the line of succession of the United Kingdom. I believe this because of who her parents are. In the same fashion, I am forced to doubt the veracity of the Sussex children because of who their parents are. For a couple so bitter, vengeful, dissembling, avaricious and full of lies, agendas and angles--why SHOULD we believe their pregnancy/childbirthing/child loss/parenting stories? They've not laid a foundation of trust in their truthfulness or transparency about any other single facet of their lives. It'd be strenuously against the (lack of) character they have shown if they were being resolutely truthful about these children. Then there's the matter of, we HAVE seen any number of publicity shots of 'Archie'--but it's been such a dizzying array of different babies/kids. Also on at least two occasions, with some debate about a third, demonstrably--an inert doll. So which of these kids is he? The Sussexes claim to be safeguarding the privacy of their children but then they (principally she, but he was also in the Netflix special) pulls these stunts. They have both posed with *little girls* and claimed that they were Archie. In the end, it comes down to character and past history--does their family life pass the smell test for authenticity? For me the answer is no.
The public thirst for images of the Royal children is nothing new. I've read that when Prince Andrew was born, his parents, feeling that Charles and Anne had been too overexposed to the press horde when they were children, resolved to keep Andrew away from the public eye as long as possible. His nanny took him out for airings on Palace grounds but he did not make a single public appearance until he was 18 months old, when he appeared on the balcony. Since it had taken so long for a glimpse of the newest little prince, wild rumors had been circulating that they baby had severe birth defects or even worse, had died. It's definitely a fine balancing act between appeasing public interest and giving one's children privacy and childhood free of intrusion.
Exactly. I don't think it's about privacy or 'the best interests of the children' at all. I think it's about exerting control, courting controversy on purpose for clicks and frankly making mugs of the world media and having us all on, from John and Jane Q. Royal watching public to the Queen and the rest of the Royal family themselves. I think it's a grave mistake to think for one moment that Narkle is a normal mother in any respect, capable of normal maternal feelings. Remember that her own brother said publicly that she should never be left alone with children. That was during the engagement, and that chilled my blood, I can tell you. Thomas Jr. and Samantha are both parents--was he speaking from experience of Auntie Meghan hurting one of her nieces or nephews? Anyone who intentionally hurts vulnerable children or animals is straight up a psychopath in my book. God help those kids if they in fact exist.
* Surrogacy and all the ridiculous secrecy around their births is also problematic. It is childish and unacceptable to claim the throne and then refuse to follow rules and traditions that have been developed and changed over centuries.
Well, I'd go much further than saying it's childish and unacceptable--I'd call it treasonous tampering with the Royal succession--a crime. Several crimes, really. Even if there are two children conceived with the aids of fertility technology via surrogacy, who were very much loved, wanted and brilliantly cared for . . .they still are not *legitimate* heirs to the Crown and therefore must be recused. It has nothing to do with their inherent worth as people . . but if they weren't conceived by TBW from H and came out of her body, they do not meet the criteria for Royal heirs. That's it, end of. If Parliament now wishes to alter the constitution to allow children of adoption or born via unconventional means/having genetic material which is NOT Royal by blood on both or either side . .that is a matter for them to decide. As it stands now, however, if H and his wife did not have their babies the usual way, from both of their loins, they are disqualified for the succession, and a gigantic fraud has been perpetuated, twice, for the last 5 years and will continue to be perpetuated until somebody comes clean. One hesitates to embroil the late Queen and now Charles and William and the whole family in a resolute conspiracy of silence over a matter this grave, but if they have done so it's out of an awareness that to do otherwise would be the end of the monarchy. They are probably right about this. Can you imagine the republican coup that would be likely to follow? Then Madam would have gotten her wish, to destroy the monarchy. Whatever H and his wife choose to call or style their alleged children, even if they are legitimate, they are constitutionally irrelevant in terms of getting anywhere near the Crown (as long as the Wales children all continue in good health and life). Really, apart from William's family everyone else is relegated to 'paper heirs' only. Still, if massive coverups are in progress it still doesn't feel very nice.
So, yes, I do think the royal children of Montecito do exist and that they should be kept out of the public eye and be allowed to find their own way in life. However, I think the children and their father must be removed from the line of succession. Whatever titles can get removed should also go ...
I can certainly agree with at least the latter half of your statement. Yes. Out. Absolutely.
as I posted earlier, Harold is at the Warrior Games in San Diego.
this tweet asks why he couldn't have brought Archie with him to view the activities
Theresa Longo Fans
@BarkJack_
·
Jun 12
The Wales Family is set to get together for a new Family Portrait according to my rock solid Royal Source!
He gave a speech at the Warrior Games. I did not realize the games had such little support
William did an engagement with his Aunt Sophie! It was a movie premiere about rhino conservation and poaching in South Africa.
I am now, and have always been, firmly of the belief there are NO children.
No damning evidence to the RF, because the RF never promoted the Todger children. The RF may have sent formal birthday greetings, but that's it.
Some time back, I mentioned trying to find zoological equivalents for people I don't care for - it should have been obvious then that she's the spider, of considerable venom, and he's the fly, being sucked dry financially and psychologically. All that remains now is to decide what kind of unpleasant species of fly he might be.
The image of a Stinkhorn fungus, Phallus impudicus has just come to mind, so perhaps he's just one of those small flies attracted by its, ahem, masculine odour.
`Will you walk into my parlour', said the spider to the fly' , see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Spider_and_the_Fly_(poem).
It's surprising really that he hasn't claimed to have an `addictive personality' and blamed it on his genes. He has too weak a character to have turned around and said `I'm bloody well going to prove them wrong!'.
At least, that's what it looks like to me and I wish he could prove me wrong. Sadly, it looks as if he was born horrible.
This is about * stinging Invictus for her clothes.
Lies are difficult to bring off successfully for they must be constantly and at all future time supported.
This is interesting ... That Australian body language expert gives her views on the state of the relationship and the future.
I agree that she never loved him because she is not capable. But, his status and wealth and the global attention he gave her really went to her head. I think the excitement and power she felt ... she could have mistaken those feelings for love. She lived in the bubble of a Hallmark romance for a while, but the movie ends. She can still put on an act briefly, and possibly she keeps rewriting the love script to try and fit the reality that she does not fully acknowledge. She does still get plenty of fuel from controlling him ... separating him from his destiny, family, country, and using his money to buy herself the LA life she had dreamed about since childhood, and so on, makes her feel very powerful in all ways. But to assume that they will part ways is perhaps wrong ... she does not want a husband she loves but one she controls. As for him becoming a liability ... I don't think she has good judgment at all. She has had so many opportunities that she has messed up because of her bad judgment, among other things. And, the royal family and tabloids are still a very useful place to dump blame.
But, he may leave her. The man does not have a good record for long-term intimate relationships. And he has no conscience about betrayal. I don't know if she has figured that out (she is too self-absorbed).
One of my favourite books
has been issued with a trigger
warning
Nancy Mitford’s
“Pursuit of Love”
Why?
Uncle Matthews’s
hounds being forced to
chase the the children?
Save the dogs, sod the kids…
😉
"she does not want a husband she loves but one she controls".
That truth, combined with Harry's pathological fear of abandonment, makes me certain that neither of them will ever willingly leave the other.
They each have differing reasons for their mutual death-grip entanglement, which I suspect only actual death or incarceration will release.
Sorry to here about `The Pursuit of Love' especially as it's thought to based on how Mitford's father treated his children. Spoiler: they survived to tell the tale literally!
Have they issued a trigger warning about the original `Black Beauty', as written by Anne Sewell, yet? Or has it been cancelled on account of the title? I had to cope om my own, aged 8, with a horse being shot on almost the first page, and then with Maurice Wilson's illustration of my role model, `Ginger' the chestnut mare, dead on the back of a cart, with her head hanging over the cart tail.
H would have done well to have read BB as a child, both as a lesson in how to treat horses properly and how to `fight the bearing rein' of press comment at the appropriate time- by refusing to accept the picture they were painting and demonstrating its falsity by conducting himself decently, instead of going along with it. Bit late to complain now.
I also think the book should have been required reading for the `equine' students at the local `land-based' college, as they've been fed nothing but pap under the title of BB, an insult to the foundation document of animal rights.
-----------
@OCGal
`mutual death-grip entanglement' is exactly right. Have 2 pythons ever been known to do for each other? Or is there a higher risk of her swallowing him whole?
Yes, that's very astute. It's safe to assume that TBW is incapable of love for anyone, except for herself, of course. Control and manipulation to get people to increase her status and her bank account is the only reason she cultivates relationships. Harry's has been the most lucrative so far, which is why she's clung on to it for at least two times longer than her normal MO. She normally ditches friends and lovers after two years, max. Trevor was the anomaly there. I wouldn't make the mistake of assuming that meant she cared; just that maybe she could afford to be a little less ruthless when she was younger, when she assumed that Trevor was going to open doors in Hollywood for her. Their official marriage didn't last longer than 2 years, so that was in character.
That truth, combined with Harry's pathological fear of abandonment, makes me certain that neither of them will ever willingly leave the other. They each have differing reasons for their mutual death-grip entanglement, which I suspect only actual death or incarceration will release.
While they are still publicly a couple, increasingly their activities are presented as separate. During lockdown, they were forced to be together more than either of them wished to be, perhaps. Harry's had quite a hiatus from the ball and chain it seems, with his jaunt to London for his court appearance, followed swiftly by this trip to the Warrior Games. He really seems like the old insouciant Haz when he's without his wife clutching and pawing, as long as the event he's at is not a Royal event where he's forced to be in the proximity of his family. Madam has been keeping a suspiciously low profile since the "near catastrophic car chase", but she's probably putting the the finishing touches on whatever desperate PR ploy she's got lined up for the Trooping the Color festivities on Saturday.
Their bizarre arrangement suits them, I think. She's got a husband with wealth and prestige (both increasingly faded, but he will always be Harry of England. That is a currency that another richer captain of industry couldn't provide) and he's got a wife who lets him do whatever he likes and with whom. She introduced him into the kinky drugs-n-sex circles he gravitates to. America is his playground away from the watchful eyes of the Royal family and RPOs. She's got her own 'friends'. It's a contractual 'show' marriage. What keeps them 'married' is that both know that they aren't going to find another person who would tolerate this arrangement. They remain mutually useful to one another in this regard. In actuality, I think they both despise each other, but they need each other, too, for mutual benefits. It's very toxic. It seems quite similar to the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. Those two would have exploited social media too, if they'd had the opportunity.
IMO Mrs. Todger rather than full of self love, if full of self loathing. She needs constant validation from others to fill what's empty inside her. That's an impossible task; she's a black hole of neediness. Mrs. Todger is, however, self centered and is only interested in herself. She's only interested in others if they can do something for her, or give her something she values.
I agree that the Narcissist is basically an empty shell; there is no core self, which is why they cannot come up with original ideas and incessantly copy others. They do not understand why they feel so “other” so that feeling of alienation from normal humans becomes rage. It is fundamentally rage at the self but it’s buried subterranean in order to protect the ego. The gaping wound that creates narcissism is dealt when a vulnerable very young child is abandoned or otherwise betrayed and hurt consistently by a parental figure. Doria was off getting high for M’s formative years and even if she was there, was an inattentive, unavailable disinterested mother. I doubt she ever really wanted a kid to tie her down. I think that her daughter learned to be manipulative and demanding and entirely self-centered as a survival tactic. If she couldn’t get adult attention by being cute and sweet, she would get it by any means necessary, including violence, lying, stealing creating havoc in the family and triangulating her parents against each other. deep deep deep down she doesn’t feel lovable or accomplished at anything to be worthy, but she can’t admit that even to herself so it comes out the opposite. She’s got to bulldoze people and grab what she can while she can before she’s discovered. Her whole life has been like this. If I can scrounge up any pity, it’s for that little curly haired toothy baby smiling in pictures with her daddy. If her parents had been better people, she might be better. But it is what it is. She and Harry both have childhood trauma of discord in the parental relationship. It’s scarred them both in remarkably similar ways.
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Yep. I think this is initially what they bonded over.
Trauma bonding is so strong, and hard to break.
CDAN has a blind item about one of the hired help being more than just an employee. Today's last blind.
@GWAH: Harry’s wife got a new bodyguard sometime around the time of the coronation. Yawn.
https://www.reddit.com/r/SaintMeghanMarkle/comments/149hu41/dhs_denies_heritage_project_visa_request_updated/
A quick diversion off topic, but you have described my narc sibling perfectly and I just wanted to acknowledge that and thank you. It's nice to know sometimes that you're not imagining things.
Laura Poirot
@thelaurapoirot
2005 "He was attached to my son’s unit and they went out for field exercises. He had a really bad attitude and when they came back to base he ripped off the Oz unit patch , threw it on the ground and trampled it into the dust. Said it was the worst unit he’d ever “worked” with!"
the thread is pretty good but this is the juiciest bit by far.
THURSDAY, JUNE 15, 2023
Blind Item #6
Apparently the ginger haired one looked into having his home be an official mission/consul so he wouldn't have to pay property taxes on the residence.
you have described my narc sibling perfectly and I just wanted to acknowledge that and thank you. It's nice to know sometimes that you're not imagining things.
I'm sorry you've had to grow up with that family dynamic. Would you say you are the scapegoat child in your family? Where in the birth order is the Narc sibling? I wonder what the data says about the percentage of Narc children being firstborn, middles or youngests.
I've always been interested in aberrant psychology, I guess, based on the types of reading material and movies/shows I gravitate to. Human beings are an endlessly fascinating puzzle. The narcissistic personality has been occupying me as a matter of study since TBW blew onto the scene. Before I discovered NuttyBlog, I was following the HarryMarkle timeline of events . . this was even prior to the wedding. HM was one of the very earliest bloggers to identify some very disturbing traits/quizzical activities/murky motivations on the part of Harry's girlfriend. Narcissism is definitely the rise in society worldwide, but perhaps at no other time in history have so many high-profile Narcissistic individuals been hiding in plain sight as public figures. There are a number of others besides TBW that come to mind in show biz, politics and the business world. In my estimation, Harry's wife is a really low-grade and immature exemplar of the condition. If she'd been as intelligent as she's always promoting herself as, more self-aware (what HG Tudor calls 'Ultra', she'd probably still be in the Royal family, stealthily carrying out her agenda. TBW and Harry are both Narcs but they are both extremely childish, with no ability to delay gratification of their Narc egos. They've got no Game and are so childishly transparent. If they were clever, they'd be really dangerous. As it is, they are stupid but have been able to harness the Zeitgeist of racism/victimhood ideology to get as far as they have. The fact that Harry is the son of the King sure doesn't hurt. It's his only ace in the hole, and TBW has got that reflected, curdled glory.
There are a number of excellent therapists online offering advice about dealing with narcissism in personal relationships as a target/victim. Dr. Ramani is one I like; Kenny Weiss is another. HG Tudor can be too triggering for people who have intimate acquaintance with Narcissists. He self-identifies as that kind of dark personality but nevertheless is helping people through his channel, so he may not be as devoid of compassion as he claims--otherwise he'd be on the dark web teaching people how to build bombs, rather than offering practical advice about triumphing over narcissistic manipulation. He's a bit of a paradox.
It's really no life at all. Even if it looks like they are thriving/'WINNING!' on the exterior, inside they feel nothing. Always in search of that magic thing--title, material possession, tabloid coverage . . that will erase all their failures and make them a 'real' person. Nothing will do it but they persist in the belief that it will. They are lost, lost, lost . . forever, and permanently. It's really a terrible sentence. Almost enough to make me feel sorry for them. Almost.
Time will tell whether there's any truth in this ludicrous suggestion
Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s lucrative Spotify contract reportedly cancelled after 912 days
There’s more bad news for the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, with reports suggesting one of their most lucrative contracts has been canned.
Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex: Saint or sinner? Grievously wronged son or petulant man-child having a prolonged tanty? Palace whistleblower or modern-day turncoat?
To write about the 38-year-old today is to constantly wrestle with the contradictions and the complexities of a man who did the unthinkable, walking away from the royal family and straight into the waiting arms of corporate America.
Except that, so far, the Megxit fairytale has not resulted in anything like an out and out happily-ever-after.
For years now, the duke and duchess have been testing the world’s patience with their veritable Niagara Falls of hurts.
Today, the question that is harder and harder to ignore is, has it paid off for them – or their paymasters?
The auguries are not good.
On Wednesday, veteran royal biographer Tom Bower appeared on UK TV and alleged that “Spotify have cancelled their contract”.
Now, let’s be clear here – this has not been confirmed, nor has this purported ‘cancelling’ been reported by, say, the Times or the Telegraph.
But, if Spotify was looking to rejig their arrangement with the Sussexes, it would come as about as much of a surprise as Fergie getting into the weight-loss tea game.
Let’s do some maths, shall we?
At the time of writing, it has been 912 days since it was announced on December 15, 2020 that the Sussexes had signed on with the audio platform, with their deal reportedly coming in at $US25 million ($36.7 million).
That works out, carry the one, divide by pi, at this being worth $40,326 per day, to date.
How much bang has the multibillion-dollar company gotten, thus far, for their many, many bucks? Think less New Year’s Eve fireworks-worthy explosiveness and more hastily-lit sparkler. A bit of dazzle and fizz that is over in no time.
Back in December 2020, two weeks after Harry and Meghan announced their Spotify marriage, the couple put out a roughly half-hour episode featuring a few starry chums offering their profound thoughts on the first year of the pandemic.
It was predictable and anaemic and seemed exactly what I figured Harry and Meghan would start pumping out: podcasts where they nattered to their A-list mates, in between serving up some self help-lite pap.
Except that then came … nothing … and more nothing … and a bit more nothing.
Listeners were fascinated with Archetypes until they were not, with the podcast debuting at number one before, in the weeks that followed, new episodes failed to make much of a mark in the listening charts.
In the nine months since then, while there have been rumours that a second season would be given the green light, nothing has been announced.
But at least Meghan had an idea and then followed it up with some talking into a microphone. Since that Harry and Meghan two-hander in late 2020, the duke has not created, released or recorded a single, solitary thing for the company. (He did pop up in Meghan’s debut episode to compliment Serena Williams on her hair, saying “that’s a great vibe”).
Or to put it another way, the last time that he properly graced the Spotify airwaves, the duke’s grandparents, Her late Majesty and Prince Philip, were both alive and hosting Christmas at their Sandringham Estate.
Such an amazing return on investment for Spotify so far …
As of now, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex do not have any confirmed or new series in the works for the company, despite their deal being worth about the price of a Kia Carnival per day.
Nor are things that much better on the Netflix side of the equation for Harry and Meghan, where their Archewell Productions has only one project on the go, the duke’s doco about the Invictus Games. No air date has yet been set.
It took Tolstoy six years to write War and Peace – is Harry working to a similarly indulgent time frame?
While earlier this year it was reported that they were looking to move into scripted content such as rom-coms, nothing has been announced.
Meanwhile, in the two and a half years-plus since the Sussexes signed on with Netflix and Spotify, the streaming landscape has been hit by an economic earthquake.
These two companies alone have lost more than $50 billion combined in market value and there have been mass lay-offs across the sector.
In January, the Spotify executive who signed the royal renegade couple left the business.
“The dumb money era is over,” a podcast industry strategist told the New York Times earlier this year.
Being a global name would not seem to be enough to keep Spotify on side, with the company “declining to renew” their deal with Barack and Michelle Obama’s production company last year.
Given the way the economic wind is blowing, you would have to think that at some stage, some polite pressure would have to be applied in the direction of Archewell HQ to get the duke and duchess to actually, you know, make something.
It would be interesting to know if the same situation might also hold when it comes to Harry and his publisher Penguin Random House.
While they are probably still gleefully counting the Guinness World Record-breaking sales of his memoir Spare, could they be looking to get their hands on another book from Aitch?
Writing in the Daily Mail, biographer Christopher Wilson reported that “Harry’s deal with Penguin, worth upwards of £22 million ($40.9 million), requires him to produce at least one more book, and soon”.
All of this is before we have factored in the time for him to do a lick of humanitarian work via the Sussexes’ Archewell Foundation. Pity his poor PA trying to schedule all of this, as well as daily shiatsu and crystal therapy sessions.
Whatever is a duke, with two small children and a clutch of British court cases on the go, to do?
This year, he does not even have the outlet of polo, with his Los Padres team not playing in his local Santa Barbara club cup.
Here’s my idea – Spotify should put Harry to work recording audio books.
He did the 15-hour version for Spare, so why not have him do King Charles’ 2010 mind-numbing Harmony: A New Way of Looking at Our World, then Fergie’s Mills & Boon number, Her Heart For A Compass, before moving onto her Budgie back catalogue?
Get him some lemon barley and get the man reading.
Streaming service + duke + raunchy romance novel? You could take that to the bank any day.
Daniela Elser is writer, editor and royal commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles.
Those two can be certified as lunatics.
@Rebecca: Thanks for the reposting.
Clarification: Was Elser trolling the Todgers with the "While they are probably still gleefully counting the ...Guiness breaking sale of Spare..."
* leaked stories to the media
Prince Harry, Meghan Markle split from Spotify after podcast not renewed for second season — doing just one cost full $20M deal
Meghan and her husband Harry reportedly signed a $20 million deal with Spotify for the project in late 2020 but insiders close to the audio giant claim that the royal couple did not meet the productivity benchmark required to receive the full payout, the Wall Street Journal reported.
A 'joint statement'... 'mutually agreed to part ways'... I don't think they had a choice! They just released a tactfully worded statement. The Harkles are 'set to lose full payout due to low productivity'. Good. They can't even produce any decent work. 'The determined Duchess, however, is still planning to create more podcasts and find a new home for her series'. Good luck with that. I don't think anyone is interested either to finance the project or listen to her ramblings. There's always a revamped Tig, though...
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12200875/Meghan-Markles-Spotify-podcast-set-axed-streaming-platform-revamps-output.html
From the shop’s Facebook page:
“Don’t forget, we are giving away a beautiful Banwood kids bike on Saturday to a child in need, and so far we have only had a handful of names register for the drawing. So if you know of a child (local to one of our shops) that is in need and can benefit from receiving a new bike (ideally age 3-6), please submit their name for the drawing.
We are also going to be working with volunteers to build up the 75 kids bikes from the fundraiser we did earlier this week, those bikes will be given to children in need in coordination with a major non profit, more details to follow. We are hoping to make the announcement later today. Two of the three local chapters are already confirmed.
We would love our local community supporters to come join us to help build the bikes on Saturday and Sunday at our shops in Carmel, Mill Valley and Montecito. If you are interested just come on down between 12- and 5 either day.
Both of these giveaways were launched in response to some of the negative pushback we got for gifting a bike to a child of privilege.
In hindsight, we probably should have ignored the haters and just moved on after gifting the first bike. Lesson learned. But atleast 76 underprivileged kids will now be getting some amazing new bikes, just like the original one we gifted to the birthday boy, so we can live with that!”
That last paragraph is very telling and passive-aggressive. I wonder who the major non-profit might be? Hmm. And they’re only carrying out the act of kindness under duress? I think the shop owner is cut from the same cloth as TW. Claiming the PR on the back of other people’s goodwill.
It seems they did not get the full 20 million payout from Spotify as they did not meet targets. I wonder how much they did get.
Supposedly she is continuing to produce a second season of Archetypes and is looking for a platform. Sure! Like when Pearl got cancelled and her and Elton John's husband were still going up make the series ... and were looking for a platform?
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@Hikari
Great description of a narc. But, I question that they have no authentic self. I would suggest that they do, but do not consciously connect with this because of the huge amount of shame and feelings of inadequacy. Often what caused it is not 'fixable' and so they spend their lives trying to be more than good enough, and hide from the devastating 'truth' that they are not good enough and never can be. The true self does leak through ... something others can see, hence, perhaps, why they are often called hypocritical in what they say and do. With our duchess, I reckon the show off who wants to be centre of attention is her true self (and perhaps other stuff such as the food and wine lover ... her true self is probably a glutton who eats and drinks too much) but all the other stuff is an act, perhaps influenced by attending the schools she did ... hence she must hand out food parcels as a display, but insists on flying in a private jet and calling herself a philanthropist.
I don't think the duo will give up on their con and they may well find others prepared to sign contracts like those with Spotify and Netflix. But it is more likely that she will have to revive the Tig and earn money from merching, as will he. A problem will be that the more public she is, the more she will attract the kind of criticism that she cannot tolerate, because neither of them can tolerate any kind of criticism at all. She could hire someone to remove all negative comments on the Tig, but I think it is unlikely that they will be able to shut down the tabloids and all criticism on social media, and they compulsively read all of it. Staying hidden and safe leads to bankruptcy, unless they can get some big donations for Archwell (more than ten times what the SussexSquad donates to them annually, which barely covers the cost of handing out some food parcels or donating coffee and cakes). Big paydays from lawsuits is a risky way to earn income, and neither have the work ethic or talents to get a job with a big pay package. The firm won't hire them again and papa Charles is not going to fund them ... nor is the very wealthy brother William. But, my prediction is that she will continue with the grifting and there will be more whinethon interviews blaming others for each and every failure.