Queen Elizabeth

[Joe Guy]

The big question, of course, is whether Liz2 will lie in state at Westminster until she is finally interred. It has not yet been decided.

It remains to be seen.

[BoSoxGal]

Liz has returned to Buckingham palace to lie in state - the line to view her casket is 30 hours long. Thirty hours standing in line outside. Where will they all pee and poo?!

[MajGenl.Meade]

There's a German company that can provides substitute "waiters" for a fee, keeping your place in the queue for short or long-term absences. You have a beeper for when you must return. It's called "Uberalles"

[BoSoxGal]

A Chill Comes Over the United Kingdom

The absurd—and sometimes sinister—spectacle of mourning Queen Elizabeth.

Imogen West-Knights
Sept 15, 20227:17 PM
LONDON, ENGLAND - SEPTEMBER 15: A portrait of Queen Elizabeth II is displayed as a tribute in the window of a department store on September 15, 2022 in London, United Kingdom. Queen Elizabeth II is lying in state at Westminster Hall until the morning of her funeral to allow members of the public to pay their last respects.

What is going on in the United Kingdom? It’s a question with a simple, four-word answer: the queen is dead. That is almost literally everything that is happening here at the moment.

Since the queen died last Thursday, the country has ground to a halt. The queen is dead for breakfast, the queen is dead for lunch, and you’ll want to leave room for a nice hearty portion of the queen is dead for dinner, too. People are still going to work, sure, but there is no press except press about the queen being dead. Every business in the country—from chicken shops to pork jerky brads, chemists to cobblers—have felt the need to issue a public statement of grief about the queen dying. Supermarkets have turned down the beeps on their self-checkout machines to mark their depth of feeling for the queen. Our weather forecaster, the Met Office, has cut back the number of weather reports it is issuing “as a mark of respect during this time of national mourning.” An amusement park company, Center Parcs, announced its intention to kick all vacationers staying in their parks out for one day, the queen’s funeral, before realizing just how deranged that would be and making a U-turn.

Insufficiently serious cinematic releases like Ticket to Paradise, the new George Clooney and Julia Roberts vehicle, are being delayed. You can go to the cinema to watch the queen’s funeral, but you may only drink water and eat nothing, in case your hot dog meets with the displeasure of the dead queen.

So there’s a weird confluence of feelings: on the one hand, all of this is mental and stupid and therefore funny, but on the other hand everything being shut down or in a holding pattern until the “mourning period” is over is boring. The country is in limbo at the moment, or maybe existing out of time. The news feels like it’s from 1630, with headlines like “Public gather to kiss the rings of King Charles.”

But there is also something more sinister brewing here. Hospital appointments on the day of the queen’s funeral are cancelled. Food banks are closed. Normal people’s funerals are also cancelled. On the day the queen died, Liz Truss, our new prime minister, quietly lifted the ban on fracking in this country and also announced a plan to relieve Britons of crippling energy bills this winter without explaining where that money is going to come from. I’m not suggesting that anybody offed the queen early for political expediency, but parliament will now be closed for a month: again, to respect the dead queen.

This could hardly come at a worse time for the country. The cost-of-living crisis in the U.K. needs urgent political attention, and the cost of energy is going to become more and more pressing as the weather gets colder.

These are interesting times to have a new prime minister and a new monarch in the same week. Things really suck here at the moment. People are frustrated. Everything is expensive, the post-pandemic mental health crisis is about to hit us like a freight train, and our seas and rivers are full of sewage that Tory MPs voted to have dumped there. And a lot of people who loved the queen in a grandmotherly kind of way but would count themselves as republicans are now faced with King Charles, who has already been filmed snarling at an aide to remove something from a table. Looking ahead, it seems likely that we are going to witness a vast, gaudy display of elite wealth, King Charles’ coronation, just as the rest of the country drags itself through one of the worst recessions in history.

There have also been the small incidents of anti-royal protest all over the country that have been met by the law with a ludicrously heavy hand. A young woman was arrested in Edinburgh for holding up a sign saying “fuck imperialism, abolish monarchy.” A man in Oxford was arrested for shouting “who elected him?” when King Charles was being proclaimed as the king on Sunday.

The severity of this reaction from the police, and from the crown by extension, suggests an unease. Some people have wondered whether this uncertain time is going to provide an opportunity to interrogate whether we want a monarchy: whether there isn’t another way forward than simply accepting another unelected head of state, another round of our “purely symbolic” monarchy that is made up of real people who receive our real tax money and that we’re not allowed to criticize publicly or we’ll get thrown in real jail.

Perhaps it will. But I’m not convinced. I spent some time at Buckingham Palace this past weekend, reporting something else about the queen, because again: there is no room for other news here. People did not seem ready to revolt. The British people and the monarchy is the ultimate case of Stockholm syndrome, and I don’t see that there’s any real hope for a cure.

[Bicycle Bill]

And among all this, there are the throw-backs to tradition that prove there will always an England.

Royal beekeeper has informed the Queen's bees that the Queen has died
and King Charles is their new boss in bizarre tradition dating back centuries

The royal beekeeper — in an arcane tradition thought to date back centuries — has informed the hives kept in the grounds of Buckingham Palace and Clarence House of the Queen’s death.  And the bees have also been told, in hushed tones, that their new master is now King Charles III.

The official Palace beekeeper, John Chapple, 79, told MailOnline how he travelled to Buckingham Palace and Clarence House on Friday following news of The Queen’s death to carry out the superstitious ritual.  He placed black ribbons tied into bows on the hives, home to tens of thousands of bees, before informing them that their mistress had died and that a new master would be in charge from now on.  He then urged the bees to be good to their new master — himself once famed for talking to plants.

The strange ritual is underpinned by an old superstition that not to tell them of a change of owner would lead to the bees not producing honey, leaving the hive, or even dying.

Speaking from the Buckingham Palace gardens, Mr Chapple told MailOnline:  "The person who has died is the master or mistress of the hives, someone important in the family who dies — and you don’t get any more important than the Queen, do you? — and it is traditional when someone dies that you go to the hives and say a little prayer and put a black ribbon on the hive.  You knock on each hive and say, ‘The mistress is dead, but don't you go.  Your master will be a good master to you.’  So I’m at the hives now, I’ve done the hives at Clarence, and I’m now in Buckingham Palace doing their hives."
.......https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... -boss.html

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[ex-khobar Andy]

Yes I hear the same from my UK relatives. "Yes we know she's dead!" they shout at the telly when there is another reminder. Only about 10% of us were even alive last time there was a king and even fewer of us remember him - I was about 2.5 when he passed so I have no recollection of the time he came for tea.

When American friends come for dinner I tell them that they are hono(u)red - I got the second best china out for them. Naturally they enquire - why not the best? - and I tell them that every British citizen must, by law, have a special set of tableware (four place settings is the minimum) in case the queen decides to pop in for a cuppa and a bite. You'd be surprised how many buy it.

[MajGenl.Meade]

That is surprising. i bought it but then again I was living in England. I left the set behind when I moved to the USA. Doubted Brenda would stoop to visiting me here. But . . . you know . . . Streatham was possible, maybe even Finsbury Park.

[Econoline]

[BoSoxGal]

FYI the Queen is still dead. Big party again today and lots of news coverage on this, the 11th day of the Queen’s escape to eternity.

I feel guilty admitting that whilst I woke in the middle of the night to watch Diana get married when I was age 10, at age 51 I felt I needed the sleep more than the Queen needed me watching her funeral. I sent Joe and Jill to give my condolences.

The Queen is probably grateful to the 81 million Americans who ensured that Donald Trump would have no invitation to today’s festivities. His head is probably exploding seeing someone else getting this level of media attention and public adulation.

[Bicycle Bill]

The Queen is probably grateful to the 81 million Americans who ensured that Donald Trump would have no invitation to today’s festivities. His head is probably exploding seeing someone else getting this level of media attention and public adulation.

I hope that if it does, it looks something like the scene out of 'Kingsman"... with or without the little technicolor mushroom clouds.



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[ex-khobar Andy]

I see that TFG is pointing out that had he still been President they wouldn't have placed him in Row 14 at the Abbey.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... neral.html

That would have been fun. Not sure who I would have supported had he started a little brawl to get Meghan Markle's seat next to Harry. Of course he does have a bit of form in this regard.

[Bicycle Bill]

I see the Orangeman is warming up his boorishness for the "Service of Thanksgiving for the Life of Her Late Majesty Queen Elizabeth II" to be held Wednesday at the National Cathedral in Washington DC.  Maybe someone should remind Trump that no matter how important he thinks he is (or was), the invitations to the funeral were extended to President Biden and the First Lady, not the Clown Prince of America and his bimbo du jour, so he had to settle for watching it on TV like the rest of the unwashed masses.

Actually, I'll bet he didn't watch it at all.  It would have either interfered with his tee-time, or taken too much time away from a hard day of shearing his sheep.

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[Joe Guy]

Actually, I'll bet he didn't watch it at all.  It would have either interfered with his tee-time, or taken too much time away from a hard day of shearing his sheep.

And if hombre naranja were personally invited, he probably would have a bone spur flare up and not be able to attend.

[Burning Petard]

I note Trump was not invited to any of the official festivities in England. I wonder what his golf course in Scotland has been doing during this period.

I also note that the leader of the most populous nation in the Commonwealth was not there.

snailgate

[BoSoxGal]

I also note that the leader of the most populous nation in the Commonwealth was not there.

snailgate

I can’t imagine why Indians would mourn the passing of the Queen, as she represented exploitation and oppression to them.

‘Nationalist’ Modi skipped queen’s funeral & not many in India touched by her death: report

Post Views: 2,157
By: Shubham Ghosh

While several world leaders gathered in London, UK, on Monday (19) to attend the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II, who passed away on September 8, the prime minister of India was absent.

Narendra Modi, the leader of the most populous nation in the Commonwealth and was once called the jewel in the crown of the British Empire, skipped the funeral and Indian president Droupadi Murmu, the country’s ceremonial head, attended the royal event instead.

National Public Radio, US, recently ran a programme on this where reporter Lauren Frayer said that on the day the British queen died, Modi was found giving a strong anti-colonial speech and renamed a road in the Indian capital which was called ‘Kings Way’ or ‘Rajpath‘ after the queen’s grandfather — King George V. Modi’s government gave the road the new name of ‘Kartavya Path‘ (Path of Responsibility).

Modi said the road was seen as a symbol of slavery under the British colonial rule and while he condoled the queen’s death on Twitter later and his government observed national mourning on September 11, Frayer said few Indians were really grieving.

Priya Atwal, a historian of empire and monarchy at Oxford University, said the queen reminded of the colonial exploitation that the British had carried out in India which became Independent in August 1947.

“She benefited from the wealth and enslavement of colonised people and never did anything to rectify that,” NPR quoted Atwal as saying.

The queen’s third and final visit to India in 1997 had a controversial episode attached to it. It was on the occasion of 50 years of India’s Independence and the queen, who was accompanied by her husband, had gone to Amritsar where site of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre of 1919 is located. Protesters during that visit demanded the monarch to apologise for the massacre where a British general had ordered his troops to open fire on thousands of Indian civilians.

But to their disappointment, the queen had not said sorry but rode elephants, posed with the carcass of a tiger shot by her husband and waved at the public from convertible vehicles, Frayer said.

Aparna Vaidik, who is a historian at India’s Ashoka University, told NPR that the queen had come from a racist colonial period.

“You know, she grew up in an era where India was a colony. So those attitudes would persist. It’s not like she’s having her prejudices questioned. Her world remained the same,” she said.

Frayer said she spoke to some people in Mumbai over the death of the queen and most of them were least bothered.

“I did not think anything, actually. I did not have a lot of respect for her. So yeah, it didn’t make any change for me, frankly speaking,” said one to her.

“We do care a bit, but also it’s like, yeah, they ruled us, but now we are independent,” said another.

A third said, “What happened in the past, it doesn’t matter. We have to look forward.”

Frayer also said that India is now the world’s fifth-largest economy and recently surpassed its former colonial master.

Atwal said the tables have certainly turned adding that since the Brexit referendum, Britain is looking to India for deals and assistance.

“There is one thing some Indians would like to make a deal with Britain for – the giant Kohinoor diamond. It was mined in India centuries ago and is now embedded in one of the British royal family’s crowns,” Frayer added.

[Sue U]

I also note that the leader of the most populous nation in the Commonwealth was not there.

I can’t imagine why Indians would mourn the passing of the Queen, as she represented exploitation and oppression to them.

Saw the movie RRR recently and boy howdy Indian cinema really hates the British.

[MajGenl.Meade]

And no one from anywhere will go to Modi's funeral. Well, maybe his best pals from BRICS - Brazil, Russia, China and some place in southern Africa that used to have electricity and money. Corrupt swindlers and murderers each and every one

[BoSoxGal]

And no one from anywhere will go to Modi's funeral. Well, maybe his best pals from BRICS - Brazil, Russia, China and some place in southern Africa that used to have electricity and money. Corrupt swindlers and murderers each and every one

Yes, Modi is a repugnant ‘leader’ I certainly don’t dispute that.

But there are 1.38 billion people in India, many who are quite decent people and still don’t give a hoot about the Queen’s passing. They want the kohinoor back. And maybe an apology for colonialist atrocities.

[Bicycle Bill]

I note Trump was not invited to any of the official festivities in England. I wonder what his golf course in Scotland has been doing during this period.

I also note that the leader of the most populous nation in the Commonwealth was not there.

snailgate

Minor nit-pick, but the use of the word 'festivities' in regard to a funeral for someone as historic, iconic, and maybe even beloved as Her Majesty Elizabeth II, seems, as least to me, to be in poor taste.  Personally, I would have used a word like 'ceremonies'.

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[Bicycle Bill]

From the article BSG cut-and-pasted:

Priya Atwal, a historian of empire and monarchy at Oxford University, said the queen reminded of the colonial exploitation that the British had carried out in India which became Independent in August 1947.

So the queen, who didn't ascend to the throne until almost ten years after India achieved independence following WWII, still reminded the Indian people of colonial exploitation — much if not all of which had occurred years before she had even been born?

Carrying a grudge much?

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