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How well we do it! Was the princess beautiful in lace and was the prince charming? Indeed they were. The glorious pomp and circumstance did not disappoint those 2 billion worldwide watchers, indulging vicariously in the theatre of majesty. They tell us this is what we are best at, the great parade, the grand charade. If you weep at weddings here was one to cry for, for us more than them. The more extreme a ceremony's extravagance, the more superstitious you might feel about the outcome: the simpler the better the prognosis, in my experience.

But let's not speculate, for we know next to nothing of these best-marketed of global celebrities beyond the homely platitudes sparingly fed to the multitudes. We might agree that they are indeed "grounded"; we might ponder on the chances of a prince surviving so dysfunctional a childhood; or we may just wish them well and use the day off to party, as many did.

Is this what Britain is and who we are? Here was a grand illusion, the old conspiracy to misrepresent us to ourselves. Here arrayed was the most conservative of establishments, rank upon rank, from cabinet ministers to Prince Andrew to the Sultan of Brunei, the apotheosis of the Daily Telegraph and the Spectator in excelsis, a David Starkey pageant choreographed by Charles, the prince of conservatives.

Of course Tony Blair and Gordon Brown had no invitation, being the prime ministers who held back the forces of conservatism for 13 years. Displayed in all its assertiveness was a reminder of what Labour is always up against as perennial intruder. Constitutional monarchy is constitutionally Tory, the blue inherited with its wealth, in its fibre, in its bones.

The manicured story of the Middletons' four-generation rise from pit village to throne offers such perfect justification, living proof of David Cameron's promised social mobility, echoed in the jokey "It should have been me" souvenir mugs. Notwithstanding repellent sniggers of the Eton set who call the Middleton girls "the wisteria sisters" for their social climbing, or the "doors to manual" giggle at their former air steward mother, the Middletons belong in the top 0.5% of earners: children of new wealth always did marry into aristocracy. Besides, Kate Middleton, Samantha Cameron and the Hon Frances Osborne all went to the same school.

Yet despite months of coverage, rising to a crescendo of print and broadcasting frenzy this week, the country has remained resolutely phlegmatic. Cameras pick out the wildest enthusiasts camped out or dressed as brides, yet the Guardian/ICM poll and others put those expressing "strong interest" at only 20%.

In poll after poll, more than 70% refused to be excited. Laconic, cool, only half the population said they would watch Friday's flummery. Few are republicans – though latest YouGov polls show those of us hoping the Queen will be Elizabeth the Last has risen to 26% – but a healthy scepticism thrives. Not love of monarchy but fear of something worse wins the day as the spirit of "confound their politics" prevails over the thought of some second-hand politician as head of state.

A jaundiced view of royalty is not confined to blasé metropolitan sophisticates: you can hear it everywhere, north more than south, in any pub or bus stop and on Twitter – the knowing shrug that finds this stuff preposterous, childish and not who we are. How embarrassingly Brown stumbled trying to pin down an ineffable definition of Britishness. But he was fumbling for something other than images of monarchy and empire to assert, quite rightly, that this is not a conservative nation: after all, Cameron did not win the last election, even with an open goal. This may not be a nation of reforming radicals, but there is no lack of robust popular riposte to royal displays of inherited entitlement.

How will history look back on this day? Out in the world of bread, not circuses, in the kingdom behind the cardboard scenery, this has been a week that told a bleak story of the state of the nation. History may see the wedding as a Marie Antoinette moment, a layer of ormolu hiding a social dislocation whose cracks are only starting to emerge. The Office for National Statistics just showed GDP flatlining for the last six months, recovery stalled ever since the announcement of the government's great austerity. Most household incomes are shrinking – as never since the 1920s. Hundreds of thousands of jobs are being cut, services slashed, £18m taken from the welfare budget, university fees in crisis, consumer confidence plunging.

This week I went to Barclays' annual meeting to watch another monarch, CEO Bob Diamond. He is in line for £27m pay this year, despite shares falling, £1.6bn profits lost and dividends cut – at a time when bank lending to manufacturing has fallen. Angry shareholders in the hall rose one by one to protest. Elderly, sometimes inchoate, they echoed the Association of British Insurers, who recommended voting against the bank's grotesque boardroom remuneration. But no, the little shareholders were voted down by unseen fund managers, all in the same game. The board shrugged off its critics, claiming that if they cut their own pay "we could very quickly jeopardise the true rewards of our success". But for how much longer?

The NHS, the most politically sensitive of public services, is warned by the public accounts committee that patient care is at risk in a £20bn cut with no plan for services that go bankrupt. The OECD, hardly a left-leaning organisation, this week warned that poverty in British households will rise inexorably so "social spending on families needs to be protected". But it is not being protected: the opposite is happening, as Sure Start is stripped bare. "Cutting back on early years services will make it difficult for the UK to achieve its policy of making work pay," says the OECD report.

Few yet realise the scale of the conservative revolution in progress. Professors Peter Taylor-Gooby and Gerry Stoker have just revealed that by 2013 public spending will be a lower proportion of GDP in Britain than in the US. They write in the Political Quarterly: "A profound shift in our understanding of the role of the state and the nature of our welfare system is taking place without serious debate." Can that really be done without rebellion? That will be the test of what kind of nation we are.

This royal wedding is Britain's Marie Antoinette moment,
G,
29.4.2011,
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/apr/29/
royal-wedding-uk-gdp-growth

Royal wedding:

police criticised

for pre-emptive strikes

against protesters

Officers use blanket stop and search powers
and arrest 52 people across London

Friday 29 April 2011
18.42 BST
Guardian.co.uk
Robert Booth, Sandra Laville and Shiv Malik

The protester had only got a few bars into his version of the Beatles' Yellow Submarine, recast as "we all live in a fascist regime", when the plain clothes officers moved in.

Inside Westminster Abbey, Prince William and Catherine Middleton were exchanging vows watched by millions, but in nearby Soho Square, the expression of different views by a few people met a robust and, according to some present, disproportionate response.

About a dozen policemen grabbed the singer, sparking a clash with his colleagues, changing the mood of a small and peaceful gathering as he was handcuffed and bundled away. "He had articles on him to cause criminal damage," explained Chief Inspector John Dale, to loud protests.

"You just incited a peaceful situation into violence," shouted a bystander.

"The police should be peaceful and respect our right to protest," said another witness, Jed, 19.

The action against the 10 or so people participating in the Right Royal Orgy in Soho Square was one of several pre-emptive strikes by Scotland Yard. Police said they made a total of 52 arrests including 13 at Charing Cross station, where people were found to have climbing equipment and anti-monarchy placards, in addition to 21 arrests during raids of five squats in London on Thursday morning.

Trouble flared at an unofficial street party in Glasgow organised through social networking websites. Strathclyde police said they made 21 arrests in Kelvingrove Park, for a variety of offences mostly related to disorderly behaviour and drunkenness.

A spokeswoman for the force said: "Police were aware of this unplanned, unauthorised event and put in place contingencies to ensure an appropriate and proportionate policing response."

Chief Superintendent Bernard Higgins, from Strathclyde police, said: "It's really disappointing that on the day of the royal wedding we witnessed the scenes we did. At one point my officers came under attack and one was taken to hospital suffering from a head injury. He has been discharged and will make a full recovery.

"We made a number of arrests at the time and we will now study CCTV footage and make further arrests if appropriate. The level of drunkenness was completely unacceptable and frankly irresponsible."

Four people were arrested the night before the wedding, three in London and one in Cambridgeshire, for conspiracy to cause a public nuisance and breach of the peace. One of them, Chris Knight, was planning to behead an effigy of Prince Andrew with a theatrical guillotine, in what his friends said was a piece of street theatre.

By the time the marriage vows had been made, the police had imposed a section 60 blanket stop-and-search order around the whole royal wedding zone, after a few individuals were seen putting scarves over their faces in Soho Square.

The move allowed officers to search people without discretion. It can be issued when police believe, with good reason, that there is the possibility of serious violence or that a person is carrying an offensive weapon. It was imposed along with a section 60a order, which allows officers to remove headgear and masks from demonstrators.

The powers remained in place for several hours, although the police said the mood in both Soho Square and at the Republican Tea Party in Red Lion Square, Holborn, was calm.

Officers also swooped on five people, three of whom were wearing zombie make-up, when they entered a branch of Starbucks on Oxford Street. They were arrested "on suspicion of planning a breach of the peace".

They were all handcuffed and held in a police van and gave their names as Amy Cutler, 25, Rachel Young, 27, Eric Schultz, 43, Hannah Eisenman-Renyard, and Deborah, 19, an anthropology student at the University of East London.

"We've been pre-emptively arrested under suspicion of planning a breach of the peace," Cutler told the Guardian from the police van. "We went to Starbucks to get a coffee and the police followed us in."

"We were just dressing up as zombies," said Amy, who was wearing a "marry me instead" T-shirt. "It is nice to dress up as zombies."

The decision to arrest people on Thursday in advance of them carrying out any protest drew an angry response from their friends and relatives. In Cambridgeshire officers arrested Charlie Veitch, an anarchist, for conspiracy to cause a public nuisance and breach of the peace. His girlfriend, Silkie Carlo, said Veitch had been planning to use a megaphone to make "ironic comments" in Soho Square. "I'm outraged. It's easy to hide all this behind the beauty and the spectacle and the tiaras of the wedding, but when people with opposing political ideas are being rounded up to keep them away from public view it doesn't make us any different from China," she said.

In London the daughter of Chris Knight, who was arrested with his partner and a friend, said the police were quashing freedom of expression. Olivia Knight said: "My father was going to take part in a performance. It was going to be in the great British tradition and was going to be playful, peaceful and satirical to highlight the obscenity of the royal wedding and the grotesque nature of the taxpayer having to pay for the Windsor wedding at a time of such austerity."

The Metropolitan police brushed off any criticism. Assistant Commissioner Lynne Owens, in overall charge of the policing operation, said it had been "an amazing success". It justified the police's preemptive action in the days and hours before the wedding and the decision to throw a Section 60 Stop and Search Order around the whole wedding zone.The Yard said the police action had allowed the demonstrations in Soho Square and Holborn to go on freely.

Royal wedding: police criticised for pre-emptive strikes against protesters,
G, 29.4.2011,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/apr/29/
royal-wedding-police-criticised-protesters

Prince William

marries Kate Middleton

in glittering ceremony

LONDON | Fri Apr 29, 2011
6:39am EDT
Reuters
By Mike Collett-White and Michael Holden

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain's Prince William and Kate Middleton married at Westminster Abbey on Friday in a royal occasion of dazzling pomp and pageantry that has attracted a huge global audience and injected new life into the monarchy.

Before the vows, a veiled Middleton, the first "commoner" to marry a prince in close proximity to the throne in more than 350 years, walked slowly through the 1,900-strong congregation to the swirling strains of Charles Parry's "I Was Glad."

As they met at the altar William whispered to her, prompting a smile at the start of the ceremony. The Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams declared the couple married with the words: "I pronounce that they be man and wife together."

Middleton's dress, the subject of fevered speculation for months in the fashion press, was a traditional ivory silk and satin outfit with a lace applique and long train.

She wore a tiara loaned by the queen and the diamond and sapphire engagement ring that once belonged to William's mother Princess Diana, who was divorced from Prince Charles in 1996, a year before her death in a car crash in Paris aged just 36.

Bells pealed loudly and trumpets blared as 1,900 guests earlier poured into the historic abbey, coronation site for the monarchy since William the Conqueror was crowned in 1066.

Queen Elizabeth, other royals, David and Victoria Beckham, the footballer-pop star couple, singer Elton John and Prime Minister David Cameron were among famous guests at the abbey.

They joined 50 heads of state as well as charity workers and war veterans who know the prince from his military training.

HUGE CROWDS

Thousands of people from around the world were outside the abbey, many of them camping overnight for the best view of the future king and queen and fuelling the feel-good factor that has briefly lifted Britain from its economic gloom.

"People watching this at home must think we're completely mad, but there's just no comparison," said 58-year-old Denise Mill from southern England. "I just had to be here."

The crowd entered into the festive spirit on a chilly day by wearing national flags and even fake wedding dresses and tiaras. Hundreds of police officers, some armed, dotted the royal routes in a major security operation.

Tens of thousands more people crammed the flag-lined streets of London to catch a glimpse of marching military bands in black bearskin hats, cavalrymen in shining breastplates and ornate carriages that will carry royal figures from the service.

A large gathering is expected outside the queen's London residence, Buckingham Palace, to cheer on the married couple as they appear on the balcony for a much-anticipated public kiss.

For some, however, the biggest royal wedding since Diana married Prince Charles in 1981 was an event to avoid, reflecting divided opinion about the monarchy.

"It's just a wedding," said 25-year-old Ivan Smith. "Everyone is going mad about it. I couldn't care less."

(Additional reporting by Paul Sandle, Matt Falloon, Jodie Ginsberg, Keith Weir, Paul Casciato, Peter Griffiths, Tim Castle and Marie-Louise Gumuchian; Editing by Peter Millership)

Prince William marries Kate Middleton in glittering ceremony, R, 29.4.2011,
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/29/us-britain-wedding-idUSTRE73Q2BJ20110429

Royal wedding:

police use section 60 to deter anarchists

Scotland Yard commissioner Paul Stephenson
says his force is 'prepared for every eventuality'

Friday 29 April 2011 14.01
Guardian.co.uk
Share Sandra Laville and Robert Booth
This article was published on guardian.co.uk
at 14.01 BST on Friday 29 April 2011.
It was last modified at 14.02 BST on Friday 29 April 2011.
It was first published at 11.03 BST on Friday 29 April 2011.

Police threw a section 60 cordon around the whole of the royal wedding zone on Friday morning to respond to anarchists masking up at a small gathering in Soho Square in central London.

The section 60 order allows police officers to stop and search anyone without discretion. The police also imposed section 60a, which gives them the power to remove masks and balaclavas from anyone within the area.

Scotland Yard said the decision was made after individuals were seen putting on masks in Soho Square where a group of anarchists had gathered.

At least one arrest was made after a clash in the square between plainclothes officers and one individual after he started singing "We all live in a fascist regime" to the tune of We All Live In a Yellow Submarine.

By 12.45pm police said 43 arrests had been made across the royal wedding exclusion zone. These included one for criminal damage.

The arrests took place in and just outside the exclusion zone around Westminster Abbey and Buckingham Palace.

Scotland Yard said two people were arrested for being drunk and disorderly, one for assault, one for possessing an offensive weapon, two for breach of the peace, two for theft.

The biggest security operation in the Metropolitan police's recent history has seen the deployment of 5,000 officers, including a 1,000-strong rapid-response team to react to any criminality, direct action or extremist threats inside and outside the exclusion zone.

In pre-emptive action on Wednesday and Thursday officers from the Metropolitan police raided five squats in London and one in Hove, arresting 21 people.

All were released and bailed with conditions that bar them from the City of Westminster on Friday.

On Thursday night Cambridgeshire police arrested Charlie Veitch, a self-confessed anarchist, for conspiracy to cause a public nuisance and breach of the peace.

It is understood police believed Veitch, who runs a group called Love Police, was planning to cause disruption in Soho Square. His girlfriend, Silkie Carlo, told the Guardian Veitch was planning to use a megaphone to make "ironic comments" in the square.

Speaking about the arrest, Carlo, 21, said: "Charlie was arrested around 5pm from our home on suspicion to cause to public nuisance a day before he went anywhere.

"There were two police officers and they did a brief search of our room. We were happy for them to do that. We had nothing to hide, " said Carlo, who studies politics and psychology at Cambridge University.

"Then they put Charlie in the back of a van and took him off to Parkside police station in Cambridge. He's since been picked up at 10am and taken by the Met. We don't yet know where he is," she said.

"I'm outraged. It's easy to hide all this behind the beauty and the spectacle and the tiaras of the wedding but when people with opposing political ideas are being rounded up to keep them away from public view, it doesn't make us any different from China."

Sir Paul Stephenson, the Scotland Yard commissioner, said his force was prepared for every eventuality.

Royal wedding: police use section 60 to deter anarchists, G, 29.4.2011,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/apr/29/royal-wedding-arrests-route

Royal wedding protest:

three anti-capitalist activists arrested

Police arrest three anti-royal wedding protesters

who had been planning a mock execution of Prince Andrew

Share David Batty
Guardian.co.uk
Thursday 28 April 2011
23.56 BST
This article was published on guardian.co.uk
at 23.56 BST on Thursday 28 April 2011.
A version appeared in the Guardian
on Friday 29 April 2011.
It was last modified at 00.07 BST

Three anti-capitalist activists who were planning a mock execution of Prince Andrew with a guillotine to mark the royal wedding have been arrested and detained at Lewisham police station.

Officers arrested Professor Chris Knight, a leading member of the G20 Meltdown group, outside his home in Brockley, south east London at around 6.15pm, according to an eyewitness.

Also arrested were Knight's partner Camilla Power and Patrick Macroidan, who was dressed as an executioner, said fellow activist Mike Raddie, of north London, who was with them.

The three activists were preparing to drive their theatrical props, including a home-made guillotine and effigies, into central London when three police cars and two police vans drew up near Knight's home in Brockley, said Raddie.

"Chris was arrested first. He lay down on the pavement opposite his house to make the arrest difficult," said Raddie. "He was pulled up by four police officers and two bundled him into the back of a van.

"Camilla was put in the back of one of the police cars. Patrick was dressed up as an executioner when he was arrested."

Raddie said the police also seized a van containing the group's props, which included a wooden guillotine. "It's a working guillotine but it doesn't have a blade – just wood painted silver," he added.

A spokesman for the Metropolitan Police said: "This evening, 28 April, officers arrested three people – two males aged 68 and 45, and a 60-year-old woman – in Wickham Road, SE4 on suspicion of conspiracy to cause public nuisance and breach of the peace.

"They are currently in custody at Lewisham police station."

The group has advertised the Zombie Wedding on its website and via Facebook. The event was billed as a "right royal orgy" with "rumpy pumpy and guillotines."

It also states: "PS govt of the DEAD disclaimer: this is a totally non-terrorist event and bears absolutely no resemblance to the Jacobin Terror of 1793-94."

The website said the event would start with a Zombie Wedding Breakfast in Soho Square at around 9.30-10am, after which participants would head to Westminster for mock executions.

Knight was sacked by the University of East London in 2009 over claims he incited violence at the G20 protests.

Raddie said the event was peaceful and the organisers did not expect to get near Westminster Abbey, where William and Kate are getting married. The plan was to join Republic's Not the Royal Wedding Street Party in Red Lion Square, Holborn, central London.

Also with the protesters at the time of their arrest was a Channel 4 film crew, filming for the Unofficial Royal Wedding, due to air at 7.10pm on Monday. Some of their equipment, which was in the activists' van, was also confiscated.

Royal wedding protest: three anti-capitalist activists arrested, G, 28.4.2011,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/apr/28/royal-wedding-protest-three-arrested

Factbox -

The royal wedding in numbers

Thu Apr 28, 2011
5:08pm BST
Reuters

(Reuters) - Prince William will marry long-term girlfriend Kate Middleton in a ceremony full of pomp and pageantry on Friday expected to be watched by hundreds of millions of people across the world. Below is a story of the wedding in numbers.

* 9:03 a.m. The time at which Prince William Arthur Philip Louis was born at St Mary's Hospital Paddington on June 21, 1982. The royal baby weighed 7lb 1-1/2 ounces. Similar details are not given in the biographies supplied by St. James's Palace for bride-to-be Catherine Elizabeth Middleton, who was born on January 9, 1982.

* 1,900 The number of people invited to the service at Westminster Abbey. Around 650 people have been invited to a lunchtime reception give by the Queen at Buckingham Palace after the service and about 300 have been invited to a dinner given by Prince Charles that evening.

* 9 The number of "grey" horses that will form the escort for the royal procession. Eleven horses who demonstrated a "good and calm" temperament were selected in advance of the day

* 5 The number of horse-drawn carriages in the procession from Westminster Abbey to Buckingham Palace. The first carriage will be the 1902 State Landau or Glass Coach carrying William and Kate.

* 5,000 Some 5,000 police officers will be on duty in London on Friday to deal with potential threats ranging from international Islamist militants to anarchists and stalkers.

* 20 The height in feet of eight trees - six English Field Maple and two Hornbeam - that will be included in floral displays in the Abbey

* 1910 The year in which luxury London hotel The Goring was opened. Kate Middleton and her family will stay in the hotel the night before the wedding

* 10:51 a.m. The precise time at which Kate Middleton and her father leave the hotel for Westminster Abbey

* 1:25 p.m. The time at which the couple will appear with the queen on the balcony

* 26 The number of charities that William and Kate will be supporting through the charitable gift fund which they have asked people to donate to instead of giving them a traditional gift. www.royalweddingcharityfund.org

* 5,500 The number of street parties expected to be held around Britain to toast the wedding, including one hosted by Prime Minister David Cameron on Downing Street

* 140 The number of tonnes of waste - equivalent to the weight of over 50 Rolls Royces - that Westminster City Council expects to collect along the route of the processional route

(Reporting by Jodie Ginsberg; editing by Paul Casciato)

Factbox - The royal wedding in numbers, R, 28.4.2011,
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2011/04/28/uk-britain-wedding-numbers-idUKTRE73R2PR20110428

Prince William and Kate Middleton

engagement announced

Clarence House statement reveals engagement
of second in line to throne
and his long-term girlfriend after weeks of speculation

Stephen Bates and James Meikle
Guardian.co.uk
Tuesday 16 November 2010
15.29 GMT
This article was published on guardian.co.uk
at 15.29 GMT on Tuesday 16 November 2010.
It was last modified at 09.15 GMT
on Wednesday 17 November 2010.
It was first published at 11.31 GMT
on Tuesday 16 November 2010.

Kate Middleton today spoke of the "daunting prospect" of joining the royal family as she and Prince William announced they would get married next year.

Wearing the blue sapphire and diamond engagement ring that the prince's father gave to Princess Diana in 1981, Middleton said "hopefully, I will take it in my stride", while adding that her future husband was "a great teacher".

Prince William said the ring "was very special to me" as was his bride-to-be. Giving it to her was "my way of making sure my mother didn't miss out on today" and the excitement that the couple were going spend their lives together.

The long-expected news that the second in line to the throne was to marry his long-term girlfriend was announced by Clarence House earlier in the day .

The prince asked Middleton to marry him during a private holiday in Kenya last month and has, the royal press office stressed, asked her father's permission.

Middleton said, during a brief press conference and photocall at St James's Palace, London, that the prince had been "a true romantic", was "a loving boyfriend" and "very supportive of me in good times and also through the bad times".

Prince William said of their engagement: "The timing is right now, we are both very, very happy. We both have a very good sense of humour and we take the mickey out of each other a lot."

He added that Middleton had "plenty of habits that make me laugh that I tease her about".

The formal statement said William's father, Prince Charles, was "delighted".

Speaking at his Poundbury model village in Dorset, Charles said that he was "thrilled, obviously", and joked: "They have been practising long enough ... it makes me feel very old."

William's stepmother, the Duchess of Cornwall, on her way to an official engagement at the Apollo Theatre in London, told a wellwisher: "It's brilliant, isn't it? It's absolutely wonderful."

Middleton's parents, Michael and Carole, were "thrilled". Her father Michael, reading a statement outside their home near the Berkshire village of Bucklebury, said they had got to know the prince very well: "We all think he is wonderful and we are extremely fond of him. They make a lovely couple, they are great fun to be with, and we've had a lot of laughs together. We wish them every happiness for the future."

Earl Spencer, the prince's uncle and brother of Princess Diana, said: "It's wonderful news. Very exciting. My family are all thrilled for them both."

The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh were also "absolutely delighted", Buckingham Palace said. During a reception this afternoon at Windsor Castle for leaders of British overseas territories including Bermuda, Montserrat and the Falklands Islands, the Queen told a guest who congratulated her: "It is brilliant news. It has taken them a very long time."

Political leaders and the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, echoed the sentiment.

Full details of the wedding plans have yet to be announced. The statement said only that the wedding would take place in London next spring or summer.

St Paul's Cathedral and Westminster Abbey are possible venues, although both have painful resonances – St Paul's was where Charles's ill-fated wedding to Princess Diana took place in 1981, while the abbey hosted Diana's funeral in 1997.

William and Kate have known each other for eight years, and met as students at St Andrews University. They subsequently shared student accommodation for two years and, apart from a brief separation in 2007, have been together ever since.

Middleton will be the first commoner to marry an expected future king for 350 years, since Anne Hyde married the future King James II in 1660.

Middleton is eldest of three children in a family whose fortune is based on a mail-order children's party accessories business.

The prime minister, David Cameron, said the whole country would join him and his wife, Samantha, in wishing the couple "great joy".

Later, he said that he had spoken to the prince to pass on his congratulations and predicted "a great day of national celebration".

The prime minister told a press conference at Downing Street that it felt "great to have a bit of unadulterated good news", and said a cheer had gone up when he told ministerial colleagues at today's Cabinet meeting.

The Labour leader, Ed Miliband, said via the social network Twitter: "Delighted for Prince William and Kate Middleton on their engagement. The whole country will be wishing them every happiness."

Scotland's first minister, Alex Salmond, congratulated the couple and said: "Of course, this was a match made in St Andrews, and everyone in Scotland will join with me in wishing the prince and Ms Middleton every happiness as they look forward to their wedding day and a long and fulfilling married life together."

The Welsh first minister, Carwyn Jones, said: "I'm very pleased to hear that they plan to begin their married life in north Wales."

Graham Smith, spokesman for Republic, a group campaigning for an end to the monarchy, said: "We mustn't see the government wasting limited resources paying for a major set-piece event ... if people are being told to tighten their belts, if the government is making thousands unemployed, if welfare payments are being slashed, it would be sickening for the government to allow a single penny more to be spent on the royals at this time."

Prince William and Kate Middleton engagement announced,
G, 16.11.2010,
    http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/nov/16/
    prince-william-kate-middleton-engagement

Prince William

to Serve in Navy, RAF

October 10, 2007
Filed at 9:51 a.m. ET
The New York Times
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

LONDON (AP) -- Prince William, the second in line to the British throne, will learn to fly helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft as part of his military training next year, Buckingham Palace said Wednesday.

The 25-year-old prince will spend four months with the Royal Air Force that starts in January. In the summer, William will spend time learning about the military's submarines, its surface ships, and the Royal Navy's Fleet Air Arm, the palace said.

William's temporary assignments follow a year of training as a specialist armored reconnaissance troop leader in the Blues and Royals, where his younger brother, Harry, also serves.

The brothers were both commissioned as officers after training at the Royal Military Academy in Sandhurst.

Harry was to go to Iraq, but military chiefs ruled that the publicity surrounding his deployment could put his unit at higher risk, and he was not sent.

Prince William to Serve in Navy, RAF,
NYT, 10.10.2007,
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/
AP-Britain-William.html - broken link

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