Royal news

Exclusive ... Penny Makepiece, freelance Royal reporter, with details on Tim Carmody's swearing-in ... Protocol issues confront the installation of a commoner to the coveted top spot ... Concerns about crowd control have forced the coronation to be held at the Registry Office 

A small private service for Tim's inductionTim (Errors) Carmody has chosen a Registry Office to take his vows as Chief Justice of Queensland next Tuesday.

Sources close to the Royal Family say that Tim preferred a simple, private service.

Usual Royal protocol is for services to be held in a large, public room, where knights of the realm tell the crowd amusing tales about the new Royal and attest to his virtues.

Royal-watchers say that the choice of a private service is due to the unavailability of knights to attend, and their generally low opinion of Tim.  

Even Lord Eldon QC confessed that he could not find it in him to act civilly towards Tim.

Aging warhorse, Sir Marshall Cooke QC, offered his services to act as MC and speech-maker, but astute Royal insiders thought this would only draw attention to Tim's lack of support amongst the knights of the Bar Association and their many followers.

Many judges from the QEII Palace in George Street were also expected to boycott the service, furious that the coveted spot of CJ had gone to a commoner.  

Leader of the Royalist Party in the Queensland Parliament, Colonel Campbell Newman, has described Tim as a "knock-about bloke". 

Media interviews Tim did after the happy announcement was made in June served to confirm this description. 

And it is a miracle that he is able to attend even a private Registry Office service, so soon after his discharge from the concussion ward of Royal Brisbane Hospital. 

Spin-doctors for the Royals have tried to explain away the fact that Tim is the first chief justice to not have a public swearing-in and welcoming ceremony.

They say the Registry Office was Tim's choice, and was due to concerns about crowd control at the Queen Elizabeth II Royal Courts of Justice.  

If the service had been held in public then crowds of adoring peasants and thousands of members of a grateful Queensland Police Union were expected to overwhelm the area.

Disappointed crowd to be turned away from Tim's enthronement

The Royal Guard was unable to guarantee the safety of the crowd from being crushed, so the service has been scheduled to occur in private during Ramadan.

It has been a meteoric rise for Tim, who has leapfrogged over scores of judges and top barristers to become CJ.   

The fairy tale of a genuine commoner, unable to speak or write in the language of the court, has filled the pages of the Bowen Hills Bugle.  It and other Murdoch outlets are understood to have scored exclusive rights to photograph next week's private service.

Page boy for the service, young Jarrod Bleijie, told Royal reporters that he could not give any further details about who would swear the commoner in.  

Many judges were understood to have retreated to their county estates, however outgoing CJ, Lord de Jersey of Fernberg, has confirmed that the Hon Justice Catherine Holmes has drawn the long straw.  

Colonel Newman (a Royalist hero of the Civil War) insisted that judges appointed during the Goss-Beattie-Bligh republics, along with those appointed during the brief Borbidge Restoration, should "get over it".

He said that otherwise they could quit the Royal Court and go into exile in London with retiree, Lord Richard Chesterman QC, and Russian oligarch, Walter Sofronoff QC.

Newman said that there were plenty more commoners like Tim who could take their place.

We can report that there still are no entries in the Bridal Registry kept at David Jones City store for Tim's big day.

No details have been released from the Royal Court, even by the talkative Page Boy Jarrod, about Tim's honeymoon plans.