#marina hyde

[movietonight]

My favourite bits from "why are you asking me this" by The Fence

#The fence #Why are you asking me this #Hugh Laurie #Annie Mac #werner herzog #Buckingham Palace #Ian Rankin #Richard Osman #Caitlin Moran #Marina Hyde #Jolyon Maugham #Michael Palin #T S Eliot #macks musings

[ingek73]

The Windsors are all about forgiving and forgetting – when it comes to Prince Andrew

Marina Hyde

Some royal rehabilitations are faster than others. The Duke of York’s jaunt with Kate and Wills must have set a new record

Tue 29 Aug 2023 14.44 BST

Do all “fusses” die down eventually, permitting the fussee to return to life largely as they knew it, while the public scratches its head and tries to recall precisely which scandal/multimillion dollar out-of-court settlement/Pizza Express branch it remembers them from? The question arises after the return of Prince Andrew to the royal tableau, driven last weekend by Prince William to church near Balmoral, where the Windsors are currently all gathered (with just the two notable exceptions). I must say I do think that William and Andrew missed a trick not doing carpool karaoke as they rocked up to Crathie Kirk, either to Take That’s Back for Good, or the Gary Puckett and the Union Gap’s jailbait classic Young Girl.

Even so, how fitting that this staged sighting should occur on the very weekend crowds of people descended on Scotland in the hope of spying the Loch Ness monster. You can imagine being there when the cry went up. Oh my God – there it is! Look – you can see its head and neck in the front seat, right next to Prince William! Quick, get a photo, even if “friends” will later claim it’s fake because its fingers aren’t chubby enough.

Anyhow: welcome back, Uncle Andy. Typically, royal rehab efforts move at a more glacial pace. For example, the plan to make the British public fall back in love with Prince Charles after his divorce from Princess Diana and her tragic death was slated by courtiers to take years of slow and painstaking image work. But the picture of Andrew being driven last Sunday by William and Kate, the family’s biggest current stars, comes merely one year after the Duke of York finally settled a civil claim against him by Virginia Giuffre. Giuffre was treated as a sex slave by Andrew’s friend, the late international paedo trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, and long alleged that she was sexually assaulted by Andrew three times when she was 17. The duke denies everything, and his reported $12m settlement did not contain an admission of guilt.

And there he was on Sunday, next to William up front, with Kate relegated to creasing her outfit on the back seat. As indicated, these royal stagings are so often wordless scenes, so we don’t know the full story behind this picture. I suppose it’s remotely possible that when the family were having breakfast that morning, Prince William clocked the presence of Prince Andrew and hissed: “You need to spend a very long time in church indeed. In fact, you know what? I’ll drive you there myself.” Possible, but vanishingly unlikely. Andrew was, after all, pictured exiting the church at the same time as the others, instead of lingering for two or three hundred years after.

So this is not some accident, some last-minute instance of Andrew calling shotgun, or of the Waleses suddenly sighing: “OK, fine, jump in the front and we’ll give you a lift.” Please remember that we are dealing with a family widely held to telegraph fantastically complex and significant messages merely by their choice of brooch or jacket colour, which the public is duly invited to parse for meaning. So sticking a disgraced dimwit in the front seat of your car is not just some random thing that happens of a Sunday morning. This is a planned and choreographed moment, with William as the designated driver.

Even so, doing Andrew’s reintegration at Balmoral does feel particularly on the nose. Attendance here connotes the most particular closeness to the royal family’s wellspring of ineffable majesty and authority – which is perhaps why Epstein himself jumped at an invitation to Balmoral back in 1999, when Andrew had him and Ghislaine Maxwell come and visit the castle. This is the version of staying somewhere at Her Majesty’s pleasure that doesn’t involve sewage in your cell or being allowed to take your own life because it would be better all round for your Famous Men WhatsApp group. (And yes, I do know that Jeffrey and Ghislaine were in New York jails so not technically Her Maj’s guests, but you get the point.)

There were probably 500 things Epstein would have objectively preferred doing than yomping round Balmoral, even if 499 of them were illegal. But the frisson of tightness with the royal family was worth journeying to the deck of the famously spartan log cabin on the estate, and posing with Maxwell on the same bench on which the late Queen Elizabeth II was frequently pictured (even if she wasn’t in residence at the castle at the time). Epstein kept the photo of him and Ghislaine at this cabin in his Manhattan mansion, which was eventually raided by police. Thereafter it was presented as evidence in Maxwell’s trial, as part of prosecutors’ attempts to show that she and Epstein were “partners in crime”.

The third wheel on that trip was Prince Andrew himself. Presumably he took the photo? That’s a typical question with those three, with the notorious picture of Andrew with his arm round the hip of the then 17-year-old Virginia Roberts – while Ghislaine smirks in the background – often believed to have been taken by Epstein himself. Quite why the Prince and Princess of Wales wish to form a new photo trio with Uncle Andy is a mystery. But it comes across as the clearest signal that Andrew’s “banishment” from the family is the type we could all live with: one where you get a free mansion, don’t have to work, and all your significant rellies appear to believe your side of the story and are happy enough to give you a helping hand. The comeback will be greater than the setback – or at least of commensurate size.

#prince andrew #prince william #marina hyde #the guardian #abolish the monarchy #jeffrey epstein #ghislaine maxwell

[transpondster]

The Post Office scandal is about two things. First, the ease with which corporate executives were able to pursue, demonise and destroy completely innocent people, particularly using the justification that technology should always be trusted over humans. And second, the ease with which those bigwigs have been able to escape any accountability themselves for doing something far, far worse than anything they wrongly accused their most junior underlings of. They escaped it for decades, and are still escaping it. It is not just Vennells who has questions to answer far beyond the issue of that CBE. There is a whole host of senior figures from the Post Office, Royal Mail and Fujitsu (which supplied and maintained the Horizon system) who were involved in or stood by the long-term policy of pursuing and privately prosecuting postmasters, as well as successive ministers from the Gordon Brown administration onwards who were made aware of the problems and either didn’t really listen or chose to believe the Post Office. These are all people we should be furiously keen to hear more from. 

 Not for them the maximum-security prisons, the social ostracisation, the bankruptcies, the mental and physical breakdowns, the giving birth wearing an electronic tag. Ministers come and go but the executives failed upwards. The upper tiers of business in this country seem almost impossible to be cast out from. One simply moves on lucratively elsewhere. A certain status of person in our society can be imprisoned for theft (or for non-theft, as it would turn out). Yet for actions that led to the most widespread miscarriage of justice in British legal history, to the ruination of hundreds of lives – well, not one person has ever even been charged. In a lot of cases, they seem to have been promoted.

#post office horizon scandal #uk news #post office #business #fujitsu #marina hyde #the guardian #uk post office scandal

[ceevee5]

“Boris Johnson, who last told the truth during the Reagan administration – and then only accidentally – has somehow got the government to fund state-of-the-art lawyers to prove he wasn’t aware of parties happening in his own house, attended by his own self, against his own rules, and in at least one case against his own laws, having gone on telly every single night to tell people that compliance to the letter of said rules and laws was a matter of life and death.”

#uk politics #boris johnson #partygate #marina hyde #what is the lying liar lying about now?

[whatacompletebastard]

#adrian edmondson #ade tweets #marina hyde

[iamanathemadevice]

For followers of British politics, this week was probably best understood in terms of quantum physics. For the past six months, the prime minister and his cabinet explained that they couldn’t comment on the Partygate scandal because they were waiting for the Sue Gray report. Then, the very day that report was published, they explained it was in the past now and it was time to move on. I know what you’re thinking: then WHEN?! When was the permitted moment to get some actual accountability?! Well, scientists estimate there were four picoseconds of liminal time on Wednesday when lawbreaking by lawmakers was an appropriate subject on which to challenge said lawmakers. It was hoped some challengers would be able to enter this witching moment without getting drawn into a black hole, and somehow extend the moment to try to work out what the hell the answers were. A version of this device was used on an episode of Stargate once, so would probably only need minor adjustment for Westminster. But in fact, the window of opportunity – the window of “taking responsibility” – closed before it had even opened. Or to put it another way: if you’ve been sitting in your metaphorical cop car staking out Downing Street for six months, you now have jack shit to show for it bar severe doughnut-induced arterial hardening. And I should probably tell you that while you were waiting, like a coiled Krispy Kreme, the government junked its obesity strategy, so … thoughts and prayers. Oh, and while you were reading this, the prime minister changed the ministerial code so ministers accused of breaking it – eg him – don’t have to resign. Shitfinger strikes again! Seriously, everything he touches ... There has been an increase in the number of Tory MPs who’ll say publicly that a prime minister breaking his own laws at a time of widespread national distress is a bit of a dealbreaker. But a fascinating number still cling to Johnson. They’re not parasites, biologically speaking. They lack the drive of a flatworm, much less the root-for-me resourcefulness of the sort of alien you might expect to see protruding from a prime ministerial chest cavity. No, think of them more as a huge barnacle community living on the underside of a whale. Unfortunately, the rest of us only get this clear a view of who’s on board when the whale has done something perhaps fatally unfortunate, like swim up the Thames, or explain why its lady petrol-fuelled leaving speech was more important than your mother’s lonely death.

Marina Hyde, “No drive, no spine, very little vision: even science can’t explain the creatures clinging on to Johnson”, The Guardian 27 May 2022

#great writing #good journalism #marina hyde

[randomberlinchick]

Of course – OF COURSE – women’s access to abortion would end up being restricted or removed by the deliberate decisions of a man widely imagined to have personally helped to keep the Manhattan abortion sector afloat for decades.

Anyone who didn’t see this coming hasn’t been paying attention.

#roe v wade #abortion #us news #health #women #marina hyde

[pablolf]

Contemplating the notion of crossing the line, Russell Brand once remarked: “As I always say, there is no line. People draw that line in afterwards to fuck you up.” Anyway: here we all are in the afterwards.

The brave victims of Russell Brand’s misogyny deserve full support. This time, let’s get it right

#russell brand #marina hyde #culture #the guardian #comedy

[anyoneknowwhatbrexitmeans]

“The government has now reached a state of perfect vicious cycle, when the only thing worse than the things it does are all the things it didn’t get round to doing.”

#Marina Hyde #absent government

[wamija]

#fear and hunger #fear and hunger termina #f&h2 #funger #marina #f&h #samarie #redraw of that one jekyll and hyde musical cover

[panelshowsource]

We asked, you answered — and then we answered. It's our first Q&A episode! Richard and Marina work through some of your burning questions on the world of entertainment, including "Why do people go on property shows and not buy anything?" and "Has Marina come face to face with anyone she's taken to task in an article?" Also, Richard fills us in on how much of shows like Have I Got News for You are scripted. Plus more Boxing Day tasty entertainment secrets!

#richard osman AKA wilty's no.1 fan! looove listening to him talk about panel shows! starts at 10:25 #their episode synopsis was absolute dogshit copy and i fixed some of it for the purposes of sharing it here but i digress #the rest is entertainment #richard osman #marina hyde #not a panel show #audio

[ingek73]

How is Britain rising to this inspiring coronation moment? By obsessing about the Sussexes again

Marina Hyde

Nothing says ‘monumental’ like commemorative mugs, a tarragon quiche and 4,000 articles about two California residents

Tue 18 Apr 2023 13.16 BST

Commemorative mugs showing members of the royal family in Windsor, February 2023

In the week before Harry and Meghan’s wedding I watched a woman in the Kensington Palace shop buy a mug that featured the entwined initials of the couple and retailed at £39. “I love how down to earth they are,” she said. I wonder where that mug is now (the cup, not the woman). There will always be new mugs, of course, and the Royal Collection is currently selling a coronation tankard for £50, as well as such essentials as a £40 bone-china coronation pillbox finished in 22-carat gold, possibly in keeping with King Charles’s oft-stated mission to modernise the monarchy. If you are one of the lucky Brits selected by lottery to receive a GP appointment before the big day, do consider purchasing it and popping your medication in it.

In the meantime you have to ask: how confidence-inspiring, really, is any event that has thus far been defined by about 4,000 articles (and counting) about the attendance or non-attendance of a couple of guests? Nothing says “we’re bigger than that and have moved on” like obsessing over the social plans of two California residents. This event is so inspiring and generational and monumental that the sole thing people can get truly worked up about is how their worst person in the world isn’t coming to it. Surely the one interesting thing about King Charles isn’t his fractured relationship with his younger son? And yet, the tale of the column inches seems to suggest it might be. For a couple we keep hearing are no longer important, the Sussexes do still seem to be the only subject in town.

Royal experts, pro and amateur, act like they’d be lost without them. If the Sussexes had any sense, “they would have accepted immediately”, explained the Mail’s Sarah Vine, about three paragraphs after saluting the “collective sigh of relief” that Meghan would not be attending. The whole interminable saga is afflicted by more than a touch of the Schrödinger’s invitation, with a yes/no able to be both right and wrong at the same time, if likely to induce fatal error one way or the other. Turning up would be an act of war; non-attendance will garner endless headlines about insulting behaviour and “what she’s missing”.

Once again one has to contrast the apparently undimmable ire directed at Meghan and Harry with the muted version enjoyed by Prince Andrew, who last year paid millions in an out-of-court settlement to a woman who had long accused him of sexual abuse when she was 17, after she was trafficked by his good friend Jeffrey Epstein. The Duke of York denies the allegations. If newspaper stories were any guide to what the public wanted, it would seem rather notable that Andrew’s presence or non-presence at his brother’s crowning were of far, far less feverish concern than that of the Sussexes.

Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation was scheduled to avoid a racing fixture; this one was timetabled firmly for Harry and Meghan’s son’s fourth birthday. Back in 1953, the Duke of Windsor (Edward VIII as was) got told by Winston Churchill not to attend. Did the newspapers of the time wet their pants daily for several months about this minor detail of the day? It feels unlikely. Perhaps newspapers back then were made of stronger stuff. Or perhaps, mindful about what happened at Sleeping Beauty’s christening, His Majesty’s Press these days regard it as part of their solemn duty to hold every royal guest list to the very highest scrutiny, lest their readers end up being put to sleep for a hundred years by failure to cover the potential fallout from any NFIs. In a 24-hour period last Friday, shortly after Harry’s attendance was confirmed, the Daily Express website featured a full 44 articles about the Sussexes, one of which suggested the couple’s brand was “on life support”. Hand on heart, the Express and others do an awfully good job of suggesting otherwise.

The official coronation quiche at a lunch hosted by the archbishop of Canterbury at Westminster abbey, London, 18 April 2023. Photograph: James Manning/PA

Back on the official channels, strong efforts are being made to get people excited about the approved royal menu for their subjects’ day. It feels somehow apt that the official dish selected by King Charles is a quiche, given quiches are often wet and almost always disappointing. Like some of Charles’s recent walkabouts, the dish has been regarded as a good use of leftover eggs. Traditionally, indifferent cuisine is a celebrated feature of royal occasions. Of a banquet on the eve of Elizabeth’s coronation, Richard Crossman noted in his diary that “the food was cold and not very good”. Charles’s official coronation quiche features tarragon, the king having failed to commit entirely to the bit, and bung in that most divisive of herbs, coriander.

Odd, finally, to read so little about the determined grumbling about the hundreds of millions to be spent on the coronation, which is a definite thing, from radio phone-ins to even the upper reaches of the MailOnline comments section. Defence of the cost has already seen a resort to the telltale line that it will be a “boost to the economy”. It also seems to have resulted in that great rarity – a bank holiday that doesn’t draw from the woodwork some killjoy from a business body to explain how, actually, bank holidays are an unacceptable cost to the UK economy. Even so, the overriding impression given by all this is that without the attendance or otherwise of one or two non-player characters, there would be very little to say about what could be for many a once-in-a-lifetime event. That doesn’t suggest a monarchy in the rudest health – perhaps the proof of the quiche will be in the eating.

Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist

-

this is brilliant

The 44 articles refer to this tweet

#meghan markle #prince harry #duchess of sussex #duke of sussex #king charles #coronation #british royal family #the guardian #marina hyde

[transpondster]

Nevertheless, the trial itself arguably added to the gaiety of the nation, as Laurence discoursed on the discourse, and claimed to have been offered a role in The Batman before his career was derailed. That remains unverified, though I can definitely see him playing one of the guys who kill Bruce Wayne’s parents. As for Fox’s claim that he had been approached for a part in Succession … Clearly, it’s a huge honour for a show like Succession to find itself woven into Laurence’s spellbinding “before” story. Even so, it must be said the idea he was up for a part in it was certainly eye-catching news, most particularly to those behind Succession. No one had any memory of such a thing. Was it remotely possible that at some point he had appeared on a British casting assistant’s longlist? It’d have to have been a very long list, seems to be the polite answer. “We definitely talked about him a lot in the writers’ room,” one writer reflects. “Just not in connection with a part …”

Yet despite all his humiliations and defeats, Laurence Fox’s essential ridiculousness and poignantly insatiable need for attention confine him to the comic spectrum as opposed to the tragic. He is more of a Malvolio than a Macbeth. Shortly after his fateful appearance on Question Time, Laurence boasted to the Sunday Times of having been the only person to have turned up for an appearance on QT “with guitars and shit”. Even now, I am unable to type that without laughing.

Marina Hyde is one of my favorite writers, especially when it comes to cutting an imbecile down to size. In the U.S. we don’t know or care about Laurence Fox. He’s just one anonymous Brexit dumbbell among many. But you don’t need to know anything about whoever he is to appreciate Hyde’s smart, sharp vivisection of a failed actor who subsequently succeeded at becoming a failed politician, finishing in sixth place in an election for Mayor of London, with 1.9% of the vote. 

#marina hyde #the guardian #Laurence fox #uk news #uk law

[tomorrowusa]

[T]he Chinese this week unveiled an ultra-deepwater drillship that will be able to plumb twice the depth at which the Titanic rests, though that still leaves the Conservative poll rating just beneath its reach. With the country settling into a kind of perma-rage that nothing much works any more, there is something mesmeric about the government’s attempts to insist its dignity hasn’t been compromised, and that it has taken back control of the taking back control.

Columnist Marina Hyde writing at The Guardian about the abysmal poll ratings of the Conservative Party government in the UK.

The Conservatives experienced a tepid bump after Prime Minister Rishi Sunak was chosen to succeed Liz Truss. But with a flood of strikes, an increase in poverty, and various Brexit-related issues, the ruling Conservatives seem headed back towards the Mariana Trench of ratings in 2023.

#conservative party #poll ratings #uk #rishi sunak #liz truss #uk politics #dysfunction #marina hyde

[ceevee5]

“The Chinese this week unveiled an ultra-deepwater drillship that will be able to plumb twice the depth at which the Titanic rests, though that still leaves the Conservative poll rating just beneath its reach. With the country settling into a kind of perma-rage that nothing much works any more, there is something mesmeric about the government’s attempts to insist its dignity hasn’t been compromised, and that it has taken back control of the taking back control. The party’s chaos machine has spewed out just the three prime ministers this year, yet Sunak’s appearance before the liaison committee this week appeared to downplay this farce to the equivalent of a few substitutions in your shopping order … for all the dysfunction and breakdown taking place out there in the place we call reality, Sunak comes across as a sort of prime ministerial chat tool, a state-of-the-art robot whose learned responses are uncannily human-adjacent, but divorced from any sense he meaningfully gets any of it. “I’m really, really robust,” he told the liaison committee, which feels like the sort of thing Alexa’s software throws up after a slight pause when your kids ask it a rude question.”

#uk politics #rishi sunak #marina hyde #satire #perma-rage #the tory chaos machine

[averycanadianfilm]

As we near the business end of Qatar 2022, though, a psychic alpaca from Chipping Norton is still in it, along with a lion in Thailand. Inauspiciously, both have wandered vaguely in one direction in their enclosure/predicted a France win on Saturday night, which I assume has led to accusations of talking England down, and a slew of credible death threats.

Marina Hyde

#Marina Hyde #world cup 2022