You Couldn’t Make It Up Department (7): Selection by Prick
From the Court Circular, The Times, 23 March 2005:
Her Majesty held a Council at 5.30pm.
At the Council The Queen pricked the List of High Sheriffs for the Counties of England (other than Cornwall and those in the Duchy of Lancaster) and Wales.
After the Council, the Rt Hon Alan Milburn MP had an audience of The Queen when Her Majesty pricked the List of High Sheriffs for the Counties of the Duchy of Lancaster.
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More fun for Alan Milburn, I suppose, than running the Labour Party’s embarrassing election campaign. Perhaps Her Majesty could be persuaded to prick the national electoral register to select the members of the next parliament?
Now, now. No amusing plays on words, thank you.
How incredibly fatuous, though I rather like the image of Alan Milburn, Rt Hon and all, sitting on a tiny red velvet chair outside some Great Chamber while the preceding Council slowly deals with the rest of England, excluding presumably Cornwall, which has its own P—-. Incidentally, what do H/Sheriffs do now? Entertain judges on circuit and give them white gloves if there are no cases to try? And how does one become prickable? Not, I suspect, merely from being von the electoral roll.
Absolutely. Although aren’t meetings of the Prive Council conducted standing up? A decision of some former monarch to stop the Right Honourables banging on and on, wearisomely, I seem to remember.
Brian
https://barder.com/brian/