Lovely things happening to lovely people

If, like me, you were delighted with the news of another Royal Wedding pushing all that depressing *news* out of our papers and off the radio, even as far as Australia, you... excuse me... I'll start that again.

Getting married can be a very stressful affair. You have to sort out the flowers, book a scout hut somewhere for the reception, ensure racist aunty Joyce doesn't sit next to your new black father-in-law - and don't mention the cost of it - whew! - madness.

It must be ten times worse if you're a Royal Family member. For a start booking out a Cathedral must cost a packet. I hear the entire thing is going to cost in the order of thirty million quid, which is a lot of sausage rolls and Cava I can tell you. How are they going to afford it all? I mean the Prince doesn't even w... pardon? Who's paying for it? The greedy buggers!

Sigh.

I know this is meant to be a cue for a miserabilist rant about the Royals, but I thought I might take a different tack to this story about a couple of irrelevances who're squeezing the state for everything they can get due to an anachronistic travesty of an institution.

You see, while I take the abolition of the Monarchy as a given, I do want to avoid the traditional grumble fest of negativity that surrounds these events. Too late you say? Well, yes, you're probably right... but regardless there is an argument that goes 'why are we spending money on this huge bash when there are people sleeping in the streets?' and I'd like to take a moment to edge, ever-so-slightly away from that.

Whatever the horrors that David Cameron is planning for us with his happiness index there is an essentially correct point at the heart of it which is profit and growth are not anything like the same thing as happiness and fulfillment.

Now thirty million is not a huge amount in the big scale of things. It's half the cuts Lewisham council are going to be making over the next three years for example. That's something obviously - libraries saved, nurseries staying open an extra year, that sort of thing - but seeing as the coalition want the cuts and won't even save front line police it seems unlikely that the money would have been spent on that rather than ordering a new Afghan gobbling machine.

I'm cautious simply because the same argument gets wheeled out over the arts, over community festivals and all kinds of joyous cultural wheezes. Why should we spend money on opera when there are children starving? Why spend money on modern art that most of the population doesn't understand when many pensioners live in poverty? Why indeed?

For me I believe that the coming inevitable socialist utopia will still have national occasions like this. Not Royal Weddings of course, but celebrations of essentially meaningless events - and I suspect we'll have them long before all world hunger is cured and poverty eradicated.

A society that doesn't have 'coming togethers', where we see the value in each other and citizens get to feel a genuinely valued part of society, is unlikely to care much about the old, sick or the young. If we don't have fun or pride or culture, even difficult culture that people don't understand, then there precious little chance that ordinary people are going to devote their time to good causes.

Socialism isn't all increasing zinc production and utilitarian tower blocks you know. There needs to be some light in there too.

This event is, of course, as divisive as it is uniting and serves to exclude the nay sayers as much as it helps anaesthetise the enthused - but there is worth in celebrations - even when we're a long way short of a perfect world.