In article <tpftgd1uehg...@xo.supernews.co.uk>, Jenny Bolton <J...@hotmail.com> writes
>I hear that she died today and it will be announced tomorrow.
>Could be shite but papers have been updating their obits all week.
Nahhhh Diana did a late summer gig. My bet is that the Queen Mum has her alarm clock set for December 23rd, just to wreck the Christmas TV.
My Mum told me what it was like when the last King died, so I'm seriously thinking of going abroad for a month when she does finally get a stake through the heart.
On Fri, 7 Sep 2001 08:51:44 +0100, Edward Cowling London UK wrote:
>My Mum told me what it was like when the last King died, so I'm >seriously thinking of going abroad for a month when she does finally get >a stake through the heart.
My dad says he caused shock horror at work when it was announced, as his reaction was apparently along the lines of looking forward to getting a day off work for the funeral.
In article <ge2hptksvh7omo078oq4jqlr6cojsqi...@4ax.com>, JAF <j...@jaf.SPAMMENOTco.uk> writes
>On Fri, 7 Sep 2001 08:51:44 +0100, Edward Cowling London UK ><edw...@genghis0.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>>Nahhhh Diana did a late summer gig. My bet is that the Queen Mum has her >>alarm clock set for December 23rd, just to wreck the Christmas TV.
>I'm going to call in at the bookies today, to find out what odds >they'll give me on the old biddy going during Brenda's jubilee, next >year. >I wonder if they'll give me a double with thatch?
Why not go for a Yankee and add a few US ex-presidents, or even the incumbent?
I doubt if it's legal (in the UK anyway) to bet on celebrity (or any) deaths - shame that - it would make a nice 21st century boost to the lottery! "Yes! - it's another rollover week for HRH etc..."!
Our laws (especially those with taxation possibilities) seem to start from "all is forbidden except..." rather than "it's OK except...".
In a democracy, such as ours, it's harder to expand liberty and freedom than to reduce established constraints - I said that. ;)
> In a democracy, such as ours, it's harder to expand liberty and freedom > than to reduce established constraints - I said that. ;)
Sounds like the sort of thing you _would_ say, Uncle Chaz, Very thought-provoking. Introduces the fascinating notion that there is an essential difference between "expanding liberty and freedom" and "reducing established constraints". Subject for a PhD thesis?
> In article <ge2hptksvh7omo078oq4jqlr6cojsqi...@4ax.com>, JAF > <j...@jaf.SPAMMENOTco.uk> writes > >On Fri, 7 Sep 2001 08:51:44 +0100, Edward Cowling London UK > ><edw...@genghis0.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> >>Nahhhh Diana did a late summer gig. My bet is that the Queen Mum has her > >>alarm clock set for December 23rd, just to wreck the Christmas TV.
> >I'm going to call in at the bookies today, to find out what odds > >they'll give me on the old biddy going during Brenda's jubilee, next > >year. > >I wonder if they'll give me a double with thatch?
> Why not go for a Yankee and add a few US ex-presidents, or even the > incumbent?
> I doubt if it's legal (in the UK anyway) to bet on celebrity (or any) > deaths - shame that - it would make a nice 21st century boost to the > lottery! "Yes! - it's another rollover week for HRH etc..."!
> Our laws (especially those with taxation possibilities) seem to start > from "all is forbidden except..." rather than "it's OK except...".
> In a democracy, such as ours, it's harder to expand liberty and freedom > than to reduce established constraints - I said that. ;)
>> In a democracy, such as ours, it's harder to expand liberty and freedom >> than to reduce established constraints - I said that. ;)
>Sounds like the sort of thing you _would_ say, Uncle Chaz, Very >thought-provoking. Introduces the fascinating notion that there is an >essential difference between "expanding liberty and freedom" and "reducing >established constraints". Subject for a PhD thesis?
Well, whadya know, a new nephew!
Anyway as I intoned - there is a difference in our 'particular' (UK) democracy!
Which boils down to: Yes - it's easier for a council to turn the existing street lights off than to extend the lighting to where it may be needed.
Take your time, and tell me when you understand, Grasshopper. -- Cheers Chaz
> >> In a democracy, such as ours, it's harder to expand liberty and freedom > >> than to reduce established constraints - I said that. ;)
> >Sounds like the sort of thing you _would_ say, Uncle Chaz, Very > >thought-provoking. Introduces the fascinating notion that there is an > >essential difference between "expanding liberty and freedom" and "reducing > >established constraints". Subject for a PhD thesis?
> Well, whadya know, a new nephew!
> Anyway as I intoned - there is a difference in our 'particular' (UK) > democracy!
> Which boils down to: > Yes - it's easier for a council to turn the existing street lights off > than to extend the lighting to where it may be needed.
Now have I got that bit right Uncle? You're saying that it's harder for a council to extend the lighting than to switch existing street lighting off?
And you're saying that street lighting is like liberty? And you're also saying that street lighting is like constraints? So you're saying street lighting is like both liberty and constraints? Sounds like street lighting is something like a Wonderbra!
I guess I'd never have realised that without your patient instruction, Uncle.
> Take your time, and tell me when you understand, Grasshopper.
Gee, Uncle Chaz, isn't it just wonderful what you can learn over the Internet?
Perhaps next you can tell me just what _is_ the sound of one hand clapping.
In article <Rih0KKAkeMm7E...@obelisksystems.demon.co.uk>, Chaz <Chaz- n...@obelisksystems.demon.co.uk> writes
>I doubt if it's legal (in the UK anyway) to bet on celebrity (or any) >deaths - shame that - it would make a nice 21st century boost to the >lottery! "Yes! - it's another rollover week for HRH etc..."!
You can bet on people still being alive, eg: Lord Lucan, Elvis etc.
Betting on somebody's death is effectively insuring against the event, and it was found that this became a bit dodgy so you need an insurable interest to bet on someone's death.
> In article <p7am7.16399$592.2270...@news2-win.server.ntlworld.com>, > Philip Wren <philip.w...@ntlworld.com> writes > <snip>
> >Perhaps next you can tell me just what _is_ the sound of one hand clapping.
> >Ever your humble nephew,
> >Grasshopper
> Well, at this moment in your development it is ...
> Raise an open hand very close to one of your ears (same side; e.g. right > hand - right ear) - move it swiftly to the other ear as fast as you can.
> Repeat (and repeat) it until you hear the answer - then you will begin > to understand.
Wow. And there was I thinking it was all done with mirrors. Or clicking thumb against finger - but then I can only do that with my right thumb so I'm ever so glad you put me on the right (left) track. Still don't understand how you move one ear swiftly to the other (and apparently without actually touching either ear). I'll keep thinking about it.
> Act swiftly, as Autumn is upon you Grasshopper.
Not for a couple of weeks yet, Uncle. And then of course that's only true in half the world innit?
> On Fri, 7 Sep 2001 08:51:44 +0100, Edward Cowling London UK wrote: > >My Mum told me what it was like when the last King died, so I'm > >seriously thinking of going abroad for a month when she does finally get > >a stake through the heart.
> My dad says he caused shock horror at work when it was announced, as his > reaction was apparently along the lines of looking forward to getting a > day off work for the funeral.
As the professional royal mourners prepare, is anybody paying attention any more?
Nick Cohen Observer Sunday August 5, 2001
The healthy reaction to the death of a great-grandmother of 100 or so from her family is one of resignation, even quiet relief. She's had a good innings - her three-score years and 10 and then another score and 10. No one wants her to die, but it is entirely human not to be disabled by grief at her passing when her survival would have brought only decline and suffering. If you have similar feelings after the death of the Queen Mother - a woman 99.9 per cent of the country cannot count as a relative or friend - I advise you to keep them to yourself. Her stay in hospital last week revealed to those who work in the 'newzak' business that professional mourners are primed to howl with anguish and to howl down anyone who can't counterfeit pain.
A gruesome media underworld starts to rumble whenever there's a royal health scare. BBC executives check if the afflicted is on the 'A-list' consisting of the Queen Mother, Queen, Prince Charles and Prince William, or the 'B-list' of Princess Anne, Prince Andrew, Edward Wessex and an unfortunate Duke of Edinburgh, who was relegated by the corporation last year - presumably for scoring too many own goals. Death in the premier league guarantees that scheduled programmes are replaced with funereal music before days of commemorative documentaries and moist news reports begin. B-list royals get second-rate tributes.
All broadcasters and newspapers, meanwhile, receive holding obituaries, stories and even leading articles from the Press Association news agency. Last week's flood of anticipatory copy included a suggested editorial for dunderheaded journalists unable to compose one themselves. ('The nation will mourn with gratitude the life of and service of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, "Queen Mum" to millions throughout the world.')
We learned from a separate piece you may read one day in your morning or evening paper or hear parroted on Radio 4 that as her body lies in state at Westminster Hall, 'vast crowds are expected to queue to file past the coffin. It will be placed high on a purple-draped catafalque on the same spot where King George VI lay in state in February 1952, and will be guarded round-the-clock by a contingent of Gentleman at Arms and Yeomen of the Guard. The ancient hall is an incomparable setting for the public's tribute to the royal lady they have loved and respected_' and so on at a length which might make the most ardent monarchist tear off his culottes.
The assumption that the nation will mourn runs through all the mainstream media's pre-cooked packages. And if a handful of perverse dissenters don't wail, they will be after them just as they were after anyone who failed to exhibit the required trauma after the death of Diana Spencer.
The shape of things of come could be glimpsed in the News of the World last year when it shrieked at Camelot executives for 'hatching a tasteless plot to protect their Saturday draw if the Queen Mum should die that day'. Their decision to go ahead with the lottery draw and announce the results in the small hours when the grieving bulletins were over for the night was the 'the ultimate in bad taste'.
If the nation was grieving, everyone would be too distracted to buy a lottery ticket and Camelot could take the week off. Its emergency planning to please the punters shows that Camelot at least knows that national mourning is not what it was.
The great vulgarity of monarchy is its transformation of private life into propaganda. Births, weddings and funerals are used to build customer loyalty to 'The Firm'. Throughout the disasters of the 1990s, courtiers and royalist commentators consoled themselves with the thought that the death of the Queen Mother would pull indifferent or hostile subjects back into line behind her less than perfect family. Extravagant designs for her funeral have been knocking around Whitehall and the media for years in a classified document entitled 'Operation Lion'. Its authors envisage nine days of mourning culminating in the biggest state funeral since Winston Churchill's in 1965. The monarchy would define the nation again and dominate its emotions.
Anthony Holden, the critical royal biographer, wonders whether Buckingham Palace still has the nerve to implement 'Operation Lion'. 'People will be making comparisons all the time with the numbers Diana's funeral attracted,' he told me. 'Suppose the majority paying their respect are elderly and there's scarcely a young face in sight. Suppose viewers revolt about television being disrupted for nine days. It could be embarrassing.'
Indeed it could. Politicians and advertisers are being forced to realise that millions of disillusioned consumers are blanking out their messages. The court and the courtier press should have learned by now that the old levers no longer work. The evidence for boredom with royal marketing has been accumulating for years.
The great exception everyone quotes is the death of the ex-Princess of Wales. I wouldn't deny it provoked mass inanity which compelled anyone who believed in the rationality of public life to grab the nearest whisky bottle. But the scale of 'the grief' during those freaky days was exaggerated at the time and has been mythologised since.
The day before her funeral the commissioner of the Metropolitan Police said he would need almost all his 27,000 officers to control an expected crowd of six million. Two million turned up. A year later on the anniversary of the Paris smash, tribute programmes got abysmal ratings and the failure of public hug fests to attract anything resembling a crowd, or even a huddle, forced the BBC to decide 'most seem to have decided to do their mourning in private'.
This was too lame, even for the BBC. Its managers drew a realistic conclusion. They decided not enough viewers wanted to see the pageant for the Queen Mother's one-hundredth birthday and became the object one of the Daily Mail 's hate campaigns. ITV took over, and the BBC grovelled and admitted it was wrong. The week's brutal viewing figures showed the error was on ITV's side. Its Queen Mother special was a lamentable twenty-fifth in the ratings, behind Charlie's Garden Army and a repeat of It'll Be Alright on the Night (VIII) .
We reported last week that senior courtiers feared that next year's Golden Jubilee celebrations for Elizabeth II may be met by 'a wave of apathy' which could damage the monarchy, so they know something is wrong. What they don't appear to understand is why they're being swamped.
A small part of the explanation lies in distaste for the airbrushing of monarchy. Everything I've heard about the television obituaries, and everything I've seen in the Press Association files, suggests that the old line will be recycled that Queen Mother is above politics; have the skill 'to be wholly non-political in the present reign', as the Telegraph said last week.
They must know this is drivel and she has the standard prejudices of an aristocrat of her generation. Woodrow Wyatt recorded in his diary of March 1986 the Queen Mother telling him that when the royal family are alone together they 'often drink a toast at the end of dinner to Mrs Thatcher. She adores Mrs Thatcher.'
She also adored P.W. Botha when he was President of South Africa, and thought the media and black Commonwealth was being beastly about the apartheid regime he managed. She was opposed to women priests, had suspicions of the French, a paradoxical hatred of the Germans and 'reservations' about Jews.
When she was Queen, she and George VI broke every constitutional propriety in their eagerness to support Neville Chamberlain's appeasement of Hitler and oppose Winston Churchill. So great was their complicity that the Public Records Office refuses to release the papers covering the royal fondness for appeasing the Right in the Thirties until after the Queen Mother's death. They would cause 'substantial distress', apparently.
Perhaps they would, but in the long term greater and deserved distress is caused to the Windsors' reputation by the sycophancy and evasions of their supporters and the bullying of the millions who see no reason to share their stage-managed pain.
, Edward Cowling London UK <edw...@genghis0.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> Nahhhh Diana did a late summer gig. My bet is that the Queen Mum has her > alarm clock set for December 23rd, just to wreck the Christmas TV.
> My Mum told me what it was like when the last King died, so I'm > seriously thinking of going abroad for a month when she does finally get > a stake through the heart. > -- > Edward Cowling London UK
Time to put the black and mauve knickers into the haberdashers' windows then
John Sutherland Monday August 6, 2001 The Guardian
As a prudent laureate, Andrew Motion would have penned a just-in-case funereal ode some time ago. And, if he were very prudent, he would also have stored away some verses for the Big One.
Given the amazing longevity of the Windsor women (those that don't smoke Capstan Full Strength, that is) many of us may not be around for the end of the second Elizabethan age. And most Britons are, happily, too young to remember its dawning.
I was 13 on Wednesday February 6 1952 when a schoolfriend came up and announced lugubriously "the King is dead". It was a surprise. The fact that His Majesty was "gravely" ill had been kept from his loyal subjects. It was given out he'd had "catarrhal inflammation"- for his recovery from which a "day of national thanksgiving" had been decreed the previous December. God, alas, was not listening.
Never was the big casino mentioned. The press was informed that George VI had died of overwork, not his 40-a-day habit. "After a happy day's shooting" the nation learned, "our King died in his sleep at Sandringham". On the death certificate, the cause of death was "coronary thrombosis" (blood clot of the crown). Lung cancer, like pregnancy, was something that did not happen to royals.
The poet laureate, John Masefield, was caught on the hop, and came up with an execrable four-liner "On Hearing of the Sudden Death of His Majesty the King" (be warned, Motion).
The Earl Marshal was better prepared than the King's poet. This court bigwig ordained a week of national mourning. "Organised gloom" fell, like a plague of Egypt, on the British people.
February is a grey month: none greyer than February 1952. All radio and TV transmissions were cancelled for 24 hours, apart from terse hourly news bulletins. "Silent shock" was the effect aimed at. When broadcasts resumed, it was for six days of dirges, sermons and the droning recitation of poems of "Consolation and Mourning".
Restaurants, pubs and hotels were ordered to close on the days of the death and funeral. In the interim there was to be "no music or other entertainment". No cakes and ale for Johnny Briton this week.
Shops were permitted to stay open (except for the funeral day) but were instructed to remove "brightly coloured displays". In the West End, black and mauve knickers were solemnly put into haberdashers' windows, alongside photographs of the late King. Newspapers (including the Manchester Guardian) appeared with black borders.
For three days the body lay in state in the great hall at Westminster as thousands of Britons shuffled past. The Daily Herald reported: "All through yesterday it was the same story of waiting people, women in black coats, workers in caps, men in silk hats". Or, as the Church Times more brutally put it, "Some people were of importance. Most people were of no importance at all". But deferential, dammit, deferential.
The British were, the Spectator claimed, "a stricken people, even those dark citizens of the Empire feel a personal loss" (did they hell). TV was in its infancy. Should the funeral be televised? the authorities agonised. Would this not be a disloyal "intrusion" on royal and aristocratic grief?
To a martian, it might have seemed like the national convulsion over the death of Diana. But that emotion swelled up from below, from "people of no importance". The mourning in 1952 was imposed from above. The nation was ordered to grieve by its hereditary masters. And we did. We were still disciplined and starved by wartime regimentation and shortages. In the same week as the funeral, the weekly meat ration was reduced from a shilling and five pence (about 7p) to a shilling and tuppence (about 6p). The penny went further in 1952, but that certainly wouldn't have got you a T-bone steak.
The population still carried identity cards and stood to attention at the end of every film performance for a chorus of "God Save the King" (you snuck out at your peril).
None the less, by the end of the week's mourning that February a feeling of bolshiness was stirring, at least among my segment of the "stricken people". Losing a monarch was one thing; losing the Ray's a Laugh radio show something quite different.
And next time will the authorities blank the screens and close the bars? They wouldn't dare. Black and mauve knickers? Now you're talking.
In article <nMbzevmnKPsl-pn2-XnQSPDhbv...@s19-annex8k2.dialin.sfu.ca>, Daniel Say <s...@sfu.ca> writes
> Shops were permitted to stay open (except for the funeral day) but > were instructed to remove "brightly coloured displays". In the West > End, black and mauve knickers were solemnly put into haberdashers' > windows, alongside photographs of the late King.
I'm eagerly waiting for the display in the Anne Summers shop then.
Ian -- Ian Sharrock. Permission to send unsolicited commercial e-mail to this host is explicitly *withdrawn*
you people are fucking sick! lets hope something bad happens to you. no matter how much you hate someone, you should never wish death on them! especially if it's a 101 year old woman!!!! have some respect, please people!!!!
On Mon, 10 Sep 2001 23:52:33 +0100, "J" <j...@no.fixed.address.com> wrote:
> you people are fucking sick! lets hope something bad happens to you. no > matter how much you hate someone, you should never wish death on them! > especially if it's a 101 year old woman!!!! have some respect, please > people!!!!
Could you point out which of the posts in this thread wishes HMQM dead, because it's not obvious to me.
In uk.media.radio.bbc-r2 J <j...@no.fixed.address.com> wrote:
> you people are fucking sick! lets hope something bad happens to you. no > matter how much you hate someone, you should never wish death on them! > especially if it's a 101 year old woman!!!! have some respect, please > people!!!!
Maybe you should practice what you preach, showing respect by not including foul language in your posts.
-- Andy Clews University of Sussex Computing Service (Remove DENTURES if replying by email)
In article <9njg5b$f7...@neptunium.btinternet.com>, J <j...@no.fixed.address.com> writes
>you people are fucking sick! lets hope something bad happens to you. no >matter how much you hate someone, you should never wish death on them! >especially if it's a 101 year old woman!!!! have some respect, please >people!!!!
+-------------+ | DO NOT FEED | | THE TROLL | +-----+-+-----+ | | | | | | | | __\\.\|.|//.--
> In article <ge2hptksvh7omo078oq4jqlr6cojsqi...@4ax.com>, JAF > <j...@jaf.SPAMMENOTco.uk> writes > >On Fri, 7 Sep 2001 08:51:44 +0100, Edward Cowling London UK > ><edw...@genghis0.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> >>Nahhhh Diana did a late summer gig. My bet is that the Queen Mum has her > >>alarm clock set for December 23rd, just to wreck the Christmas TV.
> >I'm going to call in at the bookies today, to find out what odds > >they'll give me on the old biddy going during Brenda's jubilee, next > >year. > >I wonder if they'll give me a double with thatch?
> Why not go for a Yankee and add a few US ex-presidents, or even the > incumbent?
> I doubt if it's legal (in the UK anyway) to bet on celebrity (or any) > deaths - shame that - it would make a nice 21st century boost to the > lottery! "Yes! - it's another rollover week for HRH etc..."!
> Our laws (especially those with taxation possibilities) seem to start > from "all is forbidden except..." rather than "it's OK except...".
> In a democracy, such as ours, it's harder to expand liberty and freedom > than to reduce established constraints - I said that. ;)
