AusGeoff wrote on Dec 25
th, 2022 at 10:23pm:
I actually thought he did a better job than his mum.
Although I don't know why we still put so much stead
on the words of the monarch from another country.
Charles did a far better job. The only response Liz got from her Xmas speeches was predictable stupor. No one can remember a thing from years of Xmas speeches.
Liz was good one on one, but speaking was not her forte. Charles can do both.
Charles has a vision, but he's not so good on the follow-through. Liz was determined. She could deliver the goods, but she had no vision beyond stability, more of the same.
In many ways, Charles the reformer would have been better suited for the 20th century: the end of empire and the transition to modern Britain.
Liz would be better suited to deliver the stability needed for the 21st - a post-Brexit Britain in steep decline: economic, social and environmental.
But history doesn't get to choose. People and politicians made those changes, not the Crown. Charles is stuck on top of a drowning perch at a time when Brits may well long for the stability and tradition of a monarchy, but Charles has never supported the Windsor model of excess and hollow pageantry.
In the midst of these paradoxes, no one is destined to get what they want. Many of those in the public service Charles championed in his speech will lose their jobs. Charles was criticised by the Tories for raising the elephant in the room.
Charles sees himself as an advocate, but he now occupies a role where this is haram. Brits, on the other hand, desperately want leadership. They have been utterly sold out by their politicians. Labor are as bad as the Tories. No one says what they think, what everybody knows. Charles carries an air of emotional conviction. If he was younger and had more energy, he could well carry out a useful role - a monarch with a brain if not balls.
But Charles appears just as burnt out as Britain. The years of tabloid ink have left their mark on the face now etched on their currency, for what it's worth. Britain's best years are behind, buried with Liz, or maybe ahead, in a future monarch. But they certainly aren't with Charles.
He does what he can, as does Britain, as do we all. We carry on.
So God save the King for now. And thank God you're not British.