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Prince Philip has died

royal.uk

421–430 of 553 posts

Re: Prince Philip has died

#421
post #241

99 years of tax subsidies, he surely had a good life without many regrets. It's beyond my comprehension why humans still keep these hereditary regimes, constitutional or absolutist, alive

They are just figureheads these days. No role in politics aside from ceremonial. They draw in crowds of tourists to the UK, and they aren’t that expensive to maintain. Their £67m yearly grant[1] works out to about £1/year per person in the UK. That’s pretty cheap for a fantastic PR service. Yes there is probably added costs on top like police/security but overall/net they don’t feel like a massive burden on the finan…

The French Republic is the number 1 tourist destination in the world. The UK is number 10 with less than half as many visitors. The only other monarchies in the top 10 are Spain and Thailand.[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Tourism_rankings

Re: Prince Philip has died

#422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the pre internet days, when communication went through various manual means like telephone exchanges, there were codewords known by various people to announce royal deaths without it leaking. The death of the Queen for example has to be announced to all commonwealth country leaders at the exact same time, which means coordination, which means following certain plans, but limiting the information to make sure it's…

Since the code words are related to what they reference in some way, I find it difficult to believe that they were ever intended for a serious purpose. Maybe they are useful for clarity of communication in some way, but certainly not for secrecy (which would probably require randomly selecting names from a word list).

"Secret" is a relative term, up until about 10 years ago I suspect very few had heard of it, I'd be interested in anything online before 2016 referring to them (there was big media coverage in 2017)

The specific details however aren't public knowlege, with various secrecy levels, and there are various different plans depending on the situation (what happens if the queen was on a plane that crashed for example, or what if Charles died in an avalanche in Austria), and plans of course are constantly changing (what happens if there's a massive pandemic which means people can't congregate in their millions to pay respects as they did with Diana, what happens if the news is leaked on twitter before coordinated official announcement)

Re: Prince Philip has died

#423

Also a well documented racist. Of course more of the obituaries are leaving that out and bending words to avoid that... examples I've seen: (Source: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Sg_lsY_Y-RoED3IjAjZR... ) - "with off-the-cuff remarks that were called oblivious, insensitive or worse." - "The duke could be blunt and outspoken to the point of offensiveness" - "his unfiltered remarks and attempts at humor becam…

Well he was born in the 1920s. Nearly everyone born in that time would be considered racist or sexist since those terms were basically unheard of before the 1960s. I don’t really see what’s the use of condemning him given that, you ought to recognize that his generation intentionally cultivated your generation of anti-racists and anti-sexists.

Re: Prince Philip has died

#424
post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people think "1918" as that was the first time some women were allowed to vote, and later in the year they were allowed to stand for parliament (and Nancy Astor did so in 1919) Like most things, Suffrage was a scale - before 1835 most men didn't have a vote either, working men got it in 1867, 1918 all men over 21 and property holding women over 30 got the vote, in 1928 all women over 21 and in 1969 everyone over…

> In devloved areas like Scotland suffrage is even lower (16) Only for certain elections -- local and Scottish parliamentary. You still have to be 18 to vote in elections for Westminster; the same was true of European elections when they were still a thing in the UK.

True, I think all of Scotland's elections (aside from Westminster) are relative and democratic too unlike in England

Re: Prince Philip has died

#426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

lol, chill out. everyone has said regrettable things.

Not everyone had the same opportunities to know better afforded by a world-class education and extensive travel abroad. Not everyone continued to say these "regrettable" things well into the 21st century. Not everyone was aware that they had a platform by which their words might have an amplified effect.

Judging the past by contemporary politics doesn't make much sense. The present and the past are separate contexts.

Re: Prince Philip has died

#427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there was some sentiment as to migrating Canada away from officially being tied to the British crown, even though it's all ceremonial, but they were waiting on Elizabeth to pass on out of respect. Not sure what the support for that is in Canada.

Support for abolition of the monarchy is about 53% in Canada, but because of the situation with Quebec, Canada's constitution is effectively impossible to amend, which makes the logistics of becoming a republic pretty daunting.

Interesting, what's the situation with Quebec?

Re: Prince Philip has died

#429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Im sorry but what do you think the ‘G’ stands for inside the Freemasons logo? Also: Flintsones? The Queen’s cousin is the most senior Freemason in the hierarchy.

It most commonly refers to God, or the great architect of the universe. It may be considered to refer to geometry but that’s not usually the default and not what I’ve seen discussed or referenced most commonly from masons

God or geometry, that is one of the great debates. The letter is present in French freemasonry as well. The letter D would be more appropriate (Dieu). Geometry however would still hold. Anyway without going into detail, geometry has important place in freemasonry. The question then is geometry of what exactly? But we are getting off topic.

Re: Prince Philip has died

#430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You also get one on your 60th wedding anniversary. I organised one for my grandparents a couple of years back. They also received a card from the Prime Minister [of New Zealand], the Leader of the Opposition, their local MP, and a couple of other random politicians and dignitaries. It's not something that I thought about at the time, but I'm quite happy that it's something you need to apply for. It would be a bit dis…

Are birth, death and marriage records not public?

Yes but localized and rarely digitized
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