“Morrissey is a dick” – indeed, but he’s right about royal pressure

I’ve spent the past few days weighing up whether to write about the tragic death of Jacintha Saldanha, the nurse who committed suicide after transferring a phoney Queen and Prince Charles to the bedside of the Duchess of Cambridge. The blame dished out to Australian DJs Michael Christian and Mel Greig has been absurd – as has the ritual attempted-catharsis of their streaming faces on TV and the newspapers.

There are more ethical targets of prank calls than nurses, for sure. She was not a celebrity – and so dealing with any unwanted publicity was inevitably going to be that bit worse. But the idea that one can hold humourists responsible for the death of someone they only spoke to for a matter of seconds just doesn’t follow. Indeed, it is ridiculous to say that anyone should take the blame for such an irrational act as suicide.

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Kate Middleton and the right to ogle a young woman

There’s been something of a royal flush this summer with not one but two of the younger members of our most elite family thrust, nakedly, into the spotlight. From billiards in the buff to the recent announcement that yet more gossip outlets, this time Italian and Swedish, are set to publish photos of Kate Middleton sunbathing topless, apparently we all want to see what our (unclothed) social betters are up to.

Of course, our archaic, expensive and, at times, frankly ridiculous monarchy is a symbol of so much of what is wrong in our unequal society. Bastions of class and race privilege, the royals demonstrate the painfully acute sense that in Britain, as it always has been, it’s not through your own talent or any hard work that you achieve success. Instead, your parent’s money dictates. It goes largely unquestioned that we have tens of individuals born into a life of luxury merely because they had the good fortune to grow in the right womb.

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