WE’VE all picked a fight with an organisation in our time and many of us will have celebrated a victory too.
Whether it be banks or utility firms, we know when we’ve been wronged and we will carry on until we get the redress we know that we deserve.
But very few of us, if any, would ever take on the Queen and hope to win. She is the Queen after all.
However, her own grandson, Harry, and his wife Meghan Markle have tried to do that in recent weeks and the results so far have been what you might expect. The Queen has won every round.
Yesterday, the bold Harry was in Edinburgh talking about the importance of sustainable tourism, having earlier flown in from his new home in Canada.
He is absolutely right to highlight the importance of sustainable tourism, but the thousands of visitors who criss-cross Scotland sustainably every year, do so without a taxpayer-funded security detail in tow, so he may not be be speaking from a position of strength.
It will be, after all, quite hard to find a wild camping spot in Skye with enough room for him and his heavily armed detectives to spend a quiet night under the stars.
He wouldn’t even have to carry his own rucksack.
Meanwhile, while Harry was in Scotland, Meghan was no doubt sitting somewhere stewing at the sheer injustice of no longer having a royal title to call her own after the couple stepped back from official duties earlier this year.
The couple have stepped up their battle with the Queen in recent days, with a petulant statement at the weekend bemoaning the fact that neither the government nor the Queen herself owned the word “royal” internationally.
This was in response to be being effectively banned from using the Sussex Royal domain name in case they start to cash on any royal connections.
The couple have every right to be a bit peeved at being effectively cast off from the royal family, with their HRH titles scrapped, and all public money stopped.
However, the sheer gall of wanting to be part-time royals without the duties, public engagements and tedious functions, while retaining all the trappings and money that the role provides, is quite breathtaking.
Now that they are no longer royals, they will have all the time they want for sustainable tourism – and, having set up home in Canada, they’ll have plenty of space to do it in too.
He may even carry his own rucksack.
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