A bit of a rant about wealth and privilege!

Last night I finally watched John Pilger’s documentary about the NHS. Here’s a link to a review article about it. It’s a very disturbing film. Everyone should watch it.  I can understand why certain people might not have wanted it aired before the recent election but quite how they got away with delaying the broadcast escapes me. We might live in the age of social media and total disclosure but it’s still possible to keep people in the dark, with apparent ease!

Or to distract them with trivia! Here we go!

Later the news app on my phone pinged in the middle of the evening with the latest story about rich people’s problems.

Prince Harry and his Meghan plan to step back from being senior members of the royal family (I refuse to say “royals” - it is a term that annoys me) and try to be financially independent. I bet they don’t have to try very hard. As a first step towards independence, they made the decision all on their own and did not consult other members of the royal family. They did not even tell her majesty until last week. The queen is saddened and angry! Charles and William are outraged! How do the news people know these details. Then they announced it on instagram. Shock! Horror!

Apparently this is all very sad as they were thought to be a way of making people love the royal family even more!!! One spokeswoman said that Harry and Meghan are much loved and people will be sad not to see more of them as they flit between the UK and north America.

That story was the first headline on the BBC 10 o’ clock news yesterday evening coming ahead of news about Iran. And it’s the top headline in newspapers online this morning. This is probably what amazes me most of all. However, it could be that the very fact of putting the Sussexes’ story at the top of the bill is just part of the bread and circuses element of the news. Give the people something to get sentimental about and maybe they will concentrate less on the serious stuff.

By the way, did anyone ask the people of Sussex if they wanted H & M to be their duke and duchess? Similarly, did anyone ask the folk of Cambridge if they wanted William and Kate? We might have a parliamentary monarchy / parliamentary democracy but it seems as though giving out bits of the country as dukedoms in rather mediaeval and absolute monarchy style. Just an aside-thought!

Getting back to the H & M story, which is bugging me (a fact which bugs me even more, as I really don’t want to be interested in the lives of the rich and famous), much has been made of the racist element in the Meghan story. It seems that she has suffered because the British do not want to accept a black woman into “our” royal family. Really? A commentator on the BBC news last night went on and on about it and yet I don’t know anyone who thinks her provenance is a problem. Even the news presenter, in discussion with pundits, admitted that it is possible that commentators see the whole thing one way and the public see it in another! Interesting!

Besides, both H & M come from privilege.

Meghan is hardly your typical black American girl. Her father may well be estranged from her but still he is a retired television director of photography and lighting director who was able to pay for her to go to private schools and presumably to give her a bit of a leg-up in the acting business. Oops! Can I even say things like that? It does seem, though, that almost everyone who has some modicum of success in films and television these days has a family connection to the industry.

And as for Harry, well, we all know we have to feel sorry for him but in the end he’s just a rich boy from a rich family!

I wish them all the best in their quest for independence and my advice to them would be to just get on with it, let the media say what they like but simply ignore them. Eventually they will find someone else to harass!