Most "my government"s since 1999
I always wonder how Her Majesty can bring herself to read out the nonsensical drivel she's always handed for the state opening of parliament. This year's speech also had the added sick-making factor of seeming to want to identify itself more than usual with old Brenda - Blair's lot seem especially keen to remind the country that they are the Queen's government after their shaky election performance.
In a bored moment I decided to count up how many times her Maj was forced to refer to Blair and Co. as "my government". In an even more bored moment, I decided to do some comparison. The last time that phrase was used as many times was back in 1999, where the poor dear had to associate herself with Blair's lot 39 times. Back to Buck House for a few G&Ts after that one, methinks...
Is there any significance to this, or just an example of piss-poor repetitive speechwriting on the part of Downing Street? Who knows - but the last Queen's speech under a Tory government only used the phrase 14 times, and they're meant to be the royalists...
Here's the Blair/Brenda Queen's Speech love-in tally, for anyone interested:
1996 - 14
1997 - 27
1998 - 31
1999 - 39
2000 - 22
2001 - 22
2002 - 23
2003 - 27
2004 - 28
2005 - 33
(And no, I can't be bothered to go through counting the broken promises, or to trawl through the pre-internet speeches prior to 1996...)
Poor old Liz. She, after all, has to accept responsibility for all Blair's crap as the only person in the country who actually made him PM, and something tells me she's not exactly in a position to break with recent tradition and use her royal prerogative and get rid of the bastard. But you can tell from the look on her face she's not happy. Gawd bless 'er (etc.)
0 Comments:
Post a Comment