Prince Edward is taking time to visit people
whose homes and businesses have been
damaged by widespread flooding in southern
England.
He called at the headquarters of Sussex Police
in Lewes on Tuesday afternoon, where a
temporary command centre has been
established to co-ordinate the emergency
services.
He then went on to examine the devastation
caused by flooding, visiting traders and
residents in Lewes and in nearby Uckfield.
He is also due to meet
a farmer from Isfield,
whose land was still
under water on
Monday.
Chris Oswick, a
spokesman for Sussex
Police, said before the
Prince's arrival: "I think
it will be a fillip for
everyone on the ground and will hopefully bring
some consolation as people come to terms
with what has happened."
Some river levels had risen slightly but no new
flooding occurred following an inch of rainfall in
Sussex and Kent on Monday, said the
Environment Agency.
The risk of renewed flooding is falling, despite
predictions of further rain, but the agency
warned people not to be "complacent".
It no longer has any severe flood warnings and
only four flood warnings on rivers in Sussex,
the county worst affected by last week's
deluge.
In addition, there were 46 flood watches
covering rivers in Hampshire, the Isle of Wight
and Kent.
~*~
Prince Charles 'should have married
black woman'(Electronic Telegraph)
By Alice Thomson
THE Prince of Wales should have married a black woman as a symbol of his
support for multi-cultural Britain, according to a member of the race relations
think tank the Runnymede Trust.
Lady Gavron, vice-chairman of the commission that produced last week's
controversial report on the future of multi-ethnic Britain, said the Royal Family
should take a lead in promoting racial integration.
"It would have been great if Prince Charles had been told to marry someone
black. Imagine what message that would have sent out," she said yesterday.
She did not want to "get rid of" the Royal Family. "We don't need them but
they're fun for tourists to look at." But she said they sent out the wrong
message about Britain today. "They're a symbol of our unmeritocratic
tendency and, of course, they're all white. It is part of a very unattractive
hierarchy."
Lady Gavron believes that Prince Charles's stated wish to be defender of
faiths rather than Defender of the Faith when he becomes Supreme Governor
of the Church of England is not enough.
Yesterday she complained that the hereditary peerage was also too
Anglo-Saxon. She said: "Anything hereditary is completely anachronistic and
illogical; you wouldn't have an hereditary cricket team. At least this
government has made some peers from ethnic minority groups."
Kate Gavron is the wife of the publisher Lord Gavron, who was made a life
peer after donating £500,000 to the Labour Party before the last general
election. The report by the Commission on the Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain,
which was launched by the Home Secretary, Jack Straw, nearly three years
ago, suggested that much of Britain's history needed to be reappraised.
Lady Gavron said yesterday: "We need to acknowledge that there are
different ways of looking at history. The problem with the empire was the
inequality of power. It was something we did to the Indians and Africans, not
with them."
However, she does not believe that British history should be totally rewritten.
"We should keep the name Trafalgar Square. If you got rid of everything
associated with anything bad you'd have nothing at all. A lot of street names
coincided with the height of the Victorian empire and the peak of our colonial
power, but we can't scrap all of them. We'd have to start losing the Norman
names too if we were being purist."
She said she loved hymns such as Jerusalem and I Vow To Thee My
Country. "I am embarrassed by the words but the music is wonderful."
In an interview with The Telegraph, she said that the Runnymede Trust had
received a stream of offensive telephone calls since its report was published.
"We've had non-stop hate mail. We had to turn the telephones off, there were
so many racist calls. One started, 'Dear creeps, why don't you go and live
abroad? Why not France, they're a bunch of bastards there as well.' "
~*~
Crown Prince brings message of hope(Electronic Telegraph)
By Julius Strauss in Cacak
THE Yugoslav Crown Prince, Aleksandar II, was greeted by thousands of
well-wishers yesterday, as he took his message of peace and reconstruction
to the Serbian nationalist heartlands.
Speaking at churches, factories and in
town squares, he side-stepped talk of an
early restoration of the monarchy,
preferring to congratulate workers who
played a critical role in the popular uprising
that overthrew Slobodan Milosevic. The
sight of a royal cavalcade travelling to the
proletarian heartlands of Serbia
emphasised the huge changes the country
has undergone in 10 days.
As the prince and his courtiers arrived at the grimy Kolubara coal mine,
supporters cheered and waved Chetnik flags, recalling the Second World
War royalist militia. Radoljub Nikolic, 33, a miner, said: "If only Slobo could
see this."
Fr Prota Srba, an Orthodox priest from Lazarevac, said: "For me, this day is
especially important. My father swore allegiance to his father, King Peter. My
father was a Chetnik, executed by the [Communist] partisans in 1945. I was
four years old."
The prince met strike leaders who sparked the revolution when they defied
Milosevic's police. Milos Ilic, 35, who was born near the Bosnian mining
town of Srebrenica, said: "I am so excited. I have only seen him on television
before. With God's help he will once again be king."
An old man carried a Chetnik banner: "For the army, for school, with faith,
with respect and with patriotism." Nearby hung a black and green flag with
two embossed hammers, the emblem of the mine and a reminder of the days
when it was at the vanguard of Tito's programme to build socialism.
In Stepojevac, the royal party were greeted with cheering and clapping.
Katarina Radojicic, 11, offered traditional bread. "This is so exciting," said
Katarina, who wore traditional dress. Her father, Ljubisa, said: "I'm so proud.
My wife and her mother made the bread. We've been waiting 10 years for
this moment."
In Gornji Milanovac, schoolchildren were allowed out of class to see the
prince visit the Church of the Holy Trinity. In broken Serbian, he
congratulated them on their new democracy. Ljubica Milovenovic, 15, said:
"Isn't he super? He's rich and will help us a lot."
At Lazarevac, the prince visited a crypt containing the bones of German and
Serbian soldiers who died in the First World War. He told a crowd of several
hundred: "The situation is difficult, but we have the chance of a great future. A
new government must be formed, elections must be held. There is an
opportunity for democracy and to become again a great country in the world."
Between stops, the royal convoy sped along small country roads. Policemen,
who only recently had carried out Milosevic's orders, blocked traffic and
waved the party through. The prince had lunch with Velja Ilic, the mayor of
Cacak, who had led thousands of anti-Milosevic protesters to Belgrade on
Oct 5, giving the crumbling Milosevic regime the decisive push. About 1,000
people gathered in the town square.
Many leaders of the 18 parties that are at the heart of the new Yugoslav
regime say they are for the restitution of the monarchy, but all say a
referendum is low on their list of priorities. Monarchs have returned to
Romania, Bulgaria and Albania since the fall of Communism, but not one has
been reinstated. Talk of an imminent return of the monarchy in Serbia may
also prove premature.
~*~
The Queen's clothes crash-land at
airport(Electronic Telegraph)
By Robert Hardman in Rome
IT was a smooth landing for the royal guests if not for their luggage as the
Queen and Prince Philip arrived in Rome yesterday at the start of a four-day
state visit.
The Queen's dresses were tipped on to the
Ciampino Airport tarmac courtesy of two
local baggage handlers.The royal party
arrived on the airport's military strip, thus
avoiding the afternoon's other prominent
British arrivals - Arsenal fans bound for
tonight's Champions League tie with Lazio.
Some 3,000 are expected to fly in for the
game.
Once the Queen had been greeted by
Lamberto Dini, Italy's foreign minister, airport staff set about unloading the
royal luggage. Among the first off were 10 dresses, packed in covers and
clearly marked "The Queen", which quickly filled all the space on a mobile
clothes rail. As there was no extra room, several suits belonging to the Prince
were dumped on the tarmac. Two baggage handlers then tried to pick up the
clothes rail and promptly dropped it, sending the Queen's clothes crashing to
the ground amid much squawking and waving of arms all round.
The royal couple were unaware of the comedy of errors as they sped into the
centre of Rome via some of city's most familiar landmarks, including the
Colosseum. A 38-strong mounted escort from the presidential guard
accompanied the royal convoy on the final stages of its journey to the
16th-century Quirinal Palace, home to 30 Popes from Gregory XIII to Pius
IX and then the Kings of Italy.
Since the royal House of Savoy and its heirs were banned from Italian soil in
1946, the Quirinal has been home to Italy's presidents, although its papal and
royal links still resonate everywhere. In the courtyard, the Queen inspected a
guard of honour with President Carlo Ciampi, a popular 79-year-old former
banker and vocal Euro-enthusiast. Inside, the two heads of state introduced
their entourages - the Queen's includes Robin Cook, the Foreign Secretary,
and the two leaders then retired for private talks.
The Queen is staying in the ornate splendour of the Imperial apartments, built
for a visit by Kaiser Wilhelm II in 1888. Her staff are occupying a floor over
the road at the Grand St Regis Hotel where one room has been earmarked
solely for ironing, a wise move given yesterday's airport scenes. Last night, the
palace's state rooms were decked out for a banquet which has been the
subject of much excitement among the Roman elite. The Queen wore an
uncrumpled, ice-blue silk dress.
Italy's media has made much of Buckingham Palace's "edict" that garlic should
be omitted from all state visit menus. Last night's menu offered no threat to the
royal tastebuds: caviar served with Spumante, raviloi with butter, sage,
spinach and ricotta, followed by roasted loin of veal with porcini mushrooms
and rum baba.
Reports that the Queen would wolf the whole lot down in half an hour - "she
does not like to stay long", one newspaper declared - proved wide of the
mark. The dinner moved at a stately pace in the Salone delle Feste, the
former royal ballroom. Today the Queen will call on the Pope, her fifth
meeting with a Pope and her third with John Paul II.
Principal topic of conversation in Rome, however, is what the Queen will
wear for the occasion. Traditionally, Roman Catholic queens wear white and
non-Catholic queens wear black, as the Queen has done for all her previous
trips to the Vatican.
However, there has been endless speculation that the Queen might opt for
something in pastel shades. Whatever it is, it will have undergone some frantic
pressing after yesterday's encounter with the Roman tarmac. The Queen will
be presented today with a special edition of a ground-breaking inter-Church
document setting out ways in which Anglicans could welcome the primacy of
the Pope.
~*~
Prince to wed single mother (Electronic Telegraph)
CROWN prince Haakon of Norway yesterday announced his engagement to
an unmarried mother who admits past links to the country's drug scene.
The future king of Norway, 27, is to marry Mette-Marit Tjessem Hoeiby, 26,
whose former boyfriend - the father of her three-year-old son - has a
conviction for possessing cocaine.