Peter Rhodes on a new law, a new queen and a very old little green man
The knackered old British motor industry used to be famous for “Friday cars” and “Monday-morning vans,” the vehicles slapped together carelessly by workers who were either switching off for the weekend or recovering from it.
Today, vehicle quality has improved but Britain seems to have Friday-afternoon laws.
These are the laws that slip through Parliament at the end of the week when half the MPs have already departed for their constituencies and the others aren't paying much attention. This is one explanation for how the Worker Protection Bill made it through the Commons. Like the road to hell, it is paved with good intentions.
Critics say it has the potential to prosecute people for doing nothing wrong. A shopkeeper, for example, might be held responsible and sued for compensation by a member of his staff who was harassed by a customer. Natural justice tells us this Bill should have been halted or amended ages ago. Maybe there is still time. Although probably not on a Friday . . .
Inevitably, all eyes were drawn to the top of next month's Coronation invitation with its epoch-making first official reference to “Queen Camilla”. Yet the bottom of the invitation is no less fascinating, with its image of the Green Man, one of the oldest pagan symbols. Witches will doubtless be rejoicing.
The Green Man pops up in many ancient cultures and had a revival in Britain in the 19th century when so much bogus olde-worlde stuff (Morris dancing, Scottish tartans, etc) was invented to amuse the peasantry and attract tourists. Today, the Green Man is particularly popular with ageing hippies. They put them in the garden as decorative wall plaques, hanging with the dream catcher and the wind chimes to convince themselves and visitors that they are connected on some vague spiritual level to the eternal cycle of birth and regrowth.
The question is, why did King Charles give the Green Man such prominence on his wedding invitations? His official title is Defender of the Faith but for many years he has pledged to be the Defender of Faiths, seemingly reaching out to all the world's religions. If he's seriously promoting something as nebulous as the Green Man in his belief-package, maybe he'll become Defender of Any Old Cobblers. Now, Your Majesty, what about the Garden Gnomes? They must be feeling neglected.
