The secret letters Prince Charles (might have) sent to Tony Blair's Government

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   The secret letters Prince Charles sent to Tony Blair's government
   

The Government has blocked the release of letters from the Prince of Wales to Tony Blair's ministers. What might they have said?








Prince Charles: his letters are unfailingly polite and often self-depracating Photo: PA






By Nigel Farndale

7:00AM BST 21 Oct 2012

Comment




Dear Mr Mandelson,


I hope you will forgive me for writing to you, but there are a number of points I should like to raise with regard to your proposed “Millennium Dome”.


While one would not go so far as to describe the Isle of Dogs as a much-loved or elegant friend, I cannot see what wrong it has done to deserve to have this steaming miscreation placed slap bang in the middle of it. From what one has seen of Lord Rogers’s “plans”, this “Dome” thingy will look like a giant albino hedgehog that is losing its spines.


If one may speak frankly, do we really need another eyesore in London? I’ve said it before and I will say it again, at least when the Luftwaffe knocked down our buildings it did not replace them with anything more offensive than rubble.


I understand your “Dome” will be divided into “zones”. Have you given any thought as to what these “zones” might contain? One shudders to think that the place will become a random “theme park” without any real themes.



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And presumably on Millennium night itself we will all have to troop down there and queue up to pay homage to these zones. What then? Will my mother be expected to join hands and sing Auld Lang Syne? Can you imagine!

If it is not already too late, I would urge you to reconsider the direction this project seems to be taking. I gather that the budget for it is close to £1 billion. Such a vast sum of money represents a once in a lifetime opportunity to commission something of lasting architectural significance, beauty and value — a cathedral perhaps, as we are a Christian country with an Established church and this project is intended to mark the 2000th anniversary of Christ.

Or perhaps the money could be spent on a colossal statue of Jesus that would be an inspiration to the world, along the lines of the one that stands over Rio de Janeiro? Perhaps there could even be a multi-faith dimension to the project, so that, for example, our Muslim citizens don’t feel excluded. If you are interested, I could ask Quinlan Terry to come up with some fresh ideas.

If I may be blunt, anything would be better than this “Dome” as it is currently envisioned. It seems to pander to the current adolescent fashion for “modernity”, which, in my humble experience, always seems to come at the expense of humanity.

By the way, I believe there may be something wrong with your internal postal service, as this is the third time I have written to you this month and I have yet to receive a reply.

With kindest regards to you,

Charles



Dear Mr Blair,

Please forgive my intrusion upon your time, but I gather that as part of your bid to “rebrand” Britain as a “young country” you have been hosting “Cool Britannia” parties for “pop stars” and “Brit artists” at Number 10 Downing Street.

Now I know that I do not enjoy a reputation for being terribly “with it”, but I do feel strongly that we in this country are in danger of placing too much emphasis on popular culture, “Brit Art”, “Brit Pop” and so on, and not enough on the glories of our cultural past: the paintings of Gainsborough and Turner, for example, or the music of Elgar, Vaughan Williams and, my personal favourite, Sir Hubert Parry.

If you wanted someone more “up to date” at your parties, you might consider inviting my friend Sir John Tavener. He may not be “cool”, but at least his music does not make one’s ears bleed.

I don’t want you to think of me as a “stick in the mud” — one is quite partial to the music of Leonard Cohen and The Three Degrees — and I have, as part of my royal duties, been obliged to sit through a number of “gigs”. Phil Collins. He was one. And The Duran Duran. And that fellow Chris de Burgh caterwauling about some lady in red. Ghastly, ghastly, ghastly. I could never understand why my former wife insisted on playing his records at full volume all the time at Highgrove.

Anyway, I worry that this emphasis on popular culture will have the effect of making us look trivial as a nation. Pop is ephemeral, after all. Will Tracey Emin’s bed still be considered fascinating a hundred years from now? Will the music of your guest “Mick Hucknall” still be exciting the nation even ten years hence?

I appreciate that my ideas are sometimes portrayed as “fogeyish”. But what interests me are the things that are timeless, regardless of the era that we live in. Also I have been around long enough to see many old-fashioned ideas come back into vogue. That is what tends to happen when a nation is as “old” as ours.

One final point, have you been trying to reach me by Royal Mail? I only ask because I don’t seem to have received any replies to my previous letters. Did you receive my last one about the whole imposing edifice of modern medicine being like the Tower of Pisa?

Yours ever

Charles



Dear Mr Prescott,

I trust you received the Duchy Originals I sent to you, only I’ve noticed that some of my letters and parcels have become, in that awful modern phrase, “lost in the post”.

I am so sorry to have to write to you on the subject of foxhunting, and thus to be seen to be “interfering”, but my letters to the Prime Minister have gone unanswered and I was hoping that I might be able to “push” a little with you instead.

If I may speak frankly, I’m not sure I would want to live in a country that banned its traditional pursuits without a moment’s reflection. I may as well spend my time skiing! I mean to say, how would you like it if you were told that croquet was to be banned?

My feeling is that without the sound of the hunting horn stuttering in semi-quavers on a wintry morning, our countryside will be a drearier and bleaker place. But leaving aside my own personal enjoyment of the sport, the effect it would have on the rural population would be devastating. Livelihoods depend on it and this proposed ban seems to be part of a deliberate New Labour policy to “destroy the countryside”.

If I may say so, the Government would not dream of attacking ethnic minorities in the way it has attacked those country dwellers who support foxhunting. Such spite and prejudice goes against our sense of ourselves as a nation. We are a tolerant people. Our identity is forged on the anvil of our differences.

Furthermore, in a liberal democracy such as ours, an individual’s freedom to pursue an act which the majority may disapprove of — but are not harmed by — should be protected.

I hate to labour this point but already your Government has spent more parliamentary time and energy debating this subject than any other issue. That is madness, especially when you consider that culling foxes is necessary — they are classified even by your own Government as vermin, and they have no natural predators.

And could a ban even work? How would it be policed? Would it not have the opposite effect to the one you intend and make foxhunting more popular than ever? I can only urge you to reconsider pressing ahead with this Bill.

Do send my fondest regards to Pauline.

Yours most sincerely

Charles



Dear Miss Morris,

I am writing to congratulate you on your appointment as Secretary of State for Education and Skills. No doubt you will have heard by now of my reputation for “meddling”, but I honestly feel that unless I try to help — offer advice in areas about which I feel passionate — I will be seen as an irrelevant playboy.

As you may know, one of my deepest concerns regards the lamentable state of our education system. I believe that a generation of young people are becoming “culturally disinherited” because they fail to understand their place in history, and this is as the result of an inadequate and “dumbed down” curriculum.

What I find most worrying are the “modish fads” in teaching that amount to a calamitous experiment with young people’s lives. Trendy “methods”, combined with a public examination system which encourages “grade inflation”, deny the possibility of healthy competition and merely leave young people equal in mediocrity in their race to the bottom.

The irony in all this is that when the Prime Minister took office in 1997, he declared that his priorities would be “education, education, education”. What have we seen instead? Social utopianism and engineering that contradict the lessons of history and the realities of nature.

If the presumption can be forgiven, might I suggest that your priority as the new education minister ought to be to inspire pupils; teach them that intuition is the heart’s wisdom rustling like a breeze through the leaves. As my old friend and mentor Laurens van der Post used to say, we should be offering our young people a route to personal enrichment and fulfilment, not ruin and despair. To this end they need to be taught traditional skills such as stonemasonry, the baking of bread and hedge laying. They will find such activities come with their own rewards.

What I find most worrying when talking to young people is that their language has become impoverished and sloppy. They inhabit a wasteland of banality, cliché and casual obscenity. We should, then, be encouraging them to appreciate the English language. Give them Shakespeare to read, and the King James Bible and the Book of Common Prayer. I’ve said it before and I will say it again, if English is spoken in heaven, God undoubtedly employs Cranmer as his speechwriter.

I have wittered on long enough. I hope to meet you soon so that I can discuss these ideas in more depth. In the meantime, don’t be surprised if you look in your “in-tray” and see that I have been moved to put pen to paper again!

Yours most sincerely

Charles

1. 
   

1. 
   Attorney General blocks release of Prince Charles letters to avoid 'serious damage' to his future as king
   

The Attorney General has blocked the publication of letters from the Prince of Wales to government departments to avoid “seriously undermining” his future role as king.








The Prince of Wales has been protected by the Attorney General's power of veto Photo: GETTY IMAGES






By Gordon Rayner, Chief Reporter

2:39PM BST 16 Oct 2012





Dominic Grieve said the Prince’s letters were “particularly frank” and would “potentially have undermined his position of political neutrality” if published.


He used a ministerial veto to overturn a ruling from three judges that would have allowed the publication of 27 letters sent to the Labour government during Tony Blair’s premiership.


The judges had said last month that there was a considerable public interest in the publication of the letters to the Departments for Business, Health, Education, Environment, Culture, Northern Ireland and the Cabinet Office, and ordered the departments to release them.


But Mr Grieve decided there was an “exceptional case” for him to use his power of veto to prevent the Prince’s “most deeply held and personal beliefs” becoming public.


The decision was greeted with disbelief by freedom of information campaigners and anti-monarchy groups.

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Actually, I agree with the decision , too much is made of the Freedom of Information Act.......does the Public really need to know what the Letters contained ?????