Monarchy debate/discussion

[Leith Green]

31 minutes ago, Dons_1988 said:

Graeme souness has always been a fanny. 

ftfy

[Wee Bully]

2 hours ago, Netan Sansara said:

An absolute mentalist interviewed on the BBC website who has queued to see the coffin 7 times. Incredible. 

I saw that on Twitter, and I’ve been trying to square it with the apparent 12 hour queues.  At the very best, if she was first in the queue, she has managed to squeeze 72 hours into about 15.  

[tamthebam]

4 hours ago, BFTD said:

We had to sing that awful shite every week in school assembly, as part of the attempt to marry traditional hymns with modern songs that don't mention God but, when you think about it, doesn't this remind you a bit of Jesus? So, thanks for that memory.

It doesn't seem to me that a song by an American socialist folk singer, Pete Seeger, about the conformity of modern bourgeois society, has anything to do with the Big J but that would be an ecumenical matter. 

 

Little boxes on the hillside
Little boxes made of ticky-tacky
Little boxes, little boxes
Little boxes all the same

[Verse 2]
There's a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one
And they're all made out of ticky-tacky
And they all look just the same

[Verse 3]
And the people in the houses
All went to the university
And they all get put in boxes
Little boxes all the same

[Verse 4]
And there's doctors and there's lawyers
And business executives
And they all get put in boxes
And they all come out the same

[Verse 5]
And they all play on the golf course
And drink their martini dry
And they all have pretty children
And the children go to school

[Verse 6]
And the children go to summer camp
And then to the university
And they all get put in boxes
And they all come out the same

[Verse 7]
And the boys go into business
And marry and raise a family
And they all get put in boxes
Little boxes all the same

[Raidernation]

2 hours ago, Oystercatcher said:

Holiday Monday cancelled, she's back 

"Roll away the stone (shalalala, push push)"

[throbber]

1 hour ago, Clown Job said:

He really has 

 

Lots of people are going to be watching the Liverpool game just to see how their fans react to the minute silence just so they can get all high and mighty afterwards if/when the crowd start booing. 

[williemillersmoustache]

1 hour ago, Clown Job said:

He really has 

 

Giving a hell of a lot of fans a free pass here. Nice one Graeme. 

[BFTD]

8 minutes ago, tamthebam said:

It doesn't seem to me that a song by an American socialist folk singer, Pete Seeger, about the conformity of modern bourgeois society, has anything to do with the Big J but that would be an ecumenical matter. 

 

Little boxes on the hillside
Little boxes made of ticky-tacky
Little boxes, little boxes
Little boxes all the same

[Verse 2]
There's a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one
And they're all made out of ticky-tacky
And they all look just the same

[Verse 3]
And the people in the houses
All went to the university
And they all get put in boxes
Little boxes all the same

[Verse 4]
And there's doctors and there's lawyers
And business executives
And they all get put in boxes
And they all come out the same

[Verse 5]
And they all play on the golf course
And drink their martini dry
And they all have pretty children
And the children go to school

[Verse 6]
And the children go to summer camp
And then to the university
And they all get put in boxes
And they all come out the same

[Verse 7]
And the boys go into business
And marry and raise a family
And they all get put in boxes
Little boxes all the same

I know, yet there it was, sandwiched in between stuff like He Who Would Valiant Be and Autumn Days. I guess maybe our piano teacher just liked to bash away at it between classes.

Thinking about it, we'd have to sing Guantanamera sometimes too, despite nobody knowing the words. We'd all just make noises roughly equivalent to what Mrs Pianoteacher was trilling. Could've been the lyrics to a Cannibal Corpse song for all we knew.

Edit: it definitely wasn't; this was before the Death Metal boom.

Edited September 13, 2022 by BFTD

[tamthebam]

5 minutes ago, BFTD said:

I know, yet there it was, sandwiched in between stuff like He Who Would Valiant Be and Autumn Days. I guess maybe our piano teacher just liked to bash away at it between classes.

 

[GordonD]

They interviewed some people in Australia and one woman said she had a photo of herself with the Queen. Turned out to be a copy of a newspaper photo of the Queen in a car, with the woman just visible in the crowd on the far side of the road.

[D Angelo Barksdale]

Lol

[BFTD]

Even better question: what makes a good King?

For a fair percentage of Times swing voters, apparently "looking sad when your mother died, but not too sad" and "reading a prepared script from a teleprompter without shitting yourself" were the key factors that tipped them into believing that Chuckles has got the hang of this.

[Salt n Vinegar]

9 minutes ago, BFTD said:

Even better question: what makes a good King?

For a fair percentage of Times swing voters, apparently "looking sad when your mother died, but not too sad" and "reading a prepared script from a teleprompter without shitting yourself" were the key factors that tipped them into believing that Chuckles has got the hang of this.

To be a bit on topic about that, I'd suggest that the desire to ask, at His first meeting with ET, 'so, Prime Minister, what's your estimate of the number of my fellow countrymen in their 90s who will die of cold or starvation this winter?' might be a good start.  He's not likely to change ETs mind, but he might as well take the chance to give her an emotional kick up the backside. 

Otherwise it'll just revert to having a nice image on coins, banknotes and stamps. 

[Granny Danger]

1 minute ago, Salt n Vinegar said:

To be a bit on topic about that, I'd suggest that the desire to ask, at His first meeting with ET, 'so, Prime Minister, what's your estimate of the number of my fellow countrymen in their 90s who will die of cold or starvation this winter?' might be a good start.  He's not likely to change ETs mind, but he might as well take the chance to give her an emotional kick up the backside. 

Otherwise it'll just revert to having a nice image on coins, banknotes and stamps. 

There’s the conundrum though.

Yes - it would be interesting to put Truss on notice about the state of the country.

No - why should an unelected, self-interested, heredity monarch be allowed to offer any view about the governance of the country.

[KirkieRR]

Who does this kind of counselling?

 

I mean, fair play to people who, say, counsel teenagers with mental health issues or suicidal feelings. Great work.

 

But:

 

Patient: Ah',m awfy sad.

 

Counsellor: Can you tell me why?

 

Patient: Aye. The queen's deid.

 

Counsellor: And how did that make you feeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeel.....?

[Antlion]

34 minutes ago, Salt n Vinegar said:

To be a bit on topic about that, I'd suggest that the desire to ask, at His first meeting with ET, 'so, Prime Minister, what's your estimate of the number of my fellow countrymen in their 90s who will die of cold or starvation this winter?' might be a good start.  He's not likely to change ETs mind, but he might as well take the chance to give her an emotional kick up the backside. 

Otherwise it'll just revert to having a nice image on coins, banknotes and stamps. 

Oh, they’re not using Charlie’s image?

[BFTD]

25 minutes ago, Salt n Vinegar said:

To be a bit on topic about that, I'd suggest that the desire to ask, at His first meeting with ET, 'so, Prime Minister, what's your estimate of the number of my fellow countrymen in their 90s who will die of cold or starvation this winter?' might be a good start.  He's not likely to change ETs mind, but he might as well take the chance to give her an emotional kick up the backside. 

Otherwise it'll just revert to having a nice image on coins, banknotes and stamps. 

Yeah, it's not very likely, although it may come up. The answer would likely be a dispassionate statement of what the civil service have calculated - and the calculations will have been made, and confirmed as acceptable by the government - with nothing of criticism said in public. He's seen the House of Cards series, after all, and will know that it wouldn't be a difficult task to turn the public against him with a far more popular successor waiting in the wings, likely not particularly fancying following in his septuagenarian father's footsteps by starting the position he was born to fill after retirement age.

21 minutes ago, Granny Danger said:

There’s the conundrum though.

Yes - it would be interesting to put Truss on notice about the state of the country.

No - why should an unelected, self-interested, heredity monarch be allowed to offer any view about the governance of the country.

As someone else pointed out in the past few days, theoretically the Head of State could be a more effective opposition than the Labour Party.

But not really. At the end of the day, Chuck would have to be a very stupid man to rock the boat that he was born and raised in.

[Fullerene]

5 hours ago, Netan Sansara said:

An absolute mentalist interviewed on the BBC website who has queued to see the coffin 7 times. Incredible. 

Maybe the exit signs are poorly marked.

[Fullerene]

4 hours ago, throbber said:

The bbc is all about the royal family and “traditional British values” and anyone presenting at a time like this will have been trained specifically on how to deal with the queens passing. I suppose they seem brainwashed as they probably don’t believe what they’re saying themselves and are just saying it as it’s part of their job.

 

I suspect this will be the only one of the queens passing they have been trained for.  

[Antlion]

34 minutes ago, BFTD said:

Yeah, it's not very likely, although it may come up. The answer would likely be a dispassionate statement of what the civil service have calculated - and the calculations will have been made, and confirmed as acceptable by the government - with nothing of criticism said in public. He's seen the House of Cards series, after all, and will know that it wouldn't be a difficult task to turn the public against him with a far more popular successor waiting in the wings, likely not particularly fancying following in his septuagenarian father's footsteps by starting the position he was born to fill after retirement age.

As someone else pointed out in the past few days, theoretically the Head of State could be a more effective opposition than the Labour Party.

But not really. At the end of the day, Chuck would have to be a very stupid man to rock the boat that he was born and raised in.

What’s sinister and unacceptable is the private nature of the weekly discussions between the PM and an unelected monarch with vast private interests to protect.

Again, monarchists want this both ways. Charlie’s apparently politically inutile and without influence, so there’s no reason we should know what he’s telling the PM; but he apparently has a wealth of political experience (all those jollies abroad and secret deals with despots) which aid the PM immeasurably. Both can’t be true.

There are all kinds of reasons why some high-level government business should be kept secret. Weekly “audiences” between the PM and an unelected landowning aristocrat with known links to dodgy leaders provide none of them. They just reek of corruption.

[Monkey Tennis]

8 hours ago, KirkieRR said:

I don't especially mind the levels of coverage. You just think they'd try to THINK a bit more. When some 'royal historian' says some mince like 'She was the glue that held the nation together' any proper journo would ask, 'Can you explain exactly what you mean by that?'

Yes, it's the nature of the coverage rather than its volume (absurd though that volume is) that bothers me.

admittedly, we're now starting to see some articles and podcast features that represent some sort of analysis.  Initially, however, and even still on the BBC, what we've seen really does simply amount to propaganda.