It’s a tough time to be a republican right now

James Moore, The Independent

This isn’t a column about fertiliser prices and the grave impact they’re having on the cost of food. At least for the most part. That’s just your starter. We’ll get to the main course in a moment. But did you realise they’ve surged to such an inflated level that farmers now simply can’t afford the agrichemicals they – and we – rely on? The good people at Standard & Poor’s, a ratings agency, say some have jumped by as much as 280 per cent, which they describe as “unsustainable”.

Food price inflation has, meanwhile, hit a record 12.4 per cent. Given the number of people already knocking on the doors of food banks, this ought to be getting some attention. Except that in Britain, the media has (almost) stopped and the nation seems to be operating under the tragically misguided assumption that the world has stopped spinning. There is only one story that is getting any real attention.

True, Ukraine’s remarkably successful offensive in the terrible war that is raging in our continent has been taken note of. And some celebrities have… done some stuff. We’re never going to forget about them. But otherwise, did you notice the fact that a third of Pakistan is still underwater? That’s a hellish natural disaster of the type that might usually be given wall to wall coverage, but today it appears to have been filed under “old news”.

True, Ukraine’s remarkably successful offensive in the terrible war that is raging in our continent has been taken note of. And some celebrities have… done some stuff. We’re never going to forget about them. But otherwise, did you notice the fact that a third of Pakistan is still underwater? That’s a hellish natural disaster of the type that might usually be given wall to wall coverage, but today it appears to have been filed under “old news”.

Maybe someone will take a look at the aftermath when England’s cricketers arrive. The again, maybe they won’t. Look, I’m not trying to be rude or disrespectful here. Honestly, I’m not. But isn’t it time to pinch ourselves and wake up? Not yet, say the controlling brains who decide what we see, hear and read. Now which “royalty expert” are we going to get to fill up half the 11 o’clock bulletin? What’s that? Someone from Majesty Magazine’s available? Didn’t we have them yesterday? What the hell, book ‘em. I don’t think I’m alone in finding this problematic. On the contrary. Quietly, quite a few people are saying what a friend of mine said to me: “I go straight to Amazon Prime or Netflix when I turn on the TV. It’s just too much.” They weren’t intending to be disrespectful either (they made a point of saying so). They just felt that enough was enough.

I suspect the numbers in this camp are actually quite large, and that it goes well beyond those of us who support the creation of a republic. And we all pay taxes. And licence fees and so on. We all have lives we’d quite like to lead.

Yet, the shutting down of the whole country, which will reach a crescendo on Monday, proceeds apace. Get in quick if you want to buy a teddy bear, or the ingredients to make marmalade sandwiches as tributes to Her Majesty, because we’re going back to the 1950s when everything really did shut down on a bank holiday. And on Sunday. And for half of early closing day. That was still a thing during the early part of my childhood in the 1970s.

Seriously, there are kids who don’t have any toys at all, who don’t have enough to eat. The food banks that cater for them are running out of food and yet people are purchasing tribute teddy bears? PS. One of those closures (at least on Monday) is Aldi, relied upon by hundreds of thousands of Britain’s poorest because its prices are that little bit cheaper.

Our late Queen, we are told, had a keen interest in the welfare of her people, would sometimes raise the issue with her prime ministers. That being the case, I wonder if she wouldn’t have found all this a bit much too?

I think she might have preferred it if people wanting to pay their respects made donations to charities in her name, as often happens in the case of the funerals of her more humble subjects. Your local food bank wouldn’t be a bad idea. Here, you people at the Trussell Trust, take the price of the stuff I was going to buy and use it to keep some poor family fed.

It would actually be a rather fine thing if we were to mark this occasion with a mass national giving to benefit the people at the sharp end of those rising fertiliser and food prices. It’s something we could all get behind, I think. If that were to happen, I might even be prepared to put up with the bin lorries full of rubbish being talked on TV news bulletins.  Some of the stuff that has been said when I’ve tuned in has been quite spectacularly stupid. But there are really so many other things that we ought to be thinking about; it isn’t just the food, and the floods, although they’d both represent a good start. By all means mourn, if you feel so inclined. I’ll try and keep a respectful tone in contrast to some of the people who describe themselves as monarchists who’ve been tipping rubbish over Harry and Meghan (see last week’s column). But the rest of the world is moving on. It’s time to wake up to that fact. I rather think the Queen might have said the same thing.