Recession. Cuts. Unemployment. World Cup #fail. A deranged gunman on the loose. Sometimes it seems like there’s nothing but bad news out there.
Well at least the sun’s shining – for now.
But we need something else to cheer us up and we’ve hit upon an idea:
Let’s have a royal wedding.
It’s been a while since we had a good one (the Peter Phillips + Canadian joint venture in 2008 didn’t really hit the spot) and the gloss has long since faded from those failed 1980s mergers between Charles & Diana and Andrew & Fergie.
So let’s have the one that the 21st Century has been waiting for: William & Kate.
They’ve teased us for long enough: we’ve had too many false reports, and we’ve even had pictures of (fake) Kate wearing a wedding dress.
Besides, what exactly is the Royal Family for if it can’t arrange a glitzy royal wedding once in a generation?
Our new coalition government is pulling out all the stops to try to turn the economy around, but perhaps the Prime Minister & Chancellor should have a word with the boy William and ask him to do the nation a favour and tie the knot on a date which is positive for the economic cycle, i.e. as soon as bloody possible, please.
When the city of Stockholm hosted the wedding of Swedish Crown Princess Victoria last month there were reports that for every $1 spent on the wedding, $100 would be generated for the economy.
Now that’s the sort of fiscal stimulus that we need: let’s spend £100m on a royal wedding and generate £10 billion for our economy. I reckon that would add around 0.6% to the UK’s GDP of £1.75 trillion.
There, that’s fixed it.
Now I’m sure that those Swedes put on a good show for their Big Day, but when it comes to the consumption of mountains of tatty Royal Wedding merchandise such as the indispensable Will & Kate Tea Towel and the Will & Kate Keyring, I’m confident that Britain still leads the world.
Plus of course there’s the boost from tourism as people flock to the streets of London from around the country and around the world in even greater numbers than usual, all prepared to pay for overpriced hotel rooms and about £5 for a small bottle of tepid water as they wait around for hours along the procession route through the capital waving their union flags.
And what marvellous sponsorship opportunities!
This will be the first really big royal wedding in the modern era, so like the World Cup or the Olympics, there must be a wacky mascot and an official logo for the event.
The Will & Kate logo will be expensively licensed out to Official Partners, including the Official Credit Card, the Official Cola, the Official Beer, and the Official Airline of the Royal Wedding.
A Royal Wedding will boost the media businesses too: the TV companies will cover it like they’ll cover the 2012 Olympics (which means that the two events can’t clash, so that’s another great reason not to wait until 2012), and a billion trees will be pulped to publish glossy special souvenir supplements with every newspaper and magazine.
There will be street parties with beer & bunting, and sales of 3D-TVs will get a boost, and copycat engagements & weddings will generate business for lots of people like us…
And lastly and perhaps most importantly, the Royal Wedding will add to the nation’s ‘General Well-Being’ (remember that?). It’ll put a smile on our face and make us feel like the sunlit uplands are finally within our grasp.
And the dwindling number of republicans will grumble and moan and write angry letters to the Guardian.
And then, when all is done, we’ll have an almighty hangover.
Original post here.
No comments:
Post a Comment