weddings | The Snowolf

I’m getting a little tired of the ceaseless coverage of an event which hasn’t happened yet, isn’t breaking news and is planned down to the last vol-au-vent.

However, the fault does not lie with William and Kate, but with the media. It’s like the build up to the cup final, except the difference (barring a huge shock from one or other of them) is that unlike the cup final, we know what the result is going to be.

Your favourite Canis Lupus is working tomorrow, some non-emergency public servants are, and no, I don’t get double time or a day in lieu. No biggie, I’m not that bothered about the wedding. I really hope that the pair have a long and blissfully happy life together, God knows the family could do with a break after the awful matches made by the generation before William. But it isn’t my wedding, I don’t know the couple involved, so it really doesn’t matter to me.

That doesn’t mean I’m going to start railing against the Windsors or the notion of a Monarchy though. I wouldn’t describe myself as a Royalist, but nor am I a Republican.

One thing tomorrow will show is that despite all our problems, be they self inflicted or otherwise, this country can put on one hell of a show. We do it with magnificence, class and style. The Americans do it with magnificence, but they do it with such military overbearing. That isn’t to say that there isn’t going to be soldiers all over the show tomorrow, but we do it in a style which is not so overtly overt. It’s a difficult feeling to express, but it doesn’t have that ‘America, hell yeah!’ feel to it.

The French do it with class and style, but you can’t help the feeling that at the big occasion they still feel that it is a shame that they cut all those heads off. A president just doesn’t have the gravitas that a monarch, or a monarch in waiting has. It’s just a little, empty. It’s like comparing the photo of the meal on the menu in a chain pub with the grub put in front of you, it looks promising at the outset, but ultimately fails to deliver satisfaction.

I think the Royal Family is important, I’m not going to wheel out the old tourism line, I’m not sure I buy it. What I do think the advantage a constitutional monarchy brings is that the person in the very top job doesn’t ask for it, doesn’t want it and very, very, very, very rarely uses the power they have. It is, I think, a perfect balance.

I like QEII, but I think she’s taken her eye off the ball, especially when signing away her and our sovereignty to Europe, but despite what Cast Iron Dave would have you believe, nothing is irreversible. I’m not so keen on Charles, and I don’t think he’ll make an especially good King, but then if QEII takes after her mother, he probably won’t have much, if any, time in the big job.

With William it is too soon to tell, but I think the early signs are encouraging. Say what you like about Charles, but the fact he has been able, despite the circumstances, to raise such a well adjusted and personable son does him enormous credit.

I don’t want a President, another job for a washed up politician if we follow the French/Irish model, or a power hungry grasping politician if we follow the American model.

It is far from perfect, it is elitist, it is archaic, it is a relic of history, but I can think of no better, or at least no more preferable fashion to choose the head of state than the method we have. It is apolitical, it is random, it is sometimes perfect, it is often disastrous, but it is way better than leaving it in the hands of career minded, ruthless, venal, deceitful politicians.

The constitutional monarchy allows us to be seen at our best. Even though it can and does go wrong, at least we have a fighting chance of promoting a positive image, an elected President would always show us at our worst. The constitutional monarchy is alright by me.

It all started so well, didn’t it? They day the coagulation took over we were told HIPS were gone, the ID cards were a thing of the past (incidentally, the cards ceased to be a legal document last month, and the associated database was destroyed this week) and then. . . well, it all went a little quiet, didn’t it?

But boy, have they come back with a bang? CRB checks on people who work with, volunteer with, look at, know someone who has, or accidentally stumbles over TV programming aimed at children have been relaxed. I think the penny has dropped somewhere that it’ll only show you to be a nonce, if you’ve been convicted of being a nonce.

However, in a week when we’ve seen the overthrow of a dictator in Egypt, and the mother of parliaments sitting down in a session where almost three hundred of our representatives discussed the primacy of a sovereign parliament over that of an unelected, non-legislative body and cried ‘how did we come to be here?’, (I’ll give you a clue, you grinned like clueless morons whilst you handed it over without so much as a second thought), we have seen perhaps the most groundshaking development in liberties this country has seen for a long, long time.

Hold on to your hats, guys and girls:

Night time weddings will be able to take place in future under plans outlined by the government.

Brilliant! Because I had been worried about the intrusion of CCTV into all of our lives, the installation of ANPR cameras on the main roads in and out of most towns in the UK, the retention of DNA by a paranoid and controlling state, but all that has been swept away, because now, when I go and ask the State’s permission, in the form of a licence, to place my relationship on a register, so they can keep a record of who I am sleeping with, just in case the union is blessed, so they don’t miss out on the tax eighteen years later, I can now have that relationship registered, at a time that is convenient to me! Break out the bunting!

The changes allowing marriages to take place 24 hours a day in England and Wales are part of the Protection Of Freedoms Bill. They will also apply to civil partnerships.

Even the gayers are included! There’s going to be a hell of a party down my way.

However, there will be no prospect of spur of the moment marriages at Las Vegas-style chapels where in the past some couples have wed after a night of heavy drinking – at least 15 days advance notice will still be required.

Yes, you still need to give the state a fortnight to get its shit together, because like all good nannies, it has to be allowed to tell you to go away and think about it for a good while. You could have been together for fifteen years, but you still can’t just turn up and do it. That would be unthinkable. Plus you still can’t get married outside. Well, you can, but you have to be undercover when the vows are made because . . . errrm, well, you see. . . look, you just have to, OK? It’s your wedding, and thus nothing to do with you at all, you can only do it in a style which we find acceptable, OK?

The Church of England says a relaxation in the times of church weddings would require a change to Canon Law from the General Synod, which meets twice a year. And the Catholic Church has reportedly said it would not conduct late night ceremonies.

The private sky pixie clubs will still be telling you what you should be doing though.

This is freedom?

Good grief.

The Snowolf

Category Archives: weddings

Dieu et mon goodness isn’t it over yet?

Now that’s what I call freedom.