Prince Charles Intends to Continue Campaigning When He Becomes King

The Telegraph (UK) ^ | June 28, 2014 | Patrick Sawer

[naturalman1975]

Laurens van der Post did have some influence on the Prince for a while. He was also very influential on the thinking of Margaret Thatcher - and not all of his ideas were bad ones.

But that influence ended very abruptly in the mid 1990s when certain additional facts about the man were brought to the Prince's attention. Personally I wonder why it took so long for that to happen - I think some people in the British government really liked the influence LvdP was having (seeing as I have mentioned her, I will be specific and say I am definitely not including Lady Thatcher in that group).

[lee martell]

Your knowledge of how British Royalty functions is broad and uncommonly deep. Are you in some manner a Subject of The Queen, I.e. British, Canadian or Kiwi?

[naturalman1975]

I'm Australian by birth, but hold dual citizenship in both Australia and the United Kingdom. I'm a former protocol officer with the Royal Australian Navy (not my formal job, but one I was assigned at various times) and was required to learn all of this type of information as part of that job. And I'm a friend of the Prince of Wales, and the Duke of York (went to school with the former, and served alongside the latter on secondments to the UK) and that also makes you interested in this type of thing.

I hope I'd be interested anyway - this is all part of my country's (both of them) Constitutional law and I think informed citizens should have a decent familiarity with such things as they apply to their country. It's little different from an American understanding the Constitution of the United States - not everybody bothers, but sensible people do.

[lee martell]

Thanks. I knew I was talking to a professional of some kind. Its great that you join us online at freerepublic. Do come back again to offer your most unique perspective. What you have lived sounds book-worthy, presuming you would be allowed that indulgence.

[naturalman1975]

I’m just another conservative - joined FR because I welcome its perspective on many issues. This just happens to be something I know about, and it is fairly specialised knowledge, so when I see it come up from time to time, I often post on it. But more of my posts tend to be intended to try and bring issues that have arisen in Australia to wider attention - though our countries are different in many ways, there’s a lot of similarities as well, and things in one country influence the other.

We’ve got Al Gore over here at the moment trying to tell our conservative federal government what to do about environmental issues, for example. He’s getting lots of media attention - but, fortunately, little attention from the actual government so far.