Queen causes rumpus at London School of Economics

I hear that the Queen has caused quite a bust up among academics at the London School of Economics.

Her Majesty was visiting the school a few months ago when she asked one of its faculty a pointed question about the financial crisis of 2008. "Why didn't you see it coming?" she said.

"We thought the macro guys had it covered," said the academic, somewhat meekly.

The criticism didn't end there. When one of the LSE staff subsequently visited Buckingham Palace he had to suffer a jibe from the Duke of Edinburgh that he was a member of the "institution that knows nothing about anything."

The LSE was so concerned that it convened a meeting of its six most senior economists in February. They concluded that the coming recession would be the "weakest since 1945."

Social sciences staff have now turned on their economist colleagues, questioning their ability to make accurate predictions and siding with the Queen and Prince Philip. What next? Fisticuffs in the street?

Huns, wops and dagos at the palace

Edward Stourton, the BBC Today programme presenter, has recalled in his new book, It's a PC World, a conversation he had with the late Queen Elizabeth, The Queen Mother, about the European Union.

She told him: "It will never work, you know....It will never work with all those Huns, wops and dagos."

While he thought what she said was "nasty and ugly," concluding she was "a nasty old bigot," he has sought subsequently to put the remark in context, arguing that "The Queen Mother came from a generation when people did talk like that."

Ethnic groups

No, Mr Stourton, they didn't all talk like that. I cannot recall any of my grandparents using those words. Certainly my parents never used them. I recall once, when very young, asking my mother what the words "Wogs go home," meant. I had seen them daubed on a bridge. My mother simply said that "wog" was a nasty word for "coloured people".

It's true that her generation did not try to make politically correct references that distinguished people from different ethnic backgrounds, hence the "coloured" reference. I remember it was a problem in local newspapers. At the Huddersfield Examiner discussions with local ethnic groups led to a policy of referring to the two main ethnic groups as "black" or "Asian" and I have stuck with that ever since, never feeling quite comfortable with phrases such as "Afro Caribbean" or "Afro American".

Tar brush

I would love to report that the most derogatory terms had been abandoned but I still hear such words occasionally today among the older generation. I have one shooting friend, a contemporary, who refers to black people as "jigaboos" and another who suggested jokingly to a slightly dark skinned mutual friend that there was a "bit of the tar brush" about him.

I suppose that certain "naming" to denote racial difference will be something we shall always have to live with. I have heard it argued that those black people who voted for Barack Obama principally because of his race were being racist in their choice. If so, could this be an acceptable defence of racism in certain circumstances? I can understand any black American choosing Obama for historical reasons.

Royal form

I wasn't at all surprised to hear about the Queen Mother's language. The royals have form, particularly her son-in-law.

Some of Prince Philip's less than PC remarks have been collected in a book of gaffs that includes the following:

* To a British student in China: "If you stay here much longer, you will go home with slitty eyes."
* To a British student in Papua New Guinea: "You managed not to get eaten then?"
* To a British tourist in Hungary: "You can't have been here that long — you haven't got a pot belly."
* To a Scottish driving instructor: "How do you keep the natives off the booze long enough to pass the test?"
* To Australian Aborigines: "Do you still throw spears at each other?"
* While on a factory tour, looking at a crude electrical fitting, he suggested it might have been "installed by an Indian."

Funnily enough the Duke of Edinburgh is so broadly politically incorrect that at least he can claim consistency. I have met him a couple of times and can confirm that he behaves the same with everyone. In fact I'm sure his children have suffered his tongue and Prince Charles probably more than the rest, which would explain why Jonathan Dimbleby's authorised biography of Charles portrayed the duke as an authoritarian bully.

Whatever the truth of this, I can imagine Prince Philip would have hit it off with his mother-in-law. They spoke the same language.

Watching telly at the palace

I couldn’t help wondering while walking past Buckingham Place yesterday evening what ’er indoors was up to. They must rattle around a bit in there. It’s getting tatty in the hallway, quite noticeable when you go through the front door although it would be rude to mention it. But I think I read somewhere that they are going to spend a bit of money doing the place up. It’s high time. It’s got a bit fusty over the years.

You get used to a place though don’t you, and it’s so disruptive having the decorators in. I went there a few years back for a dinner. The Duke of Edinburgh was host. He appeared from behind a screen. Apparently this is the usual form of Royal entrance when they ask you round for a bite to eat. They leave the same way quite deftly before you know what’s happened. There’s no waving you off on the doorstep.

I could imagine the Queen with her feet up watching Coronation Street in another room, giving the thumbs up to her old man as he went to do the night shift.

“Ta’ra luv, don’t be too late.”

“I won’t be luv, I’m fair blethered me’self. See you in a bit.”

I wonder if she wears curlers. I expect she has to if she wants to maintain that classic hairdo. So she’d be sitting there in her curlers with her glass of port and lemon and a copy of the Racing Post on a side table, feet encased in sheepskin-trimmed slippers, a dorgi on her lap.

At least she won’t have to entertain the condescending remarks that many people her age have to deal with if they find themselves in an old folks’ home.

In a home I expect the helpers would want to be on first name terms like they are with the others. “Hello Betty love, how are we today? All right are we? I’ve just brought your tablets. Can I get you a cup o’ tea? My, that’s a nice frock you’re wearing. How about a piece of Battenberg? No love, Battenberg, not Saxe-Coberg.”

As the Queen, however, she doesn’t have to suffer the usual old folk treatment, and because she doesn’t, she can get on with being head of state uninterrupted by those who presume a degree of senility in the elderly.

But then 80-something isn’t so elderly any more. Even 100 wasn’t seen as much in the Queen Mother who went on tottering in her high heeled shoes right up to the end.

I like to think that out of the spotlight, the Queen and Prince Philip “knock along” together quite amiably. All I know of their domestic arrangement is that they keep their corn flakes in a Tupperware box. This deliciously ordinary detail was revealed a few years back by a Daily Mirror journalist posing as a footman. “Shock horror exclusive, Queen has cornflakes in Tupperware,” said the headline, or something like that.

There was something endearing about that. It strikes me that anyone who keeps their cornflakes in a Tupperware box cannot have been too intoxicated by power and affluence. Like a hallway, Tupperwear gets a bit tatty with age. But I bet they would go on using the same old box forever, just as we hang on to the same old tea caddy year after year.

I tell a lie. In fact we threw out a faithful tea caddy of long standing just a little while back. It was a Queen’s Silver Jubilee souvenir tea caddy. I’m not suggesting there was anything symbolic about this. It was just old.

We have a Prince of Wales tea caddy now; nothing subliminally symbolic about that either. It’s just what we have. It will never be the stuff of headlines. Not like the marmalade on the Royal slice of bread.