Brenda is gonna outlive Charles just for the heck of it.
4 Likes
He wouldn’t have heard it. Better just to tell the manservant the message, and send him the 10 meters to Prince Philip’s end to deliver it.
3 Likes
8 Likes
Small positive point The Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities report on racism in the UK just gained about half an iota of truth.
It’s not much,it is not like it extinguished the pants on fire but… 
2 Likes
I expect the flag-shaggers will be making complaints about the BBC showing insufficient respect and mourning now.
7 Likes
It was too much. BBC1 and BBC2 showed the same stuff at the same time. A simulcast all fucking evening.
BBC4 (the other ‘live’ terrestrial/broadcast TV channel) said some variation of it was “not broadcasting due to a special news event: see BBC1 or BBC2”.
Ye gods, they didn’t even give us the post-news weather forecast after News at Ten! Think about that for a moment - the weather was cancelled!!
We’re British, FFS, we NEED to know what the weather will be tomorrow. No matter who has died.
6 Likes
“Aww shucks, rain again.”
(I kid, I kid.)
4 Likes
Also throughout today’s radio broadcasts which makes you think the BBC have lost their gods damn minds.
Charlie Stross has a good take on this.
Shorter summary: the royal family is institutionally resistant to change, this means its death/mourning rituals are increasingly out of touch with contemporary cultural norms, and the cognitive dissonance between what they tell us is expected of us and what we know to be true will be exploited by manipulative and malignant political actors.
http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2021/04/a-death-in-the-firm.html
4 Likes
Spoilers: there’s a reason why it’s in this thread
3 Likes
The unrest in NI has been on the TV news every night this week. On the night of PP’s death it was reported that community leaders had said things should be calm that night, but there were still some sporadic outbursts.
2 Likes
Oh I know, but the Philip angle has kinda affected things on both sides according to the AP
Really? Apart from the paragraph below, the linked article makes no mention of Philip or anything about his death. I’m not sure what point you are trying to make.
The streets were calmer Friday night, as community leaders appealed for calm after the death of Prince Philip, Queen Elizabeth II’s 99-year-old husband. But small gangs of youths pelted police with objects and set a car ablaze during sporadic outbreaks in Belfast.
The violence in NI has many complex causes but mainly
- the recent funeral of a Sinn Fein activist attended by hordes and the PSNI did nothing to stop it or prosecute clear breaches of Covid regulations afterwards
- Brexit - the Loyalists feel they are no longer part of the UK. Some foodstuffs are in short supply. All due to Brexit and the negotiated NI Protocol putting a customs border in the Irish Sea
- Boris Johnson told blatant lies to the N.Irish and those are now coming home to roost (‘there will be no new paperwork for importers - if there is tear it up and bin it’) as the reality bites.
- The loyalists (esp the youth) are being fed a line that the Nationalists are winning
Let’s not divert the thread into a discussion of NI - but I am at a loss to understand why you brought it up.
3 Likes
Loyalists profess to be loyal to the Crown, so it is logical to ask, even if rhetorically, whether the death of a senior royal might prompt them to exercise a degree of self-restraint.
The Crown is an abstract institution as far as Loyalists are concerned. And in any event this is a tribal issue - Loylists vs Nationalists, not ‘test the Loyalists’ loyalty’ (which in any case is severely strained due to the lies and deception of the UK govt over the NI Protocol).
And to your main point, well there was indeed some restraint last night compared to what we have seen earlier in the week (which on Friday night was both sides hurling masonry and petrol bombs at each other over the ‘peace’ wall).
And for the British media (and public) it will soon become (if it is not already becoming) just more of ‘yawn - so they’re at it again’ until/unless it spills over to the mainland.
And I don’t think that was mr_racoon’s point or purpose in raising it.
2 Likes
I’ve only been to Northern Ireland once, but I do remember that we drove under an arch somewhere topped with a portrait of the Queen (and perhaps Prince Philip as well).
As politely as possible - so what? Mere symbols (of the institution). Symbols known to wind up Nationalists. Purely tribal symbolism. NI is full of all sorts of tribal symbols in plain sight. Murals everywhere on both sides, professing certainty and loyalty to the respective ‘causes’ in (very) graphic representations.
And none of it has anything to do with PP’s death or anyone in NI’s reaction to that. I still want to know WHY we are talking about NI in this thread. There is nothing in the article @mr_raccoon posted, that explains this.
2 Likes
Has anyone checked on Franco lately?
Still dead.
10 Likes
