King Charles: does he really think people should be forced to seem happy, under threat of arrest if they display … alternative viewpoints?

I don’t know about you, but I’m already fed up with having jolliness forced on me because of the Coronation.

It isn’t because I’m an anti-monarchist; my attitude to the Monarchy is primarily indifference.

No, it’s because the occasion has brought out all the officious types who want to tell us what to do and how to feel.

So I agree with the sentiment below – although, like Wolfie, I’ve no idea who crystallised it.

For those who can’t read images, it states: “”Dear rest of the world.

“Don’t be fooled by any propaganda you see coming out of the UK this weekend. The mood here is not jubilant, it is sour. England is a fascist nightmare, where there are more food banks than branches of McDonalds. We don’t want pageantry, we want affordable food, and rent, and bills. The timing of this coronation, with all its gold and bejewelled opulence, couldn’t be more distasteful and sickening. It’s unjustifiable and it’s unwanted. If we’re asking God to save anyone it should be the 14.4 million people living in poverty, not the King.”

Needless to say, the comment has been disputed – by people who want to impose a happy mood on the rest of us.

I don’t think anyone should bother protesting against the coronation, though. There’s no point, with the fascist Public Order Act now in force and police empowered to arrest anyone expressing a dissenting point of view in public. Here’s an example of them using their new powers to do just that:

The Metropolitan Police have already said they are running a “multi-layered” security operation that includes “managing crowds” and “carrying out searches”, with “low” “tolerance” for “disruption”:

And they have the full support of some highly dubious public figures.

Here’s one:

I mean, wow.

Last I heard, even after the Public Order Act, here in the UK it is a principle of justice that someone has to actually commit a crime before they can be jailed.

And here’s another: prime minister Rishi Sunak once criticised the Chinese government for refusing to listen to protesters in that country, but apparently he thinks only people in foreign countries should pay any attention to protest; anyone taking issue with whatever’s going on in the UK now clearly needs to suffer a “clampdown”.

So, even though most of us have been driven into poverty by the Establishment that is propping up the Monarch, even though there will be “low tolerance” for anyone pointing this out and the police will be on hand to make sure we do as we’re told, and even though the money being spent on this event would be better-used helping the long-suffering people of the UK to survive…

We’re all supposed to be happy? Or else?

I’m not sure I can manage that.