Who?

It’s not often that I comment on celebrity stuff, but this takes the cake:

The American people still hold a grudge against the Royal Family for how Princess Diana was treated, claims a senior journalist at ABC News.
The late Diana, who died in a car crash in Paris in August 1997, captivated the hearts of people worldwide with her charm, grace, and unwavering commitment to humanitarian causes.
And she had a particularly strong impact in America – with rumours she even planned to give up her life in the UK and move Stateside.

What a load of bullshit.  I dunno where this “senior journalist at ABC News” conducted his poll — no doubt among his “senior” journo buddies, over several cocktails at some foul Manhattan bar.

I doubt whether the average American under age… I dunno, maybe 60 — even knows who the Virgin Princess was.  And among the over 60s (like me), the reaction is most likely in the “who gives a rat’s ass?” class.

Indeed, the whole Royal Family concept is treated with barely-concealed contempt Over Here, with only a few royalty groupies even aware of the dramatis personae  in Britishland’s little social soap opera.  (I know who most of these parasites are, but that’s only because my university degree is in Modern Western Civilization — such as it was — and it’s necessary to know these goofs only because of the part they played in European history prior to WWI.)

And as it turns out, Prince Charles only married this upper-class twit because he couldn’t marry Camilla — yeah, that worked out well — and even better, she wasn’t the saintly Lady/Princess Di, but a shallow little Sloane Ranger (Britain’s Valley Girl equivalent, named for their fondness for the shops and clubs of Chelsea) who won the ultimate Sloan Prize:  to marry royalty.  And that worked out well, too.  Not.

Anyway, there is no “grudge” Over Here towards the Royals.  I bet this “senior journalist at ABC News” only made that statement to create some controversy prior to Charles’s coronation next week.

Sic semper iournalisti (or however they would have put it in 100 AD).

Bosom Buddies

We all know about the foul Clintons and their insatiable greed for money (e.g. the Clinton “Foundation” a.k.a. the Clinton ATM), coupled with their need to get “donations” from just about every evil source on the planet so as to subsidize their jet-set lifestyle.

Here’s the Brit version, in the shape of Prince Andrew, Duke of York:

Thames Valley Police have refused to comment on who is paying for the security they provide to Prince Andrew, at an estimated cost of £500,000 per year. It is said that one of the duke’s principal problems is that he and the duchess desire a lifestyle that is beyond their means. Well, yes. And me. I desire that, too. The Duke of York, however, refuses to rub along on an official income of £250,000 p.a. tax free from his mother, the Q.E.II, plus his naval pension of £20,000 p.a. accrued from his 22 years of naval service from 1979 to 2001. Tom Bower, royal biographer, said: “(The Duke and Duchess of York) have an appetite for luxury which is beyond the understanding of mere mortals. There’s a sense of entitlement in it all, that is the real problem. They think nothing is too much for them.” In 2020 Andrew bought a £220,000 Bentley to add to his two Range Rovers. He also has a collection of luxury watches, including several Rolexes and Cartiers and a £150,000 Patek Philippe.

His home life is not simple.

He and the Duchess live at Royal Lodge, a 30-room cottage set in nearly 100 acres of Windsor Great Park in Berkshire, owned by the Crown Estate, to which the duke pays a notional rent, but bearing the costs himself of upkeep and staffing which are estimated to be up to £1 million a year.
He also has a little place in Verbier, a Swiss ski resort, which he bought for £16.6 million, but failed to pay the final installment, of £6.6 million, for which he is being sued.

Norman Baker, a former government minister who has written a book about royal finances, believes that the duke’s extravagance has forced him into trying to supplement his income by building business relationships with a list of dubious associates. He said: “Andrew has had a succession of benefactors, deeply unpleasant people mostly, who want to be associated with someone from the royal family and he’s been prepared to be associated with them in return for money. He once took a diamond necklace worth £18,000 as a gift from a convicted Libyan gunrunner. These are the sort of people he’s dealing with.”

Most notably, of course, the paedophile and sex trafficker, financier Jeffrey Epstein. (Which leads us back to Bill Clinton, Liar Extraordinaire — Kim.)

The Times has revealed that from 2015 the duke was borrowing an average of £125,000 every three months from a credit facility offered by Banque Havilland, an institution owned by the Rowland family. The duke made a final withdrawal of £250,000 in November 2017, then 11 days later the whole debt was cleared by David Rowland. Buckingham Palace conduct rules state that members of the Royal Family should never accept gifts of money, or money equivalent in connection with an official engagement or duty. Time his finances are investigated, at the very least by HMRC – oops – that’s Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs Service. His mum. Oh, well.

Tom Bower described the duke’s business activities as “shameless”. He said: “He is a man of unbelievable bad judgment and remarkable greed. And with each step his past catches up with him.”

Horrible fucking bastard.

No wonder the DoY is such a good friend of Bill Clinton:  their common predilection for sucking cash out of whoever wants to party with them is perfectly congruent.  As is their common predilection for young pudenda.

Just my opinion, of course;  I could be wrong.

Job Opportunity

Email from Longtime Friend Gibby:

“Idiots are working as ‘armorers’ on film set… You should be doing this work and not idiots (don’t care who her dad was!). Reach out — I’m am sure you could get this sort of piece work (forgive the horrible pun…) if you put your resume out?”

No doubt I could.  Except that it would probably require that I:

  1. live in California and
  2. work in Hollywood, which in turn would mean
  3. being exposed to show business people, and
  4. paying taxes to the State of California.

Nope. They’d have to pay me more than they pay Alec Baldwin — and I still wouldn’t do that.

Let ’em all kill each other.

Oh, How Nice

Here they come.  First it was the tech companies coming to Dallas and Austin, now it’s the fucking movie people?

Hollywood stars are leaving Tinseltown behind to recast their lives in Austin, Texas.

What comes next?  Did you have to ask?

Yet even those accustomed to Austin’s growing pains have been stunned by the pandemic’s fallout, which rocketed housing prices by 43 percent in one year — the steepest climb of any major metro area in the country. Tales abound of home sellers being bombarded with all-cash offers the moment a property hits the market. During the first half of the year, 1,440 Austin-area houses sold for more than $100,000 over asking (versus 22 houses in the same period the previous year).

Here’s the good news, though.  Leaving L.A. for Austin is like jumping from a pile of dogshit into a pile of cowshit.

The homeless problem created by Adler and the city council has had a decidedly negative impact on the city and its residents. Crime involving homeless suspects has seen a drastic increase over the past two years.

To make matters worse, the “defund the police initiative” and the anti-police sentiment that has been encouraged by the far-left politicians that govern Austin have pushed an alarming number of officers to resign or move to other departments. Each of these factors has contributed to making the city less safe, but the city council and Mayor Steve Adler don’t seem to care.

Welcome to Los Angeles-lite, assholes.