The fun thing about the Duke of Edinburgh was the fact that he came from the great tribe of the Perhapsburgs, Europe's peripatetic aristocracy: always hunting down a throne, marrying it's own money, declaring eternal loyalty to whichever perch on which it can feather a nest>
>until the gig goes sour, like it did with his dad, who had to lean on his connections to hustle up a British warship in anticipation of a Greek firing squad, before retiring to the casinos of Monte Carlo.>
>Young Phil knows he's on to a good thing here. The British monarchy is a top gig, stable, prestigious, well paid and the foreign travel is mainly voluntary. So Philip joins the Senior Service, talent spots a 13 year old queen to be and gets to work.>
god, this is absolute tosh. (via @BeijingPalmer ). One reason most China watchers don't believe in the virus lab nonsense is because it's completely superfluous. C-19 is a bang typical example of dysfunctional CPC governance> thehill.com/opinion/intern…
>which this time happened to have global consequences. A few years back someone dumped thousands of dead pigs in the Huangpu river and no-one knew anything about it till they started floating through suburban Shanghai. Thousands of dead pigs, just rolling down the river>
>anyway, there was official silence, followed by obfuscation & censorship and finally an admission that yes, there was a bit of a pig disease problem upriver. A massive pig holocaust followed, but no-one really got to the bottom of the affair>