The stupid boy and the moral compass
The stupid boy and the moral compass
The royal family goes on vacation, and that's what it's been about for days now. Did they actually do something wrong? No, they don't. They travel with their “own” plane, go to their own home and I assume they don't even have to take a taxi there and they go from the airport there with their own car to their home. They travel with staff so they have their own bubble. So people didn't do anything wrong.
But was it ethically correct? They must have experienced it as a moral dilemma. Or not when they looked at it from their personal situation. They should at least have asked themselves whether it was appropriate to go on holiday during a partial Lockdown as Head of State, even if that holiday complied with all the rules. Certainly also with regard to the Prime Minister, who is already not getting it done but is responsible. So the king should have thought, precisely because he is inviolable and cannot be held accountable, that this does not fit a head of state with the position he has within the government.
Did he actually do something wrong? The answer remains no to that. He had permission and the journey and the way it fell within the frame. If it was ethically and morally wrong, the answer is yes.
I think the funny thing is that he is rightly condemned for this lack of insight and sense of responsibility, but that the people who shoot him at the same time use him and his decision to have an excuse for their own actions and decisions. So they do exactly what they condemn him for. And I find it remarkable that they then present their own behavior as a heroic act. “If he can do it, I can do it.” That's really something like taking an example of the dumbest boy in the class.