One week ago was the start of the hype for the Duchess of Cambridge’s big new keen project. She used the Instagram post about her (dreadful, embarrassing) event with Dr. Jill Biden last Friday to announce that she would be announcing something special in the coming week. The first promise was that Kate would share “a major announcement about how she is working to elevate the importance of early childhood and continue the conversation on this vital issue.” Then Kensington Palace’s campaign began in earnest over the weekend, with a promise that Kate would, at long last, “step up” her campaign with the launch of an “ambitious and hugely significant” new initiative, something which would be Kate’s version of William’s Earthshot Prize or Diana’s campaign to end landmines.
I waited all week to see what this big dumb project would be. I even made suggestions, like they should do the Keenshot Prize and give away money to low-income families. Then KP posted a dumb video of a copier printing out “Big Change Starts Small” and we were like “…huh?” On Thursday, KP once again did a preview of the big announcement with this:
Ten years in the making… pic.twitter.com/U2jBaUSrH2
— The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge (@KensingtonRoyal) June 17, 2021
Just so we’re clear, Kate and her palace handlers are showing us exactly what this is all about: Kate. Not kids. Not early years. Not child development. It’s about Kate, beauty shots of Kate, and putting some kind of keen gloss on Kate’s decade-long laziness to make it sound like she’s been hyper-focused on kids this whole time. So with that preview in place, Kensington Palace did the big launch… at midnight in Britain. Guess what it was? The Keenwell Centre for Buttons and Book Learnin’. No, I jest. But just barely.
Today, Duchess Kate is taking her work in the field of early childhood to the next level by announcing The Royal Foundation Centre for Early Childhood—a hub within the Cambridges’ charitable vehicle that will help push for increased awareness of and new research into the impact of the early years.
Alongside the announcement, Kate also launched the center’s first inaugural report, titled Big Change Starts Small, which has brought together research from across the sector and highlights six areas with opportunities to make a difference, including “building a mentally healthier and more nurturing society,” “creating communities of support,” and helping strengthen the early years workforce. It was written in collaboration with Harvard’s Center on the Developing Child and the London School of Economics, and also reveals the huge amount currently spent on addressing issues that exist in British society that could be avoided through early intervention—$22.45 billion (£16.13 billion).
“Our first five years lay important foundations for our future selves,” Kate writes in a letter in the report. “This period is when we first learn to manage our emotions and impulses, to care and to empathize, and thus ultimately to establish healthy relationships with ourselves and others.”
She continues, “It is a time when our experience of the world around us, and the way that moulds our development, can have a lifelong impact on our future mental and physical wellbeing. Indeed, what shapes our childhood shapes the adults and the parents we become.”
Kate—who will appear at an embargoed royal engagement on June 18 to mark the announcement and also share a personal video message on social media—is also launching a new website to help raise awareness of the importance of early childhood and serve as a base for the center’s latest activities, which will include research into increasing knowledge; working with people across the private, public, and voluntary sectors to collaborate on new solutions; and developing campaigns to also raise awareness.
After all that and after a decade of marriage, Kate’s big project is a “research center” within Kensington Palace, folded into The Royal Foundation. Not just a research center – she’ll also do a new website which will “help raise awareness of the importance of early childhood and serve as a base for the center’s latest activities, which will include research into increasing knowledge.” A website devoted to being keen about Early Years, with no tangible goals beyond “being keen about Early Years” and “vaguely encouraging others to be keen through pie charts.” Yep. Sounds about right.
I mean, obviously, this is a complete mess and a waste of time and resources. The narcissism and short-sightedness to believe that Kate should have her own “center” for buttons and keenness is a f–king joke. Especially when you consider how many existing programs and projects are out there already to benefit kids! Kate could literally become royal patron to any of those programs and accomplish a lot more with fundraising and awareness-raising. But no, she just has to put her own keen stink on everything. It would be like Diana seeing the HALO Trust’s work and deciding to start her own little research facility to show how keen she was to raise awareness of how keen she is about anti-landmine work.
Today I’m proud to be launching The Royal Foundation Centre for Early Childhood — let’s embrace this golden opportunity to create a happier, more mentally healthy and more nurturing society.https://t.co/KKE6QfX99c pic.twitter.com/CWFogp9NZ3
— The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge (@KensingtonRoyal) June 18, 2021
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Kensington Palace, WENN and Backgrid.
This is the very definition of a vanity project. No results no impact but more research with no discernible solutions. She did nothing for starving children during the lockdown. She watched while the government closed all the Sure Start centres. I will not comment on the photo of her the Times used but she must have pissed someone in the photo department off big time. With friends in the media like that who needs enemies?
Kate and her husband have no choice but to launch vanity projects. They have neither the backing nor the influence to attract genuine interest and secure donations for existing projects to help sustain the work that’s already being done. People know they are both as lazy as they are insincere, and would rather slap their names on other people’s work or “create” unnecessary initiatives for personal glory, instead of amplifying ones already in place. Kate Mandela and the Duke of Elegance have been playing catch-up to the Montecito royals, hoping to have their big “Vax-Live” or “Invictus” moment. It’s not going to happen because it’s all gloss, no substance and zero results. Performative at best, but they have the British press to cover for them, hype their projects through the roof and hide all criticism coming from professionals in the field they claim Kate is now an expert in.
@Pearl Grey; Didn’t The Telegraph delete a whole article because KP was not happy about the mild criticism of Kate, with her Sussexlike moves, and the fact that she was desperately fraternalysing with Jill Biden? Where were the much heralded and treasured children in her video? All I could see were her 32s( Teeth)
@ABENA ASANTEWAA
Yes, KP clearly waved their magic wand to get the Telegraph to pull their article. I thought the rota commended Kate for always “getting on with her work” with “no fuss or complaints” in the face of criticism. What happened to the duchess with the “backbone of steel” who was a breath of fresh air next to the “whiny” Sussexes who “only want to be praised” and wish to “control the media”? They and the rota have taken a page out of Trump’s book by always accusing others of what they are doing. I won’t hold my breath for Piers, Dan, Angela and the other rats to start crying about censorship. They had nothing to say when Kate had the Tatler article revised, and sections removed from the Sun article about her husband’s country walks and dinners with the neighbour.
I agree, especially about the Sure Start Centres. It’s such a loss. If the Early Years are genuinely a priority, then focus on getting Sure Start up and running again!
That would require work, that Keen isn’t a fan of. She probably isn’t even aware that it closed, that’s how uneducated she is in regards to what’s happening around her. Since she wouldn’t even get out to help families during COVID, why should she start now! She is a useless as the TOB!!
These people work so little that they don’t understand how to work. Meghan comes across as super productive just for working at a normal pace (probably even a pretty light schedule). And because she’s always worked, she’s naturally aware of how to launch and develop a project. Unlike these useless royal layabouts who want applause for deigning to grace the masses with their existence.
I also question whether there’s a need for early years research in a private (as opposed to university) facility? Is this not already a well researched subject that has generated any number of policy prescriptions? If research is the turn these people want to take, maybe they should actually pursue higher education. You know, like Meghan did.
ETA: oops, looks like William and Kate did get some university education in super relevant subjects such as art history, which is not at all the sort of thing that people major in when they cannot handle other subjects.
I have a similar theory, that K&W don’t understand what (hard) work is, because they’ve never had to do any, have skated by all their lives (William as FFK, and Kate by copying other people’s work). I suspect they come up with these grand projects, then can’t understand why they’re not lauded like H&M, because they don’t realize the work that H&M put in to get things off the ground successfully.
Also, this will be based at KP? The same KP where people have accused Meghan of bullying, apparently because she expected them to do their jobs/work (5 am emails!)? Okaaay…
this kind of montage announcement would make sense if she had an ongoing program with a proven track record over the past 10 years and they were launching a new initiative from that program. Instead this is a “I’ve been doing photo ops for 10 years & might actually do something soon” Interesting how her PR folks are making sure they work in pics of her with POC . . .
It’s almost as though somebody in her office were paying attention to the negative comments about Kate claiming ten years of ‘work’ in this field & then produced this timeline video to ‘prove’ it.
I still can’t believe she did NOTHING for kids during Covid. More proof she doesn’t care at all. That would have been perfect for her early years project.
+1
@Ginger, The Sussexes, don’t re-invent the wheel, they join up with existing organisations to elevate their profiles, at the same time bringing something to them, to enhance or level up in these organisations, this formula, is more productive.and impactful.. The Cambridges are playing one-upmanship, that is why they are failing.
@Ginger, The Sussexes, don’t re-invent the wheel, they join up with existing organisations to elevate their profiles, at the same time bringing something to them, to enhance or level up in these organisations, this formula, is more productive.and impactful.. The Cambridges are playing one-upmanship, that is why they are failing. The Struggle is Real!
Hey, that’s not fair! She wore kids’ size masks! What more could she have done?!
This is nuts…I’m an actual researcher, with an actual PhD, and if she really wanted to support researchers she could have done things like offers substantial research grants to the people who are actually capable of doing the research….money and resources for research and advocacy is what’s needed, not a vanity project to make Kate feel better about herself.
At some point, you need to stop just “raising awareness” and start doing something.
Agreed! I try to be patient with her, as I had kids young and it interrupted my post-secondary education. It took years of part time studies to get where I am now, but now I am doing actual work, not ‘raising awareness’. That phrase makes my blood boil. Literally nobody thinks children’s early years are not important. The opinions and knowledge on what is important about them may vary, but this is such a waste of time, money, resources, and talent. Barf!
The problem is they need her to compete with the other duchess and leave a legacy and they know she has been found very very wanting. Aside from her fans, the majority of the public knows she has done nothing for 10 years and she has been tolerated for looking good and keeping her mouth shut. This announcement is an effort to try and put her on the map. All the embiggening is getting very very embarrassing now. Just like the oversmeaing of Meghan, KP really does not know when to stop flogging a dead horse.
Never a truer word spkn.
Kate wants to “leave a legacy,” but at the same time, not actually do much. She realized she needed to up her game, at least superficially, once she had some competition— but again, still not do too much work.
With Meghan, it’s like:
—her cookbook raised X amount for the Grenfell kitchen (and IIRC they were able to build a second kitchen since it did so well?)
—her Smart Works collection raised X amount for Smart Works, which immediately helped all of those women who needed professional attire yesterday, not in ten years
—her narration of the Disney elephant documentary raised X amount for (I forget exactly which organization the proceeds were going to)
—all of the other examples I can’t even think of right now
And that was just in a couple of years!
Kate is still, STILL “raising awareness” about an issue that no one was unaware of in the first place, and wasting tons of £ on promotion for busy work which will never amount to anything. Nothing substantive that will ever actually, you know, help children is being done.
All to make her look busy, give her some intellectual heft (lol) and create lots of photo ops for her. It’s a joke. Which might actually be funny if so much money and so many resources weren’t being wasted on this absolute nonsense.
@ELIZABETH REGINA
I would actually say even her “fans” know she has done nothing for the last 10 years. Remember a lot of her “fans” used to in fact be her detractors or were completely uninterested, until the other duchess came along. The rest of her “fans” were always aware of her decade of inactivity but didn’t care because they were never supporting Kate for her compassion, philanthropy and impact anyway. It was always all about heritage, tiaras, clothes, thinness, babies, pomp, prestige and princess-ing. She was their “great gowns, beautiful gowns” duchess and they liked that just fine. She represented their fantasies and dreams as their comforting symbol of mediocrity that ascended to royalty and a luxury lifestyle completely unearned. They never required more from her until she was upstaged enormously by a biracial, American newcomer who redefined the royal wife role on a global scale. Now they desperately hype everything Kate does, give her accomplishments she never achieved and make every excuse under the sun for her failures. Meghan upset the apple cart big time and Kate’s fans are not happy that they now have to pretend to care about her “work” when all they really want to do is go back to raving about her hair and jewels.
Lorelei: With Smart Works Meghan noticed a lack of basic outfits so thats what she set out to get, with her ‘buy one and one gets donated’ direct action. I dont know if she raised money as well
@Lorelei – the other important point for me is that Meghan doesn’t make announcements until the project is almost or totally completed.
@Inge you’re totally right. And with the elephant documentary, I believe it was that she donated the money she was paid to do the narration.
But hopefully my overall point came across.
I need more caffeine 😓
Meghan& Harry throughArchwell support world central kitchen and are in partnerships to build more kitchens around the world to provide meals during disasters that is something tangible, unlike this vanity project.
Well, guys, a research facility means OTHER people will do the work! It’s just what Our Lady of Buttons wanted, all the credit, none of the slog.
That was my very first thought. A center where other people can do all the work and Kate can slide in and tack her name on it. It’s a complete joke.
Interestingly it will be WITHIN KP. If past experiences are any indication, she will rarely show up, even though she’d only have to walk downstairs. See The Other Bitter Brother’s participation in his BAFTA patronage, those dinner/awards held in KP every year the night?/week? before the televised show. He showed what…once in 3 yrs.? And Keen couldn’t even be bothered to show at those dinners with him either.
I definitely see her swooning down once in a blue moon, all wigleted with a fresh blowout, newly botoxed, and all buttoned up, stay for 30 min. taking some pics while smiling manically, and swan out, leaving all the *real* workers to do everything else.
If she was really doing something interesting, they would fund an endowed center at a university. having it within KP is a total joke and means nothing serious will be going on because it answers to no one and has no oversight mechanisms, as would be in a university setting where people have to answer to other people and there are STANDARDS and internal reporting and goals and benchmarks to be met. it means it is secret. has no public reporting requirements, funding structure is hidden, can be closed anytime, reduced and contracted, its activities not subject to anything external. It’s as if she announced a dollhouse for herself. who the shite cares what she is playing at behind closed doors? It took 10 years for her to realize early childhood is important? DUUUUHHHHHHH
Yeah why not fund a fellowship? It’s strange. I don’t understand the need for research within the structure of a charity organization when this is already a well covered research subject in academia.
She could even fund a research chair at a university, a fellowship, grants for emerging researchers, post-docs etc. There is so much she could have done within the research world that would have had a bigger impact.
Not enough photo ops and ‘events’ for her that’s why. Plus it probably didn’t occur to them, that would involve understanding the field you’re playing in.
@OriginalLala exactly, a chair! That’s how my own academic discipline was founded at LSE, incidentally. That would have an impact…but it wouldn’t be so high profile.
You know who I could see going this route? Angelina Jolie. In fact, I think she supported a Centre for Peace and Conflict (or something like that) maybe at LSE, where she lectured.
Yes, she could have started a grants program through a university. Centers, at least in US, have well defined charters and goals. I don’t get it. Will there be an actual center in KP with researchers and labs?
IMO everything with her is just the means to an end. Her goal was to walk down that aisle with William; it doesn’t appear she gave any thought as to what would happen *after* the wedding.
As someone else here said a few days ago, as soon as she got her degree from St. Andrews, it was if she’d checked off another box of things she was expected to do, and saw it as the end of her education.
With this, I swear to god I think she’s waiting for that ONE iconic photo op, like Diana hugging that AIDS patient or walking through landmine territory, and then she’ll be done with this, too. We might hear something vague about it once a year or something, but once she has a photo she can use forever, she’ll peace right out.
@PearlGrey, totally agree. She does have *some* genuine fans, but most of her fan base now consists of racists who decided they had to like her because she was, at the very least, white, and could be used to illustrate all of the ways Meghan was not “regal” enough for the BRF.
She can’t fund fellowships, grants, or scholarships because she sucks at fundraising. She has never raised money for any of her charities and I imagine she wouldn’t even know how to. One of the charities under the foundation closed for lack of funds and they only needed $50,000 to stay open for the year. That isn’t much at all, but even after hearing that, Kate did nothing and several more charities folded. So what British people get are research centers, which is just KP office space, to pretend she’s coming up with a solution after a decade.
She cannot start a grants fund as she and Bill are lousy at bringing in donations. Now the work of the pathetic ‘centre’ will be done by taxpayer funded staff. So business as usual. Kate does nothing, staff will do next to nothing. Schedule a meeting every few years for Kate to pose.
@JT, let’s *never* forget her one attempt to fundraise: REGIFTING a generic gift basket to EACH, Keen Basic Barbie couldn’t even be bothered to handwrite a note to go alone with it, to give it a *oomph* for bidding. And wasn’t that the year they had to get Ed Sheeran to headline because she couldn’t even be bothered to show?
Well, the announcement doesn’t say the research center is going to do any actual research – it will “help push” for awareness and new research. That sounds like giving money. As for the website, what does “research into increasing knowledge mean”? That sounds like words randomly lifted from a report.
Harvard’s Center on the the Developing Child already exists, it’s been around for 15 years. I don’t know if LSE has a dedicated center, but they do work in this field. I highly doubt that Kate collaborated with them on anything, but I can imagine the two institutions collaborating. At the same time I can’t imagine them doing anything without a chunk of money to go with it – that would be something her foundation could support.
But nowhere in any of this is there evidence of 10 years of work.
“Help push” for awareness? “Researching into increasing knowledge?” None of that makes any sense! What does that even mean?!
FFS, Kate
Lol is there a kind of research that doesn’t aim to increase knowledge? So we have to specify that this is the knowledge-increasing kind?
Same, she easily could have used this foundation to support and elevate real, legitimate work being done. But no. Of course not. I’m saddened by the loss of opportunity this project might have afforded.
@The OG I remember when Ed had to step in because she couldn’t be bothered to do anything. However , I didn’t know she regifted a basket to the charity. That is so damn tacky. And didn’t Rose have to step up and host a gala because Kate was MIA again?
Right? In the U.S., an organization like she’s trying to start would have policy people and a lobbyist attempting to pass legislation that would implement the organization’s findings, but like, she can’t do that so what is the purpose here?
@originallala your comment was at 8:00 all so you probably won’t at this but… Jesus wept: the deliverable was a report co-authored by Harvard and LSOE that a lot of money is being spent to address a societal issue that could easily be avoided (insert obesity, etc). They emphasized this as the conclusion of the report??? OMG 😳
This woman is backed by a whole sector of government- I feel so badly for our super savvy, sweet, sassy commentators from the UK on here. That gov’t has no plan for moving forward, no plan to invest in it’s citizens, it’s land, anything, they just have this.
That last pic, wow, was George playing with the different filters on photoshop?
Her face looks.. … weird? In the last shot.
Prettttty sure that they snapped that one just as she was morphing into her reptilian state,
#LizardTruth
LOL 😀
LOLOL 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
I was thinking someone *really* dislikes her to print that photo, unretouched, bags under her eyes, crooked mouth (trying to get those words out around the marbles with the fake accent).
Welp…you end up with the face you deserve, so #LizardTruth it is. Sad thing is, she sheds, but the layers underneath are just the same.
Looks like she just left the dentist office.
While watching the video, I wanted to shout “HOLD STILL!” She never stopped wiggling during the whole thing, and she sounds like she’s reading someone else’s words, off of cue cards. And that last photo – creepy as hell.
The video is cringe-worthy. Is that is the best she can do? Fake posh accent, wiggling around and the maniacal smile.
That is the shot The Times used, unretouched, on their front page. I went “Whoaaa” when I saw it.
Agree, weird glazed look in her eyes. Speaking with a strange forced smile. Maybe Botox and just being uncomfortable. Very flat and not very animated. Just odd.
The chances she is not medicated for that video are very slim. I would feel bad for her except that she was okay with gaslighting her sister in law and did not care that she was suicidal.
I clicked in the last picture and has Meghan’s name! It says Meghan Markle Duchess of Sussex!
Kate’s early years work is such a joke. I’m actually getting frustrated now.
1 the answer to all of her questions is poverty
2 after 10 years of listening and learning, the big announcement is that she’s going to do more learning?
3 in that fancy PowerPoint she said that after 10 years she came to the conclusion that we need to change the way we talk about early years. How exactly is a research facility going to contribute to that?
4 lets talk about this research facility. It’s going to be based at an office in KP……..
where are the experts? How are they going to do research?
5 there are already plenty of research facility and organizations dedicated to this topic. What they need is FUNDING
Honestly i think earthshot is an absolute joke but it sure is more tangible than this. She could have gone a similar route. Just set up a fund that psychologists and early childhood researchers can apply to.
She and her handlers could have done much much more with this but where there is no vision, genuine intent and authenticity the PR stunts perish!
Like kaiser said: she could legit become a patron of and organization already dedicated to early childhood research and then come up with ways for fundraising and spreading awareness. That would actually bring some results. There are already so many research facilities dedicated to early childhood, the last thing that is needed is another one. Especially one as amateurish as this one.
Was there any announcement as to who these experts are? Why aren’t there any names attached to this? I feel that people should know who else is apart of this project because Keen certainly isn’t going to be doing any research on this.
This is aimed all those people looking at their two year old and thinking why don’t you have a job yet.
Keenwell Centre for Buttons and book learning. *Dies!*
This woman has had no plan all these years and after years of pushing it off has decided to hastily put this raggedy “Royal foundation center” out.
What a waste of time and resources. Lazy-ass Duchess, Duchess of Do Nothing should be her new moniker.
This is just a grift project for the keens. A way to funnel money to their pockets like they do with other royal foundation funding
That was my question, since it will be at kp, will that money pay kp rent, and salaries?. Because why have it based there, if not for income purposes?. Something stinks about this strange project.
Who is providing the billions?. So many questions so few answers.
@Margaret I imagine the annual overhead for this entire thing will be insane. All of that money, which could have been used in so many more effective ways, completely wasted.
It will be a “hub within the Cambridge’s charitable vehicle,” whatever that means. I guess the vehicle has 4 hubs? What about the hubcaps? To me, “hub” sounds like a lot of expenses are going to be funneled through it. Kate’s going to need special “going to work” outfits, isn’t she?
Ok see u in 10 years.
Year 1 – 9: Announcements and thanking everyone
Year 10: 10 Question survey + bar charts
@alexandria exactly. At core this is just an announcement that she will be doing the exact same thing she’s been doing, i.e. listening, learning, hearing, realizing.
I’m curious about the report though. The last time there was a report like this attached to her big questions it turned out it was published by researchers and basically tacked onto Keen’s announcement. I have to wonder how involved the Royal Foundation actually was in this Harvard/LSE report.
Anyway, this will be more than enough for her stans to be sated with keenness for a day or two until it disappears and we never hear about it again.
Except that it closes after year 4 due to lack of funding because their patron forgot to do any fundraising.
What’s interesting is the opportunity cost of raising funds for this centre is money that won’t be going to actual programs to help young children. This is something a high net worth individual or institution (like the RF) should be funding independently.
What a waste. I thought she was going set up a new programme for children and parents. A research centre means she won’t be doing much work and she will be brought for some events.
When I read research centre I thought ok wow, maybe as part of a university or integrated with an organisation already active in this space. Of course not. At least I don’t have to roll back on my utter disdain for her and everything she represents.
A research centre means she won’t be doing *any* work. Kate is not going to be at a desk poring over data at KP. Not only is this project a complete waste of time (plenty of other august and serious centres already doing proper research in this field) but it’s not even a project Kate will actually do anything on. Nada. Zip. Nothing. Even less than that damn garden at Chelsea.
So I’ll start with praise. I read the full letter and it actually sounds… good. Like I would be surprised if she wrote it lol. There’s a line “But — and this is crucial to understand — even if we ourselves didn’t get the best start in life we can still break the cycle and develop the skills needed to raise the next generation better.” which I really liked because it ends her “happy childhood like mine will lead to no problems!” talking point so if she has learnt better then good.
But while I like the idea of a research “centre” in theory, it feels like 7-9 years too late. After 10 years of working on this, she’s going to be doing… more research. At this point she needs to be bringing solutions, not more research into something that already has a lot of research. If she had announced this in 2011-2014 or something, I would be happy with it.
If more research was what she wanted, she truly would have been better off doing something similar to William’s Earthshot and announcing grants that will be given to Early Years researchers who are already doing the research yearly or something.
@sofia reading your comment it dawned on me that that line echos Harry’s words about breaking the cycle (which had the RR all frothing at the mouth). I mean, this is not a concept owned by Harry of course but it’s just interesting that an idea that so recently caused so much teeth gnashing made it into this.
I completely missed that Harry talked about breaking the generational cycle. And yeah, Kate is pretty much saying the same thing. My guess is that people will defend her by saying “well she’s not talking about the royals specifically so that okay!!!”
Kate who?
You’re absolutely right. This is about Kate, not kids. And it’s an attempt to retcon a few visits over a decade into a huge, focused, ten year project. They’re trying to pretend this was the plan all along.
Kate is patron of the Anna Freud Centre which has been doing this sort of thing for decades. Why not do what she is supposed to with them and bring attention? Why is there a need to create an office within the royal foundation to do the same thing?
Because she could not take credit for the it, it already exists and is doing the same kind of work. So she… copyKates.
It gets much worse than this.. She is using them as “expert advisors” they will do the work but she will take the credit they will get no mention no recognition from the press or no new funds!
https://twitter.com/AFNCCF/status/1405905433869553670
Commute’s too long?
Wow. She is trying her best to be Meghan. The cadence of her speech, the emphasis on certain words, the pauses, particularly towards the end. The way it’s structured, hooking the audience in with an “I” statement about her personal experience learning, then talking about the consensus and conclusions from those conversations, ending on a “that is how I realized.” Segue into the launch of the project, its goals, and make claims about how it will Change the World. End on a hopeful, positive, inclusive note, then the campaign slogan. I feel like her speechwriter lifted a lot of Meghan, changed some words, and decided it was best to have Kate film this outside. I listened to it with my eyes closed, imagined Meghan’s voice (or Harry’s actually, for that matter), and you can hear it so clearly.
What is with the fidgeting though? Some attempt to imitate the way Meghan speaks with her hands and conveys empathy through body language? Kate just looks like she needs to pee.
Actually, listened to it again imagining Harry’s voice and the “I’ve spoken to etc and etc, this and that, and what has become clear is [declarative statement throwing in mental health]” is very him. But the end delivery is very Meghan.
More Harry phrases: “what we could do to help prevent some of today’s toughest social challenges.”
“What has become clear [emphasis, then pause], is that the best etc is to [declarative].”
What she needs is a fidget spinner.
Dead serious!
Lorelei: I think she bounces on her toes, though. Would a fidget spinner help with that?
So three separate posts on three separate days on Twitter and Instagram since last week announcing that there was something coming was for this? I mean, nice idea, but you couldn’t do this along with the 5 questions? The hype they built doesn’t really match the outcome
This woman is a joke. So embarassing
What’s going on with her face?????
Don’t believe that she spoke with “neuroscientists”
I sincerely believe Kate lives in daily fear of the Queen. She knows she has lately won a level of respect from her grandmother-in-law for never complaining about her philandering husband, but still has to endure the Queen’s known disappointment in her for being lazy throughout her life before and after William. I am convinced that Meghan’s arrival, whose work ethic outshone Kate’s to the point of non-existence, sent her scrabbling around for something, anything, she could claim as her “work and vocation”. Bear in mind, there was only so long she could keep having babies, which appealed to the Queen’s belief in large families and kept her at home with on-going pregnancies. Et voila, we have the princess of pie charts.
I for one never thought or think of Kate as a children’s ambassador. She’s a mum, so what; it doesn’t mean she has any natural ability with children generally. I believe she pursued the idea of early years because it is safe – she doesn’t have to engage with older kids and teenagers who would find her totally boring and incoherent. I feel she is also modelling herself on Diana, who had an incredible rapport with children and young adults alike. But it isn’t working.
And, yes, she does look strange in that last picture. I wonder why it was released.
@Robin
You said: “I for one never thought or think of Kate as a children’s ambassador. …….. I believe she pursued the idea of early years because it is safe – she doesn’t have to engage …….”
Just one correction to all you so accurately stated:
kHATE was NOT the one to initiate this head-scratching, make-work project…even from the very start of her visits to child-centric charities years ago (which theyre now co-opting into this mumbo-jumbo to make it seem like it was all planned out 10 yrs ago.)
Rather, it is obvious that, with the glaring objective being to try to catch-up on the shining example of the Duchess of SUCCESS, its her comms team, acting on the dictate of the men-in-grey, who hit them over the head and said “DO SOMETHING!!!” LMFAO cobbled this big/huge/massive/amorphous concept together as their answer to M and her global supporters.
That is a brilliant point. I can actually see this as a product of someone else trying to give her a purpose. Thank you for the insight. It makes great sense.
@Carmen-JamRock – 100%. I work in marketing and this is exactly what this project feels like. Especially that 10 year video thing. Someone rushed into a room and threw down a brief that said “For the love of all that’s holy, make this woman look like she’s been doing something for the last decade”. This mood video mess and lots of words that sound weighty but tell us nothing new is classic spin to hide a hollow centre.
Ten years in the making my foot. Early Years is two years old. Meghan and Jill Biden, two women that exposed Kate for the bucket of fluff she is on the world stage, are the reasons why this “project” was rolled out. It’s all the BRF and BM got, and serves them right for the eventual crash and burn.
If this is the best she can do after “ten” years, forget it.
I get that they need to pretend she’s been doing *something* for the decade she’s been a royal, but this would look less ridiculous if it was presented as the new idea is really is.
This is the real life version of the Derek Zoolander Centre for kids who can’t read good.
Oh my god, it is.
Nah, that had more impact!
Thank you!!! That is exactly what this is! Zoolander parody. I wish someone would tell her to stop trying to smile through her speech. It is unnerving. Why can’t they just let her be the baby maker?
I am hollering
you win ALL the points. I fold. I’m taking my puppy and standing on the comments sidelines.
I’m sorry, all I can think of is:
“I give you, “The Derek Zoolander Center for Kids Who Can’t Read Good.”
At least Derek Zoolander was earnest,
@Kalana, honestly! Even Zoolander cared more about making an impact on those kids, lmao
@Nic we were each posting this at the exact same time — great minds, lol.
Our minute apart posts are captured for posterity with appropriate photos in celebitchy’s Twitter feed.
Anyone find it odd that the “research center” is on the grounds of KP? Being folded into the Royal Foundation seems like trouble as several charities, even ones that focused on early years, have been shutting down over the years. And didn’t one charity leave the foundation because they needed more funding? Where is the money for this coming from? Because it just sounds like the center is really just the office space currently housing Kate’s staff.
No, not odd. It means she can claim work and ‘events’ for wandering down the hall and looking at a pie chart.
+1
Yes, that part is very odd. I really thought it would be in an actual building, not two offices spaces at KP. This whole thing is odd. If we dont see Kate for a while; KP will just release a photo of Kate looking at pie charts and caption it “She is listening and learning”
This whole “project” is going to make Kate even more lazy.
And who are the experts working at this research centre?
It’s telling that we are given no details on who will be working at this “research centre”.
@JT- yes, that was the weirdest part to me. @ginger- was thinking an actual building too, thought maybe it would be partnered with a university and she would be opening a space there. Then, I wondered if this center would need to be decorated keenly to look like a proper research room and where was that money going to come from.
@Jais Exactly. Who is she partnered with? This announcement should have made that clear as well as who would benefit from this. When I saw she was coming up with a research center I thought ok, maybe something is here. But then I saw that is was just inside of KP and I was like, this is a damn sham. Someone theorized up thread that this is just a grift and it might as well be. A least something will come out it.
The research centre will be an empty office with a bookshelf full of binders and some child development textbooks and an adjacent table and chairs where Keen can sit to be photographed researching. She will also invite professionals in to sit at the round table and have a round table discussion that will end abruptly as soon as the photog is sure there are some good shots of Keen to release.
This is ridiculous. The best way to help early childhood would be to disband the useless BRF, sell all their nice shit and properties, and invest the money.
There. Done. Where is my video?
And the “Ten years in the making” really isn’t the great lead- in they think it is. Ten years in the making for a video she can’t be bothered to appear in.
So glad I do not live under the BRF’s benevolent rile.
The “after ten years” framing is really not the flex they think it is. It’s also a little dishonest.
It’s unintentionally hilarious. At this rate, it will take another “ten” years for Kate to “learn” enough to walk down to the research center. What will they be researching? Why it takes Kate so long to learn?
So, basically, you researched for 10 years to lead up to announcing…research…girl…
Where was she when the Tory government were shutting down Sure Start centres across the country? Where was she when children were starving in their own homes with no heating in the winter? Where is she when it comes to the growing number of food banks in that Kingdom of hers? She is frankly a pathetic, lazy, joke and i’m starting to get really angry at the absolute nerve she’s showing. It’s like she’s laughing right at the British public. Learning and listening for 10 years, but now she’s finally deciding to do something about it? How dare you.
I’ve seen in my local community what hinders early years development and the rotting core of it is POVERTY. Poverty that has been enforced and enabled by the very establishment she sits so comfortably in. She really is the laziest human being on this planet. I am disgusted.
I don’t think this will help with the growing number of people who are transitioning from being apathetic about the BRF to outright angry about what a waste of resources they are. Good.
ITA, The Duchess. If Kate really wants to do something, maybe not buy another coat and instead, use the money to fund before and after school programs, or ANYTHING, really. Her attitude and demeanor are insulting.
“Poverty that has been enforced and enabled by the very establishment she sits so comfortably in.”
Poverty is at the root of a lot of “causes” thr BRF champions and is why I’m so over them. Abolish the BRF and sell all their goodies and you’d make a real dent.
For example, Magic Breakfast is a UK charity which provides breakfasts for school age children affected by food poverty. They can provide a breakfast for one child for under £1. Just think how many breakfasts could be provided for the price of yet another unnecessary coat dress. That would be something tangible, at least.
This “research centre” thing just sounds like she’s piggy-backing off work which has already been done by other people. The primary aim is clearly to make Kate look good. It’s really nothing to do with the kids themselves.
And it’s just so VAGUE! I’d love to know what genuine academics in this field make of it. (And those who have provided arse-licking quotes must be secretly hating themselves for it).
“I’ve seen in my local community what hinders early years development and the rotting core of it is POVERTY. Poverty that has been enforced and enabled by the very establishment she sits so comfortably in. She really is the laziest human being on this planet. I am disgusted.”
You nailed it, @Duchess. All the things she could do to actually help and we get this sh*t for which she wants a biscuit.
Watch as this joke folds in on itself when the consequences of brexit and the selling off the NHS take effect. Growing poverty is already beginning to stalk the former great britain. Soon it will be a case of:
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,…..
…….And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem (Britain) to be born?
But why blame Kate, specifically, for poverty in the UK? If Kate is guilty, then every single other royal is even more guilty. Those born into it, unlike Kate, have had a lifetime in the monarchy. Is Kate more to blame than the Queen or Charles, the monarch and future monarch?
The truth of the matter is that the monarchy has NEVER had a role in reducing poverty and if a person wants to make a real difference in poverty, being a member of the monarchy is not the way to do it.
Its the part about “building a more mentally healthy and nurturing community” that turns my stomach. After the response we’ve seen the past few weeks from the tabloids and that family to Harry’s mental health specials and the ruckus around Baby Lili’s name? I don’t see how they have the gall to put this out there. This to me seems like an attempt to glom onto Harry’s success and to not look like a lightweight compared to Meghan.
@Msiam, the entire audacity is truly mindblowing! And I honestly don’t even think they realize what hypocrites they are.
And don’t forget the Cambridges’ smear campaign that led to Meghan’s suicidal thoughts. But, yeah, mental health is so important!
Seriously. How we can we take this women seriously when she made Meghan cry, lied about it, and then refused to have the story corrected? Then said Meghan slammed the door in her face. She really needs Meghan to be the angry black women and Kate needs to be the white victim crying her white tears. She really disgusts me. Her “work” is laughable at best.
I think this makes sense within the context of her legacy building. She’ll get years of good PR opportunities out of it, and over time if they do and uplift decent work, it should give her credibility as an advocate. I’m not convinced, however, that this is what the field, children, or families need most. But clearly, that’s not the main priority.
I expect this program to go the way of all the other half-assed things the Cambridges have done: big announcement, crickets, no work, done.
I thought she was investigating early childhood for the last 10 years. Ten years of research, and the big news is billions to invest in a office at kp, and several more expensive years of more research. Are there ever going to be solutions?.
How Is this money going to be spent?. Will this project pay rent to kp. Will her staff be paid from said money?. Who will monitor said spending, to guard against misuse?. Come on that is a lot of money for such a flyby program.
I don’t think there are billions or even millions. It’s not like they announced how they even got the money to begin with. All she has to do is lie because nobody is going to follow up and deep dive into this project. They are just going to accept whatever information Button gave them. This just looks like Will-Di Amin saying that his prize is the most prestigious award ever; just more propping up.
Is the music in the top video from Downton Abbey?? It’s the only other thing Kate likes besides buttons and keeness!
Not sure what a research center in kp is supposed to do as opposed to partnering with an established research center or even a fundraising project to fund a research center that could use the funds. I don’t think her or her team know what they’re doing and fundraising would’ve been a much easier feat and than whatever this is. I guess she really has to commit now because of the emphasis her team has put on this initiative. It didn’t have to be this deep.
“It didn’t have to be this deep” lol
I’m not 100% sure how this is different than what she’s been doing? Just now it’s called a center and is there actually a room in KP for this center? Kinda confused.
I think putting the “research center” in KP is so they don’t have to fundraise, because they aren’t good at it. Several charities under the foundation umbrella have shut down, even before the pandemic, so putting this center on the grounds ensures they won’t have to pay for upkeep. It also means that they will be no oversight on what is actually done and nobody can see who these experts are. Because honestly, I believe the experts in this research center are just the current staff just figuring out ways embiggen Kate. I don’t believe any experts exist within this project. They might as well be James and Pippa with how this project is going.
Their offices will be down the hall from the Diversity Tsar and across from the PR Crisis Managers, lol!
@Msiam You already know. 😂
Ten years for this? How embarrassing.
So, another think tank on a subject that already has many, a white paper, and a website.
Got it.
Even the Derek Zoolander Center for Kids Who Can’t Read Good and Who Wanna Learn to Do Other Stuff Good Too had more ambitious goals and outcomes than Lazy Kate’s Keen To Be Seen Center For Self Aggrandizement, erm, Kids Research.
this announcement makes me fume when I was actually hopeful. How can you say you spent 10 years learning (and even a fan pointed out her first early years CC entry was in 2018) only to arrive at conclusion that more research is needed? And an office at KP? What a useful way to ensure she can work from home more because she will be working on research etc in house rather than having to go shake hands at her patronages.
There’s already research out there- she knows this through her visits with orgs like Anne Freud who already do what she’s planning to set up. Instead of reinventing the wheel Why not just highlight existing research& pour resources into these orgs & her existing patronages? Work with them to fundraise & highlight their campaigns so another one doesn’t go bust & can provide support that is needed. As posters have said even Earthshot awards money to people already tackling the issue. And Archewell too with grants to charities tackling mental health or academic institutions looking at online hate etc.
It makes me furious that KP is wasting resources like this when resources that exist to help educate parents like Sure Start centres have been cut by the Tory government. So this move is purely vanity because it’s unlikely to lead to families getting the practical support that is needed. And probably will just support the govt designating such issues as issues for charity rather than the state to resolve.
I wonder why she didn’t just pick up Sure Start and provided the funds that was cut by the tory government?
You read my mind but expressed what I was thinking far more articulately, since I was also fuming. I’m retired teacher of early childhood ed. K wants to help? She and her (PR) team can use the results of decades long educational research to support charities which already target on early childhood learning. She can raise money to fund current research. They can reach out to communities that have limited or no resources for young children with research-based programs and money. No more ‘raising awareness’ about what is already known. Produce a concrete action plan focusing on all communities, instead of erecting a shrine to Kate at KP.
You guys Anna Freud centre will be “the expert advisors” on Khates centre https://twitter.com/AFNCCF/status/1405905433869553670
Lol seriously what is the point of establishing this amateurish centre only to take advisors from an already leading organization in this field
lol and that photo of kate laughing and opening her mouth next to the confused expert
The Keens are forever “raising awareness” and “starting conversations” that lead nowhere.
I like how they’re trying to ret-con her work into 10 years of action. She has only been Keen about early years since Meghan showed up.
They’re still doing that thing where they cut her arms off in the shot so we don’t see all the nervous hand waving. Someone’s tried hard to pull together a something out of nothing though.
This sounds like a Huffington Post For Early Years office on site- “gather” other professionals data, don’t pay them for it, and take all the credit.
This is sort of the vibe I’m getting. The “research center” is going to be located in KP offices because the people working there will be her current staffers. They will gather a bunch of research that other people do as it comes out and they will correlate that research into one report or something that will then be used to “raise awareness” about Early Years. I don’t think anyone in this research center will be doing any new or actual research, studies, labs, or anything else. They’ll funnel other people’s work and research through this center and claim that they’re helping the real researchers who did the actual work at their universities and actual research centers “reach a wider audience” by releasing the information through KP in the form of dumbed down reports, speeches, tweets, and Instagram posts presented by Kate. Because apparently Kate is such a huge draw that people really want to listen to when it comes to Early Years stuff.
I don’t really get how this would be at all helpful though. The people who need to be aware of the research and use it for policy making, setting governmental goals, informing curriculum, designing new research that will expand on the current research, and setting up charities or informing where charities are most needed right now are all people who probably already know how to get their hands on research. They’re probably currently working with different researchers already. They likely funded or asked for some of this research. And the people that Kate will be able to reach is more like everyday moms and women who enjoy royal watching and seeing what Kate wears. But it’s not like the research reports really need to be read by normal, everyday people and parents. Normal, everyday people need the things that the research will inform. They need to know about what to look out for with their early years kids and where to go to get help for any issues, they need to how best to parent and when to send their kids to school and what type of school is best for their child, they need to be aware of charities and government programs for early years that they can take advantage of, they need PSAs and parenting classes. They need to know about the solutions to the problems that the research highlighted, and how those they can get help implementing those solutions. Otherwise you’re just telling normal, everyday people all the things that are wrong or could go wrong and all the things that are better and best for kids generally, but you’re not telling them how to minimize the bad things and maximize the best things in their every day life for their specific child and situation.
Rather than a chicken in every pot, Kate is going for a research paper in every inbox. One is immediately helpful. The other is only helpful if you can decode the research and find a way to implement all the best practices all on your own. It’s very “you do the work yourself, I’ll just tell you what you’re doing wrong right now” which is honestly how most of the Cambridge “projects” work.
It almost sounds like a pre explanation if the number of her royal engagements do not increase with H & M having left. Kate’s not available because she’s busy “researching” at home. More likely on vacation.
Haha-Keenwell Centre for Buttons and Book Learnin’.
I’ve never seen a royal work so hard to not work.
I love that!
This is so sad and embarrassing. It’s sad that she will be lauded for doing absolutely nothing and be funded with public money to continue to do absolutely nothing. Her legacy will be her three kids as literally she has nothing else going for her.
Mackenzie Scott just literally showed how to do this. Find organizations that are already doing this work and give them no-strings-attached money. Why is that so hard?
If it doesn’t embiggen Buttons Cambridge, it’s too hard for her to understand.
Well kate the early childhood expert, showed her no knowledge at the round table event. If tools are willing to invest billions, maybe the wrong dummy is being questioned.
W&K don’t have money to give, as they are lousy at fundraising. Hence the talk of William trying to steal the Together money and it being ‘ringbarked’ from theft by Harry and Meghan.
We went to a wedding where the parents of the bride stood up and gave a speech….solely about the bride and all her life accomplishments. Not a word about her and the groom, their relationship, or why they were even getting married in the first place. My husband and I were like “WTAF?” It was the weirdest wedding speech ever, and this 100% reminds me of this.
Me. Me. Me. That’s ALLLLL I see throughout this promo, and frankly this entire project. Kaiser is 100% on the nose that all this is, is to promote Kate and make her look like she’s remotely worthy of the Duchess title she holds — who gives an eff about the kids and their wellbeing? Because it sure ain’t anyone over at KP.
Skimmed the inaugural report “written in collaboration with Harvard’s Center on the Developing Child.” Admittedly, I went in not with a positive attitude and am a biologist, not social scientist, but was not impressed at all. So their “landmark study” is looking at attitudes towards early years. The first graph shows that 72% of respondents think both genetics and environment play rolls in development. It read like a bad paper one of my students would right and it didn’t have anything helpful about early years for a parent. Then I looked at the beginning again and realized it was written by a marketing firm. So it makes sense as a marketing report discussion where you need to put your energy in promotion, but as something useful for the greater community or some big research accomplishment, not so much. Thank you for giving me a chance to vent. I was reading passages to my husband and critiquing their references, but it is nice to give him a break since he couldn’t care about them less.
So they’re not partnering with a UK uni but a US one? Or rather they paid someone at Harvard to review the keen report to strike out the worst errors, not a real partnership. Where’s the outrage from the Keen Brexiteers?
They also partnered with the London School of Economics. I just got tired of typing it out. I’ve heard the name, but as an American didn’t realize they were involved in child development.
Question remains. Why partner with a US-based uni instead of a UK-based one? It implies she and her staff think the US is better than what is produced in the UK. They really are trying to her to happen in the US, but it will never take.
Harry and Meghan are partnering with Stanford University on some type of social media initiative, sorry I can’t remember the details. Soooo, here comes the Duchess of Keenbridge partnering with “Hah-vard”. So obvious.
Their typical attempt to make a splash in the US, which will fail. Could have partnered with oh, IDK, any of the UK-based early childhood education institutes I found in two minutes of searching.
Centre for Research in Early Childhood, Birmingham, UK
Nuffield Foundation
British Educational Research Association
Early Childhood Research Centre, School of Education, University of Sheffield
Early Childhood Research Centre, University of Roehampton
Early Years, Institute of Education, University College of London
Kate isn’t partnering with Harvard – they just helped to write the first report, and that could just mean one of their admin people worked on it. I think she wants to throw the Harvard name around, along with LSE, so she can sound “global.” Like H&M’s global Vax project.
And why not use one of the many UK institutes? Students at Harvard should protest the waste of time and effort spent on this woman’s vanity.
That first graph sounds the same as her 5 Big Pie Charts?? Are they rereleasing the same work under a new heading?
Yes, the report is looking at 4 surveys, 2 online (including the 5 big questions) and 2 in person surveys. The in person were relatively small, one had 40 families. So the big questions is folded into the report. I’m too lazy to go back and double check what it is based on, but that is what I remember from last night. The idea is that they are the first people to look at public perception of the importance of the early years and that makes this ground breaking according to them. Again I didn’t read it closely, but that is what I got out of it.
Th elegant duke and his keen wife have shown for a decade they are too good to do the work the rest of the royals have been doing for decades. They will only be involved in a big production where they are the center of the universe and their faces are always front and center. Hallmarks are the absences of goals and the flowery descriptions of bringing awareness versus producing results. No, don’t look for results just lots of close ups of keen and many, many buttons.
Mediocre Middleton strikes again!
Visita she makes there will probably count for the cc though….
Anyway I fully agree why she couldnt just help a charity and I feel the same about the Earthshot prize
Money laundering
How much blonder is she going to go? Looks like she and Charlotte got the same dyed blond streaks. What look are they going for, a California summer sun streak job?
She is looking older and older.. hard to believe she and Meghan are truly not that far apart in age. Healthy shows from the inside out. (Not trying to pick on her it just seems to show more and more.. I do seriously wonder if she is truly ok).
The hair doesn’t bother me because when you start to gray, lighter hair hides that better I learned from experience.
She’s been dyeing her mouse brown hair redder since she was 18. We even got silly PR stories about her hair and home dye kit during the pandemic last year.
Why go blond now instead of sticking with the shade she’s has for 20 years? It looks like more disturbing Diana cosplay, only now it looks like they’re dyeing their daughter’s hair to be blonder too.
The grayer I got (I had dark brown almost black hair) the frequency of touching up was biweekly and ridiculous.. going natural mean growing it out (to just bring gray) so I lightened.. it truly is a slippery slope that sucks. (Of course this is my experience and I was 90% gray by 45.)
She might think it makes her look younger, she isn’t going to be compared to Princess Diana when she has lived well beyond the youthful age in which Princess Diana died for long.
She has it dyed every two weeks, blown out three times a week. So saying she has to go blond to hide gray doesn’t make sense, seeing as she’s been going gray since she was 18.
This comment is indeed true!
“The actual Royal Foundation audit was posted online last year (2019) and blatantly showed through auditor’s notes and monetary data that Will and (some of) Kate’s patronages/efforts had profitable loss. IT EVEN STATED that money was being pulled from other areas within the foundation to cover it. I wish I could find it, I’m at work, but it’s accessible online for anyone who wants to see it to read.
They were allocating money from Meghan and Harry (and even some of Kate’s) projects to put towards William’s. I could see why the Royal Foundation broke apart.”
Wasn’t that one of the reasons why they split? I remember a huge “fight” to keep the Grenfell cookbook monies raised to stay with the Kitchen. The split happened right after that.
The accounts can be found an the Royal Foundation website (right at the bottom there’s a link that says “accounts” (2019 are the latest available).
What does surprise me though is that these state the Foundation only has annual income of around £6-7m. Doesn’t that sound rather low considering the high profile? Where are the big donors?
Where did this comment come from?
Why is she moving up and down like she is riding a penny pony that used to be in the front of grocery stores for those of us that are a certain age remember?
I really have nothing to say about the project if this is what the British people wish to celebrate and pay for, good luck to them..I guess.
When this story was reported in the Daily Fail, Romeo Beckham driving a new car got more traction. Seriously no one cares what she does.
For real. Their engagement on Twitter and Instagram is incredibly low. 15,000 responses with millions of followers is pitiful, but since most of their fans are bots that’s to be expected.
A couple of years after high school one of the girls that was sort of a friend of a friend called and asked me to hang out. I thought it was kind of random but I said yes. She brought me to a meeting for one of those pyramid MLM type “be your own boss” business scheme things. I really can’t be any clearer on what it was or did because after a three hour meeting/presentation all I got was:
1) join!
2) ……
3) you’re so rich now!
And I kept asking “okay but what do you actually DO? I join up and then…. what? Am I selling something?” And I kept getting super vague non-answers like “it’s so great, you sign up and we hook you up with a mentor, who would be (My Friend) because she’s the one who brought you here, and she would teach you everything and help you, and then when you’re doing well, you can be someone else’s mentor.”
Okay, but what is she going to teach me? What is it that I’ll be “doing well” at? No answers. Like nothing. I have no idea what step 2 is still to this day.
I feel like that’s what Kates doing.
1) launch early years
2) …..
3) solve early years!
But what is step 2!? What is she doing!? What is this research center going to do exactly? What is her part, specifically, going to be at the research center? What exactly is she raising awareness about? Other charities? Specific solutions to specific problems? But what are the specific problems? And solutions? What is “continuing the conversation?” We haven’t had a conversation yet! We keep being told we need to talk about this super important early years thing and we need to keep talking about it, but what are the talking points? That children under the age of 5 exist? That’s all I’ve gotten so far, little kids exist and they grow up to be adults and parents so it’s important that they get everything they need in early childhood in order to grow up to be adults. Okay… what do they need? How many of them are not getting it? How do we fix that?
So many questions with no answers from Kate. What is she doing? What does the Early Years project do? Why does it need its own research center? And what does the research center do?
@AmyToo I think that she genuinely believes that her survey “sparked a national conversation.”
If I was British I’d be so insulted that I was expected to believe this nonsense and not see right through it immediately. All it is is repetition of the same phrases year after year. Nothing is actually being done, and the children deserve better than this.
No amount of palace spin can polish a turnip!
How dishonest to collate all those photos from previous royal engagements and act as if they were all shots from ten years of The Importance of Early Years work and research. She has been pregnant and MIA for a minimum of five of those years. I am sure she enjoyed picking out all those photos of herself and she even included a Heads Together shot with Harry as a secret message to him: “SOS–Please come home and help me as I can’t do this much longer.”
And she has to have her own website because Meghan has Archewell but she won’t go as far as Meghan does in tackling day-to-day deficiencies–too messy. Awareness shouldn’t stand alone–it should birth new legislation and provide practical relief. Sigh. Now that the Katie Keen Centre for Awareness of the Children Whose Early Years Are All Wrong has been announced it’s time for Keen to take her summer vacation for the next three months.
The Early Years thing was only announced in September 2018, in a desperate attempt to grab headlines from the Together cookbook that launched three days later. Kate doesn’t work on this at all, but it has only been her stated ‘banner project’ since Sept 2018. Catherine Quinn decided Kate and Kids looked good, but gave up after less than two years and moved on from Keen.
I am now going to have to come up with a name for this centre. Right now I have the Keenwell Centre for Telling Kids they shouldn’t be Born Poor.
K.I.D.S – Kate’s Imitation of Duchess of Sussex
K. E. E. N. L. Y. – Kate Embiggening Empty Nebulous Lackluster Yawn
(Keenwell Centre is much better!)
Meghan has Archwell so Kate will have Keenwell LOL….I love it.
I’m going to put as much effort into this comment as Kate has done into her project. Very little. This is so ridiculous. The hype outweighs the effort, and the effort is pretty ridiculous.
You put 1000X more effort into your post than Kate did into her ‘work’.
Over the years I’ve really avoided Cambridge posts here and news about them but i think seeing Kate so fully embrace Dr. Biden after refusing to be seen with the Trumps and using a postpartum Meghan as a shield so that no one would notice in 2019 has really set me off. It was obvious she was doing it at the time but this just reinforced it and to then have to see this woman preach about the importance of supporting mothers and children during the first few years of life is blood boiling. If the royals are to be believed- they knew Meghan was struggling back in 2019 but not to the extent she revealed in the Oprah interview; yet it’s been 3 months and we’ve heard nothing from this Keen Advocate for maternal health about her having empathy for her sister in law who was suicidal while pregnant with her nephew! They couldn’t even be bothered to leak some bs on background to pretend she cares!
And it’s also amazing for her to “write” about how we should break generational cycles while she’s sat quiet while her brother in law was ripped to shreds for saying the same thing and encouraging others to dialogue on the matter. But we know she didnt write this crap and that she knows nothing about the subject and is more concerned with looking busy so she can get embiggening articles written about her than she is actually helping the vulnerable children and families who need it most in the country she will day be Quuen Consort of. I mean how hard would it have been for her to team up with Marcus Rushford last year when he was trying to get food to poor children who were going without because of lockdown? Or for her to just do anything actionable to improve the lives of children in the UK?
I’m more interested in knowing why the Telegraph deleted their little article mildly criticizing Kate then this hype machine. This research center is just a branded vanity project. 10 years in the making is just empty hype, nothing more. She’s done nothing substantial and doesn’t plan on it either. These people are a joke being funded by taxpayers, while the taxpayers will happily be fleeced because the little English rose knows her place and plays the game.
Deleted in less than three hours, right? Good thing people grabbed screenshots for posterity.
Hardly a “rose” when her skin is terrible from smoking and botox and fillers, and beginning to droop from all the running.
What waste of time and money- is frankly obscene.
I looked at the website, I think the most useful page is the one that gives information on organisations that can provide assistance. The report does mention poverty and disparities among ethnic minorities but doesn’t really go into depth. The website seems to be overloaded with information and research that Kate’s staff and the marketing company has done. It need to be in a more concise and to the point.
Is this a launch of the many faces of duchess buttons? All I see is her her her . This is not about children, this is all about duchess mcbuttons . I don’t know what has happened to her face or what she is dealing with recently, but she looks dried up and tow up
“Duchess McButtons.” Lol
This reminds me of Melania Trump and her “anti bullying” FLOTUS platform. All it was was a website that had photos of her in very nice clothes smiling at kids.
Speaking of the website, has anyone checked to see any similarities with another website that rhymes with “smarchewell”. I’m not going to look (not going to give KP the satisfaction that I care about Kates photo ops) but I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if there were a few similarities lol
A research center located in an office inside of KP, with no experts and no affiliation with a university. It’s a scam. This is going to hold her over until she becomes queen consort. She can go on doing absolutely nothing under the guise of running her “research center”. I can’t believe people actually fall for this garbage. She has never demonstrated any kind of interest, let alone passion, in helping young children. There’s a whole pandemic and kids in her own country have literally been going hungry yet not once did she even open her mouth to say a word to try to get those kids fed. What a joke. The only good thing I can say about this is that it looks like a financial scandal waiting to happen.
Yes, and look how her sister-in-law and Archie were treated. Where was the concern for THEIR wellbeing? Non-existent is where.
If Keen and Baldy are the future, the British monarchy is in trouble.
Yes, and the fact that they’re saying this has been 10 years in the making is such a blatant lie that I just can’t. I’m sure the reason the palace came up with this “early childhood” thing is because they know she can’t interact well with adults, so they capitalized on the kids thing. But 10 years? Please … And Tominey KNEW she was telling a lie when she said this for an article last year. And again, if you have to say, “This isn’t a vanity project” … it’s a vanity project.
I would love a real journalist to ask Kate specifically what she did for early years prior to September 2018. The court circulars sure don’t seem to show anything.
The blatant lying about working on this for 10 years is no different than what Trump does or frankly what they do in North Korea with Kim Jong Un. At least in the US some of the media questioned his lies. In the UK it seems few if any journalists call out the propaganda.
I’ve been saying forever that Willileaks (and by association his spouse) will be the one to bring the whole thing crashing down around everyone’s heads. I stand by that.
This sounds like another Head Start umbrella organization within the umbrella Royal Foundation. Who are the researchers and experts hired to run this Centre?
What projects are they tackling right now?
William and Kate are the literal embodiment of thoughts & prayers right now, and I just can’t.
An early childhood center except its six people who go to her house to develop and research. Ok. So it’s not an early childhood center. It’s an excuse for her to never leave her palace again. Congrats, Kath, you can continue to be lazy and antisocial.
I can’t stand the “raise awareness” projects for such obvious causes. This isn’t a rare disease or taboo subject. Just raise the money to actually help.
Right. Like, who was unaware that the “early years” are important? How is awareness being raised, exactly? Is “awareness” the only goal for this organization, or do they have actual, tangible things they want to accomplish? Is Kate “aware” that food insecurity impacts the early years, and if not, shouldn’t she ask her sister-in-law?
They are really caught between a rock and a hard place when it comes to the issue they’ve made Kate’s passion cause. Healthy early childhood development isn’t something that can be apolitical. It’s too wrapped up in government programs and funding. It’s too wrapped up in economic systems. That’s why she’s always so vague and useless about it. If she genuinely advocated for something useful, it would have to involve the public policy, and the royals can’t do that.
Good point. And I just went to their Twitter page and it’s a bunch of pictures of Kate tilting her head as usual to appear keen and interested, and “I’m listening so intently.” Wash, rinse, repeat. Photo-ops only, I really have to wonder about the real work involved and who actually does the research.
Then the stans rush to social media to say how “perfect” is.
+1, Plums
Not a good look. Poor Keenie. What a waste of a platform.
Gah! This idiot frustrates me to no end! Imagine having her platform and her access and doing fuck all with it! I can list 20 charities off the top of my head bad at least 5 projects I would effectuate. How can a human being with, apparently, no cognitive issues be so devoid of curiosity or concern about other people!
Wow. So much waste. I really loathe this woman and her husband.
As an American, I have always been enchanted by accents. English, Irish, Australian…they are all so charming. I could listen to British friends read the phone book.
So why is it that listening to Kate speak makes me so damn uncomfortable? Everything sounds so clipped and hard. She sucks all the joy our of hearing language spoken. It upsets me.
I’m with you. It’s because her accent is fake. Believe me, she is trying to talk above her class, and it is a fragile grasp. She tries to keep a hold on it but can’t. It’s uncomfortable listening to her because it’s uncomfortable for her to talk like this.
I watch her stuff with the sound muted. There are several other posters on here who suffer the same ear cringe when she talks.
I’ve seen this about her a lot, and granted I have barely ever heard her speak, but when I do, it doesn’t sound weird to me? But I am American and have no real good ear for UK accents. But idk, I don’t get the unintelligibleness that people talk about. She’s not a good public speaker or anything, but that to me is a separate issue from whether her accent in itself is intelligible when speaking or not. What specifically is fake or tortured about her accent that I can look at and know what people are talking about, is basically what I’m asking.
Hi Plums. I don’t know how to reply to you directly, so this may end up somewhere else! Re Kate’s accent – Yes, it may be because I’m British that it sticks out like a sore thumb. One way of questioning whether her voice seems faked or not is to think, could Kate Middleton ever speak in a spontaneous way? I don’t mean could she speak without a speech close to hand, but rather could she be relaxed in the to and fro of conversation. And I think it’d be a no. She has to hold her voice very carefully and pace and place it. If you mute the sound, you can actually see that the way she holds her jaw/mouth also looks not right to her. It is very tight. Someone has taught her to do this, and it sounds forced as a result, or she has done it herself. I suspect you’d get a better idea if you could find some clips of her speaking before she got married and started to really up the aristo, or even by listening to her family before they overly poshed up, as well. The thing is, it has done her no favours; I’m sure if she spoke as she finds natural, some of her speech making in public would be less of an ordeal for her.
I also find it difficult to listen to her and I guess it is partially because she’s faking the accent, as Robin says, but also because she doesn’t speak as if the words are her own – it all sounds like someone else’s thoughts and expressions with which she is minimally engaged. Early childhood issues are supposed to be her passion, but there’s no genuine passion in her speech. And again, maybe it’s because she’s trying so hard to keep her accent in place that she has no energy for anything else, except for wiggling and bouncing with every word – which is annoying and distracting to watch.
I feel kind of sad for her, I must admit. She’s just not good at this and it shows.
I commented on this when I heard Kate speak with Dr. Biden. It sounded like she was channeling Hugh Grant – that upper crust, faked stammer and bumbling humble-brag to show that “Oh, I’m not all that, really.” Only, in this case, she really isn’t all that.
I am American, so it took me some time to really get the criticism, but once you pick up on it, you can’t unhear it. It is similar to how Ivanka Trump uses her “sexy baby” voice in an attempt attempt to convey femininity and class to her father’s base. While Kate and Ivanka don’t sound the same or use the same speaking techniques, you can pick on them straining to keep up their facade.
If you look up interviews with her sister Pipa& her brother from 2014 they don’t have the same accent. Kate sounds fake and forced
When you compare her speech pattern/accent from their engagement interview to this video, it is really noticeable that she’s been working on something. Does appear that she works hard to speak more open mouthed now-when the upper and lower lip meet as little as possible. If that makes sense. Reminds me of my cat’s open mouth growl.
I’m American so I don’t know if this link holds true to the accent being discussed. Upper Received Pronunciation? From pronunciationsstudio..
https://pronunciationstudio.com/upper-received-pronunciation/
Looks like she got some fresh Botox for this announcement!
Just here to applaud Kaiser’s infamous photo shade and show a moment of appreciation for The Keen Research Center for Early Buttons
Promoting awareness and additional research…
Big whoop.
This is why Meghan was run out of town, she’d never stand for this meaningless b.s. and she was showing up Kate left and right with examples of how to do philanthropic work that actually makes a difference. It’s absolutely abhorrent that so many charity dollars go to crap like this, especially into the pockets of unnecessary executives and PR people.
But I guess from Kate’s perspective it’s kind of brilliant. She can hire a bunch of people to do all the work for her and put her name on it. She will drop in every so often and make an appearance here and there, and it’ll look like she’s working.
Ugh.
As I said in a previous post, this should be a two-pronged effort — one to provide healthy breakfasts and lunches for children who are dealing with food scarcity as well as a healthy learning environment at home. The second is helping their PARENTS, especially those who may have addiction or mental health problems, create stress-free relationships with their children, reward rather than punish, to help them build self-esteem, confidence and passion for learning. Kate has done f*ck-all. She hasn’t learned anything and couldn’t run a f*cking ant farm let alone pull together a group of researchers to build Early Years into a successful project and a model for others to follow.
I think I need another cup of coffee…
Oh, Jaded–“couldn’t run a f*cking ant farm” is beautifully accurate.
Please correct me if l am wrong. I clicked in the last picture and it says Meghan, Duchess of Sussex when is Kate!
I just watched the video of her talking. Did anyone else hear the dog bark/loud random noise? I thought it was odd.
She actually says they want to research why the first five years are so important, and then how to help the first five years and make people aware and change how they think about the first five years.
I doubt that a group of randoms in an office headed by her are going to discover anything of magnitude. And to me, why the first five are so important isn’t really a question to be answered? It’s something known, so come up with ways to support the positive outcomes you’re looking for.
Like so many other posters have said, poverty is at the root of most of the issues she’s pretending to care about, which means this is a total waste of the easiest way to help the real world problem. She could’ve done so many things that would have a real impact, and this is what she picked – wasting time, money, and public interest on a vanity slideshow.
Literally no one expects her to be an expert on this stuff, so I don’t know why they need to pretend she is. She can’t even pretend to be interested in visiting groups that already are addressing some of these issues, which is why she doesn’t go or help with fundraising.
She deserves to watch the monarchy end before she gets to feel any of the big time fancy robes.
I heard it. I wondered if someone off camera had dropped a large tray in shock at the audacity of her nonsense.
It seemed to me that she was standing outside a restaurant kitchen with all that ambient noise.
They want to research, study? Why? LOL Unbelievable. She ought to go look at Save the Children in America and study all of the advocacy Jennifer Garner does for Save the Children regarding the importance of those early years educationwise and how it ties into extreme poverty and food insecurity with those children and parents, all intertwined together. She’s also a trustee for Save the Children, which that organization is doing important work regarding children’s rights. But, of course, I doubt Kate would have that kind of passion and energy for it. Best to keep studying it.
Maybe she could read Jennifer’s speech on Capitol Hill, with others from Save the Children, regarding funding. It’s all there for her everywhere. A research center? Go model other programs that are boots on the ground making a difference.
Jen’s testimony written here is from four years ago. Kate has so much at her disposal and could have already been making a difference. Maybe I’m behind, but the last thing I remember was that survey.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2017/03/16/jennifer-garner-urges-congress-to-fund-early-childhood-education-a-brain-in-poverty-is-up-against-it-im-telling-you/
Princess anne has bern president of Save the Children UK for 50 yrs. And succeeded her mother. The core constituent of the charity is the one target by kHate’s little grey men who hv placed her as the face of this farcical attempt at reinventing the wheel.
I can just imagine anne & charles laighing their arses off at copykHate.
She’s listened so much she hasn’t had time to practice her public speech abilities.
Poor sausage really doesn’t have a clue on what struggle is, all smoke and mirrors.
A distant relative of mine, a woman who is very vain, arrigant, snooty, etc. Wanted to become a represnetative, and her district was newly cut along the richest and the poorest parts of the city. She would go “campaigning” and literally bathed in disinfectant before going back to her suv. Mrs. Eternal student here, tries to be seen as more relatable, (hard working is a loooong stretch) but really wills doesn’t help much.
A research facility? Inside KP? This is self-evidently fiction and will never exist, because it doesn’t make sense. At best they would put a sign on a desk. She’s stood back and given tacit support to government policies which deprive children of resources, education and even food.
Bitch needs to STFU and get out of Marcus Rashford’s way.
Brilliant point.
Those are very touched up close up portraits of her. It’s about HER not the children.
This is yet another farcical act in the never ending play put on by The Theatre of the Absurd, with it’s ridiculous teasing and stagecraft that amount to the same thing – nothing. It is meaningless.
Read all of the up-thread comments and I agree with all the posts. It’s outrageous and ridiculous. It’s sad, and it’s tragic, because people, especially poor people, need actual resources and tangible help, not cheap talk and hot air blown at them. Not a slideshow about someone going down rabbit holes for 10 years and finding purpose.
At this point -IMHO- she should just stick to being a patron of the National Portrait Gallery and become a study, subject, and object of aesthetic judgment and vanity. She embodies “purposiveness without purpose.” Hilary Mantel has already started this discourse.
@tealief, so perfectly stated. I wish she would switch to something art-related, so that no one depending on actual help or assistance related to “the early years” holds their breath waiting for this show pony to do something that actually results in any benefit to other than herself.
“help raise awareness of the importance of early childhood”
Not sure about others, but I already know that childhood is important.
“ which will include research into increasing knowledge.”
Who is going to tell them that the definition of research is an attempt to increase knowledge?
Who wrote this garbled, vague, state-nothing crap?
Anyone remember Pia Zadora? Starlet – older v rich husband – and desperate to become a movie star? Her husband threw the kitchen sink at trying to make her happen. Pia even beat Kathleen Turner to win a Golden Globe for best New Star(!) She insists her hubby didn’t buy it for her.
This is that. Kate’s been focus-grouped to death, had praise lavished on her and all KP could come up with is a “research centre”, which is actually a couple of offices; and an attempt to recreate the charisma of Diana and Meghan by stealing their words, causes, style. What a waste.
Oh, that’s a good anology. The only difference, of course, being that Pia had an actual personality and was somewhat charismatic herself.
Pia would be a youtube star or maybe even a reality show star if she came out today. 😂
Jeepers, that’s one frightening snarl in the top picture. Full set of teeth bared.
I feel bad for her because she can’t speak in public without violently twitching the lower half of her body. I keep hoping she’ll stop, but it’s been years …
I think it’s two things. She has been told to pace herself because of her anxiety in speaking and maintaining her accent, and because it defuses her nervous energy. Apparently, people here in the UK find her inability to talk properly a bonus!
A research centre in KP is a genius move by Kate’s handlers as there is no one to know zero work occurs! I think they should stop trying to make Kate into something she’s not, let her focus on sport charities which she actually enjoys. Kate having to pretend to work or have an interest in this is exhausting! Compared to William, Kate appears to be a workhorse of initiatives! What does William do exactly…
I’m so sorry the way Kate looks these days. She really looks aged and weary like a dry leaf. She’s awfully frightening. I think she has anorexia. And this disorder, although being medically treated, is being covered up by the British media. If she took a charity that provides information and support to end pain and suffering of people from this eating disorder, this charity would’ve been right up her alley (as compared to child’s 5 years). This would resonate to most people and will make her more relatable because she would know whereof she speaks and would come across as honest and real.
She giving a speech during the launch of her Keenwell Centre was so painful to look at and listen to. Wow! You can feel how insecure and tentative she was both in her content and delivery. Those nervous giggles, after 11 years of marriage, are still evident. She’s a certified mediocre.!
I can’t feel bad for a woman who participated in a bullying campaign against her sister in law. She is going to be 40 and it’s time to accept the consequences of her life choices. From the obvious public snub at the commonwealth service to her continued silence in correcting the lie about the crying story that she likely put out herself, she has actively attacked Meghan. And despite knowing Meghan was suicidal, she pretends to give a shit about mental health.
Yeesh. She brings nothing to the party.
She could not give her speech in take and her nose tip is splitting.