h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

It is a very sad and tragic thing that anyone is so humourless and pathetic as to start frothing at the mouth about a costume worn at a private party.

"The point is he could be King one day, will all those people directly affected by the Nazis accept him as King with this in his past?"

Those people are getting pretty thin on the ground (I suspect it's why it's always being dragged up) and I doub't any would be left buy the he get's a chance at being king.

By the time I saw this on TV news breaks for the fourth time, the wife and I were both saying get over it already!

The children of those people are still alive. Perhaps its inconvenient that they continue to grieve for their parents and grandparents deaths at the hands of the nazis. Perhaps you could tell them to get over it already, thats bound to help isn't it?

I went to a party dressed as a Roman is anyone worried about my feelings regarding the enslavement and rape of people by the Roman Empire?

I once got in to trouble for taking a water pistol to a New Years Party a few miles down the road from Dunblane. (there had been a massacre of local people and school children by a gun nut a few years previously), but that was just one out of a hall that held about three hundreed people and the friends I was with said take no notice.

Does a painting of Napolean in an English gallery amount to a slight on the British Soldiers who died fighting his armies?

The Jewish Holocaust is of course different it is living memory to gor so many people, but surely the thoughtlessness there can be seperated from any sort of thought that Harry is some how a Neo Nazi.

I dont think any group is safe from The Prince Philips ribald "wit" and peolope seem to get on either accepting him as the queens consort or just doing their normal stuff and mostly ignoring the Windsor soap opera.

one love

" Perhaps you could tell them to get over it already, thats bound to help isn't it? "

That's pretty unhelpful and over bearing isn't it? What has it got to do with my wife and I thinking a television company should get over the fact that a wealthy forign kid wore a nazi uniform?

I don't like your insinuation that I'm telling my grandparent's generation to get over WWII. Mind you those who remember it don't harp on about it nearly as much as their children do...

My experience of talking to those who were there is that they'd rather not bring it up every chance they get.

This made me think of punks in the 1970s, who all had a lot of fun wearing Nazi regalia... at least in NZ, they did.

What you have to remember in the background to this is that while Prince Harry may have dressed as a Nazi for a party, the Queen's uncle, King Edward VIII, actually was one, in all but name. (Monarchs do not join political parties)

After the abdication, he and his new wife were welcome at Hitler's private gatherings, supported his policies, spoke in his support and were fully-prepared to take back the throne if the Nazi party had come to hold power in Britain.

So there is an underlying issue here which is rather more to the point tham whether or not the younger prince should have had more sense.

Any student of British peri-war history knows that this country was very close in political flavour to National Socialism in the thirties, and that it was a close-run thing as to which side we might have chosen had a very few events gone a different way.

Jez

It really has gone from ridiculous to nigh hysteria now with the right on PC brigade now demanding he makes a personal apology, make a visit to Auschwitz (sp?) and virtually flog himself with barbed wire to make amends. I sincerely hope he does not. We all know that events in WWII were horrific and should never be repeated, but (at the risk of being abused) I am getting ever so tired of constantly being reminded of the facts by bleating groups hell bent on making it relevent today.

IT WAS 60 YEARS AGO. Do we still whinge on about the Crusades? No. Do we ever even mention the genocide of the Native American people? No.
There are probably numerous other atrocities that could be dragged up, but oh no - for the rest of time we will constantly be smacked over the head by events in WWII by people who will just not let it go and get over it.

<>

I can see that point of view, especially for the very young, like Prince Harry - it was 60 years ago, as you point out.

*All* war is Hell!

The word I was fumbling for was "Closure". Any Californian head shrink will tell you about it for $400 an hour. I therefore suggest that anyone who is offended by the boy Harry, go to your nearest shrink and say you need "Closure"

Actually, yes, both the Crusades and the wiping out of the Native Americans are still talked about and can bring up some very deep sensitivities. As was seen after September 11, some unwise remarks by GB regarding the US response being a "crusade" brought about a huge reaction within the Islamic community. Europeans don't talk about it because it was Europeans who caused it in the first place. The feelings about this are rather different in the Arab world.

Similarly in the US, there is now a lot more awareness of the period of colonisation and conquest that lead to such a massive killing off of so many Native Americans. You don't need to go back so far when we were looking at films of glorious cowboys killing savage Indians. The fact that we don't see that anymore, and the fact that a lot has been done there to increase people's knowledge of those times is testimony to a greater sensitivity to such things. Again, we Europeans don't talk about it because it was caused by Europeans. Maybe Native Americans feel differently.

Just because it happened a long time ago doesn't make it any less important. Humanity showed a truly evil side during all these situations, and the message is there in black and white - it could happen again.

"Similarly in the US, there is now a lot more awareness of the period of colonisation and conquest that lead to such a massive killing off of so many Native Americans."

There may well be "Awareness", but it didnt stop the FBI trumping up charges against Leonard Peltier and leaving him to rot in a cell did it? Also doesnt stop the US Government honouring treaties that were signed in perpetuity - like giving back the Black Hills to the Soiux - or does it?
Enforced abortions, jail if you dare spoke your native language and more.
Not a single effort by anyone in power over there EVER to put this right and there never will be.

Sorry to go off topic, rant over. Please continue about the Boy Harry......

Dr Doctor who exactly are the right on PC Brigade?

Assomeone regularly chastised here abouts for being too PC I have to tell you that PC is something that is being hijacked here by a press that generally derides it for easy points scoring against a guy who does daft things but hasnt got much hope of talking back when they start slagging him off. This time the press have chosen to come out as somekind of PC crusaders but they are not the PC brigade as you would normally know them.

Jez, Tony Benn was part of the aristocracy but gave it all up to be a socialist, what d his ancestors have to do with his politics? A lot but you cant visit the sins of the father on the children that's the action of the bigG of a certain middle eastern death cult.

Where would such sensitivity stop if we didnt say I have a right to wear what I like? Would I be stopped from wearing '60s style American combats for fear of offending Koreans? Would hunt saboutuers be right to lambast me for wearing a red riding jacket as a fashion statement?

Shouild I stop white people from using the phrase "lets get down to the nitty gritty" as it originally refered to visiting the slave hold to to take advantage of manacled female captives from Africa?

Rainbow Della,
"I am getting ever so tired of constantly being reminded of the facts by bleating groups hell bent on making it relevent today.>>

Ican see that point of view

Why am I not surprised to find you supporting this! What exactly is wrong with people knowing FACTS and those facts being RELEVANT

As we all know you would rather people know fantasies and the facts be damned as long as what people learn supports your views.

Woodpigeon, IMO, it *is* happening again, or rather still happening, with what's going on in Iraq - or the Sudan, in Israel/Palestine or in 1994-5 in Rwanda. Those atrocities are much more recent, and should be considered of far more moment.

"Any student of British peri-war history knows that this country was very close in political flavour to National Socialism in the thirties, and that it was a close-run thing as to which side we might have chosen had a very few events gone a different way"

What gross distortion. Mosley's Blackshirts had next to no base of support. The Kellogg-Brian pact and a fear for the spilling of blood on the scale of the Great War, the idea that Britain should not get involved in the affairs of the continent were not a liking for the extremism of Nazism.

Is it true, there is a story of it being about his membership in a anti-establishment group, not just a 'bad choice' but done on purpose?

Drink. Drugs. Nazi uniforms.

He's the Keith Moon of the royal family, isn't he?

>> Jez, Tony Benn was part of the aristocracy but gave it all up to be a socialist

Actually, Tony Benn's father, William Wedgewood Benn, was a Labour MP who was asked by Clement Atlee to become a Labour member of the House of Lords in the days before life peers.

He seems to have been an extremely interesting man, and a man of great integrity, having started out as someone who was clearly middle-class and a very successful Liberal politician under Lloyd George. He was a pilot, aged 63, in the Second World War. http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/TUbenn.htm

Whatever else he was and wasn't, he was not a member of the aristocracy. And neither was Tony Benn.

B

The minute people say things like 'Well it happened 60 years ago, it's in the past,' I find my goat very much got. Because maybe that particular example of 'it' happened 60 years ago but the genocide in Rwanda was only 10 years ago, and what about the Bosnian one? And what about Aceh and the Tamils and the trouble in Zimbabwe and Israel/Palestine? That's bloody happening bloody now and if people go about wearing Nazi uniforms because it's a bit of fun and anyway it was all over 60 years ago, they're not really helping with the very important task of explaining that it is still happening and happening right now all over the world and will go on happening as long as people think they can dismiss any of it as over and done with and a good excuse to wear a silly costume. Bosnia sprang right out of Nazi atrocities, it is not over now and will not be over for hundreds of years. don't believe me? Weeellll, take a good look at the last 500 years of the history of Ireland and how much the whole Oliver Cromwell thing still rankles and all that followed on from it and try to tell anyone THEN that something that happened 60 years ago is over and done with. Ha. Like heck. If only it was.

As for Harry, poor little eejit, I stand by my original point that he really needs a wider mix of friends and possibly an education, seeing as Eton singularly failed to give him one. His sin was ignorance. Our sin is that of failing to point out how appalling, vile, and stupid it is to let anyone, let alone an aristocrat who went to the 'best' school in Britain, grow up in that ignorance.

I reckon he is not as stupid as people might want to believe - that he chose that costume in order to cause waves. He seems quite rebellious - as much as he can be. Yeah, maybe the 'Keith Moon' of Royalty. Still, not clever, not amusing. And definitely a bad choice of costume.

Other than that - so?


az