Queen is ‘dedicating herself anew’ as diamond jubilee year begins
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This article titled “Queen is ‘dedicating herself anew’ as diamond jubilee year begins” was written by Stephen Bates, for The Guardian on Monday 6th February 2012 00.01 UTCThe Queen is issuing a message of thanks to the public on Monday morning on the 60th anniversary of her accession to the throne.
In a statement from Buckingham Palace, the 85-year-old monarch promises to dedicate herself anew to the service of the country, and echoes a call that she made in her Christmas message for the restoration of a national spirit of togetherness.
The Queen and Duke of Edinburgh will spend the day at Sandringham, the Norfolk mansion where her father, George VI, died in his sleep on 6 February 1952.
The couple were out in the snow on Sunday, for a service at West Newton church, on the estate and being greeted with flowers from well-wishers. They visited the local Sunday school in the village hall, but a 90th anniversary parade by the Royal British Legion, in King’s Lynn, which the duke had planned to attend, was cancelled due to the weather.
The Queen’s message says: “Today, as I mark 60 years as your Queen, I am writing to thank you for the wonderful support and encouragement that you have given to me and Prince Philip over these years and to tell you how deeply moved we have been to receive so many kind messages about the diamond jubilee.
“In this special year, as I dedicate myself anew to your service, I hope that we will all be reminded of the power of togetherness and the convening strength of family friendship and good neighbourliness, examples of which I have been fortunate to see throughout my reign and which my family and I look forward to seeing in many forms as we travel throughout the UK and the wider Commonwealth.
“I hope also that this jubilee year will be a time to give thanks for the great advances that have been made since 1952 and to look forward to the future with clear heads and warm hearts as we join together in our celebrations. I send my sincere good wishes to you all.”
Responding, David Cameron praised the Queen’s dignity and authority, guiding and uniting Britain and the Commonwealth over six decades. To view her as a glittering ornament was to “misunderstand” the constitution. “Always dedicated, always resolute and always respected, she is a source of wisdom and continuity,” he said.
Cameron, the 12th PM of the reign, who was not even born until she had been on the throne for more than 14 years, added: “All my life and for the lives of most people in this country she has always been there for us. Today and this year we have the chance to say thank you.”
The main focus of the celebrations will be the first weekend in June, extended by two successive bank holidays, when there will be a riverboat pageant of 1,000 vessels sailing down the Thames through London, expected to be attended by a million spectators, an open-air concert at Buckingham Palace, and a service at St Paul’s Cathedral.
anti-monarchy group Republic, which said its members would demonstrate peacefully against the pageant, argued that schools and the BBC should not be overly enthusiastic about the celebrations.
The Queen and duke are due to visit many areas of Britain and Northern Ireland in the summer, and other members of the royal family are visiting Commonwealth nations, starting in March with Prince Harry in his first official solo tour, to the Caribbean and Latin America.
On Mondaya jubilee website, is being launched with news about events during the year and two newly commissioned photographs of the Queen. There will also be commemorative postage stamps and a charitable diamond jubilee trust, led by Sir John Major, to raise money for medical research and education across the Commonwealth.
The former prime minister said the trust would “identify charitable projects that would enrich the lives and opportunities of all its citizens to provide a lasting legacy”.
The anniversary was not met entirely with unalloyed joy however as some economists said the June holiday could dent GDP by 0.5% in the second quarter as firms closed and people took extra leave, though they conceded this could be made up by sales of jubilee souvenirs, food and drink purchases for street parties, and tourist revenue.
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George III’s tin bath rediscovered at Kew Palace
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As two centuries of lumber was cleared out of the abandoned Georgian kitchens at Kew Palace in west London – the smallest of the royal residences – a unique and poignant piece of royal history was uncovered.
The brown tin tub found stashed away in a chimney opening was the bath in which King George III took regular soakings in hot water, a prescription to calm him as he and his attendants wrestled with his terrifying bouts of mania.
At that time, the early 1800s, he was assumed to have been mad; he is now believed to have developed the hereditary condition porphyria. He was virtually imprisoned at Kew to prevent a political crisis if the full extent of his condition became known, as the previously gentle and clever king roared obscenities and terrified his wife, Queen Charlotte.
The discovery bears out a Kew legend that the tormented king took his baths not in the sumptuously furnished main house, but amid the domestic clatter of the royal kitchen.
Curator Susanne Groom believes the bath was set up for King George in a small room normally used for keeping silver under lock and key, which would have given him some privacy. It had a fireplace and so could be made comfortable, and was next door to the main kitchen with an endless supply of hot water from the copper boilers. The bath will be displayed in this room in May, when the kitchens open to the public for the first time after a £1.7m restoration. The main building will reopen in April.
The kitchens will be displayed using sound and light to evoke a significant date, 6 February 1789, when George was judged well enough to be given back his knife and fork, and sat down with his wife and daughters to a meal.
The menu survives in the national archives, and includes soup, pigeon pie, veal, sweetbreads, pike, chicken, a leg of lamb and a roast goose, pheasant, blancmange, anchovy salad, a mille-feuille gateau and pancakes.
Groom was told the story of the bath in the kitchen by a descendant of a visitor. In 1823, after Charlotte died, the palace was virtually abandoned and the kitchens fell into their long twilight. The visitor had been told by the royal housekeeper, a Mrs Tunstall, that George insisted on bathing in the kitchen to save staff the trouble of carrying heavy cans of hot water to the house.
“That has to be true, that is George to the life,” Groom said.
Because the kitchen block gradually filled up with junk and stores, it escaped being fitted out with Victorian gadgets and is now a rare and historically important survivor. Original elm tables and dressers, bread ovens and roasting spits, hooks for hams and sides of meat, and a large cupboard where the precious spices were kept have all survived.
“Since the palace reopened, the question we are most often asked is, where was the kitchen and where was the bathroom? Now we can answer both,” Groom said.
• Kew Palace reopens on 2 April and the kitchens in May.
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Prince Charles presents proof of profit in sustainable fisheries
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Proof that sustainably managed fisheries can deliver higher profits as well as environmental benefits was presented on Friday by the Prince of Wales. The report by one of his charities was hailed as a rare piece of good news amid what is usually an unremittingly gloomy outlook for the world’s dwindling fish stocks.
Prince Charles told an audience at Fishmongers’ Hall in London: “The story today need no longer be one of doom and gloom and inevitable decline, but one that harbours the possibility of generating more value from a strongly performing natural asset. This potential can only be tapped if we manage it well.”
He said the evidence gathered by his International Sustainability Unit (ISU), which examined 50 sustainably managed fisheries around the world, showed that improved fisheries management was “actually be more profitable than perennially succumbing to the temptation of maximising short term income while deferring the costs until later”.
He quoted an estimate from the World Bank that if all fisheries around the world were better managed, they would be worth bn a year more than their current total contribution of 4bn to global GDP. But the number of fisheries that are subject to a sustainable management programme are still a minority, and global fish stocks are falling fast. According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation, at least a third are now overexploited, depleted or recovering from depletion, and this figure is rising.
The study found many examples of responsibly managed stocks bringing benefits to local people. For instance, in the Pacific halibut fishery, the introduction of a catch-sharing system lengthened the fishing season and consequently increased the value of fish sold from to per pound. The Ben Tre clam fishery in Vietnam, after improving its governance, now supports 13,000 households, compared to 9,000 in 2007. The report also found that the hilsa shad fishery in Bangladesh could be worth nearly US0m more annually if improved, and that recovering the bluefin tuna fishery in the north-east Atlantic could produce gains of US0m per year.
The ISU found that in sustainably managed fisheries, declining stocks were revived by putting in place controls to regulate fishermen, including restrictions on when and where they could fish and what kind of nets and boats to use. The authors said that some of the key ways to improve the management of fish stocks were to change the economics of fishing through rewarding positive behaviour by the fleets, and to look at the health of the species being netted in the context of the whole marine ecosystem, which would include the health of other species in the food chain, and pollution from chemicals, agriculture or other human causes.
They made several recommendations for improving fisheries management, including: collecting better scientific data on fish stocks and the impact of fishing on the whole marine ecosystem; identifying more examples of good management; developing mechanisms to finance the wider adoption of good management techniques; involving the private sector with more fisheries improvement projects.
But the prince warned that action must be taken urgently to ensure that more of the world’s key fisheries are subject to good management – otherwise, he said, the current rapid decline of fish stocks would become irreversible.
“Despite the current vulnerable state of global fisheries, if managed properly with a focus on the resilience of the marine ecosystem as a whole, our seas could still provide us with the opportunity to continue harvesting seafood long into the future at similar, or perhaps even higher, volumes than at present,” he said.
His call was echoed by David Nussbaum, chief executive of the conservation group WWF-UK, who said: “We share the view of the problem and the collaborative, science-based approach to finding solutions that will protect the marine environment and ensure long-term sustainability for those whose livelihoods are dependent on it. To minimise the danger of catastrophic collapse of fisheries, we must look beyond short-term gains for some to the long-term interests of all. We should ask ourselves, ‘if fisheries and marine ecosystems face collapse in the same way as the banking system did, who will bail out the oceans?’ “
The ISU report, entitled Towards Global Sustainable Fisheries: The Opportunity for Transition, was the result of two years of consultation with the public, private, scientific and NGO sectors.
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Greenwich celebrates royal borough honour
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A weekend of fireworks and celebrations begins on Friday as Greenwich becomes a royal borough.
The rare honour is being bestowed by the Queen to mark her diamond jubilee. The town, already a Unesco World Heritage Site and famous as the home of Greenwich Mean Time, is expecting a business bonanza this summer when it hosts the London 2012 Olympics equestrian events.
One of its tourist attractions, the tea-clipper Cutty Sark – of which the Duke of Edinburgh is a patron – is due to reopen after years of restoration work delayed by a fire.
The great palace at Greenwich, now a few bits of broken stone in the grounds of the Royal Hospital, was a favourite of the monarchy from the 15th century onwards, its extensive hunting park and handsome buildings easily accessible by water and a refuge from the stink, noise and disease of London.
The palace was named Placentia, the pleasing place. Henry VIII was born there in 1491 and brought up mainly at nearby Eltham palace, which will open to the public for free on Saturday as part of the celebrations.
Henry married Catherine of Aragon and Anne of Cleves at Greenwich and his daughters, the future monarchs Mary and Elizabeth, were born there. Many royal visitors came through Greenwich at some point, and Peter the Great, on a ship-building tour, wrecked the diarist John Evelyn’s prized garden in neighbouring Deptford by organising wheelbarrow races through his holly hedge.
Greenwich’s latest honour became official when the royal charter signed by the Queen was collected from the office of the lord chancellor and delivered to the town hall in Woolwich by the mayor of Greenwich, Jim Gillman, and the leader of the council, Chris Roberts.
There will be myriad fireworks and free public entertainment over the weekend in Woolwich, Eltham and Greenwich itself, where the charter will be on display at the Old Royal Naval College.
Signs boasting of the royal title are likely to spring up all over Greenwich this year, although the council says most official street signs will be replaced only on an “as and when” basis.
However, the maritime museum got in early and changed its name to the Royal Museums Greenwich last year. Its royal credentials are unimpeachable, and it even has a royal dogs connection. The main museum was officially opened by George VI in 1937, with the 11-year-old Elizabeth at his side, and the complex includes not only the observatory on top of the hill, which was the former home and workplace of the astronomers royal, but also the Queen’s House, an elegant Palladian mansion built by Inigo Jones for Anne of Denmark, wife of James I. According to legend, James gave Anne the manor to make up for swearing at her in public after she accidentally shot one of his favourite dogs while they were out hunting.
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Argentina criticises Prince William’s tour of duty
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Argentina has stepped up its war of words with the UK, issuing an official statement criticising Prince William’s planned tour of duty of the Falkland Islands – wearing what Argentina angrily termed “the uniform of the conqueror”.
The statement, from Argentinian foreign ministry, under the letterhead: “Argentina, a country with good people”, was the strongest reaction yet to William’s six-week deployment as an RAF search-and-rescue helicopter pilot in the south Atlantic.
“Prince William will arrive on the Malvinas islands as a member of his country’s armed forces. The Argentine people regret that the royal heir will arrive on national soil in the uniform of the conqueror and not with the wisdom of the statesman who works in the service of peace and dialogue among nations,” it said.
Patriotic fervour is high in Argentina as the 30th anniversary of its invasion of the islands approaches this April.
With the support of Argentina’s closest neighbours, the country’s president, Cristina Kirchner, has imposed a blockade of major South American ports against ships flying the Falklands flag and is threatening to cancel permission for the once-weekly flight that links Port Stanley with neighbouring Chile to overfly Argentina, cutting off the Falklands only commercial air link with the outside world.
The ban against ships prompted David Cameron to accuse Kirchner of having “colonialist” aims on an island population that wants to remain a British dependency. In response, she accused Cameron of “mediocrity bordering on stupidity”.
William Hague, the foreign secretary, said on Tuesday that Britain is sending one of its most modern warships, the destroyer HMS Dauntless, to the Falklands. He called the deployment a routine replacement of another warship, but also stressed that “the Royal Navy packs a very considerable punch”.
The Ministry of Defence described the move as a routine operation to replace the HMS Montrose, currently in the South Atlantic, although its capability to use its Viper anti-aircraft system to prevent just about any air attack on the islands has infuriated Argentina.
“Argentina rejects the British attempt to militarise a conflict regarding which the UN has said both nations must resolve though bilateral negotiations,” said the new statement.
Anti-British sentiment is also being stirred ahead of Thursday’s premiere of the Oscar-nominated The Iron Lady, in which Meryl Streep plays Margaret Thatcher. An online preview of the film shows the moment when Thatcher decided to send the British fleet to counter Argentina’s 1982 invasion.
“It is shameful they are showing this film in Argentina,” said one furious commentator who provocatively proclaimed that the US would never allow the screening of a film glorifying Osama bin Laden. On the other hand, the 1982 invasion was described as “one of the greatest moral swindles suffered by the Argentine people” by another. “Do you even know what moral means,” replied a Malvinas hardliner. “If you regret that we left the English with 31 ships out of combat then you never had any sense of morality.”
The online disagreements reflect a noticeable recent shift from formerly unified public opinion on the issue of Malvinas, as the islands are known in Argentina.
Despite the passion most Argentines outwardly display, the most recent available poll from 2010 showed that 45% had little or no interest in the Malvinas question. Surprisingly, compared to previous hard-line positions, 24% agreed to the idea of some kind of shared sovereignty solution. Among women and young people the acceptance of shared sovereignty increased to 28%. A small group of 5% even said the islands should remain British.
A column last week in the leftist daily Página/12 proposed that Argentina should offer the widest possible autonomy to the islands, still an unthinkable alternative at an official level. “We have to move away from the old sloganeering,” says its author Gustavo Arballo, a 36-year-old law professor at the University of La Pampa in central Argentina. “We’re a nation of 40 million against islands with only a couple of thousand inhabitants, that’s like an 18-wheeler bearing down on a bicycle.”
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