Live data from Hacker News

Prince Philip has died

royal.uk

231–240 of 553 posts

Re: Prince Philip has died

#231
post #79

Some famous quotes of Prince Philip. Make your own judgement while you downvote his comments. “If you stay here much longer, you’ll all be slitty-eyed.” (to British students in China, during the 1986 state visit) “Do you still throw spears at each other?” (in Australia in 2002, talking to a successful Indigenous Australian entrepreneur) “There’s a lot of your family in tonight.” (after looking at the name badge of th…

Everyone is product of their time. Give them the benefit of the doubt. He could be one of the reasons why we are all not speaking in German right now.

Doubtful, he was neither American nor Soviet.

Re: Prince Philip has died

#232
post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a reason for this, I'm a bit vague on the details, but when Parliament took control of the country from Charles II, one of the agreements was that the monarch would keep out of political affairs.

It went on quite a bit longer than that. In 1834, William IV sacked a prime minister for purely political reasons. His successor, Victoria, was probably the UK's first constitutional monarch in the modern sense.

i understand victoria did the same. She was a pretty powerful monarch. Maybe even more so than her predecessors.

Re: Prince Philip has died

#233

This is an actual honest question; why is this on hacker news?

Hacker News is a forum for anything of interest to nerds. It doesn't have to be technical or scientific or academic.

The death of a royal may be of interest to nerds.

Re: Prince Philip has died

#234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Queen holds a weekly audience with the Prime Minister. It's unlikely they make chitchat about the weather. The monarch also vets laws while they're being drafted and can make suggestions for changes if they affect their interests. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/feb/08/royals-vette... The Queen isn't just the head of the armed forces - they swear an oath of loyalty directly to the Monarch, not to the peo…

The Queen isn't just the head of the armed forces - they swear an oath of loyalty directly to the Monarch... Interestingly (to me, anyways) is the oath is made directly to Queen Elizabeth by name, not to the crown in general. And isn't made by officers in the Royal Navy, because the navy wasn't created by act of Parliament, but by royal prerogative, so their fealty is assumed.

> [T]he oath is made directly to Queen Elizabeth by name, not to the crown in general.

So when a monarch dies does everyone in the armed forces take a new oath?

Re: Prince Philip has died

#235

The codename for his death is : "Operation Forth Bridge"

What does this mean?

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 not leaked.

Of course with the internet means they code words are widely known (they were also named on The Crown) - and indeed trending on twitter, which is amusing given how some documentation still says they are super secret. The information can't be easily kept underwraps now as the chance of someone scooping it on twitter increases with the number of people aware of it and the time taken, I suspect there's only a few minutes between the palace announcing it to bbc/sky/itn and the embargo time - certainly BBC didn't have enough time to get Huw Edwards in for example (he's in now)

Other bridges includ(ed)

Menai (Charles - Price of Wales, Menai Bridge is from Bangor to Anglesey)

Tay (Queen Mother, near balmoral which I think was her ancestral home)

London (Queen, London being the captial)

Forth being the bridge at Edinburgh, so makes sense for the Duke of Edinburh)

Not sure if William has one, maybe it would be the River Cam.

Re: Prince Philip has died

#236
post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately people are very quick to assign "generational guilt" these days. It's as if we've gone backwards, and are no longer capable of being individuals. "Oh, you're white/black/related to x/decended from y, did you know your ancestors did *that*?"

because it’s much simpler for people to find external causes to their misery than looking at their own actions. nothing new, see “religion”.

Yes, history is a figment of our imagination, every person's misery is due to their own actions. /s

Re: Prince Philip has died

#237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Queen holds a weekly audience with the Prime Minister. It's unlikely they make chitchat about the weather. The monarch also vets laws while they're being drafted and can make suggestions for changes if they affect their interests. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/feb/08/royals-vette... The Queen isn't just the head of the armed forces - they swear an oath of loyalty directly to the Monarch, not to the peo…

The Queen is the disabled root user of the constitution. The government are the sudoers. She doesn’t get to ‘vet’ laws in any meaningful way. She rubber-stamps them. The fact that the armed forces swear an oath of loyalty to the Queen is simply because she is head of state. Nothing in your comment actually demonstrates politicality.

The crown is just a rubber stamp, until it’s not, like in the Australian constitutional crisis

Re: Prince Philip has died

#238
post #42

I really wish we could just do away with all this royal family nonsense. You guys are somehow special because what? Useless social fiction from antiquity.

It's obviously not a social fiction, regardless of what you may think about monarchy in general. They have power because they inherited it from someone that conquered it. Just like people may inherit companies and fortunes.

Yes, that is indeed the point.

Re: Prince Philip has died

#239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Queen holds a weekly audience with the Prime Minister. It's unlikely they make chitchat about the weather. The monarch also vets laws while they're being drafted and can make suggestions for changes if they affect their interests. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/feb/08/royals-vette... The Queen isn't just the head of the armed forces - they swear an oath of loyalty directly to the Monarch, not to the peo…

The Queen is the disabled root user of the constitution. The government are the sudoers. She doesn’t get to ‘vet’ laws in any meaningful way. She rubber-stamps them. The fact that the armed forces swear an oath of loyalty to the Queen is simply because she is head of state. Nothing in your comment actually demonstrates politicality.

but she can't actually use her root privileges too much, like start/stop too many processes (or say anything about brexit)

Re: Prince Philip has died

#240

Because Prince Charles is heir to the throne (and has been portrayed more negatively in the news media than any other living person), some in the HN community may be surprised to know that he wrote a book on philosophy . https://www.amazon.com/Harmony-New-Way-Looking-World/dp/0061... I found the book to be astonishingly good. It takes a design approach to Platonism and western esotericism. It goes deep into "sacred g…

> and has been portrayed more negatively in the news media than any other living person Uhm, what?

Deserved or not, the coverage he gets has been a balancing act to all the generally sympathetic coverage that Diana gets.
Post reply on HN