With Charles being considerably less popular than Elizabeth, maybe the British will finally remove some royal privileges like https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/feb/08/queen-...
Queen Elizabeth II has died
981–990 of 1001 posts
Re: Queen Elizabeth II has died
#982It's weird, I've never considered myself a "royalist" but this news has affected me quite strongly. I just burst into tears unexpectedly on hearing this news and I don't quite understand why I feel so very sad. I guess I have grown up and lived my whole life (as a Brit) seeing and hearing the Queen, singing "God save the Queen" etc, and this news made me suddenly feel very old, very nostalgic, with the sense that all…
The Queen was mostly a symbol, right? It makes sense that you feel sad - it is not just the person who has passed, but also, in part, some essence of that which she symbolized.
Re: Queen Elizabeth II has died
#983It's weird, I've never considered myself a "royalist" but this news has affected me quite strongly. I just burst into tears unexpectedly on hearing this news and I don't quite understand why I feel so very sad. I guess I have grown up and lived my whole life (as a Brit) seeing and hearing the Queen, singing "God save the Queen" etc, and this news made me suddenly feel very old, very nostalgic, with the sense that all…
You most likely not one of those who were at the end of her might. You were not the one who suffered when she went on a tour to curtail the independence movements in the colonies, making her one of the biggest PR person for death and destruction.
Or one of the Children that her son raped and who she protected.
And so on and so forth.
One less evil person in the World.
Re: Queen Elizabeth II has died
#984This is the most disappointing thread I’ve seen on HN in a long time. A large number of accounts have been banned and rightly so. There are lots of good and interesting comments, but also lots of comments dancing on her grave. This is one of the lowest, meanest and fundamentally uninteresting things one can engage in.
I would say there are many things lower one can engage in than commenting on an internet forum on a news event, not least, presiding over decades of colonial terror and genocide. It might be worth considering that comments you find offensive due to their apparent disrespect might be justified in their anger in some way you can't directly relate to.
She's dead. She has ceased to be. If you think this is an appropriate time to trot out grievances, which I'm sure are all well justified, then we have a different understanding of common decency.
Re: Queen Elizabeth II has died
#985Quoted post unavailable.
HN is about more than tech and startups: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html . That's been so ever since pg changed the name of this place to Hacker News 15 years ago. Btw, your account isn't banned, but your submissions are getting killed because HN's software thinks you're running afoul of the rule against using the site primarily for promotion—see https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html : " P…
From YOUR guidelines: "If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic." but there we are: a dozen of posts about Queen Elizabeth II's death on HN...
Re: Queen Elizabeth II has died
#986> From commoners to heads of state, the queen has been known to smooth over embarrassing situations with a gentle quip or two. According to Blaikie, at a Buckingham Palace Garden Party, a woman was chatting with the queen when her cell phone embarrassingly started ringing. “You’d better answer that,” the queen told her. “It might be someone important.” > Then there was the notorious incident that occurred during Char…
The Madame de Gaulle story is apocryphal: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/happiness-envy/
Alas. Well, the phone-call story alone makes me a fan of the queen.
Re: Queen Elizabeth II has died
#987I have cried several times today because of this. I did not expect to, and I did not think I would. Yet I did -- and I do not understand why.
Re: Queen Elizabeth II has died
#988I've never really understood how we can still have monarchies but I do believe Elizabeth was probably one the better ones that have sat on those thrones. A few years ago I looked into how much power she had and I was shocked. I was also shocked by how much that monarchy owns.
You were shocked that most of the UK’s Democratic institutions exist at her pleasure?
Yes I was, but that was just a part of it. The "United Kingdom" is huge. It's hard for me to imagine, for example, how Australians are still owned and controlled by that Monarchy.
In practice it's not much different here since we still have the military draft but so far we can still fire a "President" via impeachment if they go crazy on us. The UK's "subjects" do not have that power, they are truly akin to chattel.
Re: Queen Elizabeth II has died
#989I've never really understood how we can still have monarchies but I do believe Elizabeth was probably one the better ones that have sat on those thrones. A few years ago I looked into how much power she had and I was shocked. I was also shocked by how much that monarchy owns.
It depends on what you mean by "owns" too. My understanding is that legally the monarch (or is it the Crown, I know there is some kind of distinction) is the landlord of last resort for all of his or her holdings. In the case of the British monarch, that includes not just the isles, but the Commonwealth realms as well. Any property taxes in those realms are technically feudal rents. And yeah the British monarch's the…
You've nailed it. I'd never really given the UK Monarchy much thought but a few years ago I spent a little time looking into it and was fairly well shocked by how immense their power and wealth is.
I think it's fair to say that Elizabeth was exceptional for how she handled her position as Queen but the United Kingdom is always just one "King" away from a disastrous ruler and that could get very ugly very fast and potentially for a very long time.
That said, same could happen here and for much the same reasons, which basically comes down to issues of common sense and fealty. If the first is low and the second high the odds of getting caught up in a shit storm are pretty good.
Re: Queen Elizabeth II has died
#990Let's leave aside the atrocities committed by British Colonialism. In fairness, those crimes are far bigger than any one person. Instead, focus on the individual. This is a woman who brow beat her daughter in law to the such a degree, that her two choices viable options were suicide or deportation. All for the crime of being born with a trace amount of black blood in their veins. This was not a good human being.