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Comments at CiF

Bongbong Marcos

So, a question.

The widow of Ferdinand Marcos disclosed last week that she is pushing her son Ferdinand Jr, 51, known as “Bongbong”, to stand for president next year.

He was educated at Worth, a Benedictine boarding school in West Sussex.

I remember, when I was at the prep school there, seeing the limo coming to take him off for a weekend exeat or half term or some such. Whether Ma and Pa were in the back I don\’t know although I was told they were.

Anyway, on to the question.

If elected would he be the first head of state to have been educated at an English Catholic (err, yes, specifying Roman, not the Apostolic etc claim of the CoE) school since the Reformation?

The Tudors and Stuarts weren\’t educated at schools and we\’ve not had a Catholic HoS since then (neatly leaving aside all the arguments about whether Charles I, or II, or James II were in fact Papists). Then there were no Catholic schools in England until what, 1837 and the Emancipation (maybe earlier?)?

I doubt very much if any member of any other Royal Family who has ascended the throne was educated in England which leaves elected Presidents and the like since around 1850 or so.

So, anyone any idea?

Ah, looking it up I see that Ampleforth has already had a Grand Duke of Luxembourg and a King of Lesotho. So how about elected heads of state?

Comment at CiF

Peter Tatchell:

"free trade need to be subordinated to sustainable policies for the survival of humanity."

This is something I really don\’t understand about you Greens (ie, the political party, not environmentalists in general). What is it that you\’ve got against trade? By the division of labour and the subsequent trading of the production, for any given level of resource use we get a higher standard of living. Or, for any given standard of living, we use fewer resources.
Since you\’re all concerned about the use of resources, I really don\’t get the antipathy to trade. Why do you oppose the very thing which gives what you want, lower resource use?