On October 2, during Yom Kippur, a Syrian-born British citizen drove into a crowd of pedestrians outside of a Manchester synagogue. The man then entered the synagogue and began stabbing worshippers. He killed two people before being fatally shot by police. The terrorist attack has devastated Britain’s Jewish community and Manchester in general. On Monday, King Charles went to visit Manchester, and he spent a good deal of time at Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation Synagogue, doing outreach within the community and meeting with the police force. Honestly, respect for Charles for always making these visits in the wake of tragedies. God knows, his heir will not do anything like this. If this kind of thing happened on the Scooter King’s watch, the community would only get a tweet sent from Scooter’s vacation. Incidentally, that’s what William and Kate are doing right now – they’re on vacation, it’s their kids’ school break.
All that being said, Charles is still being heavily criticized from all sides for his mishandling of the Prince Andrew fiasco, a disaster which is still ongoing and growing. A palace spokesman dropped a line about how the king hopes that his work won’t be hijacked by the Yorks.
King Charles wants to focus on “duty and service” and hopes people will not be distracted by “other matters”, his spokesperson has said.
It is understood to be a reference to his brother Prince Andrew, who is facing fresh allegations about Virginia Giuffre, whose memoir is being posthumously published this week.
The comments come after the King met those affected by the synagogue attack in Manchester.
Prince Andrew announced last week he will be giving up his royal titles, but the scrutiny over his links to sex offender Jeffrey Epstein continues.
Speaking after the King’s Manchester visit, a Buckingham Palace spokesperson said: “This is the King continuing with duty and service in his longstanding mission to bring communities together particularly in times of challenge.
“And he hopes very much that the focus will be on the community impacted rather than any other matters.”
Earlier, a royal source said they were expecting “more days of pain ahead”.
Royal sources also said the claims about Prince Andrew and his links to sex offender Epstein are being treated by Buckingham Palace with “very great concern and should be examined in the appropriate ways to the fullest extent”.
On Friday the prince announced that he is giving up his titles, including the Duke of York. But there are still calls for them to be formally removed.
It feels like the palace spokesperson was issuing a directive to the royal rota more than “the people.” The British press has been in the middle of a good old fashioned feeding frenzy over Andrew and Fergie, and this was the palace saying: okay, we gave you the whole weekend to talk about that situation, now you better go back to acting as stenographers for what we tell you to write. As you can imagine, that message is not going over very well, especially when the royal reporters have plenty of royal sources willing to talk about how badly the palace is managing the situation. As for “more days of pain ahead” – boo-hoo, too many people are talking about how a prince of the realm raped trafficked teenagers!
Going back to Charles… he still looks pretty rough, but again, he’s out and about while his heir enjoys another vacation. Rob Shuter’s Substack (blah) claims that Charles is “seriously unwell but determined to carry on and he’s exhausted, but he won’t stop.” Shuter’s sources claim more responsibilities are being handed off to William. Where? When? Is someone going to drive to Norfolk to convince him to tweet through it?
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.
