THE BIRDS: they're stinking up Harry and Meghan's mansion!

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's £11m Montecito mansion is engulfed by foul smell that 'is like offal rotting in the sun' caused by bird refuge nearby

Harry and Meghan's £11million mansion is apparently engulfed by a foul smell leaving neighbours 'disgusted'

The duke and duchess' headache said to have been caused by the nearby Andrée Clark Bird Refugee

Foul smell is said to have hit Montecito, also home to Oprah Winfrey, Orlando Bloom and Ellen DeGeneres

Harry and Meghan have have to contend with odour issues in the past, including a nearby cannabis base

By JACK WRIGHT FOR MAILONLINE

Harry and Meghan’s £11million California mansion is apparently engulfed by a foul smell leaving neighbours ‘disgusted’, it has emerged.

The duke and duchess’ headache is said to have been caused by the nearby Andrée Clark Bird Refuge, a 42-acre saltwater marsh. The area is one of the largest wildlife refuges in Santa Barbara and the water can become ‘stagnant’ leading to an odour.

The foul stink is said to have hit the area in Montecito, which is also home to Oprah Winfrey, Ellen DeGeneres, Orlando Bloom and Katy Perry.

A local resident told the Mirror: ‘It smells like offal that has been rotting in the sun. It makes my stomach churn. I’ve seen lots of homeowners closing their windows when it wafts over.’

Local officials say the stench could last as long as the autumn, when improvements are in the pipeline. Cameron Benson, clean water manager for the City of Santa Barbara, said: ‘Water can become stagnant there. The odour issues are sporadic and sometimes they are worse in some conditions.’

Harry and Meghan have had to contend with odour issues in the past. Last year, it was reported the royals were living near a legal cannabis factory base in Santa Barbara.

The couple’s mansion is just up the road from the 20 large greenhouses full of the plants — leaving the luxury suburb reeking. Neighbours made a string of complaints, sparking the company to install new ‘odour control systems’.

Gregory Gandrud told the Sunday Mirror: ‘The stink was getting stronger and heading their way. I was driving along the freeway and was hit hard by the smell. It doesn’t make you high but it’s not what you want driving at 70mph.

‘I had to pull over. It made me completely lose my train of thought. Lots of people here are suffering.’

Harry and Meghan’s home — which has a sauna, library, and cinema — is surrounded by celebrity neighbours, most prominently Oprah, to whom they made a series of bombshell allegations about the Royal Family last year.

Notably, the couple’s mansion is almost home to the bench Meghan immortalised in her 2021 children’s book The Bench.

It comes as the couple have yet to publicly congratulate the Queen as she celebrates her Platinum Jubilee this year.

The couple have remained silent, despite news that Camilla will become Queen Consort when Charles is eventually made King.

They recently confirmed that ‘sources’ will no longer speak for them, and they will only comment when they wish to through their official press team. Despite the lack of public response, Harry is understood to have been enjoying video calls with his father over the past few weeks. He is expected to return to the UK for the Platinum Jubilee celebrations.

However, it is thought he will not be accompanied by Meghan, Archie or Lilibet amid a row over the family’s security arrangements.

Dear Prince Harry (a message from The Universe)

 

You're better OUT, Harry. NOW.

The world according to Prince Harry! The Duke of Sussex's tips for achieving 'mental fitness'

 

The world according to Prince Harry! The Duke of Sussex's tips for achieving 'mental fitness' (from the Daily Mail)

AIM FOR THE PINNACLE OF MENTAL FITNESS: 'Mental fitness is the pinnacle, it's what you're aiming for. The road towards that can be really bumpy... it's called inner "work" for a reason.'  

INNER WORK: 'With everything else around you, the only way you can combat [burnout] and build resilience for the outside world and your entire environment is the inner work... Outer work becomes so much easier when you get to grips with the inner work... If everybody [had time] to do [inner work], the shift in global consciousness and awareness would be enormous, it would be vast.'

DAILY MEDITATION: 'I know that I need to meditate every day... Put it [into your daily routine] like brushing your teeth every morning... You need to put it into your day diary as a habit otherwise it's the first thing that drops away from your busy day.' 

DAILY ME TIME: 'I have now put in about half an hour, 45 minutes in the morning when one kid has gone to school and the other is having a nap, there's a break in our program. It's like, right, it's either for a workout, take the dog for a walk, get out in nature, maybe meditate. I would hope that everybody would be able to do that.'

LISTEN TO LESSONS FROM THE UNIVERSE: 'Life is about learning and if you're in your 20s, your 30s, your 40s, and even your 50s and you think you've got it sorted then bad stuff is going to happen. But when bad thing happen I think, there's a lesson here, I'm being schooled by the universe, there is something for me to learn.'

TURN NEGATIVES INTO POSITIVES: 'Every single bad thing - or the things you perceive to be bad - that happen actually can be good.' 

SURROUND YOURSELF WITH MENTAL COACHES: 'You need to have someone there who is not only coaching you through life but challenging your perspective. That's what I ask [my mental coach] for on a weekly basis... Professional help, friends, family, anyone can help you in that coaching process [and give you] the ability to be able to find somebody else to throw ideas off or feelings or thoughts.'

WIPE YOUR MENTAL WINDSCREEN: 'Have different points of views in your life and friends who will not worry about pushing back on things you say or feel to be able to encourage you to be able to see it more clearly. I view that as trying to surround myself with people who will happily wash [my mental] windscreen and clear those filters... There is an endless filter system of what you think is happening.'

CREATE A MENTAL TOOL BOX: 'I know how my nervous system is going to react to certain situations that are out of my control, [so I think], what have I got in my tool box? What tools can help me deal with this?'

HONE YOUR MENTAL SUPERPOWER: 'Life is about discovery. In that discovery you are going to find things that you don't like, you're going to find things that make you uncomfortable, that are constantly pushing back on you but as you work your way around those things, all of a sudden the stresses, the chaos, and all of the things that were working against you in your life, be it private life, be it work life... all of the things getting in your way either fall away or you visualize them and are able to turn a negative into a positive and therefore make those things work for you. It almost feels like a superpower.'

BLOGGER'S COMMENTS. I was going to counter each of these statements of warmed-over New Age bafflegab with my editorial comments, but just found it wasn't worth wasting my precious time. Anyone with a brain can see this is very old stuff, the naive blather you used to hear decades ago at expensive corporate retreats where the guru sets up a sweat lodge and kills people. Or makes them drink the Koolaid? 

I can't see this as anything but the Meghan effect, though I think he was a ditzy dolt long before that. Prince Andrew is equally doltish and inbred, but until recently . . . Oh, never mind. At any rate, the pre-Meghan Harry wasn't too fussy about his choice of partywear, was he? And has he ever properly apologized for this? If he did, he'd be liable, and that is NOT a good thing. His lawyers have put tape over his mouth for that one. 

At first I honestly thought the Daily Mail piece was parody, and if you have even the vestiges of a critical mind, you'll probably find it hilarious. Oh, just take an hour off in your busy schedule. Look at me, folks! I do it! I'm so disciplined that I never miss my "me time", though believe me, it's REALLY HARD with all those servants to order around (not to mention deciding which of the sixteen bathrooms I'll use today - Meghan insists I take them in rotation, so people won't say we never use them). I just have to squeeze in all this rocking back and forth with my eyes shut during my all-day-long child care marathons. (Well, maybe he's right. Every nanny they ever hired quit after a week). I have so many worlds to save! Oops, now that I'm with Meghan, she has made the world into ONE BIG THING that we'll BOTH save just by blathering platitudes that were dated forty years ago, back when New Age philosophy sputtered out due to its irrelevance and utter absurdity. (But he doesn't know those words, as they happen to have more than one syllable.)

The infamous Nazi shot has more than one version. The one I always see on royal reporting channels  has two of his partying "mates" in the background - one clearly wearing a white KKK costume with hood, and the other in Al Jolson-style blackface. Then there are his "Paki" remarks, and likely worse - those are just the ones that were reported. If THIS guy is responsible for saving the world, I'd say we're doomed.

THE KICKER. Here are just a few comments posted on Twitter and other social media platforms, criticing Harry's inane statements about "mental health":

It's always me-me time with Prince Harry. Real people have to work for a living...' wrote Richard James.

'Sorry, just don't take him seriously any more,' wrote one user.

'I know he's qualified to talk about being mentally unstable because that's all he does but what does he know about having a job or balance between the two. Exploiting him is not kind,' said another.

'OMG is this a sick joke?.…..Haz doesn't actually know what the word work means!' wrote Carrol McDonald.

'This is a man who has more troubles than those he thinks he has. He needs professional help not being put on a platform & showcased as if he's in recovery,' said Tessa Cate.

'It's really difficult to take mental health advice from a 40 year old who in the middle of a pandemic was complaining on Oprah that he only had his mom's millions to rely on because dad cut him off. This is all during people losing their livelihoods,' explained another Twitter poster.

KICKER TO THE KICKER! I found this bizarre statement on the Daily Mail website under "comments". The article was about the Queen's official announcement that Camilla will become Queen Consort when Charles takes the throne. Harry and Meghan have NOT responded publicly to this historic announcement, but THIS guy did! 

The ENTIRE world loves you so much Harry, handsomest Prince of the Earth. Thank you for being such a chivalrous hero UNRELENTINGLY committed to peace, love and non-violent communication. You are our cosmic light and salvation. Princess Meghan is the strength of your life and ours. Long live Gods brightest angels. #GenZ4Harry #VegansSupportMeghan

OK THEN. . . 

🤡PRINCE HARRY JUGGLES HIS BALLS!🤡

THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK! A Major Victory for Piers Morgan

 

(I may be stretching copyright a bit here, but I wanted to copy and paste this piece from the Mail because it delighted me so! Chalk one up for Piers.)

PIERS MORGAN: Ofcom's vindication of me is a resounding victory for freedom of speech and a resounding defeat for Princess Pinocchios who think we should all be compelled to believe every fork-tongued word they say – now, do I get my GMB job back?

By Piers Morgan for MailOnline

'Everyone is in favour of free speech,' said Winston Churchill, 'but some people's idea of it is that they are free to say what they like, but if anyone else says anything back, that is an outrage.'

He could have been talking about Prince Harry and his wife Meghan Markle, two people who think they have both the right to drop endless incendiary unsubstantiated bombshells about their family AND the right to censor and silence anyone who dares to disbelieve or challenge them.

Back in March, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex spent two hours spray-gunning the Royals to Oprah Winfrey in an explosive interview on prime-time US television.

They claimed a member of the Royal Family had been racist about their son Archie, and that their little boy had been banned from being a Prince because of his skin colour.

Hours later on GMB, Piers said he didn't believe a word Meghan Markle said triggering furious protest from her fans of the couple. Today OFCOM announced that they had rejected all the complaints against Piers 

Meghan also claimed that she told several senior Palace officials she was feeling suicidal, but they told her she couldn't have any treatment because it would be bad for the royal brand.

Oh, and she stated as fact that she and Harry secretly got married three days before their official wedding, in a private ceremony conducted by the Archbishop of Canterbury.

On ITV's Good Morning Britain a few hours later, I said I didn't believe a word Meghan Markle said.

This triggered a furious protest from fans of the couple who accused me of being a racist callous misogynist who was belittling Meghan's 'lived experience' of mental health and racism.

But it was simpler than that: I just didn't believe her.

Not least because it was immediately established that some of her more outlandish claims, like the secret wedding and Archie's princely ban, were provable nonsense.

As the furore grew, a record number of 57,000 people, including Meghan Markle herself, complained about me to the UK TV government regulator OFCOM.

ITV's Chief Executive, Dame Carolyn McCall, responded by saying that she believed Meghan's mental health claims, and I was then told by my employers to either apologise for what I had said or leave the show with immediate effect.

I decided to leave.

As I explained in an article for the Mail on Sunday several weeks later: 'I wasn't going to apologise for disbelieving Meghan Markle, because the truth is that I don't believe Meghan Markle. And in a free democratic society, I should be allowed not to believe someone, and to say that I don't believe them. That, surely, is the very essence of freedom of speech? If I said I now believed Meghan, I would be lying to the audience, the very thing I've accused her of doing.'

Today, in a stunning verdict, OFCOM announced that they agreed with this argument, and rejected every single complaint against me.

Their report is lengthy and detailed, but in the end, it came down to an unequivocal and emphatic endorsement of my right to an opinion.

'OFCOM is clear that, consistent with freedom of expression, Mr Morgan was entitled to say he disbelieved the Duke and Duchess of Sussex's allegations and to hold and express strong views that rigorously challenged their account,' they declared, adding that their Broadcasting Code 'allows for individuals to express strongly held and robustly argued views, including those that are potentially harmful or highly offensive, and for broadcasters to include these in their programming.'

It concluded: 'The restriction of such views would, in our view, be an unwarranted and chilling restriction on freedom of expression both of the broadcaster and the audience.'

Chilling… wow.

Ironically, I would imagine that word will prompt a very chilly reaction from the self-satisfied Sussexes as they slurp kale smoothies in their California mansion over breakfast this morning.

Make no mistake, this is a watershed moment in the battle for free speech.

If OFCOM had found against me, that would have signalled the end of every UK TV journalist's right to express any honestly held opinion on air lest it upset the likes of Meghan Markle.

The whole point of journalism is surely to question and challenge statements from public figures, particularly when no actual evidence is produced to support them?

Five months on from my sudden departure from GMB, at least 17 of Meghan and Harry's claims in the Oprah interview have now been shown to be false or disingenuous.

 The whole point of journalism is surely to question and challenge statements from public figures, particularly when no actual evidence is produced to support them? writes Piers 

The poor old Archbishop of Canterbury was even forced to publicly deny he'd conducted a secret marriage ceremony because that would have been a criminal offence and he might have been sent to prison for it.

More pertinently, none of the couple's most sensational and damaging statements about racism and mental health have yet been supported by a shred of evidence amid furious denials from the Royal Family.

So, my observation that I didn't believe Meghan Markle is looking stronger by the day. And for the record, I still don't believe her.

But that's not really the point.

This is not about me, or Meghan Markle.

It's about free speech and the right to have an opinion.

We now live in a woke-ravaged era where it's become a punishable offence to say what you really think about almost anything for fear that someone, somewhere, will be offended.

This insidious 'cancel culture' as it's been termed represents the most serious threat to democracy in my lifetime.

People all over the world are being shamed, vilified, and even fired from their jobs for expressing an opinion that the woke brigade don't like.

Every day, social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook explode with self-righteous judgements handed down by the court of woke public opinion, and the consequence is that debate is being destroyed at the altar of political correctness in a way that would have Churchill turning in his grave.

This was a man who fought off the freedom-muzzling Nazis, for God's sake!

Yet now people calling themselves 'liberal' are behaving like the worst kind of fascists.

That's why this OFCOM ruling matters so much.

It was preposterous that I had to leave a job I loved because I didn't believe a demonstrable liar.

But it happened because the corporate world has been cowed into surrendering to the woke mob whenever it bays for blood.

I was reliably informed recently that Meghan Markle wrote directly to my ITV boss Dame Carolyn McCall the night before I was forced out, demanding my head on a plate.

Apparently, she stressed that she was writing to Dame Carolyn personally because they were both women and mothers – a nauseating playing of the gender and maternity card if ever there was one.

What has the world come to when a whiny fork-tongued actress can dictate who presents a morning television news programme?

So yes, I'm obviously delighted that OFCOM has supported my right to disbelieve the Sussexes' lurid claims against the Royal Family, many of which have failed to stand up to even a scintilla of basic scrutiny of the kind that a woefully enabling Oprah should have conducted.

This is a resounding victory for free speech and a resounding defeat for Princess Pinocchios.

As OFCOM determined, to have restricted my right to disbelieve her and Harry would have been 'chilling.'

And when Meghan and Harry, whose unofficially authorised biography is titled 'Finding Freedom', lick their failed censorship wounds today, I suggest they heed the words of George Orwell: 'If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.'

Just one question remains: does this mean I get my job back?  

Prince of Piffle: Harry, we hardly know you!

DAILY MAIL    Sunday July 4/21

How the Prince of Piffle went from bloke to woke: He used to live for beer and naked billiards... now Harry's become a master of weird wokespeak. But never fear - JAN MOIR is here to translate

Once upon a time there was a prince who lived for drinking beer and watching rugby and sometimes running around in the scuddy, occasionally while playing nude billiards with comely young maidens.

He was popular, he was kind, he joined the Army to serve his country in Afghanistan and everyone adored him.

The Harry we used to know and love was a straightforward, straight-talking, two scant A-levels sort of bloke.

Then that all changed. Harry met a girl! He got married. He moved to California and different things became important to him. Things such as climate change, mental health, social media, mindfulness, raindrops, and myriad other subjects he could lecture us on at length, with passion, ad infinitum.

Somewhere along the line, he mutated from cheeky chappie to woke bloke, from devil may care, to caring very, very much indeed. So much so that he wanted you to care, too. And as he changed, so did how he talked.

Over recent years, Prince Harry has become a master of his very own brand of wokespeak. A kind of jargon-led, plum dumb waffle, sugared with an endearing raspberry ripple of his customary mild confusion. The result is an Eton mess of words that entrance his fans but utterly bamboozle the rest of us.

What the hell is he going on about? No wonder that the words ‘Harry’ and ‘clarity’ are rarely used in the same sentence.

In the modern manner, he is now an expert at constructing elaborate, airy sentence soufflés that mask the essential nothingness of what he is saying. In his speeches and utterances, he has become obsessed with key words such as authentic, trapped, lost, truth and oh God, compassion.

The prince has become in cyberspace that most terrifying figure in contemporary life — a man with a mission and a website. On the Archewell site that promotes the global good works undertaken by the Duke and Duchess of Sussex he states: ‘I truly believe that good mental fitness is the key to powerful leadership, productive communities and a purpose-driven self.’

Is that like a smart car? Who knows, but the prince has had a lot of therapy. What was that like, Harry? ‘It was like the bubble was burst and I plucked my head out of the sand and gave it a good shake-off.’

Car, ostrich, soap, shake? I’m confused already.

In his infamous interview with Oprah, Harry said that, unlike other members of his family, he wanted to ‘just, like, just be, just be yourself. Just be genuine. Just be authentic.’

But what is that? In a bid to find out, we tiptoe through the tulips of princely verbiage that denote Harry’s great awokening. We stand side by side, the puzzled swine before whom Prince Harry casts his pearls of woke wisdom from his great pulpit of blather and bull.

Here is his incredible journey from yahoo to guru in his own inimitable words . . .

AWKWARD APOLOGY, 2005

Awkward that one of Prince Harry’s very first public statements — in 2005 — is an apology for wearing a Nazi uniform to a fancy dress party.

What he said: ‘I’m very sorry if I caused any offence or embarrassment to anyone. It was a poor choice of costume and I apologise.’

What he meant: ‘Whassup! Oh no, do I have to read this boring statement out loud? I don’t know why you are so angry Pater, because Straubs and Skippy thort it was a right laff.’

OPENING CONCERT FOR DIANA, 2007

THEN: ‘Hello Wembley! It’s great to see so many of you here tonight. Of course, when William and I first had this idea, we forgot that we’d end up standing here, desperately trying to think up something funny to say. Well, we’ll leave that to the funny people. And Ricky Gervais.’

NOW: Can you imagine a time when Prince Harry would appear in an arena in front of thousands and not lecture them about saving the planet? He even made a joke that is actually funny. Remember when he used to do that? Remember?

THEN: In 2009, Prince Harry is forced to apologise for calling a fellow cadet at Sandhurst ‘our little P*** friend’. He also accuses another of looking ‘like a raghead’ in racist slurs captured on video in 2006.

NOW: At the Princess Diana Awards last year, Harry seizes the opportunity to lecture us all that ‘institutional racism has no place in our societies, yet it is still endemic’, and that ‘unconscious bias must be acknowledged without blame, to create a better world.’ Yet he did not acknowledge or apologise for his mistakes in this area, nor mention he was sent on a diversity course as a result.

Sometimes what is not said is even more important than what is said, don’t you think?

THE ENGAGEMENT

When his engagement to Meghan Markle is announced in 2017, Prince Harry is not long out of the Army. Indeed, he speaks of his fiancee’s entree into the Royal Family as though she were taking part in a military exercise.

‘For me, it’s an added member of the family. It’s another team player . . . what we want to do is be able to carry out the right engagements, carry out our work and try and encourage others in the younger generation to be able to see the world in the correct sense.’

She’s a woman, Harry, not an all-terrain tank. Still, note that use chilling use of ‘correct sense’.’ Already he is moving into the role of jolly green tyrant convinced of the rightness of his views.

And Meghan employs the doltish Californian mindfulness her fiance will soon embrace, too. By marrying him, she is ‘investing time and energy to make it happen’, ‘nurturing our relationship’ and focusing ‘on who we are as a couple’.

THE MEGHAN INFLUENCE

Her words, his mouth . . .

2018: ‘What Meghan wants, Meghan gets.’

2018: ‘As my wife said many years ago when working on menstrual health and health education, this is not about periods but potential.’

2019: ‘As my wife often reminds me with one of her favourite quotes by Martin Luther King Jr. — “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”’

2020: ‘You know, when you go into a shop with your children and you only see white dolls, do you even think: “That’s weird, there is not a black doll there?” ’

GENERAL WOKESPEAK

March 2021: Harry gets a new job as chief impact officer of mental health firm BetterUp. ‘My goal is to lift up critical dialogues around mental health, build supportive and compassionate communities, and foster an environment for honest and vulnerable conversations. And my hope is to help people develop their inner strength, resilience, and confidence.’

May 2021: Interview with the Armchair Expert podcast about mental health: ‘Any single one of us, whoever we are, wherever we come from, we’re always trying to find some way to be able to mask the actual feeling. And be able to try and make us feel different to how we are actually feeling, perhaps from having a feeling, right?’

May 2021: At the Vax Live concert, Harry even attempts to ‘reunite the world,’ after coronavirus. ‘None of us should be comfortable thinking that we could be fine when so many others are suffering. In reality, and especially with this pandemic, when any suffer, we all suffer. We must look beyond ourselves with empathy and compassion for those we know, and those we don’t.’

HARRY THE DRIPPING TAP

‘I believe even more that climate change and mental health are two of the most pressing issues that we’re facing and in many ways, they are linked,’ he declares on The Me You Can’t See documentary aired on Apple TV in May.

‘The connecting line is about our collective wellbeing and when our collective wellbeing erodes that affects our ability to be caretakers of ourselves, of our communities and of our planet ultimately . . . we have to create a more supportive culture for each other where challenges don’t have to live in the dark . . . and where physical and mental health can be treated equally because they are one.’

Sorry to barge in, but did anyone leave the taps running?

‘A lot of people are doing the best they can to try and fix these issues but that whole sort of analogy of walking into the bathroom with a mop when the bath is over-flooding rather than just turning the tap off — are we supposed to accept that these problems are just going to grow and grow and we have to adapt and build resilience . . .’

NOT A RAY OF SUNSHINE

‘Every forest, every river, every ocean, every coastline, every insect, every wild animal. Every blade of grass, every ray of sun and every rain drop is crucial to our survival,’,’ says Harry making a speech at WE Day UK youth event in 2019.

‘It is all connected, we are all inter-connected. You in this room understand that and are already making this a safer, healthier and more resilient home for all of us and for generations to come. And for that I applaud you.’

Prince Harry also urges the kidz not to be swayed by social media or the mainstream media ‘distorting the truth.’ The mainstream media have something to say about that.

Is Prince Harry a Puppet? roars ITV’s Good Morning Britain. Meanwhile, queen of daytime TV Lorraine Kelly is understandably muddled. ‘I don’t know what he was talking about, it was gobbledygook,’ she says.

RAINDROPS KEEP FALLING ON MY HEAD

Uh oh. In December 2020, Prince Harry makes a speech to help launch an environmental documentary streaming platform called WaterBear. He wastes no time in calling for ‘affirmative action’ on climate change.

‘Don’t be a hypocrite like me and fly in private jets,’ is exactly what he does not say.

Instead, Harry waffles on about something called ‘sustainable nature-based economic stimulus packages that embrace a One Health approach . . .’. He also touches on ‘training a young generation of talented storytellers to create more inspiration and excitement around those values’.

Who are these budding bards generating thrills with their quills? Answer came there none. Instead it was on to the rain.

‘Every single raindrop that falls from the sky relieves the parched ground. What if every single one of us was a raindrop? And if every single one of us cared, which we do, because we have to care because at the end of the day nature is our life source.’

I’m still confused. Clarity, Harry! He gives it his best shot: ‘For me it’s about putting the dos behind the says, and that is something that WaterBear is going to be doing: capitalising on a community of doers. There’s a lot of people that say, but this is about action.’

HOW MANY PEOPLE CAN I ANNOY TODAY?

October 2020: In an interview to mark Black History Month: ‘The world that we know has been created by white people for white people. I’ve had an awakening as such of my own, because I wasn’t aware of so many of the issues and so many of the problems within the UK, but also globally as well. I thought I did but I didn’t.’

May 2021: Harry takes part in an Armchair Expert podcast with Dax Shepard: ‘I’ve got so much I want to say about the First Amendment as I sort of understand it, but it is bonkers. I don’t want to start going down the First Amendment route because that’s a huge subject and one which I don’t understand because I’ve only been here a short time. But, you can find a loophole in anything. You can capitalise or exploit what’s not said rather than uphold what is said.’

THE OPRAH INTERVIEW

In the infamous interview aired in March, Harry says: ‘I’ve spent many years doing the work and doing my own learning. But my upbringing in the system, of which I was brought up in and what I’ve been exposed to, it wasn’t — I wasn’t aware of it, to start with. But, my God, it doesn’t take very long to suddenly become aware of it.’

Author and Daily Mail writer Craig Brown has a theory that Harry confuses the word ‘compassion’, with ‘contempt’. For example, after telling Oprah his father stopped taking his calls and he and his elder brother were ‘on different paths’, and also having hinted that one or other of them might be racist, he says: ‘My father and my brother, they are trapped. They don’t get to leave. And I have huge compassion for that.’
Harking back to harry the LAD

2008: During his service with the British Army in Afghanistan: ‘No one really knows where I am and I prefer to keep it that way until I get back in one piece and can tell them where I was. At the moment, they think I’m tucked away, wrapped up in cotton wool.’

2010: Chatting with Prince William about England’s role in the World Cup: ‘A win would be fantastic, but I don’t think we should put a number on it. 1-0? A win’s a win. I’m more of a rugby fan but this seems to be a World Cup full of surprises. Let’s see what happens.’

2011: Before William and Kate’s wedding: ‘I’ve got to know Kate pretty well, but now that she’s becoming part of the family, I’m really looking forward to getting her under my wing — or she’ll be taking me under her wing, probably. She’s a fantastic girl. She really is.’

2013: During his military service in Afghanistan: ‘I’m one of the guys. I don’t get treated any differently.’

SPOT THE DIFFERENCE

2015: At a youth centre in Cape Town, South Africa: ‘I would like to have come to a place like this. When I was at school, I wanted to be the bad boy.’

2019: At a youth empowerment launch in London: ‘Be kind to each other. Be kind to yourselves. Have less screen time and more face-to-face time. Exceed expectations . . . Keep empathy alive. Change your thoughts and change the world . . . your role is to shine the light.’

I have nothing to add. . . . . . .

 

MEGHAN AND HARRY: the lies heard 'round the world

                       

SARAH VINE: If Meghan Markle was wrong about the wedding, how can we believe anything else in her Oprah interview?

By Sarah Vine for the Daily Mail

Truth, we are told, is central to the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. Indeed, it was supposedly the desire for truth that drove them to give that explosive interview to Oprah Winfrey, broadcast just over two weeks ago.

'How do you feel about the Palace hearing you speak your truth today?' asked Oprah.

'I don't know how they could expect that, after all of this time, we would still just be silent if there is an active role that The Firm is playing in perpetuating falsehoods about us,' replied Meghan, casually dropping the first of many bombshells.

It was supposedly the desire for truth that drove Harry and Meghan to give that explosive interview to Oprah Winfrey

It was quite a moment. Oprah nodded in solemn agreement as the nation took a sharp intake of breath.

As the interview progressed, Meghan's 'truth' was broadcast to millions, unchallenged and uncompromising.

The Royal Family is a dysfunctional organisation; the royals were racist; the Duchess of Cambridge made Meghan cry. No one was spared.

She, by contrast, was just a naive young woman who had fallen in love with a handsome prince and found herself in over her head, attacked from all quarters.

She even compared herself to the Little Mermaid, a wide-eyed innocent adrift in an ocean of monsters. Oh, the pain. Oh, the agony. Oh, the injustice of it all. Oh, just leave my oat-milk latte over there, will you?

This was their truth, as told to Oprah, and many viewers — though far from all — lapped it up. Well, most of it anyway. Except as it turns out, not all of Harry and Meghan's truth was the actual truth — more like their own, somewhat Disneyfied, version of it.

Yesterday, after days of speculation, the couple finally admitted that, in one respect at least, they'd got their facts wrong. Despite what they told Oprah, they were not, after all, married three days before the royal wedding, on May 19, 2018, by the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Despite what they told Oprah, the couple were not, after all, married three days before the royal wedding, on May 19, 2018, by the Archbishop of Canterbury

That particular nugget was one of the more startling revelations in the interview, a much-trumpeted 'exclusive', delivered with all the emotion that only a seasoned actress like Meghan can muster.

'You know, three days before our wedding, we got married. No one knows that,' she gushed coyly.

'We called the Archbishop [as you do] and we just said: "Look, this spectacle is for the world. But we want our union between us." So, like, the vows that we have framed in our room are just the two of us in our backyard with the Archbishop of Canterbury.'

How romantic, how touching. No doubt that was the point of telling the story. Except the Archbishop didn't marry them. By all accounts he administered a blessing; but it was not their wedding.

In other words, what Meghan said was — by her own admission — not accurate.

This then joins another misleading claim in the interview — that the Royal Family had somehow contrived to stop baby Archie being a prince.

The rules are crystal clear: under protocols established by George V, a great-grandson of a sovereign has no right to such a title. And if there is one thing the Windsors like to adhere to, it's protocols.

By all accounts the Archbishop of Canterbury administered a blessing but it was not their wedding

No doubt fans of Meghan — and they are legion, including the President of the United States himself — will dismiss such points as minor misunderstandings. But even so, it presents us with a problem.

If she is wrong about the wedding, then what else is she wrong about? How do we know that when she speaks her truth, it is the actual fact of the matter rather than her, or Harry's, Hollywood-tinted interpretation?

Until now, it has been almost sacrilege to question many (any!) of their more damning assertions without risking the wrath of the couple and their supporters.

Indeed, to do so runs the risk of being 'cancelled' by Meghan's self-appointed army of powerful players in the world of media and politics, as Piers Morgan discovered when he left his job on Good Morning Britain after daring to say he 'didn't believe' Meghan's side of the story.

But now we know she got the wrong end of the stick about events involving the Archbishop and her 'backyard', surely it is not unreasonable to wonder what else she may have misremembered?

And it matters because so many of the things said in that interview were so incredibly damaging. I'm thinking in particular about the allegation that 'concerns' were expressed by a senior royal about the colour of Archie's skin.

In the febrile aftermath of the interview, when feelings were running high on both sides of the Atlantic, the Queen issued a statement saying that while she did not underestimate the seriousness of the issues raised, 'recollections may vary'.

We see now that Meghan's recollections do vary from the actualité in respect of the wedding; might the same also apply to other events mentioned in the interview?

The more you scrutinise this interview, and the claims made in it, the more holes start to appear. And the worse it starts to look for Harry and Meghan.

Prince William, for example, has now vehemently denied via friends his brother's incendiary assertion that he and Prince Charles find themselves 'trapped' in their roles, as well as stating in public with ill-concealed fury that the royals are 'very much not a racist family'.

The more you scrutinise this interview, and the claims made in it, the more holes start to appear. And the worse it starts to look for Harry and Meghan.

Because if you are going to accuse people of doing terrible things — as they have done — you have to make sure you are on solid ground. The moment you allow yourself to embellish things, or attempt to cast the facts in a different light, you undermine your case. You become your own unreliable witness, and no one knows what to believe any more.

The fact is that these are two of the most judgmental people on the planet. They are relentless in their criticism of those they consider to be in the wrong. Which is, in some ways, commendable.

But the problem with pitching your tent so firmly on the moral high ground is that you risk it being blown away because it's so exposed up there.

Perhaps they just couldn't give a fig. These two are so wrapped up in their cloak of righteousness it probably won't even register that what they have done is so deeply damaging.

And besides, their concern now is surely their profile in America. Who cares what the peasants back home think?

Now that their chief-of-staff has stepped away from her role after less than a year, they have teamed up with a top producer to work on their lucrative projects with Netflix and Spotify.

Meanwhile, in what many consider to be a nod to Meghan's future political ambitions, they have forged new links with an organisation called Invisible Hand whose founder, Genevieve Roth, worked on Hillary Clinton's (unsuccessful) 2016 presidential election campaign.

Harry even announced yesterday that he's got himself a job — working as 'Chief Impact Officer' for BetterUp, a company specialising in professional coaching, counselling and mentoring.

But while all these moves may be seen as positive — or should that be 'empowering' — in the U.S., in the UK the interview has done untold damage to their reputation. Harry's personal popularity rating has plummeted, while 58 per cent of people now view Meghan in a negative light. A majority in one survey said they should have their royal titles removed.

However much Harry may be enjoying his new Californian lifestyle — he was recently doing his bit for the planet cycling around sunny Montecito (albeit dogged by a 4x4 bristling with bodyguards) — the truth is that while he remains a Prince and an HRH (a title Meghan also continues to hold, despite her clear disdain for 'The Firm'), Britain is his home.

Whatever version of events he may have manufactured for himself to justify leaving, however little he may value some things we hold so dear, that will never change.

That is his truth, however inconvenient it may be. Even if it's not Meghan's.

Meghan's mask is slipping!

Meghan Markle is not my favorite person - in fact, she is currently one of my LEAST favorite, for all her posturing and preaching on "issues" she does not understand, continual virtue-signalling and blatant hypocrisy. She is the most overexposed figure in show biz, and wearing out her welcome. Some say she stole Harry, but Harry's a grown man, for Christ's sake, and made his own decision to dump his family and royal duties and follow her to Hollywood (during the height of a global pandemic - so much for keeping their son safe). I could go on and on, but I won't. Trump wished Harry "lots of luck, because you're going to need it" - the only Trump statement I will ever agree with! He did not even do his usual blustering, but waved them away like the insects they are. 

Like Elizabeth Holmes and her embarrassing Mickey Mouse-style explanation of Theranos technology (“A chemistry is performed so that a chemical reaction occurs and generates a signal from the chemical interaction with the sample, which is translated into a result, which is then reviewed by certified laboratory personnel"), Meghan gives the most naive and ludicrous explanations for her world-shaking commands. This is my favorite quotation so far:

"Asked for her views on the BLM protests, Meghan admitted they had been 'inflammatory for a lot of people'. She continued: 'But when there is just peaceful protest and when there is the intention of just wanting community and just wanting the recognition of equality, then that is a beautiful thing. While it has been challenging for a lot of people certainly having to make this reckoning of historical significance that has got people to the place that they are, that is uncomfortable for people. We recognise that. It is uncomfortable for us. And I think when everyone just starts to own that, we push through that and focus on how do we make it different moving forward? And if we just focus on the uplift and the positivity of that, while still acknowledging the past, that's where we reshape things, and that shouldn't be inflammatory at all. That should be really exciting actually.'" 

OK guys, so how DO you "reshape things" (and which things - isn't that just a little vague)? What SPECIFICALLY are you guys going to do to "push through that" and "focus on the uplift and the positivity"? And stating that everyone should "just start to own that" is stale, empty rhetoric left over from '80s corporate retreats.  How does her ignorant bafflegab even begin to resolve gravely serious life-and-death issues like the murder of George Floyd? So far all she has done is flap her lips, with Harry parroting back the same ROT and acting like the ventriloquist's dummy that he is. 

But it's worse than that. She uses the word "just" three times in one sentence, and twice more in the next two sentences. "Just" in this case implies, "it's simple if we only do this". She talks about Black Lives Matter as "a beautiful thing", but how beautiful is it when a black man suffocates to death with a policeman's knee on his neck, and another man is shot in the back five times? This "beautiful thing" rhetoric is more 1960s than 1980s. It reminds me of that appalling pop song, "Everything is beautiful in its own way". 

At any rate: this is a little video made up of gifs taken from a recent interview, in which she became very petulant about someone actually challenging her and saying, "You are NOT the most powerful woman in the world" (an understatement).  She then threw a little diva fit which I have immortalized in this video. Enjoy!

REALLY dumb article about Prince Harry.

Click below for:

REALLY dumb article about Prince Harry! 

(REALLY dumb.)😕

PIERS MORGAN: Meghan and Harry? . . . PLEASE SHUT UP.

PIERS MORGAN: You're right, Meghan, confronting inequality is uncomfortable – but not as uncomfortable as watching unemployed Harry lecturing the world about it from the comfort of your Hollywood mansion hideaway

By Piers Morgan for MailOnline

Published: 09:06 EDT, 7 July 2020 | Updated: 09:29 EDT, 7 July 2020

I've seen less disconcerting hostage videos.

That was my thought this morning as I watched Prince Harry staring blankly into a camera and lecturing the world – yet again - on our need to face up to our privilege.

As he spoke about why we all have to right the wrongs of the past, his wife Meghan stared intently at him, boring her eyes into his skull as if she was virtually transporting her own pre-programmed thought processes into his brain.

I'm not a conspiracy theorist but at one stage it looked like his lips were moving in sync with her blinking eyes.

We're going to have to be a little uncomfortable right now,' said Meghan when she herself spoke.

No s***.

She continued: 'Because it's only in pushing through that discomfort that we get to the other side of this and find the place where a high tide raises all ships.'

This sounded very profound.

Then I remembered where I'd heard it before.

President John F. Kennedy famously said the words 'a rising tide lifts all boats' in a 1963 speech.

Meghan just forgot to credit him. 

An easy mistake, perhaps, when you're desperate to impress everyone with the power of your own world-changing rhetoric.

What was even less palatable than her linguistic plagiarism was Meghan's next claim: 'Equality does not put anyone on the back foot, it puts us all on the same footing - which is a fundamental human right.'

The essence of this assertion is entirely correct.

But there's something quite breathtakingly unedifying about a very rich deeply privileged Duchess banging on about equality from her $20 million borrowed mansion in Hollywood.

One of the few benefits of the coronavirus crisis has been that fame-hungry attention-seeking narcissistic celebrities have been put firmly back in their boxes.

From Madonna sitting naked in the rose-petalled bath of her lavish home as she told us COVID-19 was 'the great equaliser', to Gal Gadot's grotesquely tone-deaf annihilation of Imagine with a bunch of other tuneless virtue-signalling stars, the pandemic has exposed the utter irrelevance of celebrity culture when there's a killer virus on the loose.

For Meghan and Harry, this moment of reckoning has come at a particularly awkward time.

Six months ago, they quit the Royal Family and Britain in a blaze of aggrieved self-righteous glory - and announced big plans to be newly liberated global superstars, trading off their royal titles to make themselves enormously rich.

We were informed that they had 'never been happier' and were 'very excited' about their new lives of freedom from control by evil racist palace courtiers and the even more evil racist UK media.

It was a spectacular two-fingered snub to the Queen and the Monarchy, and to all the British taxpayers who had funded their lavish lifestyle.

And for a few weeks they were one of the most discussed and debated news stories in the world, dominating newspaper headlines and TV bulletins – all fuelling their superstar status.

But then came the biggest health crisis for a century, and suddenly we all forgot about them with the same speed that all their big plans for global domination got cancelled.

Meghan and Harry's terrible 'struggle' that they'd spent months moaning about was now put sharply into perspective by horrendous, chaotic scenes at hospitals around the world as heroic health workers risked their lives to save people infected by the disease.

Frankly, as Rhett Butler might say, we didn't give a damn about them or any other self-absorbed celebrities.

The REAL stars were the doctors and nurses on the Covid frontline.

As the threat of lockdown loomed, the Sussexes faced a dilemma: should they return to the UK from their vast Canadian riverside hideaway so Harry could help his family support the British people in our darkest hour since World War II?

Or should they hop on a private jet to Los Angeles?

They chose the latter, decamping to the sprawling $20 million Hollywood home of American actor Tyler Perry.

And that is where they have stayed ever since.

The house is an eight-bedroom, 12-bathroom Tuscan-style villa, which sits on 22 acres on the top of a hill in the ultra-exclusive Beverly Ridge Estates guard-gated community, offering sweeping views of the city from the backyard and with a massive swimming pool as its centrepiece feature.

It's hard to imagine a more luxurious or spacious place to spend lockdown.

Or a more incongruous place from which to lecture the world on equality.

'It's not going to be easy,' said Harry, 'and in some cases it's not going to be comfortable - but it needs to be done, because guess what, everybody benefits.'

Hmmm.

Again, there's nothing inaccurate about that statement, especially when applied to racism.

(Though his direct attack on the Commonwealth for its racist colonial wrongs suggests a poor grasp of history given it was formed in 1932 to bring an end to the British Empire and make amends for all the racist colonial wrongs with the British Empire.)

But there's something horribly inappropriate about it coming from a jobless prince sitting in a Hollywood mansion, living off his father's money and still reportedly using British taxpayer cash to fund his family's very expensive security costs.

In fact, it's hard to think of a more privileged, elitist life than the one they're now currently living – one that has all the luxury and glamour of royal life without the need to perform any of the duty.

I really didn't want to write about Meghan and Harry today.

I've managed to avoid it for four months and know there genuinely are far more important things to worry about.

But by making such overtly controversial political pronouncements, they are deliberately forcing themselves back into the news cycle and that makes it impossible to ignore them.

Their latest outburst follows last week's extraordinary revelations by Meghan in court documents filed in her privacy case against the Mail On Sunday.

She claimed, with zero evidence and quite staggering delusion, that her wedding to Harry made $1.2 billion in tourism cash so more than paid for itself.

She said she was 'unprotected' by the 'institution' of the Royal Family and was unhappy she couldn't take paid work like minor royals including Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie - who don't carry out public duties, so the comparison is completely irrelevant.

She complained that the Palace didn't correct 'hundreds of thousands of inaccurate articles' about her, which is a laughably exaggeration and, as Palace sources responded, the Duchess didn't seem to understand the difference between untrue stories and negative critical ones that were true.

But honestly, who cares about any of this trivial first world bleating when so many people are losing their lives and livelihoods?

In several weeks, a new biography of the couple, written by friends to 'correct' all the supposed myths about them, will be published and doubtless spray more dirt at the Royal Family, causing further embarrassment and upset for the Queen in her 94th year.

None of this sits well with Meghan and Harry's claim when they quit the Royals that they were doing so for the sake of privacy.

It's now clear that this pair of royal renegades have no intention of remaining 'private' and every intention of continuing to lecture us how to think and behave from behind the protected walls of their gilded new Hollywood life.

This wouldn't matter so much if people weren't suffering so badly from the terrible impact of the coronavirus and the horrific economic fallout as a consequence.

The last thing people want to hear right now is yet more whining from Meghan and Harry about how badly they've been treated, yet more digs at the Queen and other members of the Royal Family like William and Kate who have stepped up so commendably to comfort the British people during the pandemic, and yet more of their haughty, patronising, hypocritical sermons about equality.

So, before I return to more important things, three final words of advice for the Duke and Duchess: please shut up. 

(Please note! I don't own this material and am re-posting it here for educational purposes only, and because Piers Morgan KICKS ASS.)