Garth George: Prince Harry's indiscretion just a matter of bad timing

For the life of me I can't cotton on to what all the fuss is about over the latest manifestations of the swastika.

Nor can I manage to get myself wound up over the latest prediction from the climate boffins that global warming will have us all either parched or drowned within the next 10 years.

It seems to me that half the people on the planet are doing their damnedest to live in the past; and the other half are spending most of their time living in the future.

Neither of which has any appeal to me. Those who live in the past are condemned to suffer all the resentment, anger, guilt, shame and blame that such unhealthy retrospection induces; while those who live in the future put themselves at risk of constant and crippling anxiety and fear.

The kerfuffle over the swastika was triggered by the young Prince Harry wearing to a fancy dress party a Werhmacht uniform complete with Nazi swastika on the arm. And - horror of horrors - he had not just a drink in his hand but a cigarette, too.

I'm rather surprised that there wasn't a bigger uproar over the smoke than over the swastika which, had it been worn by anyone other than a prince of the realm, would have excited no comment at all. That it brought on an outbreak of scandalised international opprobrium beggars belief.

Now, granted it was a silly thing to do, but Prince Harry's behaviour so far marks him out as a twit, which is not surprising since both his father and grandfather are twits, too.

Twitishness rather runs in the royal family for, apart from the redoubtable King George VI, most of the males of the line have exhibited behaviour that goes well beyond mere eccentricity (of which, incidentally, there is not nearly enough today, particularly in this country).

In fact, if you study the monarchy over the past 500 years, the standout rulers have all been women - Elizabeth I, Victoria and Elizabeth II. We can only hope that Prince William takes after his grandmother and great-grandfather rather than his father and mother or, God forbid, his grandfather.

But back to the swastika. Surely, 60 years after the gruesome events that took place in Europe under the demented Adolf Hitler there is nothing to fear from this symbol of peace, which was turned back to front and twisted half a turn to the right to represent just one era of oppression and inhumanity.

There can't be because it is seen time and time again in movies and in books about World War II, and not just the swastika, either. What about the death's head badge of Hitler's elite SS regiments, which were at the front line of the Holocaust?

I have seen more than enough movies filled with actors playing SS officers, complete with their black uniforms and sinister cap badges, yet no one has so much as raised an eyebrow.

I was browsing though our Reuters picture feed this week when I came across a picture of a Jewish couple visiting the Holocaust museum in Jerusalem. And there in the middle of the picture was a huge swastika on what appeared to be a Nazi recruiting poster.

And I had to ask myself why, if a swastika is okay in a Holocaust museum, it is such an offence at an obscure fancy dress party in England?

Which brings us, perhaps, to the core of the matter. Today is Holocaust Memorial Day, to be observed at the most notorious of all Nazi concentration camps, Auschwitz in Poland, and to be attended by the heads of state of Russia, France, Germany and Israel.

So it seems to me that Prince Harry's indiscretion was more a matter of bad timing than anything else for there are a lot of people in Europe and elsewhere who have a vested interest in keeping the Holocaust victimhood and its associated guilt-trip alive and who couldn't help themselves from capitalising on a bit of gratuitous publicity.

As for the latest doom-saying about global warming, if I was in the habit of worrying about the future, that's about the last thing that would exercise my anxieties.

And even if all the dire predictions come true, most people seem to forget that climate has been changing one way or another since the world was created and man, the most adaptable creature on Earth, will adapt to anything the weather might throw at him.

Our own doomsayers, of course, are at it all the time, particularly the goofy Greens and their camp followers, who never miss a chance to pronounce portentously on the dismal prospects for our future.

The latest has been the Greens' boss lady herself, Jeanette Fitzsimons, who has told us, once again, that we're heading to oblivion because the world's oil reserves are running out.

Well, I have news for her. I predict that long before the last oil is pumped out of the ground, man, the most inventive creature on Earth, will have discovered another, even more efficient, source of energy and old-fashioned oil will not even be missed.

In the meantime I shall keep in the forefront of my mind a passage from one of my favourite philosophical documents, which says: "We cast off the burdens of the past and the anxieties of the future as we live in the present, one day at a time ... and thus lose our quickness to anger and our sensitivity to criticism."