TK's Blog

Wills and Kate (really? There MUST be a more inventive moniker) are generating a lot of newspaper inches these days, half of it about whether they should be getting said inches, and you might be surprised (or not) to hear my take on the royal nuptials. You see, I may be a quasi-libertine, occasionally atheistic houmous scoffer from North London, but this is one way in which I buck the trend.

I am not a republican.

Not for any practical reasons. Yes I like a strict division of Church and State, I like democracy, I like equality. But I also scrapbook, collect old photographs and letters, and on a purely sentimental level, there's something nice about tradition.

And after all, isn't that what the monarchy is? The opening of Parliament, the Queen's Speech on Christmas day. It's all pageantry, and none of it means anything, or helps anyone, but at the same time, there's something comforting about the repetition, the routineness of it. So, yeah, I like them. We don't spend, statistically, a huge proportion of taxpayers money on the monarchy.

The monarchy is an anachronism, but so is an antique chair over one from IKEA. Provided they have no constitutional power, I don't see the harm in a little harmless indulgence.

Now, vis a vis the Royal Wedding. Maj and the Middletons are paying for it, which is all well and dandy, but does it merit the attention we're giving it?

Probably not. It's two people getting married. They're probably not more in love, or more likely to succeed than any other couple. Their children are probably no more likely to be happy than anyone else. Why do we care? Why should we?

Well, we shouldn't really. Not because William happens to be a prince. But we should care, because it's a wedding, because it's two people deciding that they're going to try and spend the rest of their lives together. That, for a lot of us, is a momentous decision, and we can throw a huge party for them, piss off work, and generally celebrate the fact that, yes, actually, there are people who are willing to bet on love lasting and life being worth living. And so what if we can't do it for everyone else who deserves it? We can for Wills and Kate.

As long as I don't have to buy any of the tacky wedding porcelain, I'm happy for the media to be as obsessed with the royal wedding as it wants to be. Sometimes a feel good piece is an end in itself.