Barmy Prince Charlie

Like anyone else Prince Charles is entitled to express eccentric views, but there exists a fine line between eccentric and deranged. And this is the line HRH oversteps with growing regularity.

Especially worrying is his apocalyptic view of warm weather, an impending catastrophe he regards, according to his spokesman, as “the number one threat to the planet and it is the thing he cares most passionately about”.

Anyone less dedicated to monarchy than I am could be forgiven for turning republican on the strength of that statement alone. Really, Your Royal Highness? Nothing more worrying in the world?

How about the complete brutalisation of your loyal subjects who en masse regard wallowing in their own vomit as a good night out? Educational standards way below Victorian times? Our pyramid-scheme economy? Collapsing NHS? Muslim terrorism, threatening to go nuclear? Several flashpoints in the world, each capable of triggering a global war? Growing atomisation of society? Spiritual, intellectual and cultural standards rapidly descending to those of a pre-colonial Africa? Totalitarian political correctness stifling free speech more effectively than the Gestapo ever did?

Well, at least all of them are demonstrable facts, not politically inspired hypotheses, which anthropogenic global warming most emphatically is.

After all, the anthropogenic nature of warm weather is the first discovery in the history of science made not by scientists but by a political body, the UN. Much as one admires the epic successes this organisation has achieved in its own field (Yugoslavia springs to mind, among many other examples), one has to say that the evidential base of the theory is, to be charitable, weak.

The political base, however, is massive, and the banners of fictitious global warming have drawn all the same people who oppose nuclear energy, shale gas, medical experiments on animals, free enterprise and everything else that can improve and prolong human lives.

Prince Charles’s latest contribution to this destructive propaganda is his suggestion that every weather forecast include a detailed report on the damage perpetrated on ‘our planet’ by climate change. Floods, hurricanes and tidal waves must be unequivocally blamed on the UN’s scientific breakthrough.

TV weathercasts are already too long, but at least they have the benefit of being a politics-free zone (it goes without saying that all political statements aired in that medium oscillate between stupid and subversive). Now Prince Charles proposes that they become interminably long and intolerably politicised. Good one, HRH.

One shouldn’t be too hard on people for saying silly things. He who is without sin… and all that. Yet I’m genuinely worried about our future king’s mental health.

This heartfelt concern wouldn’t be completely justified if this proposal were the only symptom. Alas, it isn’t. There have been many other manifestations, enough to indicate a progressing degenerative disorder.

This was especially acute last year, when HRH, his eyes glistening frighteningly, blamed climate change for the on-going crisis in the Middle East. That geopolitical analysis for once rendered me speechless.

Since HRH believes that at base all religions are the same, he obviously couldn’t blame Islam, with its 1,400 years of blood-soaked history. But at least he could have suggested that partly to blame was the idiotic attempt to carpet-bomb the Middle East into parliamentary democracy initiated by the Americans and supported by Blair.

He didn’t though. Instead HRH went so far out into left field as to be in the stadium car park.

According to him, our wanton disregard for the environment begat “five or six years of drought” in Syria; the drought begat the 2011 uprising; the uprising caused the civil war; the civil war begat 250,000 deaths; the deaths begat 11 million running away from home; and the combined effect of all those disasters presumably begat the hundreds of massacres perpetrated by Muslims over the last 20 years.

This whole chain of begets is traceable back to anthropogenic climate change, believes our future king, so next time you whip out that aerosol spray, I hope you’ll be suitably ashamed of yourself. The blood of all those Muslims and their victims will be on your head, vicariously at least.

Compared to that peak of acute madness, HRH’s current display of his obsession suggests that the disease is entering a chronic phase. There’s no need for an immediate chemical cosh; some gentle therapy may keep the condition at an even keel.

Anything will do to keep Charles’s mind off his idée fixe. For example, I don’t know if he has lost interest in his friends’ wives, which was a major preoccupation of his younger days. Yet if the old embers are still smouldering, it’s the therapist’s task to fan them into vigorous life.

However, Charles should be discouraged from referring to his friends’ wives as ‘hot’ or using expressions like ‘cold comfort’, ‘a warm feeling’ or ‘hot to trot’. HRH’s staff would also be well-advised to make sure HRH stays in an air-conditioned space on hot days and only goes out when it’s below freezing.

Actually, I’m hereby offering my services in amateur psychotherapy. It’s the duty of every patriot to do his bit for the realm.