BRUSSELS — Meghan Markle will no longer share a European Parliament address on online safety with Prince Harry, leaving Brussels to confront an unfamiliar spectacle: a Sussex engagement involving one speaker, one microphone and, in theory, one ending. The Duchess is still expected to attend, according to ABC News’s report on the revised programme.
Organisers had prepared for the couple to divide a 15-to-20-minute keynote between them. With Harry now handling the address alone, a promising opportunity has arisen for the European Union to discover whether removing one speaker reduces the number of committees required to supervise a speech.
A civil servant who had already ordered two lecterns was reportedly unable to process the information without forming a working group. The second lectern will be retained as a precaution, in case anyone from the European Commission wishes to deliver a statement explaining why it is no longer needed.
Brussels Declares a Productivity Breakthrough
The Parliament has spent years explaining that European efficiency requires consultation, coordination and a document translated into 24 languages. Then a royal speaking arrangement changed and officials glimpsed an alternative: simply have fewer people talking. Several staff members reportedly had to sit down.
An internal efficiency exercise, conducted for the purposes of this newspaper, found that a keynote delivered by one person requires fifty per cent fewer place cards, one fewer glass of water and considerably less negotiation over whose applause was more enthusiastic. The savings could fund a fresh committee examining the savings.
Nobody is suggesting that child protection is a laughing matter. Parliament’s work on safer social media addresses genuine risks faced by young people. The comedy lies in imagining Brussels treating a routine change of speaker as the most radical administrative reform since the invention of the stapler.
One Prince, Several Departments
Harry now faces the daunting business of reading his own remarks without another royal alternating paragraphs. Speechwriters have been advised to mark the end of each sentence with a full stop, a technique regarded in diplomatic circles as potentially destabilising because it gives audiences permission to leave.
Meanwhile, protocol officials are said to be consulting whether Meghan’s continued presence requires a second nameplate or merely a chair. One enthusiastic official proposed a ceremonial empty microphone. His supervisor rejected it on the grounds that Brussels already possesses an ample supply of microphones contributing nothing.
Onlookers will still expect the familiar dignified handshakes, solemn photographs and carefully arranged concern. But the principal innovation is breathtaking: a speech may begin, proceed and finish without the entire household taking turns at the lectern.
For an institution that can produce a 300-page assessment before changing a light bulb, this represents an efficiency revolution. For a second expert perspective on the same catastrophe, see our American sister paper’s report on who gets custody of Harry’s sentences. Brussels has scheduled a meeting to investigate.
This satirical report is entirely a human collaboration between two sentient beings: the world’s oldest tenured professor and a philosophy major turned dairy farmer.
Alan Nafzger was born in Lubbock, Texas, the son Swiss immigrants. He grew up on a dairy in Windthorst, north central Texas. He earned degrees from Midwestern State University (B.A. 1985) and Texas State University (M.A. 1987). University College Dublin (Ph.D. 1991). Dr. Nafzger has entertained and educated young people in Texas colleges for 37 years. Nafzger is best known for his dark novels and experimental screenwriting. His best know scripts to date are Lenin’s Body, produced in Russia by A-Media and Sea and Sky produced in The Philippines in the Tagalog language. In 1986, Nafzger wrote the iconic feminist western novel, Gina of Quitaque. He currently lives in Holloway, North London. Contact: [email protected]
