Riotous republic less apology demanding for Royal first tour than braving Commonwealth politics

The fact that the first foreign state visit by King Charles was characterised by an apology was hardly a surprise.

The surprise was that the apology was from France’s president Emmanuel Macron saying he was sorry for the postponement of the visit due to disruptions in his own country most notably in the specially-selected Bordeaux which was once part of England.

The significance of the reverse apology disguised how Palace advisers have at last achieved a firm grip on the royal projection of influence.

These counsellors correctly gauged the folly of King Charles undertaking any inaugural tour of what was until quite recently known as the white Commonwealth meaning Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.

In all these countries the governments are arranging their future grip on power around identitarian politics.

Australia for example is now in the throes of adding to the eight parliaments it already has a ninth parliament of new nation members which will have a supra veto over the other eight.

The government of New Zealand meanwhile has only in the past few weeks pulled hesitatingly and tremulously from the brink of introducing the first steps of a condominium rule in which first nationers or those identifying as such take over exclusive swathes of governance.

The significance of the French tour kick off was demonstrated notably by the decision by palace counsellors to resist the temptation of Canada often considered in British diplomacy as the royal home-away-from-home.

Here of course identitarianism is turbo charged. In addition to the first nationers there are the French Canadians who resent Ottawa as much as they do London.

So King Charles at every whistle stop would have had to utter a string of apologies which in Canada’s case would have been duplicated. One to first nationers. The other to the original colonists, the French ones, dispossessed by their British usurpers.

The canaries in this combustible commonwealth coal mine were the Prince and Princess of Wales more commonly known as William and Kate.

Their so recent tour of the Caribbean added up to one long apology.

Its enduring image was of the royal couple standing up in Jamaica in a colonial era Land Rover with on their faces the frozen smiles of public figures who know that the planned and expected acclamation has turned visibly sour.

Continuing to swerve away from the awaiting identitarianism trap awaiting King Charles in New Zealand and Australia will test the resolution of Palace counsellors.

The reason is that the governments in both countries see identitarianism as the key to holding onto power. No single person on the planet presents anything approaching the ability to signal their righteous application of it than King Charles.

He would present the governments of Australia and New Zealand the opportunity to perfect and exhibit their most exquisitely honed set of triangulation strategies.

In this process politicians would praise the apology-demanding first nationers for having the courage and the candour to seek to avenge past hurts along with their demonstration of the government-consecrated values of free speech.

They would meanwhile slyly praise the visible royalists for their devotion to an institution, the royal one.

Then would come from the real pay-off.

At some stage they know someone, perhaps an anguished royalist, would take a swipe at the first nationers and their entourage. This would ignite the desired blue touch paper which would now take over the entire visit. There would be a tsunami of governmental crocodile tears.

Then commentators, barely able to contain themselves, faces a rictus of sorrow, would release their repertoire in which the words far right would be the mildest refrain.

Germany under Hitler would be routinely invoked.

To borrow a German linguistic inflection we find that realpolitik has at last descended on the Palace advisory corps.

It is symbolised by the decision to send on his first state visit King Charles to the paradoxically much more secure anti monarchist France.

They understand that even given the Latin and therefore riotous temperament of republican France, it offers a safer and more predictable and less embarrassing rendezvous for King Charles than anywhere in New Zealand, Australia, or Canada.

Politicians are Diplomats Soft Shoe Shuffling a Plantation Cult

Unquestioning adoption of northern hemisphere climate creeds by the main political parties in New Zealand threatens the nation economically and environmentally as the cyclone season pushes south.

The most recent of these transatlantic doctrines is the one to carpet the nation with the shallow-rooted, fast growing, North American tree species Pinus radiata.

The reason that the introduction of this short-lived species is under intense acceleration is that it is deemed the most instantly-realisable counter weight crop to absorb the trace gas carbon dioxide.

The fear by the main political parties of detonating the anger of the urban professional class now considered to base their vote exclusively on climatic doctrines is now evident.

This is because Pinus radiata plantations were the proximate cause of much of the damage in the recent Cyclone Gabrielle floods.

Nobody, and especially those in authority, chose to see the connection between the piles of forestry debris at the river mouths and at the beaches and the upstream unstable mountainous clutter accumulating as the result of selective logging.

The untrammelled go-ahead to use the Pinus radiata species as the overriding instrument for banking the offset credits required by investors in allowing them to pollute in other parts of the world has introduced a fresh threat and one which is not even whispered.

This is monoculture which means that the introduced species is prone to extensive infection. An official Farm Forestry Association group from New Zealand has inspected such infestation known as pitch canker first hand (see illustration.)

The mutually agreed information blackout on this threat from the re-intensified Pinus radiata plantation fever obscures a number of other dangers inherent in using the species as a gas exchange trading mechanism.

What happens if the liability exchange market collapses and the trees end their short lifetimes unharvested?

Will these abandoned hulks lie on the ground ready to be swept away by cyclones?

Why was all the forestry debris never considered for fuel –pelleting and thus become a readily available substitute for the hated fossil fuels?

As recently as 10 years ago there was widespread complaint about the effect of the logging trucks on the nation’s roads as they conveyed the selected logs to port of shipment.

This too was allowed to fade as radiata took over the national importance once accorded to native timbers.

These were once held in such high regard that native timber facia was ripped out of public buildings on what can only be described as sacrilegious grounds.

New Zealand party leaders have become diplomats rather than politicians.

They know for example that exports derived from ruminants are many times greater than exports from forestry.

The constant and consistent official scheming to cover the nation in Pinus radiata has about it an essential characteristic of any imported cult in that those espousing it cannot bring themselves to find anything wrong with it.

Dissenters are denounced for their heresy.

The New Zealand general election is already showing signs of an action replay of the last Australian one.

Australian former prime minister Scott Morrison, who shares a similar background to his New Zealand Opposition counterpart Christopher Luxon.

Mr Morrison sought to deflect and sidestep any direct challenge to the climatic high moral ground because he knew his privileged urban constituencies so ardently clung to it.

In the event and by failing to challenge the climate industry he created a vacuum in which the Teals successfully claimed the moral high ground and Mr Morrison was out of office.

Nobody still dare to question the forestry/offsets exchange lobby even after the Ukraine invasion triggered food and power shortages.

Even Cyclone Gabrielle failed to shake the doctrinal faith.

It failed to dent a long running scheme to erect near Auckland a solar power generating plant on a river loop drowned twice in the past two years.

Its flood-born house -sized reflector panels would have become the high tech version of the forestry residue responsible for so much damage wrought by the cyclone.

Several other such sites on flood prone river land are still planned for the Wellington region.