BS: Wonderful Jubilee celebrations

Subject: RE: BS: Wonderful Jubilee celebrations
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 03 Jun 12 - 09:09 AM

Funny you should mention God, Shimrod. I was just thinking about how these here royalists react to criticism of their beloved monarch in exactly the same way as religionists react when their God is attacked. Interesting.

Subject: RE: BS: Wonderful Jubilee celebrations
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 03 Jun 12 - 09:13 AM

Excellent pics, leveller. I wonder how much coverage the Beeb will give that protest on the evening news. Huh.

Subject: RE: BS: Wonderful Jubilee celebrations
From: Megan L
Date: 03 Jun 12 - 09:53 AM

Subject: RE: BS: Wonderful Jubilee celebrations
From: GUEST,HiLo
Date: 03 Jun 12 - 09:57 AM

My Dear Mr. Shaw;

Have you any idea how boring it is to have to put up with these rants. Why not leave of whingeing for a day and allow those who enjoy such things to just have a pleasant day.
Personally, I am weary of the politics of resentment..lighten up and enjoy.

Subject: RE: BS: Wonderful Jubilee celebrations
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 03 Jun 12 - 10:11 AM

All I have to say to you, Mr Hilo, is why aren't you watching telly? Let us republicans rant miserably in peace on our own for a couple of hours just for once!

Subject: RE: BS: Wonderful Jubilee celebrations
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 03 Jun 12 - 10:22 AM

I rather liked what David Mitchell wrote about this in today's Observer. The Queen's jubilee should be a time of rejoicing for our spoilsports

'...making our weird cartoonish monarchy the focus for a national knees-up is so cleverly inclusive: it gives the curmudgeons a role. Peter Wilby moaned that: "At times like this, republicans risk being portrayed as killjoys and spoilsports." But he's wrong. It's the other way round: at times like this killjoys and spoilsports get to be portrayed as republicans. The Queen's existence means that a flabby "Bah humbug!" emotion is given a rational constitutional backbone and transformed into a credible opinion.'

Subject: RE: BS: Wonderful Jubilee celebrations
From: GUEST,HiLo
Date: 03 Jun 12 - 10:26 AM

Oh, please dp rant on your own..in peace..it would be such a pleasant change.

Subject: RE: BS: Wonderful Jubilee celebrations
From: Will Fly
Date: 03 Jun 12 - 10:29 AM

Well, our jubilee Sunday lunchtime gig went down a storm - and my jazz duo is booked in my local for a similar lunchtime gig on the 1st Sunday of every month. So thanks, Queenie - or should I say, thanks, circumstance...

Subject: RE: BS: Wonderful Jubilee celebrations
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 03 Jun 12 - 10:48 AM

#bbcjubilee Nice weather for republicans on the Themes; my poem on monarchism "AFTER PSALM 118:9 AND MATTHEW 4:8-10": http://www.myspace.com/walkaboutsverse/blog/454825721

Subject: RE: BS: Wonderful Jubilee celebrations
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 03 Jun 12 - 10:51 AM

Anyone know why HiLo isn't in front of the telly still? Yep, I read David Mitchell too. He don't half burble on. His missus-to-be was good on Question Time I thought. Good card-player too.

Subject: RE: BS: Wonderful Jubilee celebrations
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 03 Jun 12 - 11:15 AM

Despite the dull weather (above), though, the Themes flotilla is providing a true representation of the revolting inequality in our nation.

Subject: RE: BS: Wonderful Jubilee celebrations
From: Bainbo
Date: 03 Jun 12 - 11:21 AM

My favourite comment has been from an American lady who spoke to BBC radio as she queued up along the side of the Thames this morning. She was understandably excited at the prospect of the pageantry, and chortled: "It's going to be just like the Fourth of July."

Now, I'm not a great one on history, but isn't the Fourth of July precisely a celebration of getting rid of all this flummery?

Subject: RE: BS: Wonderful Jubilee celebrations
From: Megan L
Date: 03 Jun 12 - 11:23 AM

Well I would offer a celbratory plate of fish and chips but there seems to be enough chips on some shoulders its no wonder the poor wee things are grumpy carrying all that weight around all the time.

Subject: RE: BS: Wonderful Jubilee celebrations
From: Bainbo
Date: 03 Jun 12 - 11:30 AM

Please don't take from my comment above that I'm anti- all of this. I feel, as another commentator has said, like someone who isn't a sports fan feels during the build-up to a big game. I'm aware it's happening, it just doesn't really affect me.

I've been listening to it on the radio, after all, and my other favourite comment was from a little girl at a street party in Scotland. Asked how long the Queen had been on the throne, she answered, very slowly, clearly, and confidently: "Eight. Hundred. Years."

Subject: RE: BS: Wonderful Jubilee celebrations
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 03 Jun 12 - 11:36 AM

...fancy a Scottish lass forgetting Cromwell, Bainbo!

Subject: RE: BS: Wonderful Jubilee celebrations
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 03 Jun 12 - 11:45 AM

isn't the Fourth of July precisely a celebration of getting rid of all this flummery?" - and replacing it by an equivalent display of flummery...

It really doesn't involve a significant change in some ways. Except that people seem to take it all much more seriously than they do with the royal version.

Subject: RE: BS: Wonderful Jubilee celebrations
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 03 Jun 12 - 12:18 PM

What was the Beeb doing employing a commenator so pig-ignorant as to announce the arrival of "Her Royal Highness Queen Elizabeth II"? That really was what he said. I hope they confiscate his mic and place it elsewhere.

~M~

In case any foreigners reading this may be puzzled {all true Brits will have got the point already, apart maybe from such as Fatgob*}, the Queen is not a Royal Highness, but, above all those, is Her Majesty: now that her mother is dead, the only person in the nation at present entitled to be so-called.

*[a term of affectionate rivalry, of course, not abuse, Herr Schutzstaffel!]

Subject: RE: BS: Wonderful Jubilee celebrations
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 03 Jun 12 - 12:38 PM

Good God, typical nit-picking royalist! Perhaps it was a deliberate instance of lese-majesty from a closet Beeb republican...

Subject: RE: BS: Wonderful Jubilee celebrations
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 03 Jun 12 - 12:40 PM

...or mebbe he did it just to annoy you, the.

Subject: RE: BS: Wonderful Jubilee celebrations
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 03 Jun 12 - 12:43 PM

As the Beatles put it:

Her Majesty's a pretty nice girl
But she doesn't have a lot to say
Her Majesty's a pretty nice girl
But she changes from day to day

I want to tell her that I love her a lot
But I gotta get a bellyful of wine
Her Majesty's a pretty nice girl
Someday I'm going to make her mine, oh yeah
Someday I'm going to make her mine

Subject: RE: BS: Wonderful Jubilee celebrations
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 03 Jun 12 - 12:55 PM

Someday I'm going to make her mine, oh yeah

Does that mean that McCartney's after shagging her post-gig tomorrow?? Is she a groupie then???

Subject: RE: BS: Wonderful Jubilee celebrations
From: Musket
Date: 03 Jun 12 - 12:59 PM

Gawd Bless her.

No seriously...

The alternative is someone who WANTS to be the big cheese. Every Prime Minister since and including Churchill has had this someone to bounce things off each week, and considering it can get a bit lonely at the top, I am convinced her approach has helped in ways someone who campaigns to be a President could only dream of.

A bit like the Aussies who never become a Republic for that very reason, cynicism of whoever would want to replace her.

Chippy rants get a bit boring after a time, don't you think? History got her there and me here, and you down there, oik.... I don't apologise for my Dad getting pissed one night in, say, 1946, and I don't apologise for the Empire. Far easier than being a miserable sod. I only apologise for what I personally do. I don't expect any different from our institutions. She isn't the Monarch in any real sense, and we are a constitutional democracy, (although paradoxically without a constitution.) Royal assent of law is a ceremony not a fact.

You see, there are people who get drawn to tradition. Some enthusiasts of tradition get together in pubs and sing traditional songs, their sense of tradition being so strong. Folkies, I believe they are called....

Subject: RE: BS: Wonderful Jubilee celebrations
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 03 Jun 12 - 01:00 PM

#bbcjubilee What about the health and safety of the Philharmonic singers - all miked-up in the wet?

Subject: RE: BS: Wonderful Jubilee celebrations
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 03 Jun 12 - 01:04 PM

...singing "Rule Brittania" - with all due respect for indigenes, of course.

Subject: RE: BS: Wonderful Jubilee celebrations
From: GUEST,Allan Conn
Date: 03 Jun 12 - 01:19 PM

"Isn't God supposed to be the ultimate arbiter in all this?" No that all ended when James VII & II first fled the English throne because of the Williamite invasion and then was branded a traitor and booted of the Scottish throne by the Scottish Parliament. Since then the monarchs have accepted the idea, probably unwillingly at first, of the consitutional monarchy. Bonnie Prince Charlie and his father before him unsuccesfully tried to turn the clock back to rule by divine right.

Subject: RE: BS: Wonderful Jubilee celebrations
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 03 Jun 12 - 01:40 PM

...long to rain over us.

Subject: RE: BS: Wonderful Jubilee celebrations
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 03 Jun 12 - 01:43 PM

SS ~~ let me repeat what I said to you above:

'I am not an out-and-out royalist BTW, e.g. I think HM's sister Margaret was a snobbish spiteful obnoxious person. But I am a great believer in the principles of "Ain't broke, don't fix"; "Baby'n'bathwater"; Unintended Consequences...'

So you can stop calling me a royalist tout court, if you wouldn't mind ~~ or even if you would.

Regards

the


For general consideration ~~ Something I observed that I don't recall to have seen before ~ or have I just missed it? Prince Philip & Prince Charles wore their Royal Navy uniforms, with rank insignia at bottom of sleeves, respectively Admiral of the Fleet and Admiral. But on the shoulders they carried also their army rank insignia, Field Marshal/General. This is surely unusual: or are there precedents? A bit confusing imo...

~M~

Subject: RE: BS: Wonderful Jubilee celebrations
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 03 Jun 12 - 02:11 PM

Top congratulations are due the pageant master and his staff for a well-organized procession on the Thames.

Subject: RE: BS: Wonderful Jubilee celebrations
From: Paul Burke
Date: 03 Jun 12 - 02:58 PM

Here's an offer to you Yanks- Liz has about four years to go before beating Victoria as longest raining (sic) monarch. That should take us to the end of Obama's second term. Then you give him to us as first President as an extension of the old lend lease program- ok he ain't by any means perfect, but a lot better than any of our homegrown alternatives- especially New Age Charlie. And his Dad was a Kenyan, which is of course where Liz was up a tree when she found out she was queen.

Subject: RE: BS: Wonderful Jubilee celebrations
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 03 Jun 12 - 04:16 PM

...I was surprised that the Beeb showed, via Charles, footage of her return flight from Kenya, upon her father's death - looking most happy with herself.

Subject: RE: BS: Wonderful Jubilee celebrations
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 03 Jun 12 - 05:45 PM

""Wonderful jubilee protest! Nice one!""

Yeah! Wonderful indeed!

A million lining the Thames on both banks and cheering themselves hoarse.

One hundred or so in an otherwise deserted corner, protesting loudly to a couple of bored journalists and a wet dog.

Guess we won't be seeing your desired Soviet Socialist Republic here anytime soon.

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: Wonderful Jubilee celebrations
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 03 Jun 12 - 05:58 PM

""I hope they confiscate his mic and place it elsewhere.""

I noticed that and a couple of other blunders Mike.

Maybe next time they'll have the sense to call on a Dimbleby (David or Jonathan, either would do the job), they have the pedigree for commentary on State Occasions.

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: Wonderful Jubilee celebrations
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 03 Jun 12 - 06:05 PM

"...her return flight from Kenya, upon her father's death - looking most happy with herself. "

Would this be the picture you mean, walkabouts? "first picture of the Queen just hours after taking the throne " - "looking most happy with herself" doesn't really seem the right way to put it...

Subject: RE: BS: Wonderful Jubilee celebrations
From: number 6
Date: 03 Jun 12 - 06:07 PM

My wife made a comment/question today ... whilst watching some of this Jubilee 'stuff' ... and that comment/question was .. Phil and Liz are such good looking couple, how could they produce such homely looking offspring.

anyway ... personally I don't give a rat's ass about the royal household. But I must say 'jubilee' is a such a beautiful word.

biLL

Subject: RE: BS: Wonderful Jubilee celebrations
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 03 Jun 12 - 07:51 PM

Prince Philip & Prince Charles wore their Royal Navy uniforms, with rank insignia at bottom of sleeves

Something deep down inside me detects an appropriateness in this sentence I can't quite put my finger on...

the, I'm going to have to stick permanently with that small t, even at the start of a sentence, which grates somewhat. Reason being that I call The Edge "The", so the only way I'll be able to tell you apart is by that initial letter. I hope you don't mind being littler than he.

Subject: RE: BS: Wonderful Jubilee celebrations
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 03 Jun 12 - 07:56 PM

Maybe next time they'll have the sense to call on a Dimbleby (David or Jonathan, either would do the job), they have the pedigree for commentary on State Occasions.

Interesting interpretation of "pedigree" there, Don. Whilst I'm an aficionado of the elder Bumblebee in particular, I still prefer the term "nepotism" in this case... Bring back that fanatical, right-wing, royalist sycophant Cliff Michelmore, say I!

Subject: RE: BS: Wonderful Jubilee celebrations
From: gnu
Date: 03 Jun 12 - 08:18 PM

I missed the Thames deal. Watched the first of a three part (one hour each) series about her and what she does and why she does it. She does what no one else can do. She DOES fill a valuable position and provides a vauable service(s). After she goes... who knows? I assume it will continue, but I just don't see Charles doing the same job. If he does, I assume it will just be for a short time... for tradition.

Subject: RE: BS: Wonderful Jubilee celebrations
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 03 Jun 12 - 08:22 PM

She does what no one else can do.

Do expand.

Subject: RE: BS: Wonderful Jubilee celebrations
From: gnu
Date: 03 Jun 12 - 08:32 PM

Watch the shows, Steve.

Subject: RE: BS: Wonderful Jubilee celebrations
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 04 Jun 12 - 05:02 AM

I was forced to watch some by dint of living in a household that is less than solidly republican. I see that she can stand up for quite a while (admittedly, not bad for an advanced wrinkly such as she, though not a unique skill by a long chalk) and do funny little waves. I imagine she can also say "Hellay, and what do you do?" when prompted. She can sit in a big room and pat people on the shoulder with a sword. She can giggle with call-me Dave and frown at Brown. Let's face it, gnu. Her "job" generally consists of turning up to places via the finest forms of transport available on the planet. Once there, she does next to nothing except "be an icon." To suggest that no-one else could do these things, is, well, a trifle fanciful to say the least. By far the most successful aspect of her job is that she keeps her trap shut. And, unlike her feckless son Big-ears, she manages not to bob up and down like a bloody idiot in the view of billions of people during the Sailor's Hornpipe. You see, even I am capable of giving her some credit.

Subject: RE: BS: Wonderful Jubilee celebrations
From: Jack Campin
Date: 04 Jun 12 - 05:39 AM

BBC report on the great Scottish ho-hum:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-18317092

I think that gets it about right. There isn't a lot of hostility to the Royals in Scotland but there is even less enthusiasm for them. I have seen no private house with bunting or a flag, and outdoor parties at the weekend were mostly ones that were going to happen anyway (like the Meadows Festival in Edinburgh or the children's gala in the village next to mine, both events that have taken place annually for decades).

And we unpatriotic sods had a great sunny day while God was pissing on London. So there.

Apparently you can get bunting printed with little guillotine motifs.

Subject: RE: BS: Wonderful Jubilee celebrations
From: theleveller
Date: 04 Jun 12 - 05:55 AM

"Guess we won't be seeing your desired Soviet Socialist Republic here anytime soon.
"

As usual, Don, you have no fucking idea do you? Moron!

Subject: RE: BS: Wonderful Jubilee celebrations
From: Musket
Date: 04 Jun 12 - 08:55 AM

You tell him Wolfie!

Subject: RE: BS: Wonderful Jubilee celebrations
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 04 Jun 12 - 09:06 AM

We only want an English Socialist Republic - imperialism is evil.

Subject: RE: BS: Wonderful Jubilee celebrations
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 04 Jun 12 - 09:13 AM

...apart from some local government, all any citizen of our world needs is their own nation and the United Nations: no Commonwealth, G20, EU...nor and other such club.

Subject: RE: BS: Wonderful Jubilee celebrations
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 04 Jun 12 - 10:08 AM

I think that Ms Piggy has been a wise and stabilising influence at times of constitutional crisis. The idea of hereditary rule as such rather grates, and the way in which the crown as such (as distinct from the current holder) amassed such landholdings also rather grates (as do the Inclosure Acts) but given that the Crown is now a constitutional monarchy I would have thought that work expenses should be paid by the employer (that is to say the state rather than the crown).

I'm not a rabid royalist, but I'm inclined to think that the present incumbent is better than any present revolutionary choices, and I thing that Big-Ears often talks a lot of sense. Both seem very replete with a sense of duty, and Phil the Greek has held down a gruelling schedule of official duties well past retirement age (and his sense of humour has I think suffered from an unnecessarily hostile press).

I don't want to jump up and down and celebrate being a peasant under a master's lash but I wouldn't lead the revolution against the monarchy. Now against the present bunch of "elected" Etonians, that's another matter!

Subject: RE: BS: Wonderful Jubilee celebrations
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 04 Jun 12 - 10:32 AM

"Big-Ears", Richard, could surely join the Greens.

Subject: RE: BS: Wonderful Jubilee celebrations
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 04 Jun 12 - 01:04 PM

I started wondering why Bozo starts threads like this (obvious answers, related to his general character, on a postcard, please)?

Of course, it goes without saying, that he likes winding up Lefties.

But I also suspect that he's hoping that Her Maj reads this, will be mightily impressed by his slavish loyalty, instruct MI5 to discover his identity (using Top Secret software) and award him a knighthood and a million pounds!

Dream on, Bozo!

Subject: RE: BS: Wonderful Jubilee celebrations
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 04 Jun 12 - 01:12 PM

Lefties can now go back to their hutch.

Subject: RE: BS: Wonderful Jubilee celebrations
From: number 6
Date: 04 Jun 12 - 01:33 PM

I think it's about time we finally stepped out of the 18th century in regards to monarchy, politiks, and economic systems and move onto the 21st century ... if we don't, we'll surely become extinct.

biLL