Trust me, I’m a prince

Charles’s vanity and delusion are being taken out for an airing again. He

has told confidants he would like his role to “evolve” so that his knowledge and experience are not wasted once he inherits the crown.

What knowledge and experience? What knowledge and experience does he have that would be ‘wasted’ if he didn’t use his accident of birth to publicize them? His knowledge and experience about GM crops? About alternative medicine? About architecture? What special unique irreplaceable knowledge and experience does he have on those subjects?

None, right? Do correct me if I’m wrong – but as far as I can tell, the answer is none. He has strong opinions on the subjects, but so do lots of people. He has perhaps spent lots of time or some time reading and otherwise gathering information about them – but so have lots of people. What he has not done is get systematic training in any of them, which lots of people have done – so why does the world need his amateur ‘knowledge’ when it already has access to professional knowledge? What is this special irreplaceable knowledge and experience he has that it would be a pity to waste if he became king?

There isn’t any. His status doesn’t replace professional training, and his amateur dabbling doesn’t either. Nobody needs Pris Chos laying down the law about GM food or homeopathy because there are already thousands upon thousands of people who can do that much better than he can. I’m a great fan of autodidacticism, being an autodidact myself, but that doesn’t mean that I think the world needs amateur agronomists or amateur medical researchers. If Charles really wanted to be an influential expert in one of these fields he should have gotten the appropriate training to do so. It’s incredible arrogance and the most literal kind of elitism to think that his royal birth somehow makes that supererogatory.

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