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Joe Biden probably didn't want to be there. Thou he was the most powerful man in the room by some distance. Unlike Mary o leary and the oddball you've just anointed as king hes also safe in the knowledge his country will still be intact and wont have broken up within the next decade.
There is absolutely no way that 4+ billion people watched the funeral.
Saw it reported on their TV news - maybe
Sat down and watched it - absolutely not.
I am a 63 year old republican socialist with a low threshold for fawning, sycophancy and bullshit. I didn’t do the royal jubilees, I missed all of the Chas and Di stuff, I didn’t watch the sickening outpouring of saccharine and subservience after the death of ‘The People’s Princess’, or any of the manufactured embarrassments that followed over royal events. It is hard to avoid the noise, but easy to avoid the coverage.
I have no animosity to Elizabeth Windsor - she had no choice where she was born and played her hand pretty well, but I despise the institution of monarchy and hereditary privilege and want no part of it if at all possible.
It is a major event. I recognise and accept that. So was the Nuremberg Rally. Just because something is big and important doesn’t mean everyone has to join in to be part of it!
This time has been easy. We have been travelling around Canada since early August - usually in B&Bs or hotels with a TV screen we have never turned on. We were in a taxi last week when the segment of the radio news that in passing covered the QE2 death was ‘sponsored’ by a funeral home!
Apart from that - nada. No reason to tune in and many many reason to be grateful that the circus is a long way away!
When I switched on 5 Live first thing this morning and heard the presenters still banging on about the Royals, that was when I decided to send an e - mail of complaint to the BBC about their completely one eyed coverage - with a poll showing the forty nine per cent of those polled thought there was too much coverage, the views of around half of the country seem to have been completely ignored.
Well I for one enjoyed it. Looking back, I don't think the overriding feeling is one of grief more one of pride. She was an old lady who lived a long life and any death is sad, but I never knew her, had limited feelings on her and it would be a bug lie to say I felt any grief.
In that sense, the coverage, at it's most solemn, was over the top, as I think was the sheer amount of hours and newspaper inches given.
That said, I do think it was a very symbolically important event in the country's history, because I do think she was a link to a world we now read about in the history books; ie the second world war, post war Britain etc. You don't have to be an arch monarchist to recognise that.
The pride I felt was in the country coming together a little more than usual, and sharing, for most, something in common, in the way that Wales did in the summer of 2016, or England did last summer. The nearest thing I can thing of that was similar was the 2012 olympics, which also had it's detractors. I also think the weather, the showing off of the architecture, the genuine feelings many had showed us in a good light. I also think the break from political bickering at a national level was refreshing. I do think the national mood has shifted by a degree or two, and will be interesting to see what happens in the coming months and years and what kind of role Charles has.
It is time to move on now of course, and legitimate conversations about the royal family should continue and I would like to see numerous changes but I can still look back on that last week with a sense of pride and will look back fondly on the queens role.
This coming together , great Britain cobblers is absolute tosh
I don't know anyone among my social circle who was even vaguely interested in all the nonsense
I have nothing in common with people who catch a train to London to stand in line for 12 hours before having a little cry for the cameras then coming home . I don't want uniting with these deranged souls .
These people are nutters.
4.1 billion people watched this event or some reports saying 5.1 billion people watched the event yesterday thats 63% of the worlds population
i find that hard to believe in fact a load of hogwash would love to see the stats here must have been Bidens dominion machines wired up to the grid !
A.T.B Mozzer
You say it's a world we now read about in history books, but it strikes me that it's a world many would return to at a drop of a hat if they could. Too many of the generation that came after the Second World War have this truly bizarre nostalgia for ir - it's almost as if they're sad to have missed our on it.
Did the country really "come together"? How can we know when anyone with a differing opinion was, effectively, ignored by the mainstream media?