Birthday Drama Queen

Have you ever seen MTV's My Super Sweet 16? If you've not here's a brief summary. Spoilt soon to be sixteen year old American child demands incredibly lavish birthday party. Gullible rich parents engage every whim of said child to produce an unnecessarily lavish and expensive celebration. However, celebration, no matter how elaborately expensive rarely meets with child's expectations causing tantrums and tears.

General themes of excess within these parties are; 'the entrance', because the birthday girl cannot just walk through the door of the party, they must instead arrive in a limo or via helicopter or on the back of a dolphin. 'The act', all these kids invariably want daddy to somehow from his contacts at his state-wide refrigerator distribution business secure a set from KanyeWest. 'The car', because this over inflated party is not enough for the ego, the child will also receive an expensive gift, which is always a car, and will always cause some sort of hissy fit because the spanking new Audi is in silver and not black, I mean OMG dad, are you kidding me. And finally there's the guests, snivelling equally posh kids, pretending to know the birthday girl so they too can revel in the expense of someone else.

Far fetched and ridiculous, the same would never happen in this country would it? Well yes it would, and no I'm not talking about the poor imitation that is My Super Sweet 16 UK, because frankly our kids are terribly poor imitation Divas; Kerry Katona to Mariah Carey if you like. No, I'm instead talking about HRH The Queen.

Today of course is the Queen's birthday, well her official one at least, her Super Sweet 83. And reading the reports of her bash online and seeing footage on the television news I cannot help but note the similarities to those crass moneyed celebrations of the MTV teenagers. Unnecessarily expensive and showy and all of it met with that charismatic stony faced forced grimace of acceptance that the nation has come to tolerate.

The Queen's birthday celebration is very much in the mould of a Sweet Sixteen bash. To start with there is the entrance, arriving at Buckingham Palace in a vintage horse drawn carriage; a staple part of any new-money celebration. Then there is the act, not for the Queen a simple get together no she gets an RAF fly-past, marching military bands and a parade of 1,100 soldiers and 300 horses. I thought the UK was currently involved in at least a couple of wars globally... should these folk not be in a trench in Hellmand Province rather than prancing around the Mall in a bear-skin hat?

And all this in front of some token Sweet 16 party goers. Sycophantic posh folk, cheering and waving along all pretending that they know the birthday girl in someway and hoping desperately that some of her moneyed importance will rub off on them. The same folk who were up in arms when their local MP claimed expenses for first class travel, now cheering happily as a large proportion of the Defence Budget is tossed at what the BBC called a 'historic display of military pomp and pageantry'.

There's a recession on Ma'am, at least look like your in tune with the people and maybe tone it down a bit eh? Maybe this year just go out for a meal with the family then head back to Windsor for a more low key Royal Tournament; a few games on SingStar or some Wii tennis?