Prince Harry

Why has our nation become so hysterical about everything and nothing? Flick through the channels on television and chances are someone will be screaming or shrieking mindlessly at someone or something on most of the stations.

If this were not bad enough, the guttersnipes of the tabloid press aided and abetted by a complicit and unscrupulous section of the media have now contrived to manufacture yet more hysteria over Prince Harry going to a fancy dress party dressed as a nazi. Well so what? That’s what fancy dress parties are all about. The nazis, like Atilla the Hun, the Crusaders or the Vikings are now part of human history and will therefore be a feature at fancy dress parties for millennia to come. Get used to it.

Quite apart from that, it is as clear as day to any objective observer, that Harry is not a nazi, quite the opposite. He was if anything, having a joke at their expense, for which the nazis have no one to blame but themselves.

The most shameful aspect of this whole affair is not that Harry wore a swastika to a fancy dress party. It is that everything good that he has done, in particular his work with Aids orphans in Africa, should be cynically and conveniently air-brushed out of the reporting by blood thirsty reporters sensing a cheap and easy kill and a good pay day. That is what is immoral and it is this, that is wrong with our society. This kind of "journalism" poses a far greater threat to our society than the foolish antics of a relatively innocent 20 year old at a fancy dress party. I'd wager Harry has more character and integrity in his little finger than those who connived to get the story on to the front pages of a tabloid rag.

That many of our politicians should have jumped on this bandwagon is a disgrace. Just as they have so often in the past, they have fallen hook line and sinker into this populist tabloid trap. They are now using the incident to persue their own cynical agendas in the hope that it may buy them a vote or two here and there, come the next election. We have a right to expect a higher degree of insight, judgement, intellect and integrity from our community leaders, who are after all, twice if not thrice, Harry’s age!

It might have been worse though. Harry might have upset the Pope by going as a condom. Phew!