Tag Archives: prince charles

Jasmine Guinness, Designer, model, toy shop owner and Mum, {Interview}

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Model, designer and Mum-to-be, Jasmine Guinness, posts her petition into the B&Q Green Piggy Bank to support the campaign to cut the VAT on green goods. The aim of the B&Q campaign is to make it easier and more affordable for everyone to live a more sustainable way of life. Just log onto www.diy.com/eco to find out how to sign up.

1) What is your number one eco tip?

I think lots of little things all add up. However I think the most important thing we really need to teach people of all ages is to switch electrical things off. Why do huge office blocks need their lights on all night? They don’t! Why leave your computer plugged in all night or all day? Stand by does not mean off. It is so easy to make sure everything is off before you go to bed or to work. We could save a massive amount of Co2 and money! Surely people want to save money these days. I love the idea of a monitor in every house so we can all see how much money we could save every day.

2) Which eco champion do you most admire?

I have two eco-heroes at the moment. The first is Prince Charles who I admire for his long standing support of green issues, organic farming and caring for our countryside as the finite resource that it is. Not only his support but he has put his time and money where his mouth is and really made a difference to how we think about our environment. He has always stuck to his guns no matter what criticism has been put his way and I really admire that.

My second eco-hero is Lucy Siegle who writes for the Observer on their eco page. She always has new and exciting ways to help us all make life greener and cheaper and is very informative about things we would never otherwise have heard about. She makes you think about things in a different way which is always good and she is also a great writer too!

3) How do you try to live a more sustainable life?

I just try to incorporate small things into everyday life and teach my kids respect for our planet and what she gives us. We recycle, bicycle, buy organic meat, buy vegetables and fruit from the market but none of these things make us truly sustainable. However we do plan to move to Wales where we have bought a small farm. Once there we plan to be as sustainable as possible. I want us to have our own power supply, chickens, fruit and vegetables. It will be hard work but I can’t wait!

Thank you Jasmine.

The Gall of Prince of Wales {Carl Packman}

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Have you ever said out loud: oh my, how have they got the gall to say that? Occasions arise when the gall of your heroes can come back to hurt you. I’m on the political left, and as such I quite like the words of Polly Toynbee, she’s very well skilled in saying things that I want to hear, but she does have some gall.

There was the time when the lads at Though Cowards Flinch noticed that Polly was writing in support of outsourcing to ‘improve standards’ instead of supporting workers’ rights in the public sector. Then there was the time on Question Time when Richard ‘why bring up the world war, just actually why, why‘ Littlejohn outed Polly for her fancy foreign houses (Littlejohn hates foreign houses).

Toby Young, Tory boy of such popular cultural hits as How to show Cameron in a bad light and still love him to bits, pointed out that Toynbee had gall for criticising free schools when sending two of her three own children to private school for part of their education.

When someone finds this out on twitter, I believe it is shortly followed by the hashtag #fail.

Toynbee is someone who ought to represent my political viewpoint, but by night she illustrates a perversion of that view. And it hurts those to whom she writes for the most.

Now that I’ve shown myself to take this approach to people I used to respect, I can now turn to people I have never had respect for, and show them to be gall-ish too.

Prince Charles, it turned out, earned £271m in property deals in 2008, making an estimated £43m in profit.

The Mail reported back then that:

“The Prince’s income from the Duchy [created in 1337 by Edward III for his eldest son Prince Edward to provide an income for the heir to the throne] in 2007 was £16.3million or £12.8million after tax.”

This was after a massive £1m pay rise the year previous.

Yet he now comes out in support of ordinary people against property developers.

As the Guardian puts it:

“It is an unlikely claim for a prince who enjoys a £17m private annual income and employs 16 gardeners but Clarence House today said that Prince Charles believes it is his duty to defend “ordinary people” against profiteering property developers.”

This emergency budget is set to make 1.3 million people unemployed. My suggestion for him showing his support for all ordinary people is by contributing to the cuts, by getting his Mother to wave ta-ta to Edward IIIs outdated financial model, and giving up the Duchy. Then campaigning for the abolition of the monarchy, while throwing support at the scheme to nationalise all ex-royal buildings, thereby safeguarding tourist money to the country.

Until then, the man has some gall.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/jun/29/prince-charles-planning-property-developers