COUNTLESS people are grieving all over the world every day, some in the most tragic and horrible conditions. It is an insult and injury to those still suffering from indifference, wilful persecution, oppression and exploitation to have a royal – any royal, whether it be king, kaiser, tsar, or jumped-up dictator – shoved down one’s throats by a relentless and ascendancy OTT media.

So, a 99-year-old over-privileged white man goes to meet his CofE nationalist god? We have to watch dying and starving children around the globe appealing for charity every day. We also have to listen to sycophantic, royalist correspondents, struggling to find “interesting and amusing” anecdotes, like priests, ministers and humanists touting for funeral payments from grieving families struggling to pay the bill.

READ MORE: BBC removes Prince Philip form on website as complaints hit peak

All are shamelessly competing on all Brit channels about the great man, scrabbling with an imperialist entitled “Duke of Edinburgh Awards” and the wonder of Balmoral, and Royal Deeside hand-picked cap-doffing John Broon/Sir William Connolly of Candacraig-type interviewees, straight from Scottish Question Time.

Charity, not human rights, is the ruling class’s answer to poverty and is selective and in the power of the beholders. During the enforced Highland Clearances, ministers had the power to grant certificates of character to some of those in need. Needless to say, “agitators” would not be granted that privilege.

In Ireland, clergymen generously “offered” a bowl of soup to starving peasants if they endured a four-hour sermon and converted to the Anglican Church of Ireland. Hence the question, “Are you a real Murphy or a bowl-of-soup Murphy”?

READ MORE: Patrick Harvie raises Prince Philip's 'extreme privilege' in Holyrood tribute

Jack London, the American socialist (and white supremacist) racist, wrote an excellent account of human charity, where he posed as a down-and-out in London. The London working class were smaller, so he posed as an American seaman. He had to wait in long queues in subdued, deferential silence, sing hymns, say prayers, chop wood and wash bloodstained hospital linen before “earning” his “deserving poor/able-bodied” charity.

The Duke managed to live to the ripe old age of 99. Take the average proportions of Scots death rates in the most deprived areas and then the average age of those in the world’s most deprived areas and we are entitled, surely, to ask for some sense of majestic proportion?

I am reluctant to add my own personal grief, of losing my 53-year-old son last December. No parent should see their child go before them. It is every parent’s worst nightmare and against all natural instincts of parental protection. It is magnified many times worse by seeing young children die in mass bombings, imperial wars and famines in the most horrific all circumstances.

Forgive us, for those who have sinned against us and for what we little we might receive, if we are to see beyond state cheerleaders who do not have to beg for charity or parsimonious state handouts to pay for their loved ones’ survivals or mass funerals.

Sure, the Duke’s family are entitled to their personal mourning and privacy. They can never understand why the rest of us grateful peasants are pleased to be spared any more hurt from a media-fest state funeral.

Donald Anderson
Glasgow

I AM full of admiration for Patrick Harvie for not succumbing to the rampant sycophancy and hypocrisy of recent days (Patrick Harvie raises Prince Philip’s ‘extreme privilege’ in Holyrood tribute, thenational.scot, April 12). I wish more Scottish politicians could have been as honest.

Nancy Sellar
via email