Thursday, February 12, 2009

Diversifying Harry

(Photo: Prince Harry in one of his better moments, on active service in Afghanistan) Years ago, I think I was in Manchester - so that's like eight years back at least, I was listening to Nicky Campbell on FiveLive. For some reason they were discussing the then still rather young Prince Harry. To their amusement, they found out that the girl who was doing work-experience with them had a best friend who went to school with Harry. So they got her on mike and Nicky asked the immortal question - live, of course - "what does your friend think of Prince Harry?" Without hesitation she replied that he didn't like him at all, he is really racist and is always going on about "Pakis". A brief stunned silence descended on the studio, before Campbell in a slightly forced upbeat manner said something along the lines of "umm, errr, interesting. Now! Lets go to the travel news!" I was quite surprised that the next day this wasn't front page news in the tabloids, but perhaps it just shows tabloid hacks are actually working mid-morning and not listening to talk radio.

So, it is perhaps no surprise that Harry in recent months has shown himself to be such an insentitive prat. Maybe, as some of his defenders claim, he isn't actually racist. This is quite possible, but of course if he isn't racist, he very clearly is immensely stupid and insensitive to other peoples feelings and his own public position.

So I just love the idea that Harry is being sent on a diversity course. As someone who has, in the last year, had to sit through too numerous management training sessions and the like, due to a minor crisis in the workplace, I'm pretty certain that these type of consultant run sessions are at least the third circle of hell. The Prince clearly deserves to suffer the experience.

3 comments:

Quizbo said...

Consultant run diversity courses as the third circle of hell... brilliant, and I couldn't agree more. Nothing grates on the nerves quite like having to sit through that asinine garbage with the full knowledge that the only purpose is to protect the company from lawsuits.

I hope Harry's being subjected to particularly cruel forms of such abuse - being asked to hold hands with other people and affirm their uniqueness... perhaps an essay on how racial insults would feel if you were a minority. He's going to love it.

Unknown said...

The bloke is an idiot and now of very limited use to the Army - I very much doubt that he will ever be able to command the respect of any soldier from an ethnic minority again.

Tom Ripley said...

I think Marc's comments show his lack of understanding about the armed forces. What Harry said was stupid, but he isn't racist.