Somebody should ask the Queen when she’s here if Jack Arbuthnot was her father and not George VI. Alex Cockburn, son of Claud and native of Cork, suggests it was so.

In her brilliant tome The Royals, Kitty Kelley reports on the basis of typically assiduous research that George VI was a stutterer in more ways than one. She reckons Elizabeth and her sister Margaret were conceived by artificial insemination, in 1926 and 1930 respectively, probably by different donors.
Margaret hated Jews and described the Irish as “pigs”. She would have been knowledgeable in such matters, having had her snout in the trough all her life. But that’s by the by.
Alex’s maternal grandfather, Scots Guardsman Arbuthnot, was commander of the guard at Balmoral when Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, later the gin-soaked old harridan marketed as “the Queen Mum”, would come a-visiting from Glamis Castle across the heathered glen. “The high-spirited Elizabeth used to insist that Major Jack play ‘Horse’ carrying her about on his shoulders,” Alex recalls the family lore on his Counterpunch website. He goes on to speculate that, “Perhaps in 1926 the Duchess, as she then was, remembered that early, fairly intimate proximity and sent him a royal request.” Major Jack, Alex points out, was “now seasoned but still virile (and) from reputable genetic stock.”
An impressively argued case, readers will agree.
Alex has confirmed his status as a doughty defender of truth in raising the matter at all. It must hugely embarrassing for a life-long radical to have to admit such a distasteful connection.
The reason you hadn’t heard of Ms Kelley’s revelation is that her book has never been published on this side of the Atlantic. Even its existence is rarely referred to. Strange, when you think about it. Although not, when you think about it some more.
If you want Kelley’s Brit Royals summed up in a snap-shot, consider the Queen Mum posturing as a proper person in her role as Patron of the Royal Society for Mentally Handicapped Children and Adults, at the same time keeping two mentally handicapped cousins locked away in a secure institution where they never received visitors, and certainly not Royal visitors, for fear of the secret coming out. What a contemptible piece of shit. The rest of her brood didn’t lick it off the stone.
Hot Press – the magazine with the inside track on Royal turpitude! More next issue, and every issue until the last of the kow-tow teams has left the stage.

“Black Calvin Klein underpants with a secret compartment attached to the front of the waist-band” – Channel 4’s description of “specialised equipment” found on SAS men captured by Libyan farmers.

I see that the commanders of the UVF, the UDA, the Red Hand Commandoes, the Protestant Action Volunteers, the Loyalist Volunteer Force and the General Federation of Tartan Gangs has published a plan for the eradication of bigotry against Catholics in the North. “Kill more Taigs, that’s the ticket,” declared a spokesman.
I see, too, that the Ireland First group has published its manifesto for economic recovery and has been invited to meet and discuss with members of the Government.
Ireland First includes former finance minister and opponent of bank regulation Ray McSharry; former Bank of Ireland CEO Mike Soden; former National Treasury Management Agency boss, now director of AIB, Michael Somers; free marketeer and former MEP Pat Cox; property magnate Dermot Desmond; former chairman of BP, current chairman of Goldman Sachs Peter Sutherland; former AIB director Sean O’Driscoll; Meath rancher John Bruton; Kerry chancer Dick Spring. And others of the same ilk.
It is hard to imagine a group more accurately representative of the fundamental thinking of the money-mad mileau which dragged the Irish State to disaster. Now they stand together to survey the devastation they’ve left in their wake and demand, “More! More!”
Ireland First’s top priority is the abandonment of the An Bord Snip Nua target of wiping out 20,000 public sector jobs. At least 30,000 must go, they proclaim.
The Irish Times provided fanfare coverage – pics of all 17 of the “heavy hitters” spread across six columns under the headline, “Thinktank aiming to put Ireland back on the economic map.”
RTÉ reported with a straight face that a “powerful new group” had emerged to “advise” the Government.
No acceptance of blame, no suspicion of shame, no shred of evidence that any had at any point thought it appropriate to reconsider anything.
Day by day, the case for revolution gathers towards a reckoning.

The Belgians may be on to something. Last month, the country broke the world record of 249 days without a government. As we go to press, Flemish and Walloon parties continue to fail to form a coalition. There were cheerful gatherings all across the country to celebrate their achievement in passing Iraq in the no-government stakes.
Life goes on. Many citizens say they have given up listening to reports of the ever-deadlocked negotiations.
Asked on BBC2’s Newsnight about this odd situation, a member of the idle parliament explained: “You have to remember that this is the country of Tin Tin, the Smurfs and surrealism.”
This is the most interesting thing I have ever heard about Belgium.

Saw a very well-dressed bunch of citizens marching up the road the other day chanting, “We say cut back! We say fight back!”
Sinn Féin expressing their all-Ireland approach, I suppose.