The Manly Life Saving Club has been chosen to host the event on the long stretch of beach it shares with two other clubs.

News that Manly would host the carnival prompted discussion among local early morning swimmers as to whether the Prime Minister could resist pulling on his speedos to show the royals his lifesaving style.

The Ceremonial and Hospitality Branch only told Surf Life Saving NSW that it had to organise the carnival on the weekend.

''It came out of the blue,'' said media and communications manager Donna Wishart. ''I mean, the competition season is over but we'll come up with something.''

Who are you people? Who buy magazines about the royal family, order Kate Middleton dolls, who will line the streets to cheer William and baby George when they arrive in this country in April?

Do you hide your obsession like a guilty smoker or masturbator, for I never meet you in the street, never hear you speak in public, yet you're out there in your millions.

Never have I heard the words "I am so excited about the royal visit" or "I cut my hair like Kate's", or "I've got a RDO lined up for when they go to the Bilby enclosure at Taronga Zoo" but, this happens ... apparently.

Almost six million Australians tuned in to watch Wills and Kate tie the knot back in 2011, while 14 million of us prefer the "obsequious knee-bending" of our present constitutional monarchy over a republic.

Of course, not all of these people will buy the 372-page royal visit commemorative issue of The Weekly New Woman's Idea – many won't be able to get out of the nursing home or will have a Young Liberals' mixer to attend - but you still clicked on this story when you saw 'royal' in the headline!

Is it catnip?

While the virulence of royal watching is stronger and its attendant obsessives more numerous in the UK and Europe, a startlingly number of Australians are also bizarrely afflicted with this malady.

Bizarre because, while Aussies tie themselves into intellectual and moral knots arguing the egalitarian nature of our country and peoples, we unapologetically slobber on the world's most famous symbols of hereditary privilege and inequality.

With another expensive royal tour coming up, the ridiculous charade continues, says senior correspondent Barry Everingham.

The Abbott Government released the itinerary of the upcoming visit to Australia of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and their son George — but what hasn't been revealed is the obscene cost this unnecessary swan around Australia will cost the hapless taxpayer.

Nor has it been revealed why the tour is taking place.

William of Wales and Kate Middleton are not Australians.

Their only connection to our country is the position is William's grandmother, the Queen. She is Britain's most highly paid public servant. She is that country's principal citizen — a position she holds by right of birth, a notion we in Australia find offensive in the extreme.

It will be remembered that her late father, King George VI, came to the throne by accident — he hadn't been trained for kingship that was saved for his older brother David, who for one brief moment was King Edward VIII. It was brief because he made the mistake of falling in love with an American divorcee, a Mrs Wallis Warfield Simpson whose previous husbands were still at the time alive. The British establishment, comprised at the time by chinless miscreants with little or nothing to recommend them, were aghast at the thought of a Queen Wallis, so Edward abdicated leaving the throne vacant for his brother, George, the Queen's father. Hence her current position.

History has a short memory and, when William's father Prince Charles was serially unfaithful to the lad's divine mother, Princess Diana, he was, unlike Edward, free to marry his long time mistress Camilla Parker Bowles — herself a divorcee with one living ex-husband still alive.

So we are saddled with Charles, with William and with little George who are a trio who, as accidents of birth, will one day be heads of state of this country.

We have no say in this ridiculous charade — unless, of course, we as a nation vote in a referendum to drag ourselves screaming into the reality of our current situation and declare ourselves a republic with a home grown head of state.

http://www.independentaustralia.net/australia/australia-display/the-expensive-royal-charade,6259

From the Daily Telegraph...:

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Then five days ago at the Daily Telgraph :

THE Duke and Duchess of Cambridge may not be guests of honour at Royal Randwick’s new $18 million festival of racing but a host of stars are lining-up at the starting gate.

The revamped Autumn Carnival will be Australia’s richest and the stars who are lending their name to the carnival, set to rival Melbourne as the crowning glory of horse racing, include Rachael Finch, Grace Huang, James Tobin and Sally Obermeder.

Finch, who only gave birth six months ago, flaunted her amazing post-baby body in a white two-piece topped off with a lace-inspired fascinator.

‘Blah blah blah blah......

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So what's the beef? No beef?... I believe the royal party had been invited by the horses at Royal Randwick... and the invite got declined... Hum I wonder why?... Has this something to do with the fact that Kate Middleton and horses don't mix? From a few years ago:

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So, is this why Prince William has not yet made an honest woman of Kate Middleton?

Of all the attributes needed to feel at ease in royal circles, being a horse lover must be close to the top of the list: the Queen still rides in Windsor Great Park, her daughter Anne and granddaughter Zara are rarely out of the saddle, William and Harry both play polo and Charles wishes he still did.

But now it can be revealed: Kate Middleton is allergic to horses and, according to friends, is trying to "overcome" the problem.

Read more: http://www.theweek.co.uk/people-news/20649/kate-middletons-royal-difficulty#ixzz2vokdK7Ph

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Let it be said here that Gus is ALLERGIC TO ROYALS and that I am not trying to "overcome" the problem...

...

Of course. But no more absurdly ridiculous than asking them to make the tour in the first place.

It is hard to believe that William, or even little George, will ever be kings of Australia and there is a possibility that England might be a republic before us. There is evidence  that many Poms have had a gutful of keeping  that family afloat.

William will need to wait for Charles to die before he is crowned and George will be in line after William. Longevity is the keynote of the German genes, which course through their veins and the Queen Mother’s Scottish gin-soaked blood is there as well to keep things going.

So we can only guess what was going on in what passes for Abbott’s mind. 

The treatment  he metes  out to asylum seekers would make most fair minded people sick — including even, I would think, the Queen herself, who is known for her compassion for the underdog.

Thousands of Australians will cheer and wave to the couple why they stampede around the country as, indeed, they would for a pair of young good looking celebrities which, at the end of the day, is all they are — celebrities, who happen to be royal.

So again, at whose expense will this tour come?

Whose public services will be cut in Joe Hockey's confected "budget emergency" to ensure this charade takes place?

http://www.independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/why-have-a-royal-tour-in-the-middle-of-a-budget-emergency,6338

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The whole royal tour of Aussieland is for the benefit of women's mags — and for Tony Abbott newly appointed disappointing pre-grandiose dudes for accepting what are phoney Ratty imposts — who regal themselves with tits, bums and bubs of all sorts in order to keep women ironing and the advertising recipients subservient. Of course the young royals may be as nice as spice but they are an anachronism from a time when reality was fogged by godly endorsed self-appointments..

I am all in favour of someone touring this place. Say the nobody's tour of Australia would be the go when Aussie mum Shirley Nobutton is plucked from obscurity and paraded as a member of the human species, to remind us of the chance of life — rather than have privileged hereditary offshoot from Pommyland coming here to show how lucky they are to plunder our sense of equality as well as our coffers.

But the royal presence keeps the paparazzis (including those who stoke William's dead mother to death) — and the other idiots on radio who think it's funny to associate these sordid photographers with pizza (a mighty thin joke) — busy... 

Meanwhile some peers want to end the lurk and perk: http://www.westernmorningnews.co.uk/Peer-wants-crackdown-Prince-Charles-tax-financial/story-20881774-detail/story.html

Prince George will be in the spotlight as he heads to Australia and New Zealand with the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. What can they expect on their first engagements as a family of three?

He's not even nine months old yet, but he's already making a big impact.

George Alexander Louis is about to embark on his first official foreign tour - with his mother and father too, of course.

And it can reasonably be said that a good many people in New Zealand and Australia appear to be getting rather excited about the three-week trip, which starts in Wellington on Monday and ends in Canberra on 25 April.

The normally rumbustious, hard-edged Kiwi/Aussie attitude to visiting Poms seems to have been suspended for William, Catherine and George.

Barbs about alleged sporting deficiencies in the "old country" have been replaced by baby talk - about teething (is he?), crawling (can he?) and walking (might he, on this trip?).

In part, the Aussie/Kiwi soppiness (words which one wouldn't normally expect to find together) might be explained as being a perfectly normal reaction to a baby, the presence of whom is a pretty universal antidote to cynicism.

But there appears to be evidence of something else here.

Are we, perhaps, witnessing the emergence of a renewed enthusiasm for the long-term future of the monarchy in New Zealand and Australia?

read more: http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-26869332

Baby talk: ... agoo... agoo... agoo... royal dribble...

LONG LIVE THE REPUBLIC....

Prince William may have hinted a second baby is on the way, during the Royal tour of New Zealand.

Royal watchers are now scrutinising the Duchess of Cambridge after comments reportedly made by Prince William in the North Island town of Cambridge.

The Royals' eight-month-old son Prince George, third in line to the British throne, has been the star of their New Zealand tour so far.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-04-13/prince-william-comment-fuels-second-baby-speculation/5386866

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I am very happy for the young couple new addition as long as they decide to become commoners like the rest of us... Long live the REPUBLIC. 

UPDATE: Royal tipple stops baby rumours: 

Speculation that Prince William and Duchess of Cambridge Kate Middleton could have a second baby on the way has been quashed after the Royal couple made a trip to a Queenstown winery in New Zealand.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-04-13/prince-william-comment-fuels-second-baby-speculation/5386866

I am very happy for the young couple should they decide to become commoners like the rest of us... Long live the REPUBLIC.