https://www.politico.eu/article/queen-elizabeth-death-plan-b...
(For context, this politician's ability to keep outliving his peers is a local running joke.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_heade...
A list, British Kings & Queens - by Length of Reign: https://britroyals.com/reigned.asp
These two women take the two top spots.
By the way, in the otherwise completely unremarkable hobby-writer webnovel "Monroe" (https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/35398/monroe) the queen was a - very popular - side character. After the introduction of "magic" in our universe she got her youth back and started killing monsters using armor and huge sword used by her ancestors hundreds of years earlier, in a sword and magic and levels fantasy universe. The author kept writing chapters about this initially not very important side character after it turned out a lot of readers found the Queen returning to youth and becoming a sword fighting and magic throwing monster killer at least as if not more appealing than following the story's actual main character.
Sample chapter where she appears (look for "queen", it's down the middle of this chapter): https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/35398/monroe/chapter/84715...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles,_King_of_the_United_Ki...
If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_longest-reigning_monar...
[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/health-coronavirus-britain-q...
> She remains the only female member of the royal family to join the military, and is the only living head of state to serve in WWII.
Personally speaking, I definitely respect her for that.
Dying in your thirties or forties? “Tragic.” Fifties? “Such a shame.” Sixties? “Too soon.” Seventies? “A good run.” Eighties? “A life well lived.” Nineties? “Hell of a ride.”
"In many [Commonwealth countries] constitutions state that the Queen, specifically, is the head of state. In these countries, constitutions will need to be amended to refer to her successor. In countries such as Jamaica, where there is a strong independence movement, and Belize, these constitutional changes will also require a referendum, according to Commonwealth experts. This is expected to bring about a moment of political peril for the new monarch, who, after Barbados became independent in 2021, could face the loss of another prominent part of the Caribbean Commonwealth."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgQpcC-ne64
This story is on topic because it's a major historical event and history has always been on topic here. If it doesn't produce an intellectually curious response in you, you're welcome to find something else that does—there are plenty of other things to read—but in that case please refrain from posting.
Positive-empty comments aren't substantive either, but as pg pointed out way back when HN was getting started (https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html), those are benign. The comments we need to avoid are the malignant ones.
Edit: by positive-empty I just meant comments like these:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32770030
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32769786
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32769037
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32769019
I'm not telling you guys to be royalists! I'm just asking you not to post crap comments, which this thread was filled with when I first saw it. We don't care what you're for or against, we just care about people using HN as intended.
Edit 2: I think the problem is that this comment has outlived its usefulness at the top of the thread because the bottom of the barrel comments have mostly been moderated away, whether by user flags or by us. I'm going to unpin this and mark it offtopic now. Please don't post any more bottom-of-barrel comments!—and if you see some, please flag them.
"People who are not expecting to cry will cry."
Looks like they were right!
Interesting read by the way which touches on many aspects.
[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/mar/16/what-happens...
Meanwhile my daughter is 6 months old and will likely live to see a half a dozen monarchs.
[0]https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=%28June+2%2C+1953+to+no...
One has to remember she took upon her shoulders a lot (essentialy from WWII to everything we've all gone through in recent memory, plus a lot of responsibility we can only guess at), and yet, by all accounts[1], was an amazing human being.
[1] https://twitter.com/davidmackau/status/1567894552744271872
> A mix of June and 19th, Juneteenth has become a day to commemorate the end of slavery in America. Despite the fact that President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation was issued more than two years earlier on January 1, 1863, a lack of Union troops in the rebel state of Texas made the order difficult to enforce.
> Some historians blame the lapse in time on poor communication in that era, while others believe Texan slave-owners purposely withheld the information.
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/abolition-of-sla...
When you say "extraordinarily cruel" then maybe you refer to the 2,100,000 to 3,800,000 Bengals you starved to death
The murder of 13 people (the inciting incident of the troubles) by the British army is not exactly comparable; even taking into consideration the total losses during that time of 3,500~, hardly comparable at all.
1870-1970 (or about that range) probably would be bigger change. That would cover time from before commercial light bulbs to commercial computers[1] and man on the moon. Societally it would include WW1 and the series of Russian revolutions leading to wave of other revolutions in Europe[2], and major advances in Womens' suffrage[3] among other things.
[1] e.g. PDP-8 and S/360
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutions_of_1917%E2%80%9319...
[3] "The Representation of the People Act 1918 saw British women over 30 gain the vote. Dutch women won the vote in 1919, and American women on August 26, 1920, with the passage of the 19th Amendment" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women%27s_suffrage
I think even John Lydon has respect for the Queen nowadays. [1]
[1] https://www.loudersound.com/news/john-lydon-on-sex-pistols-g...
> The monarch and their immediate family undertake various official, ceremonial, diplomatic and representational duties. As the monarchy is constitutional, the monarch is limited to functions such as bestowing honours and appointing the prime minister, which are performed in a non-partisan manner. The monarch is also Head of the British Armed Forces. Though the ultimate executive authority over the government is still formally by and through the royal prerogative, these powers may only be used according to laws enacted in Parliament and, in practice, within the constraints of convention and precedent. The Government of the United Kingdom is known as His (Her) Majesty's Government.
I wasn't aware that the monarch appointed the prime minister, but here you have the last one the Queen made:
> Liz Truss has became Britain’s next prime minister after meeting with Queen Elizabeth II, who asked her to form a new government.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/9/6/uks-johnson-bows-out...
The Wikipedia article later notes that prime minister appointment appears to fall into the ceremonial category:
> The sovereign has the power to appoint the prime minister. In accordance with unwritten constitutional conventions, the monarch appoints the individual who commands the support of the House of Commons, usually the leader of the party or coalition that has a majority in that House. The prime minister takes office by attending the monarch in a private audience, and after "kissing hands" that appointment is immediately effective without any other formality or instrument.[15] The sovereign also has the power to dismiss the prime minister, but the last time this power was exercised was in 1834, when William IV dismissed Lord Melbourne; since then, prime ministers have only left office upon their resignation, which they are expected to offer to the monarch upon losing their majority in the House of Commons.
You mostly do a pretty good job of avoiding that, for which we're grateful, but on the other hand, (a) we have had to warn you about this before, and (b) this subthread is a classic generic flamewar tangent—just what we want to avoid on HN.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32769470.
> Positive-empty comments aren't substantive either, but as pg pointed out way back when HN was getting started (https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html), those are benign
Pro status-quo bias. Monarchy isn't as relevant as it used to be but trusting the judgment and leadership of the elite is as relevant as ever and allowing positive-empty comments just reinforces that belief here. I guess that's just the sort of bias HN is ok with.
In 70 years, the number of gaffes/crises linked to her person (rather than other members of her family) are few, perhaps the only dents were the Diana incident and the secret influencing of the law by the crown ("royal consent" and "royal assent" - e.g. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/feb/08/royals-vette...).
This is the broadcast she was referring to: https://youtu.be/VJI9LPFQth4
- At least in the US, Canadian diplomatic residences are owned by her. Where I live, the owner of the consulate general's home is listed in public records as "Her Majesty the Queen Right Canada".
Here's another example from a few years ago:
> Charlie Zelle confirmed Wednesday he has purchased a five-bedroom, five-bathroom Minneapolis lakeshore home that has been the official residence of the Canadian consulate general.
> Records show Charles and Julie Zelle paid $1.65 million US for the property, with the seller listed as "Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth."
https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/canada-diplomatic-residence-so...
I think the grandparent comment’s author forgot to insert a “British” in front of monarch.
Edit:
> [Simeon II] is, along with the current Dalai Lama, one of only two living people who were heads of state from the time of World War II. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simeon_Saxe-Coburg-Gotha
However, Elizabeth II did not become Queen until well after WW2.
(Removed erroneous statement about the Swedish king being old enough to remember WW2; he was born in 1946.)
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
(for anyone rushing to post 'oh so you support $hideous-thing do you' – no, just trying to have an internet forum that doesn't suck)
0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Member_states_of_the_Commonwea...
As it was recently discussed here [0], You have a sad feeling for a moment, then it passes. [1]
[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32252198
[1]: https://everything2.com/title/You+have+a+sad+feeling+for+a+m...
Less theoretical than many seem to think: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/feb/08/royals-vette...
They do this in secret, to preserve the illusion.
As I wrote here three years ago[1]:
> Indignation isn't shallow or boring, it's the driving force behind social progress. Indeed, lack of indignation indicates either the inability to imagine a better world or perhaps the natural satisfaction with the status quo of someone who finds themself sitting on the upper rungs of society as currently structured. The latter no doubt describes many of us here.
Indignation isn't the arch-enemy of intellectual curiosity; apathy and bovine conformity are. This status-quo bias is what you would expect of a forum run for the benefit of a Silicon Valley for-profit institution, but it's still disappointing.
1. https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2013/jan/14/secret-papers-roy...
Just in case anyone didn't know, the UK does not have a singular written constitution like you may find elsewhere.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_United_Kin...
Many monarchies have been elective[1], and in some, the monarch is often picked from the same family. Even that is a better system than "first-born child".
Perhaps I should take bit out as it obviously wasn't clear enough.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/fabulous/18050875/queen-first-offic...
Queen Elizabeth II’s last official photograph from 2 days ago:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11185023/The-Queen-...
UK is in top-20 countries by democracy index.[1] It is classified as 'full democracy' (as opposed to 'flawed democracy', for example in the US).
[1] https://www.eiu.com/n/campaigns/democracy-index-2021/
UPD pdf version of the linked report: https://www.docdroid.net/xCeDvHc/eiu-democracy-index-2021-pd...
(Edit: that first sentence is really a template instantiation. When I post like this, it's never for or against <T>. It's always just about internet comments. People who are against <T> (or for it) often react like we're for <T> (or against it), but this is an illusion. It could quickly be cured by grokking the template, since at that level all these posts are entirely the same.)
It may not make so much sense now, but this thread was filling with the worst sort of dumb flamebait when it got started. That it isn't so now is because I've spent the last 3 hours refreshing the page and meticulously moderating it. If some of my comments are a little dyspeptic, that's because dealing with tedious comments is tedious, and I sort of pep myself up by letting loose a bit. Not the finest of practices but esprit de corps is also a need.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/08/world/europe/queen-elizab...
That's true, back then she'd have to move to the Bahamas: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallis_Simpson#Second_World_Wa...
Technically this occurred with the Bretton Woods agreement in 1944 [1] several years before Queen Elizabeth II ascended to the throne.
Look at the HDI: https://hdr.undp.org/data-center/human-development-index#/in...
Look at the top ten countries. How many are a constitutional monarchy? Which of them would you rather live in? :-)
Might be worth pointing out that not all Commonwealth countries are part of the Commonwealth Realm.
I was not making a case for royalism! just a case against tedious internet battles, and boy is monarchism one of those. (I mean, "Good riddance. The world is rid of a horrible person who has done horrible things" - ? Good grief. At least give us something amusing.) (that was a random example I just ran across)
More at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32771818 if anyone cares.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/feb/08/royals-vette...
If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
Which makes sense, to me. The Canadian experience of the world wars and subsequent decades was decidedly different than the British experience, and the role that Elizabeth played, though meaningful, wasn't as important to our cultural identity. But now that those wars are generations past, and both nations have enjoyed relative peace and comfort for some decades, the sentiments toward the monarchy are beginning to align.
0: https://bc.ctvnews.ca/canadian-support-for-monarchy-hits-low...
1: https://www.statista.com/statistics/863893/support-for-the-m...
If I were moderating myself I would now point out that the burden is on the commenter to disambiguate intent: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so....
I couldn't care less which side you guys are on re monarchs! If you want to make thoughtful critique, go for it. Just remember that the bar for that is rather high when it comes to a topic so filled with bombast as this one.
The idea that we'd be trying to preserve the royalist status quo and the elegance of railway travel is just so silly that I can't believe I have to say that. Clearly it was my mistake, though—that was no splash-free dive.
> The Tjapwurung, an Aboriginal people in what is now southern Australia, shared the story of this bird hunt from generation to generation across an unbelievably large slice of time—many more millennia than one might think possible. The birds (most likely the species with the scientific name Genyornis newtoni) memorialized in this tale are now long extinct. Yet the story of the Tjapwurung’s “tradition respecting the existence” of these birds conveys how people pursued the giant animals. At the time of this particular hunt, between 5,000 and 10,000 years ago, volcanoes in the area were erupting, wrote amateur ethnographer James Dawson in his 1881 book Australian Aborigines, and so scientists have been able to corroborate this oral history by dating volcanic rocks.
...
> What are the limits of such ancient memories? For what length of time can knowledge be transferred within oral societies before its essence becomes irretrievably lost? Under optimal conditions, as suggested by science-determined ages for events recalled in ancient stories, orally shared knowledge can demonstrably endure more than 7,000 years, quite possibly 10,000, but probably not much longer.
https://www.sapiens.org/language/oral-tradition/
So, anyway, be it 10k or 30k, definitely within an era of "history" and not "pre-history"
The articles probably landed on the top 10 list of most read articles (due to Google hits) after the Buckingham Palace statement this morning that the doctors are recommending continuous monitoring of her health, which probably was British understatement for "Her situation is bad".
https://medium.com/dose/does-the-queen-of-england-have-any-r...
https://theconversation.com/the-queens-gambit-new-evidence-s... https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2018/05/09/could-army-c...
But don't worry, as long as people live in a fantasy world where they believe they are just ceremonial figureheads and a benign presence, their position at the top will never be challenged. And at any moment when it does, peoples emotions/grief will be exploited to maintain the institutions by using north korea style propaganda campaigns and security operations:
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/mar/16/what-happens... https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/sep/03/security-ope...
> Then there was the notorious incident that occurred during Charles and Madame de Gaulle’s state visit to Buckingham Palace. “Somebody asked Madame de Gaulle what she was most looking forward to in her retirement, which was imminent,” Blaikie writes. “Not speaking English much at all, she replied, ‘A penis.’ Consternation reigned for some time but it was the queen herself who came to the rescue. ‘Ah, happiness,’ she said.”
https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2021/08/behind-queen-elizab...
Arsenic-laced baby-food would be tolerated, if not vaguely enjoyed, if it received that kind of positive coverage.
Mainstream UK press are regularly making North-Korea style calls for people who personally dislike the royals to be excluded from the media, eve when they are making even-handed reportage about them, just on the off-chance that their subconscious biases might seep through in to their work (or something? lol): https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10267447/Amol-Rajan...
Edit: to indicate irony..
- https://slendertroll.tumblr.com/post/66114152363 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_Town_(Specials_song)
"Naivete can also be detected in my supposition that it would take something as melodramatic as a near-miss nuclear conflict to nudge England toward fascism. Although in fairness to myself and David, there were no better or more accurate predictions of our country’s future available in comic form at that time. The simple fact that much of the historical background of the story proceeds from a predicted Conservative defeat in the 1982 General Election should tell you how reliable we were in our role as Cassandras. It’s 1988 now. Margaret Thatcher is entering her third term of office and talking confidently of an unbroken Conservative leadership well into the next century. My youngest daughter is seven and the tabloid press are circulating the idea of concentration camps for persons with AIDS. The new riot police wear black visors, as do their horses, and their vans have rotating video cameras mounted on top. The government has expressed a desire to eradicate homosexuality, even as an abstract concept, and one can only speculate as to which minority will be the next legislated against. I’m thinking of taking my family and getting out of this country soon, sometime over the next couple of years. It’s cold and it’s mean-spirited and I don’t like it here anymore."
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32769222
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32769043
Once that sort of comments were no longer so prominent, people thought I was asking them to say nice things about the monarchy. It took me a while to realize what was causing the misunderstanding, and once I did I demoted my post. It was basically a victim of its own success.
It was because, when the thread was getting going, it flooded with crap comments (e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32769222, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32769043). I decided to come down hard on those to try to ward off a shitshow. It would have been the same in any thread that was filling up that way, but which we weren't going to downweight off the front page. And we weren't going to do that because (a) the story was on-topic, and (b) it's such a big story that we couldn't get rid of it if we wanted to—people would just repost it until one got past us.
I posted https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32769925 at the top of the thread as a bulwark against the crap comments. That's also standard moderation. At some point, though, the thread started to fill with plenty of more substantive comments and then it looked to people like I was taking a side on the royalist question. Nothing was further from my mind.
It took me a long time to figure this out, probably because after 4 hours of doing nothing but refreshing this page and posting moderation scoldings, my brain was fried. Eventually I got it and the fix was simply to unpin https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32769925 from the top and demote it as offtopic. That seems to have calmed things down (except maybe for https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=theirishrover).
Just last year there was the Guardian investigation that suggested she was trying to hide the true extent of her wealth: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/feb/07/revealed-que... (I've seen other sources disputing it, but one can't argue that this is at least a hint of scandal)
- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20661919
- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2504770
But it is to be expected. There are the good guys in the Western sphere of influence and the bad guys. And this is a Western site. It cannot be expected to do much but reflect what is this site's audience. The Elephant and The Rider, after all.
Besides, she's just a figurehead, and makes no real decisions. So it's a bit strange to lay the blame at her feet for the Mao-style starving of her subjects (as they would have been considered by her at the time) or the many wars.
Remember that mobile phones were already "StarTac" sized in 1996:
https://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2009/05/the-evolution-of-ce...
As for social media, "Eternal September" was in 1993. In fact, I noted my grandmother's perception that people putting their thoughts out there was disruptive. In her mind that, like radio or TV that she saw get invented, this was obviously going to suddenly be everyone. So you're saying she was right. But she'd already seen it in the last millennium.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September
As for "fall of American Democracy", actually, the 1960s and early 1970s didn't feel a whole lot different from the recent summer of discontent, and remember that the LA Riots were 1992. And for someone around since 1900, 'fall of American democracy' was, at several points, not "unthinkable".
In any case, "social media" hundreds of years ago was called "pamphleteering" and, for example, contributed to French Revolution:
I did not referred to that comment.
> and the other, not much longer, ended in "cringe asf lmao".
The comment you're trying to misrepresent was "Great time to abolish the monarchy. Monarchies are fucking stupid.", and afterwards, once the downvotes started to flow, was edited with "Edit: yall actually support monarchies? cringe asf lmao"
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32769043
Why do you feel that opposing the concept of a monarchy should be censored in a discussion on a topic which naturally involves replacing a monarch?
This should be obvious if you've read HN's rules: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
I believe I've answered your other question in a few places:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32772419
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32771874
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32772067
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32771818
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32770946
... as well as in the comment you're replying to (starting at "I'm not telling you guys to be royalists!"). If you read those comments and still have a question that isn't answered there, I'd be happy to take a crack at it.
If she had wanted to, at some point, abdicate in favour of Charles, that could have been arranged. It would have required a special Act of the UK Parliament (following the prior example of His Majesty's Declaration of Abdication Act 1936) [0] – and probably also supporting legislation in the other Commonwealth Realms (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, etc) – but no doubt the governments of the Commonwealth Realms would have obliged. It was her own decision that she did not want that. I would not be surprised if, in another 10 or 15 years, King Charles III makes a different decision, but we shall see. In recent years, monarchs abdicating due to advanced age has become rather common – the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Luxembourg, Japan, among others.
[0] http://www.bailii.org/uk/legis/num_act/1936/ukpga_19360003_e...
https://twitter.com/grahamrkings/status/1567983024402305027?...
Take a counselling course and you’ll quickly learn that truly listening to people is a difficult and very valuable skill. Ask any counsellor and they’ll tell you that even for the most compassionate people, it can actually be quite emotionally exhausting to give their undivided attention to someone for hour after hour, day after day. It is in fact, best practice for BACP counsellors to schedule an hour with another BACP therapist for every 12? hours (this might not be the exact number but it’s somewhere in this ball park) spent with clients in order to discuss their own state of mind and decompress. The Queen had many luxuries but I doubt this was one of them.
The Dalai Lama and Simeon II of Bulgaria were both heads of state during WW II. But China invaded Tibet in 1950, and by 1960 the Dalai Lama ruled nothing. And Simeon lost his throne in 1946 (though he did get elected prime minister many years later).
I wouldn't count them as monarchs any more.
That said, looking at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_current_monarchs_of_so... I find the following currently reigning monarchs who were born before WW II and probably remember something from it:
- Emir Nawaf Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah of Kuwait
- King Harald V of Norway
- King Salman of Saudi Arabia
- Pope Francis of Vatican State
Metric is where "I" would raise my family, and based on all other western options, monarchies would come first; Brasilians idolises US, I can tell you because I was one of them, but them once you grow up and have a little more exposure to the world and different cultures, the current state it encounters itself it would be one of the last places I would live, because of its recurrent issues, mainly gun control, healthcare, I would also included woman's health birth choices under healthcare, those being the top ones, are a sad joke.
Of course everything depends on which stage one is at life, at the moment this is what I think with a young family, maybe if I was single just leaving Brasil, I would have fell in love with it, but that is not my experience. * At the moment I am fortunate enough to work from NZ with an US salary, and maybe when I am older I might retire on a Spanish villa, who knows, but US is not what it used to be.
> ...1,000 people are dying a month from the botched "response" to covid...
How many republics appear before the first monarch country in this[1] list? [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1104709/coronavirus-deat...
> I wouldn't lay this on the feet of the monarchy, cos the elected officials seem to be the main cause of it. Me neither, but it is hard not to conclude that the further away a country have been "independent" the worse it is.
* I have been on some business trips to US. PS: Other countries I would consider would be AU, NZ, UK, CA and Nordics, also I could not care less who is running what, as long as my family is safe and I have peace of mind.
As a second-generation immigrant from an Asian country, I have to admit that I was ecstatic at hearing the news. For someone who's family was poor to the point of drinking rotting bone stew and foraging grass partly due to the queen refusing to decolonize until Britian lacked the military might to do so, the only reaction anyone in my close circle could have is positive. This is juxtaposed with the prevailing sentiment here where it's socially unacceptable to celebrate her death. I wonder if all the moralist harping about how one should never celebrate a person's death felt about Stalin, or how they would react to the death of Carmen Ortiz or Vladimir Putin.
I really enjoy my time lurking here in this small corner of the internet and I hope that the moderators here step it up and either 1. ban politically divisive topics or 2. moderate away both trite positive and negative comments.
I have never liked the queen or the British monarchy. To me they are the biggest symbol of oppression in history and set my people and continent several centuries back while they enriched themselves. Never an apology, never any reparations.
So while i will not jump around and rejoice, I would be lying if I said I did not feel some happiness and relief at the news. And i think always will as this monarchy chips away.
I am not alone in these sentiments, but our sentiments as Africans have never really mattered in the grand scheme of things.
This press release from one of South Africa's bigger political parties expresses this succinctly. They did not mince their words and i know there are plenty of Africans who feel the same.
LINK: https://www.politicsweb.co.za/documents/we-do-not-mourn-the-...
[0]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32769867
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1937_tour_of_Germany_by_the_Du...
I've posted the same here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32775652
Edit: With all those things in perspective I ask the same question, would the late Queen of England have given up imperialism and colonialism and gave the nations to themselves if she lived during that era? Or was it convenient that she or anyone in power now didn't have to oversee the imperialism.
The hatred though is coming from unresolved hurt, which the modern British era is trying hard to forget and won't be easy until they take some sensible directions towards reparations and an honest apology at least from whomever even got to witness, including the late Queen. She had a chance to resolve or ease it in our memories. We'll remember her as someone who lived their life in power, saw the horrors their parents designed upon others and didn't even have courtesy to apologise.
So much for the British decency..
Edit: Sorry for the rant. My Grandpa and his kin suffered a lot and was in freedom struggle, it is that lasting impact. I've put it here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32775488 If you're a brit, please know that I am not against you or anybody for that matter. Just the monarchy's horrific past.
I’ll admit growing up I had some affinity for all the good in the world Pincess Diana was doing. And then she died. Which was sad. Her life ruined by the royal family and a failed marriage to guy who wasn’t faithful. And then many years later after visiting the UK and learning how much the public supported them financially etc and how little power they had and other than being the face of the money I asked myself: “what is the point of it all? To sell tabloids?”
Or if you come from one of the countries like me that was colonized under her watch you might have this reaction: https://twitter.com/laurajedeed/status/1567940027279196170?s...
https://reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1rs5wr/did_the_b...
Reduction of UK public debt by Thatcher (visible in the second half of the eighties):
https://ercouncil.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/ercchart171...
Increase of US public debt throughout the eighties by Reagan:
https://zfacts.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/US-National-De...
This is the point I was trying to make at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32769925 by quoting pg's 15-year-old bit about how empty positive comments aren't so bad (https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html). It's true that they don't contain any more information than empty negative comments, but they don't degrade the threads the way empty negative comments do.
Unfortunately people took that as some sort of pro-monarchist stance!
It's true that there's an asymmetry in that it's much easier for the people making positive comments not to break the site guidelines. In a way that's not fair—but it applies to all threads equally, regardless of whether the topic is monarchy or something else. It's also an unfairness we can't do much about—it's intrinsic to the problem of how to operate this forum.
We do try to make special allowances for negative comments that break the site guidelines but also include enough information to explain why the person feels the way they do, in a way other commenters can learn from. I did that in a few cases in this thread. What we don't make special allowances for is garden-variety flamewar, which there was also a ton of in this thread.
If you see comments that did not break the site guidelines but were moderated anyhow, that's bad and I'd like to see links so we can correct our mistakes (or, in the case of user flags, user mistakes). Mistakes are inevitable when trying to moderate threads with 1500 comments or whatever; moderation is guesswork, and hasty guesswork at that. But we're always willing to take a second look, and when we do see a mistake, to acknowledge it and fix it.
Not a very interesting answer, but there you have it.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/h%C3%B4pital
So the occurrence is quite possible.
India alone had $45 trillion dollars of wealth looted from the country: https://video.vice.com/en_us/video/how-britain-stole-dollar4...
Literally millions of Indians died as a result of deliberate policies of colonization and economic enslavement by the British.
Their history in Africa is too chilling to even recount here.
In 7 decades as a figurehead and leader of her people, she never apologized for these crimes, and continued to quietly benefit from the spoils of war.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/true-story-koh-i-noor...
You have to remember how old she was. The Queen's first Prime Minister was Winston Churchill, born in the 1870s. A staunch Empire man to the last, he was one of only two Prime Ministers for whom the Queen attended their funeral. He is famous for successfully defeating Europe when it was united under a dictator determined to reduce Britain to rubble and ship its population to labour camps. She was Queen as the British Empire wound itself up and became the Commonwealth. She saw the nationalization of the British railways and then the re-privatization of them decades later. She saw the birth of the European Coal and Steel Community, she watched as it evolved into the European Economic Community, and then into the European Union. She saw Stalin fall, then she saw the Berlin wall fall, and then the USSR. She observed passively as millions of people from the former Eastern Bloc then moved to the UK a decade later to make a new life. She saw the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. She saw the space race. She was Queen throughout the Troubles, living with the constant threat of being assassinated by the IRA, who at one point dropped a concrete breeze block on her car. She visited over 100 countries. She watched as countries fell to communist revolutions. She watched her country be brought to the brink during the Winter of Discontent, she watched as European nations transitioned from dictatorship to democracy. She watched global COVID lockdowns. She watched the Euro debt crisis and a thousand other crises come and go.
In short, she saw political institutions far larger and more important than British membership of the EU rise and fall over her lifetime, and far more dramatically. She saw the UK join the EEC, she saw it transform into the EU and then she saw the UK leave it again. Of all the things she's seen and done, of all the life and death battles she witnessed or even took part in, EU related events were surely some of the less memorable and important, especially given the relatively imperceptible changes Brexit so far brought about.
If you really want to engage in speculation about the Queen's views on Brexit and the EU, consider this. I already said Churchill was one of only two Prime Ministers the Queen honored by attending their funeral. The other was Margaret Thatcher. Both had complex views on the merits of European integration, with both being positive in their earlier years but coming to regard it as a mistake in their later years.[1][2] Both were strongly committed throughout their lives to the strength and independence of the United Kingdom regardless of what Europe did.
Look, this thread is the only result for exact phrasing:
https://www.google.com/search?channel=fs&client=ubuntu&q=%22...
However there is evidence Queen Elizabeth I (400 years ago) said part of it: https://books.google.co.nz/books?id=tayxm6fO1kIC&pg=PA528&lp...
They were printing reports from all over the world.
As an example the modern sporting event the Tour de France was started by a newspaper in 1903 and was reported on daily. That wouldn't really have been viable financially without mass communication. In fact the race exists solely to generate those reports.
There's a very good book called The Victorian Internet that covers early mass communication if you're interested[2].
In case you don't know what Paisley sounded like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ME45v08fQ0
Incidentally, we don't need you to change any of your views, nor do we need you to conform to the majority here (which, although highly international, is certainly mostly Western). But we need you to follow the site guidelines, which means using the site for intellectual curiosity and thoughtful conversation, avoiding name-calling and personal attacks, avoiding flamebait, and not using an account for a mostly-political agenda. There are other places on the internet to fight those wars. We're trying for a different sort of forum here.
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
To give an extreme example, these two comments in different threads are basically the same in terms of sentiment, prose and effect, however, one criticizes the CCP for their genocide of Uighurs, and the other criticizes the Queen. The difference here is one comment is at the top of the discussion while the other got the user banned.[0][1]
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24881093
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32770904
The "likeliest explanation" of ignorance for [0] here doesn't hold since moderation has posted comments on the topic and again, it's the top comment of an extremely popular thread.
Here are some more examples of popular but off-topic for HN comments against Putin and Cloudflare respectively.
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6371615
[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32707053
and their equivalents in this thread:
[4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32771398
[5] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32769645
[6] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32769550
Dang, a million kudos to you for curating the site, but this topic has been an absolute train-wreck and I hope you can at least take it off the front page.
Her behind doors effects on laws and how they would effect her interests may have set an example[0], but not a positive one.
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/jul/14/queen-immuni...
https://govdata360.worldbank.org/indicators/hd8f5d509?indica...
I fail to see how making Finland more stable would improve anything, or that adding a monarch would achieve this goal.
Royalism sounds like the hunt for a silver bullet that would fix complex problems and institutions in a society. I don't think there is any evidence quasi-religion by itself improves institutions.
https://twitter.com/NaomiOhReally/status/1568157931538989056
https://twitter.com/NaomiOhReally/status/1568157931538989056
Either your typical bottom-up social media fake news, or the usual MO of certain intelligence agencies to sow division in the anglosphere.
I think it is more of an indicator of overall prosperity, which may, in fact cause civilizational decline. I'm reminded of the mouse utopia[0], and my own family.
>"But also: you could have just put more effort into it. As it stands, the comment you're talking about could be persuasive only to someone who takes your word on things, because it doesn't support any of the arguments it makes."
No one reads long walls of text, not least in threads with >1000 comments. Concision is a great virtue in nearly all communication. I would say two things to the refrain that I didn't 'support' any of my assertions, and that my post 'could be persuasive only to someone who takes your word on things'.
First, they are a form of 'immanent critique'[1]. Anglo-American society recognises some basics moral and political norms. These include the idea of equality and that people shouldn't be privileged because of blood or race, the idea of liberty and that one people should not coercively rule another, and the idea of democracy and that a people ought to choose its own government. I made some simple observations to the effect that the British monarchy egregiously violates all three.
In this sense I don't need to argue for my evaluative premises because they're all bromides within our gestalt. But if you juxtapose them with some basic facts about the monarchy, suddenly it becomes obvious that there's a catastrophic contradiction. I am working from premises most people accept to a surprising - but I think obviously correct - conclusion.
Second, this same burden of 'support' is not being applied to those on the other side of the conversation. The person to whom I was responding said nothing to support their assertion that the Queen was a 'moral authority' other than that the Queen didn't succumb to personal scandal. A standard that lots of very bad people meet.
Note that this scenario may still happen, but she was extremely lucid to realize its salience:
https://time.com/6212004/queen-elizabeth-republicanism-anti-...
"QI has determined that the author of the quote is not someone famous or ancient.
It was crafted by a student, Kenneth John Freeman, for his Cambridge dissertation published in 1907. Freeman did not claim that the passage under analysis was a direct quotation of anyone; instead, he was presenting his own summary of the complaints directed against young people in ancient times. The words he used were later slightly altered to yield the modern version. In fact, more than one section of his thesis has been excerpted and then attributed classical luminaries."
