The British are world beaters at the elaborate pageantry and pomp of State ceremonies. Year upon year, event after event, they all go swimmingly well, providing glorious spectacle after spectacle. Big public occasions watched in person by amazed thousands, seen on television by mesmerised millions from all around the World, and promulgated & beloved by all the media. We see the magnificent Trooping of the Colour on London’s Horse Guards Parade; we watch the serenity of Armistice Day at Whitehall’s Cenotaph in; or even the impressive daily ritual of the Changing of the Guard outside Buckingham Palace, don’t we?

What idiot, or set of morons ,took all this then to another unbelievable level to enact a quasi-state funeral & laying in state for one Richard III Middle Ages King of England from nigh-on five hundred & thirty years ago? He was killed in battle at Bosworth Field Leicestershire in 1485 and his decayed skeletal remains were found by searching archaeologists just over a couple of years ago beneath a meagre car park in Leicester (covering a site of an old destroyed monument).

Digging up old things is of dubious interest and value (except of gold coins of course), but full credit to the bloke who tracked down where our Richard’s bones had been dumped. This King was a bit of a tyrant with a villainous reputation it seems, but as a trained knight was a vintage courageous fighter and certainly  battle hardened, and that in all probability caused his demise – he didn’t know when to run away, did he?. Richard is denegrated as a ruthless power-grabber, and moreover stands accused of doing away with two young brothers aged 12 & 9 (the Princes in the Tower), though as the only evidence is circumstantial, this is seen by many historians as nothing more than rumour and propaganda. Those against him called him ‘The Hog’, and said he was someone who was deservedly buried in a ditch like a dog – a nice epitaph eh?

Unbelievably, when Richard’s few bones were recovered, it started an argument about what to do with them; some actually campaigned that they should be taken and reburied in York, his birthplace, while others said they should stay in Leicester (where monies had been spent on the investigational research). Why would anyone give a damn about a few grotty bones, you might wonder? Certainly those individuals that had spent years trying to find them, fully expected them to be quietly and privately reburied. Instead of that, we have been subjected to a pseudo-state funeral no less, with gratuouse gravity to boot.

It is unclear what set of imbeciles decided to spend millions of pounds of public money on a bizarre funeral escapade. It is no excuse to say that Leicester are hoping to bring-in other millions from Richard III related tourism – if that comes (and good luck to them), it doesn’t excuse the funeral folly & cost, does it?

We had to watch ridiculous images of coffin carrying when a strong military bearer party ridiculously struggled apparently to slowly carry some yards a coffin containing a few ancient bones (or did they fill it with sandbags to stop it blowing away in the wind?). Last Sunday, we were expected to react with deep emotion as the tearful watchers saw a horse drawn coffin carriage (without a real body) paraded through the streets to get to Leicester St Martin’s Cathedral, where thousands of saddos then lined up to pay their respects to a pile of decrepit bones – for goodness sake what were they thinking about, eh?

Yesterday we were faced with a solemn religious re-burial service ceremony, where the Bishop of Leicester, even said Richard’s mortal remains were being given the dignity originally denied them in death – how on earth does he know anything whatsoever about that, eh? We unbelievably even had the top man, the Archbishop of Canterbury in charge – does he really think that by his performance, he is going to get Christianity to steal a march over Islam? The Queens’s representative and other royals were there as well, looking suitably sorryfull in their black clad outfits – perhaps they were auditioning for Downton Abbey TV series (didn’t they know it has finished?). Oh yes let us not forget a specially commissioned ‘poet laureate’ poem, delivered for the occasion, nor indeed the special arrangement by the master of the Queen’s music. Oh yes they had even installed a big screen to watch the stupidity.

[The Richard III funeral Leicester March 2015 – a vain attempt to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, don’t you think?].