Prince Charles kitted out as a Muslim, and Ratzinger in a Santa Claus costume
HEIR to the British throne, Prince Charles, is said to have “thrown his toys out the pram” by refusing to attend a papal inter-faith event in London in September.
Writing in the New Statesman, James Macintyre revealed that the Prince has caused anger in London and Rome after declining an invitation from the Pope, and that, as things stand:
The Prince of Wales will now play no part in the Papal visit in September.
Mcintyre added:
If it is true, as one source put it, that Charles “threw his toys out the pram” over the Papal visit, then this should be seen in the context of the bizarre self-obsession that appears to govern Clarence House. Charles has proved time and again that he has pitiful concept of his role, with his willingness to swing in and out of politics like a hammer in a tea-shop.
Many observers will conclude that, if he wants to be king it is high time he put his duties before himself.
Meanwhile, the Daily Mail reported at the weekend that Ratzinger had turned down an invitation to meet Charles in Scotland, claiming he’ll be “too busy”.
The two men will not get together even though Charles will be in Scotland when the Rat is scheduled to kick off his three-day trip by calling on the Queen and Prince Philip at Holyrood House in Edinburgh.
Charles had wanted to meet the Pope separately in Edinburgh on the same day, but at another venue.
There were claims that Charles had demanded his own meeting to establish his independence from the Queen, and was disappointed the Pope had declined.
But the Prince’s official spokesman denied he had been snubbed.
There were discussions between the Vatican and Clarence House about the possibility of having a separate meeting while the Pope was in Edinburgh, but there wasn’t time in his schedule for that.
Charles and Ratzinger share similar approaches on issues such as the environment and global poverty. But while the Pope has reaffirmed his Church’s traditional disapproval of artificial contraception, the Prince earlier this year called for greater birth control in the developing world.
There may also be a difference of emphasis over how they regard faiths other than Christianity.
The Prince, who who has a cock-eyed notion that Islam is somehow a force for good in the world, has said he wants to be styled “defender of faith” rather than “defender of the faith” if he succeeds to the throne – a move critics fear could undermine the centrality of Christianity in British life.
Bearing in mind Catholic Church opposition to divorcees remarrying, said the Mail, the Prince’s marital history would also not be regarded as ideal by the Vatican. However, the Prince and Camilla, both divorcees, were granted a private audience with the Pope in Rome last year. It was the Prince’s first papal audience since his divorce from Diana in 1996.
Hat tip: BarrieJohn
The Freethinker was founded in 1881 by GW Foote, an outspoken critic of religion. After the publication of 
July 11th, 2010 at 10:49 am
Who cares if these prima donnas won’t do a dance together? The Poop always looks ridiculous and it’s nice to see him at odds with the future head of the CofE.
One for you Broga.
Charlie is very keen on organic farming. My mother visited one of his ornamental gardens and said there were no holes in the leaves on his Hosters. These plants are magnets for any creature with a radula yet his were untouched. Apparently he employs a man that tours his estate picking up slugs and snails. Given this example, it’s no wonder us plebs can’t afford to go organic.
July 11th, 2010 at 12:04 pm
These people live in a world of their own! And as far as “organic gardening” is concerned – if it weren’t for the pesticides used by the vast majority of farmers now, we would be completely overrun with crop-crunching critters, so it’s all a complete con!!
July 11th, 2010 at 12:50 pm
You’re right Barriejohn
As a former plant biochemist I say go for GM and dump whatever chemicals your food crops require. Those who choose to disagree can do their best to feed themselves. I’ve sprayed my runner beans three times already this season. I doubt the organophosphates will fuck our livers, just follow the instructions. Our surplus is kept buried in earth or frozen in a chest freezer.
Don’t tell my family but a little bit of piss as fertiliser is useful too.
July 11th, 2010 at 1:11 pm
@Broadsword. Charles is quick enough to sell land when it suits him. Any work he does is done by his poorly paid serfs.
Piss is excellent fertiliser and should not be wasted. I have three compost heaps (which are used in rotation) and that is where most of mine goes. I am still surprised at the ignorance of kids who seem to them that everything arrives, wrapped in plastic from some mysterious place, in a supermarket.
Charles Windsor, a man of mediocre ability encouraged to think by his sycophants that he is a genius, is a raging ego out of control. That all this debate, all this concern, is devoted to Charlie and Papa tells us much about the pernicious influence of class and religion in the UK. Add in the bleating from the C. of E. Synod about women bishops. One bishop left in tears, “excluded from the church he loved” because the vote went against him. The vote had gone against the “holy spirit.” All this anti women claptrap was started by that prize maniac St Paul.
July 11th, 2010 at 1:12 pm
Sad news for all: The Vatican is running out of money!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/10590214.stm
Considering the vast amount of humour supplied to us by Ratty and his friends, I feel that visitors to this site ought to make some contribution so as to ensure that this continues!!
July 11th, 2010 at 1:18 pm
Well said there B&B! When I had my own garden I kept a watering can in the bathroom to collect the precious golden fluid. (NOT to be poured onto plants undiluted, I might add. The compost heap is the best place for it, as you say.) No wonder Charles’s plants do so well, though, as there is such a plentiful supply of bullshit available!
July 11th, 2010 at 1:55 pm
Barriejohn’s link suggests the Vatican are claiming an operating loss. If I were their banker I wouldn’t be worried. What is important here is their NET WORTH. What is it? There must be plenty of European works of art, buildings and land that can be realised. If they really do end up short they could do a GodTV.
This church will not go bust. Firstly its adherants will pay up then as their following dwindles the Catholic church will end up as isolated independant outlets with no central control. Back to basics I suppose Mr Major.
July 11th, 2010 at 1:56 pm
Charles, has, time and again, shown he is a cretin with the luck of birth. To think that he may be, one day, titular head of this country is bewildering. He should be told to shut up and wave.
July 11th, 2010 at 1:59 pm
@barriejohn. We really cannot afford to let Ratty and the Rascals go down the tubes. The Vatican has had a layer of grisly horror added since Ratty arrived and the scope for Rabelaisian humour, (or vulgar abuse as an RC acquaintance of mine terms it) once that pinched face with the pointy teeth showing behind that rictus of a smile appears is endless.
I read an interview with Christopher Hitchens in this week’s New Statesman – I think you referred to his cancer in an earlier post?. He came across as a complex, candid and intriguing man. I first came across his work in the excellent demolition he did of that dried up, sanctimonious and hypocritical old prune Mother Theresa. I have enjoyed his writing ever since. There is something in me that I find attracts about people, particularly writers, who break the rules of life that the cautious abide by. Hitchens has smoked heavilty and drank heroically. As did Hemingway, Faulkner, F.Scott Fitzgerald, Eugene O’Neill, Dylan Thomas and others.
July 11th, 2010 at 2:05 pm
Tony e
Ta for the word “titular”.
If I’d gone to chapel this morning I wouldn’t have been able to Google it. Now I’m richer.
July 11th, 2010 at 2:13 pm
Do you think old jug ears looks like a complete tit in that hat? Yes Broadwsord is right, the scrounging parasite does indeed like his organic gardening, and, he also likes telling us to take more care of the planet whilst flying around in his jet or helicopter, what a wanker, The filthy inbred even threatened to move abroad if they banned fox hunting but like everything else he says, it was and is shit, he’s still here wasting precious air and food, I hope jugs dies soon, as he is only a burden on the tax payer and the planet, fucking retard. Death is to good for charlie, hard labour for him and his parasitic family would do just fine, until their dead of course. I lack the language skills to describe my contempt for these “royal” scum. I can honestly say I would rather eat my own shit than meet charlie windsor What was this prick talking about when he said in Oxford recently “we should look to islam to solve environmental problems”. It sounds to me as if he is only embracing islam because there might just be a chance of holding onto that power and money the spineless bastard so loves.
July 11th, 2010 at 2:30 pm
@Graham
I’m a Welshman and I can tell you, he’s no Prince of Wales.
He was invested in 1968 as Ponce of Wales at Caernarfon Castle just to rub our noses in it.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not unpatriotic. My family have a long history of military service including myself and MrsB. As far as I’m concerned the English are our nearest neighbours and our best friends but we would like independence.
July 11th, 2010 at 3:09 pm
Yes – I think I may have overdramatized the situation there a bit, Broadsword. There’s a job for me waiting at ITV News, I should think! It’s just an operating loss, so nothing to worry about, thank Dog. And re the Principality, I expect you’d all vote for Max Boyce as your head of state, wouldn’t you?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMKsrjOqW6o
“I wish I’d been there!”
July 11th, 2010 at 3:22 pm
@Barriejohn
Max Boyce. Fucking hell. Funny for his time. He ruined it for me when he claimed we had god on our side.
If he’s the best we have, there’s no hope for us….
How do you pick a king, who wants a king?
July 11th, 2010 at 3:37 pm
@Graham.
= I lack the language skills to describe my contempt for these “royal†scum.=
Oh, I dunno. You seem to do OK to me. Don’t underestimate yourself.
July 11th, 2010 at 3:42 pm
Broadsword: We used to enjoy his TV appearances down in Swindon. A bit dated now, as you say (Jasper Carrot was “cutting edge comedy” in those days!). You’d have to have a head of state though, and if you don’t mind me asking, who else have you got in mind? Tom Jones, or Charlotte Church?
July 11th, 2010 at 4:12 pm
Barriejohn/Broadsword,
In this country, when talking about getting rid of the ‘no-ability’, there is a comment I often hear. ‘Well who would replace them?’. That smacks of automatic deference. As long as who leads us is an elected person that we can vote out I don’t really care.
Imagine a UK with no religion, monarchy and Jordan.
Bliss.
July 11th, 2010 at 5:07 pm
Whenever I think of Principe Carlo, the mystery of his A Level grades versus his subsequent winning of a place at Cambridge, his weird comparative taste in women (for which preference the only explanation can be that Camilla gives wonderful head), his organic profiteering, his championing of homeopathy, his toothpaste-tube gadget, his philistine architectural interventions and, above all, his received “wisdoms” on religion – one word sings out for indelible aerosolling onto his polo-pony’s arse: MERITOCRACY. I want it heckled at him at every public apprearance (just as I longed to hear CHAPAQUIDICK hurled at that Kennedy oaf both live and in his posthumous sanctification). But I digress.
Meritocracy: if we were in one, all of the above posters would be forming the new government. Vos saluto!
July 11th, 2010 at 5:11 pm
Imagine a UK with no religion, monarchy and Jordan.
Bring it on!
July 11th, 2010 at 6:05 pm
I read that as the costs of Ratzinger’s freebie head north of £20 million the man coordinating (i.e. hiding, excusing, rationalising, deflecting attention from the true costs etc) is someone called Lord Patten who is a Roman Catholic. This is like putting an alcoholic in charge of a brewery. Why should I, as an atheist or indeed a muslim, protestant, hindu, buddhist or whatever, be forced to contribute to these outrageous costs.
Here is a man who should have his collar felt by Inspector Knacker of the Yard as soon as he sets foot on UK soil before being questioned about his part in many paedo priest cover-ups. Doesn’t the law of the land apply anymore? Or only to the peasantry?
July 11th, 2010 at 6:52 pm
@Barriejohn
Whiskey’s worn off now, I’ve overstepped the mark.
Head of state?
If we can export Julia Gillard (from Barry) to Australia will they lend us Kylie Minogue?
July 11th, 2010 at 6:54 pm
As a republican, I say “long live the queen”.
*sighs*
July 11th, 2010 at 7:26 pm
tony e
Your comment about automatic deference.
You wouldn’t get it from my old rugby coach. Prior to any match he’d scream at us, “He’s got a cock and balls just the same as you. Just fucking kill him!”
Afterwards he’d say, “Well boys, you played like a bunch of cunts!”
He said this once after a 72-0 win.
July 11th, 2010 at 8:40 pm
Broadsword: problem solved. I was channel-hopping whilst watching “Sink The Bismarck!” for the umpteenth time, when up popped that great Welsh icon, ALED JONES. Godly, clean-living, modest in the extreme, yet endowed with talent beyond measure – how could you possibly have overlooked HIM?
July 11th, 2010 at 8:53 pm
Barriejohn
ALED JONES.
We’re fucked. All we need now is some crooning from Harry Secombe.
These people are from a tradition that would terrify unbelievers into attending chapel. Freeing us from their superstitious drivel has to be the best thing that old fashioned communism did for us. Not Arthur Scargill’s unpatriotic Soviet worship.
July 11th, 2010 at 11:28 pm
Broadsword, your old rugby coach has more intelligence with that one statement that any of the crap from Charlie boys’ lips.
On a quick aside. That picture of ratty, does it not look exactly like the moment where Bilbo Baggins asks Frodo to see the Ring in the first part of Lord of the Rings?
July 12th, 2010 at 4:49 am
Broadsword: If we can export Julia Gillard (from Barry) to Australia will they lend us Kylie Minogue?
She’s all yours!
Resurrect King Arthur…then you’d be right…
July 12th, 2010 at 5:50 am
Going off track here, but seriously, Ratty IS the Palpatine star wars emperor. Unless we have a galactic wide photoshop job running.
July 12th, 2010 at 6:48 am
Ratzinger is not exactly the picture-boy I would use if did the Vatican’s marketing. It looks scary enough to explain the dwindling of the flock in the West, and as for Charles: just another victim of an anachronistic bit of folklore, heavily subsidised by the tax-payer.
We’ve got these people in Holland too; our own queen helped her tree-hugging sister, who flies all over the planet to tell us to do something about the need to change our way of life, avoid taxes by setting up a little scheme in ‘her’ palace. There was a fuss, of course, but us yokels were told that’s basically okay if people on benefits screw the system, as long as they belong to one particular family. God and royalty, things of the past that should be just there: in the past.
July 12th, 2010 at 9:42 am
Charles is the product of inbreeding, a sheltered public school education and too much time on his hands; his pandering to Islam is an act of treachery against the Crown. In olden times his head would be removed and displayed on Traitors’Gate at the Tower of London.
July 12th, 2010 at 10:11 am
Angela_K
July 12th, 2010 at 9:42 am
Charles is the product of inbreeding, a sheltered public school education and too much time on his hands; his pandering to Islam is an act of treachery against the Crown. In olden times his head would be removed and displayed on Traitors’Gate at the Tower of London.
aaah, the good old days.
July 12th, 2010 at 11:06 am
Is Aled Jones the Cliff Richard of Wales? Jones is, to my mind, even more soppy and Cliffy sets a severe standard on that.
July 12th, 2010 at 11:42 am
I’m ashamed to say that once, just once I thought the jug-eared fuckhead was doing a useful social service in criticising architectural excesses. Let’s face it, UK postwar architecture is for the most part pretty bloody disastrous. Naturally he immediately bollocksed things by suggesting something out of Noddyland as a solution. This was also around the time he mentioned his tampon fetish to a startled world.
Angela-K; I imagine his head would make a good weathervane.
July 12th, 2010 at 2:08 pm
Broga: Yes, and the Irish have Daniel O’Donnell! (Not sure about the Scottish equivalent, though I believe The Krankies made a record once!!)
July 12th, 2010 at 2:17 pm
Fandabidozy.
any Cliff fans would want his calendar:
http://www.boreme.com/boreme/f.....dar-p1.php
July 12th, 2010 at 2:47 pm
barriejohn. Daniel O’Donnell is desperately bad news. The Scots? Going back a bit Andy Stewart is or was awful with his kilt, knobbly knees and a god awful song called “A Scottish Soldier.” He used to be wheeled out every Hogmanay on TV and this was the greatest incentive ever for me to grab the whisky bottle. I freeze up even thinking about it. You may wonder about my detailed knowledge of this. I had a girlfriend, back in the distant past, who thought Andy Stewart was great. Well, you know, on occasion lust overcomes good musical taste.
PS I think Bryn Terfel is great. Terrific singer and a great human being. That is for the Welsh contingent on this site.
July 12th, 2010 at 8:43 pm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGZSvdSsoAE
just come across this
July 12th, 2010 at 9:52 pm
I love the Cliff Calendar!
I well remember both Andy Stewart (whom my Nan thought was the image of my dad), and Kenneth McKellar. Sadly, neither now meet the qualifications required of a head of state!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=liPDM7JGRUM
July 12th, 2010 at 11:46 pm
I did post you a comment today, no abuse and very factual but you choose not to publish it, or am I jumping the gun and it will appear tomorrow?
July 13th, 2010 at 6:25 am
@chrsbol
Nice link. We have Priestoff, all they need to invent for us now is Muzzaway.
July 13th, 2010 at 9:47 am
bj
Ah Kenneth McKellar. I was once told the way to drive a Scotsman mad was to nail one of his feet to the floor and play a Kenneth McKellar record.