Saved From The Skip

Hello.
My name is Charles.
Prince Charles.
And I’m a dissident.

Actually, I’m not all sure what that word means, but it sounds so terribly exciting that I thought I’d include it in my top secret diary… you know, the one I circulated to all my friends on condition they wouldn’t publish any of it.

But back to dissidents. You read about them all the time in the newspapers (those horrid things). They’re the ones who go around protesting about issues: burning McDonalds restaurants in Paris, throwing eggs at the Prime Minister, climbing Mount Everest dressed as Batman, getting shot against a wall in China (that horrid place), etc., etc.

Of course, the trouble with being a dissident is that every now and again you have to actually dissent. (I’ve just looked that word up in my pocket dictionary. It means “disagree”.)

On paper, that’s perfectly OK. There are loads of things with which I disagree. Global warming, the Chinese invasion of Tibet, the existence of the free and independent media in Britain... and that annoying little grammatical rule about never ending sentences with prepositions. (That is something with which I especially disagree.)

But the thing is, if I had to actually speak out on any of the issues with which I disagree, then the Government could quite easily decide that the Monarchy is something with which it disgrees…And that’s it. I’d be out of a job. Now what kind of dissident would I be if were just an ordinary, boring old fart like everybody else?

So that’s why I keep a secret diary... so I can secretly dissent about the things with which I disagree. (Terribly clever of me, I know.)

Sometimes, however, I disagree with things so much that I accidentally let slip that I’m a dissident, on occasions when I’m supposed to be an assident. (That word, by the way, means “someone who assents”. It isn’t my pocket dictionary, though… must remember to have the editor shot against a wall at the earliest opportunity.)

One occasion when I publicly disagreed (and said so, too) was during the Hong Kong handover in 1997. It was terribly naughty of me, especially when I didn’t show up to a banquet organised by the Chinese (those appalling old waxworks).

You should have seen their faces. God, how I laughed! But mummy was terribly cross: in fact, she even threatened to cut off my pocket money.

So as you can see, dissenting can be quite dangerous.

One other domestic issue with which I publicly disagreed was the fox hunting ban. This was something about which I felt terribly strongly. (I mean, what are the poor foxes going to do on the weekend, if they can no longer be torn to pieces by a pack of dogs?)

But in the end, I didn’t even have to dissent too much. After all, the law only banned hunting with dogs. It didn’t say anything about hunting with tigers… (which is more fun anyway, because if you don’t catch any foxes, you can always feed them a few peasants...)

Right, that’s it from me for now. Tally ho!