The first is the case of the redevelopment of Chelsea Barracks by the Qatari royal family, who put in an application to build 552 homes in a modernist development designed by the celebrated Lord Rogers. The Prince of Wales has torpedoed the project by writing to his Gulf-based royal friends saying he didn’t want another monstrous carbuncle on the beloved landscape - and they have acquiesced by withdrawing their project, just before it was due to be considered by the relevant planning authority.
We have well-defined laws and rules when it comes to planning in the UK, which have been developed over many years. They should not include complying to the taste criteria of the heir to the throne. Rogers, who has been plagued by royal interference throughout his career, is so cross that he’s thrown his drawing board right out of the pram.
'The prince always goes round the back to wield his influence, using phone calls or, in the case of the Chelsea barracks, a private letter,' he rages from his River Café office. 'It is an abuse of power because he is not willing to debate. He has made his representations two and a half years late and anyone but him would have been shown the door. We should examine the ethics of this situation. Someone who is unelected, will not debate but will use the power bestowed by his birth-right must be questioned.' (Not that Lord R has ever shied away from throwing his unelected weight around when he wants his way).
Even if it weren’t thoroughly unconstitutional, I have to admit that I’d still find Charles’s interference distasteful, because his taste in architecture is thoroughly backward. Look at the model village of Poundbury in Dorset, where his toytown vision has been turned to a grim reality.
Charles has been a thorn in the side of modernist architects for years. This matters greatly to UK business, because if he takes against a commercial development of any significance in the capital, the project is good as doomed. As anything tall or modern brings him out in hives, this is not good for the commercial future of London.
The second example of muscle-flexing comes from across the channel and is altogether more comical. It concerns the notorious micro-management of the dwarfish and Napoleonic French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who has fired the prefect of the Var region over a dispute in the exclusive Cap Negre, Lavandou enclave. Sarkozy’s in-laws, the Bruni-Tedeschis, have been involved in a row since 2003 with locals over the removal of individual septic tanks to be replaced by a communal sewerage system. Sarkozy even turned up last year at an owner’s meeting on the stinking subject with his battleaxe of a mother-in-law.
Being the owner of a septic tank, I can vouch that if they are correctly installed and looked after they should emit no significant smell at all. (Although when they're pumped out every few years I wouldn’t recommend anyone of a queasy disposition being present to observe or sniff the proceedings.)
It’s not hard to see why this pair behave in the way they do. You could argue what is power for but to be wielded, as Sir Fred Goodwin clearly felt once he ascended to the RBS throne. One of the joys of those who exercise power in business or public life is the 'let it be so' syndrome. They command something will occur and those around them make sure it happens. They cut through the inefficiencies of due process, the endless faff of committees and they Get Things Done. But they often get up a lot of peoples’ noses in the process.
