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As thick as thieves The Sunday Times carries the story that two men have been remanded to await trial on charges of blackmailing a member of the royal family. They are said to have demanded £50,000 not to publicise stories about sex and drugs.
Haven’t the perpetrators missed the point of blackmail? Surely if they had anything that would stick, they could get many times that amount from the world’s tabloids? The point of blackmail is to take advantage of the embarrassment of the person concerned for gain. They seem to have attempted to do it for loss.
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So who is it? Apparently there’s a video.
My money is on Eddie. But I would love it if it was Charles. If anyone is into sexual preversions it’s Charles. And he’s definitely a sub.
Oh, it’s Chuck getting a golden shower from Camilla with her dressed as the Queen while a dwarf in blackface blows Columbian marching powder up his Gary. Got to be…
I really hope so. Now, that would be a Duchy Original.
Perhaps they didn’t go to the tabloids because they had nothing concrete, but they had however gotten information from an official source that something royally untoward was going down. Not being able to prove it with photos or video would rule out the tabloids as a buyer but the member of the the royal family who was up to something could not be 100% sure that he or she had not been caught in the act at some stage in the past. Basically I think the blackmailers tried to bluff and their bluff was called.
royally untoward
What so totally unlike slinking off into the arms of Camilla Parker Bowles on your wedding night and subsequently expressing a desire to be said woman’s tampon*?
Then there’s all the other antics… throughout centuries. You do know the full sp on the rather baroque end King Eddie II met?
They’re depraved and not in a good way.
*A truly bizarre thing to compare oneself to when talking to the love of one’s life – something women use then discard.
If there bluff was called properly we wouldn’t even have heard about it. This means the Palace spin-doctors have displayed their usual inability to locate their collective arses with both hands (something that can’t be said of the Windsor’s prize chutney*) or there is something in it.
I so hope it’s the latter.
*Gold Rosette – Wessex WI – “pleasingly soft textured and a complete royal knockout – a really useful condiment”.
What, one of’em likes the other sex and isn’t on drugs?
Maybe it’s one of the young’uns “experimenting” with class A whilst in the company of a member of the oldest profession.
Ah, I just read the article. An aide was involved. Even by the furthest stretch of the imagination a prostitute cannot be seen as an aide (or so sayeth my accountant). My money is on one of the lesser members of the royal food chain. Someone whom the tabloids would not fork out 50K for. Viscount Linley, Lord Nicholas Windsor or Lord Frederick Windsor. Then again it might be someone higher up and the perpetrators are as this posts title suggests, a bit thick.
The royals are human and humans do sometimes have casual sex with people to whom they are not married. It may well be, after past scandals, that the royals are not so uptight about being seen to be human, and that they are not so bothered about it being known as the blackmailers thought. The business of the cocaine delivered in the personally monogrammed stationery sounds ridiculous, and the story behind someone being able to video a royal aide taking it would need to be a good one.
It sounds like tabloid gossip to me – weak evidence, less than fully credible story, and probably not the full picture.
And it saddens me that people will take (allegedly) embarrassing details of someone’s private life and paste it all over the internet. They may have the right to do so, but is it something we should approve of? And if we do, would we then approve of the state being able to do it? Isn’t that one of the fears with the total surveillance society – that people will no longer be able to do things in private that, while perfectly legal and (arguably) moral, society does not approve of? Are we there yet?
Pa Annoyed,
Agreed. As often, I am surprised and dismayed by the tone of most of the comments. I have no interest in the allegations. I was commenting on the small imagination of crooks.
Point taken. But crooks often have their own moral feelings too, and might not have liked the idea of giving their victim no chance to rescue their reputation. Crooks need some sort of self-justification to be able to live with themselves. There is also the question of revenge – they might think that so long as they hold something over the royals they’re safe, but that if they published, then after all the noise died down that a run of ‘unfortunate luck’ might be arranged. Or maybe they would have preferred to avoid the limelight themselves, and the effect on their future employment prospects of being known snitches, and therefore wanted to be sure the victim would pay the money rather than risk pushing it for every penny they could get. Or maybe they didn’t want or need such a huge pile of cash to have to explain away, and it was only enough to meet some specific need.
There’s not enough information here to tell how dumb it was. That’s what I mean when I say it isn’t the whole picture.
Guy, Pa,
But they are The State. They ponce off us and have the temerity to tell us how to live. OK, I went a bit OTT. But… Well, I don’t care what others get up to unless it’s at my sodding expense. Would I be so viciously mocking of Charles Windsor if he were just another organic farmer in Devon trying to make a living despite the largesse of the EU? I don’t think so. He’s a rhodium-plated tosser of epic proportions but heh, that ain’t against the law is it? If it was half to two thirds of people in advertising would be in jail.
But, the minute these people set themselves up as our lords and masters, the minute Charles takes it upon himself to call himself “defender of faith” or some chinless-wonder gets a grace and favour gaff at my fucking expense then I feel absolutely within my rights to go nuclear. And that means hitting them at their weakest point – hypocrisy.
I have a great deal of respect for the Queen and I believe some sort of elected head of state would just be another failed politico on the gravy train but I shudder at the idea of King George VII. For the record I think the tabloid treatment of William, Harry and especially Kate Middleton is both weird and nasty. But they don’t pontificate from palaces. Instead, they seem remarkably well-adjusted 20-somethings.
If a cat may look at a King then Nick M can also mock he who would be King, viciously. It was not me that turned our monarchy into a soap opera. It was them. It was them that maintained the idea that the heir to the throne can only marry a virginal practising member of the CofE whilst I never cared. I don’t care if any of them are gay, straight or on wobbly eggs. It isn’t me that is hung-up on the idea of a King with a Prince Consort – it is them. It is them on some kind of demented pseudo-Victorian families kick.
And that is why I get my claws out. I have said things at least as bad about Al Gore.
I will do again. They are not the England I believe in.
And I despise Prince Charles with a deep passion. There is practically no point of significance upon which he and I could ever find common ground. Perhaps because I compare him to his mother, perhaps because he is an unmitigated chicken-choker. I’ve cleaned up cat-puke worth more than him.
But they are The State.
There you are dead wrong. The Crown may be the state, in theory, but the occupant of the post alone has even theoretical power. Their personal lives are none of our business any more than ours are theirs, and their family even less so.
Is Prince Charles using his fame and wealth to promote his views any diffrent from, say, Bono doing the same? You may want to treat the actual views with contempt or applause, based on their merits as views. The origin of the fame/wealth concerns me not in the slightest. Consider what weight you would give to the Prince of Wales’s background had he chosen to pontificate on individual liberty or spend his money on astonomy and GM research.
Let’s leave aside the broader questions about whether the Royal Family is a good thing. Just focus on whether the would-be blackmailers were thickies (or properly-educated citizens, as we say these days).
Surely Blackmail 101 says — start small; come back for more; again & again & again. By apparently letting themselves be bought off the first time for a small fee, the blackmailers strengthen the case that the target has something to hide, and establish a pattern of behavior where the blackmailer is willing to pay.
Not unlike what our Lords & Masters do with taxation & regulation — establish the priniciple first, and then apply the screws.
But maybe I have read too many silly crime novels.
Guy,
Oops! I deleted the part of my last post which stated that I’ve said at least as bad about Al Gore. I am not saying anything that I wouldn’t say about Bono (a twat) or any of the other members of the tossocracy.
But they don’t have a constitutional role and Charley does. I appreciate and applaud your concept that folks should argue in terms of the merits or otherwise of the positions these people take but I’m not as high-minded as you and Charlie doesn’t deserve it.
The minute someone starts saying that everyone else should do x,y or z then as far as I’m concerned they’ve made themselves public property and made an opportunity for me to give ’em a righteous kicking in the pilgers.
Do you honestly want to see Charlie being crowned as George VII? He is an arrant hypocrite, a possible crypto-muslim, a greenie-weenie, a noted thicky and feudalist throwback. I’m prepared to slag him off till the (organic) cows come home. Why not? Does he pay for Clarence House? Or Highgrove? No, we do so he can either shut the fuck up or get a job at Tesco where he can spout shite unhindered till he gets his P45.
Other than that I couldn’t give a monkey’s about anyone’s sexual antics or drug-use but my own.
Maybe not the brightest criminals in the country, but not nearly as bad as this lot.
Nick. As the Prince of Wales he can say what he likes about whatever he likes.
When he becomes King though, he has to shut up.
That is Constitutional convention.
The Royal Family, as a whole, earns billions more for this country than it ostensably costs we taxpayers.
But that is for another debate.
I am off to the Principality tomorrow, and will be back in a week to reveal what Chuck’s feudalism has wrought on that fair Land!
He is an arrant hypocrite, a possible crypto-muslim, a greenie-weenie, a noted thicky and feudalist throwback.
And as a consequence he is a perfect fit for much of the English middle class, alas.
You know, if criminals were actually intelligent, they wouldn’t be criminals.
They’d be some form of professional liar, be it real estate, law, reporter, or recruiting (corporate or military).
He’s also, through the Prince’s Trust, the UK’s foremost venture capitalist, and has helped tens of thousands of budding young entrepreneurs establish successful businesses. He is also, himself, a successful businessman – the Duchy of Cornwall has prospered considerably under his guidance, so much so that the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee has whined about how well it’s doing. In other words, the Prince of Wales may sound like a crystal-hugging yoghurt-knitter, but he’s actually something of a poster boy for entrepreneurship.
“The minute someone starts saying that everyone else should do x,y or z then as far as I’m concerned they’ve made themselves public property and made an opportunity for me to give ’em a righteous kicking in the pilgers.”
Don’t we also tell everyone else they should do x, y, or z? Where x, y, and z are things like minding their own business, allowing us to own guns, lowering taxes, shutting up about “the environment”, and reducing bureaucracy?
Lots of people have the temerity to tell us how to live. The issue is whether they back their opinions up with force, or whether they only seek to persuade. I’m not aware that our Bonnie Prince has ever done that – and of course if he has I’d oppose it – but even for those people who do, I’m not sure I like the idea that this justifies personal attacks without any limits in other areas. Besides two wrongs not making a right, it is a tactical error in that opponents can point to our own hypocrisy in opposing the abuse of privacy and use of totally unfounded and extreme allegations by the state against people they disapprove of while doing exactly the same thing ourselves.
I agree with you about some of his opinions, and am no more in favour of hereditary power than I am in favour of bishops sitting in the House of Lords, but only criticising people on their actual rather than invented failings is not just “high-mindedness”, but a necessary measure to avoid losing arguments and having your friends (temporarily) turn against you.
I don’t care what you say about Charlie, or anyone else, and I wasn’t at all bothered by your initial comments which I took to be humour, but I don’t believe he’s anywhere near as bad a person as you make out, or that anyone takes him that seriously. Unless you know something we don’t?
A healthy disrespect for those in authority is well, healthy. For what it is worth, I would like to speculate that this is about Prince Andrew employing a former Page 3 girl as an “aide.”
Edward King,
He’s also, through the Prince’s Trust, the UK’s foremost venture capitalist
Oh do behave! My brother took the prince’s shilling and therefore spends more time at courses about how to run a business than he does running a business. A huge chunk of this is about reducing taxation…
So, HMG spends money both raising taxes to keep the pig in clover and telling folk how to avoid them. I may be a deeply simple Gordian knot cutter but… Why not get rid of the taxes altogether rather than spend them on measures that are “little gifts” to certain “lucky folk”.
The rest is about whatever PC antics they’ve decided to enshrine as law that week. This is absolutely not venture capitalism. This is cheerful Charlie playing milkmaids just as Marie Antoinette did.
RAB, having stood in a monumental queue at Versailles I suspect not. I am, as I said above, a loyal citizen of Queen Elizbeth II but I think her son would be a disaster.
Yeah, Pa, he’s that bad. That bad with a potential constitutional role. He’s a feudalist and he can go supremely fuck himself.
Hasn’t England been fucked with enough?
They’re depraved and not in a good way.
So long as all involved are consenting adults, it is none of my business.
*A truly bizarre thing to compare oneself to when talking to the love of one’s life – something women use then discard.
Mm. I know more than a few men would would find the analogy most apropos. Mostly men of means who become involved with women who turned out to be golddiggers.
This is great stuff! Nick M – you really must do some podcasts!
The thought occurred to me as soon as I heard the story that they must be idiots with nothing concrete at all. If they had a video, or any credible evidence, or source, they could have made far more than they asked for from the media. Sounds like some sort of scam.
Any of you who saw Cheerful Charlie meeting King Abdullah on the red carpet care to rethink?
It’s Lord Frederick Windsor, son of Princess Michael of Kent.
He is one of only three male royals that the blackmailer knows. The other two – William and Harry – he only met twice.
Lord Frederick Windsor admits to taking cocaine and was on the committee of a gay club.
The Italians, to whom this silly gagging order does not apply, have outed the royal in question at http://www.repubblica.it/2007/10/sezioni/esteri/ricatto-famiglia-reale/il-visconte-ricattato/il-visconte-ricattato.html
That close interest in interior design was rather giving the game away in hindsight…
Coke and a gay club? That’s it? Sheesh. Colour me unimpressed. Frankly that sort of things appears on some people’s CVs (resumes) these days.
I was expecting something like “videoed dressed up like nun, having sex with a goat, whilst surrounded by a chorus of naked fifteen year old boys singing ‘We will rock you’, in the basement of the Houses of Parliament…”
Snorting coke and visiting a gay club barely counts as ‘naughty’ these days.
Perry,
And that is precisely why I don’t hang out at your gaff. I mean the goat sex, the nun’s habit and the 15 year olds are perfectly understandable but singing Queen? Have you no shame!