Prince Charles embarks on lavish train trip to spread green message
Robert Booth guardian.co.uk,
As a mode of transport, the royal train suits Prince Charles down to his hand-made brogues: resolutely old-fashioned, rather costly for the taxpayer, but just possibly ahead of its time.
The locomotive this afternoon hauled the prince out of Glasgow station, furnished with the prince's bespoke study, a grand dining room and bedroom suite, complete with bath and his and hers beds, on the start of a four-day tour of Britain that will cost the taxpayer at least £50,000.
The contrast between the train's opulence, which seemed worthy of an oligarch, and the purpose of its journey was, to some, jarring. Charles has begun a week-long trip to persuade his "subjects" to go green, and the train from which he has chosen to assert his voice in the climate debate has been converted to run on cooking fat, which, its suppliers estimate, creates just one-eighth of the carbon dioxide of oil-based diesel.
I guess he will be frying fish and chips in the cooking fat to save more energy.
....How does Prince Charles wind down on the royal train? There's an old-fashioned Roberts radio in his well-appointed study for his preferred late-night Radio 4 news. A photo of the Queen Mother has pride of place, and the phone has the quarters of the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh on speed-dial.
Being vapid can be rvery green!
This is consistent behavior though-
ON the matter of Prince Charles’s green credentials, the Mail brings news.
The story goes that on a recent trip to the Gulf, Charles’ wife Camilla discovered that she’d left a shoe at home.
Calls were made. A search was undertaken. The shoe was found. The shoe was flown to Camilla and reunited with its other half.
The delicious image of a horseshoe-shaped piece of metal and leather sat on a first-class recliner is tempting.
And it is one the Mail is keen to emphasise. “Camilla’s high heels leave a huge carbon footprint,” it says.
“This is one hell of carbon footprint just for a pair of shoes,” says a campaigner from green pressure group Plane Stupid.
It’s all the more galling when the Mail revels that Camilla never wore the shoes.
But, of course, the shoe did not have its own seat on a private jet?
As a spokesman for Clarence House says: “They were not specially couriered, but were sent along with a number of items and paperwork as is often the case of royal tours.”
So there goes the shoe, sat alongside Charles’s morning paper and toothpaste squeezer du jour…
Posted: 12th, March 2007
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