Lifestyles of the rich and hypocritical: The Idiot Prince

The idiot prince

Reprinted from Climate and Capitalism

November 2, 2011

Prince Charles thinks people should consume less. Other people, that is …

Is any group of people more hypocritical than the British royal family?
Last year, Prince Charles told a public meeting in Oxford:

“wherever you look, the world’s population is increasing fast. It goes up by the equivalent of the entire population of the United Kingdom every year. Which means that this poor planet of ours, which already struggles to sustain 6.8billion people, will somehow have to support over 9 billion people within 50 years.”
“It would certainly help if the acceleration slowed down, but it would also help if the world reduced its desire to consume.”

Now, an advance report on a new book about his family tells us how this royal Malthusian goes about setting a low-consumption example for the rest of us:

“Prince Charles employs 133 staff to look after him and Camilla, more than 60 of them domestics: chefs, cooks, footmen, housemaids, gardeners, chauffeurs, cleaners, and his three personal valets—gentleman’s gentlemen—whose sole responsibility is the care of their royal master’s extensive wardrobe and choosing what he is to wear on any particular day.
“A serving soldier polishes the prince’s boots and shoes every day—he has 50 handmade pairs each costing over £800 by Lobb of St James’s—and a housemaid washes his underwear as soon as it is discarded.
“Nothing Charles or Camilla wears is ever allowed near a washing machine. Particular attention is paid to handkerchiefs, which are monogrammed and again all hand-washed, as it was found that when they were sent to a laundry, some would go missing—as souvenirs.
HRH’s suits, of which he has 60, cost more than £3,000 each, and his shirts, all handmade, cost £350 a time (he has more than 200), while his collar stiffeners are solid gold or silver.
“Charles’s valets also iron the laces of his shoes whenever they are taken off.”

Question: has anyone ever seen a statement by any populationist organization, in Britain or anywhere else, that says the world would be better off with fewer royals?

We didn’t think so.