I read the news today oh boy! Page 2,140

Quote: chipolata @ 8th January 2020, 6:32 AM

I don't really remember it but the footage on the balcony is legendary. I'm surprised it's never been turned into a TV show.

It sort of has, see above post. But yes a six parter docudrama like the Excellent Keeler thing on at the mo would be good.

Quote: Definitely Tarby @ 8th January 2020, 2:21 AM

I was a toddler at the time but it has become the defining moment for showing the grit of the SAS. I remember reading about how the team were gathered for a debrief after the incident and when news footage of it was shown on a TV one of the SAS troopers said to Margaret Thatcher to "get out the f**king way" and she complied with an apology. I'm not sure how much truth there is to that story but I like to think it happened.

That was the section leader John 'Mac'Aleese, it's very true, but his exact words were 'Move yer f**king heid' not knowing it was Maggie as he called her afterwards. Same guy who started the fire by setting light to the curtains after blowing the windows out and nearly roasting alive the trooper who got caught in his abseiling ropes. Legendary mission and gave the biggest ever boost to Special Forces all around the world. Not many embassy sieges after that one.

I'm not making jokes about tragedies, but I read the bushfire casualties - so many men, women, children, kangaroos - and I imagine this English guy, Oh my God, KANGAROOS! Now I care.

Isn't the problem with this Meghan and Harry business is that the Royal roles are so ill-defined. We need some proper job specs for all the royal family.

Quote: Alfred J Kipper @ 9th January 2020, 3:53 AM

It sort of has, see above post. But yes a six parter docudrama like the Excellent Keeler thing on at the mo would be good.
.

I am enjoying that. Although I must admit it is mainly because the actress playing Christine Keeler is bloody gorgeous. :$

Following Harry and Meghan's resignation from royal duties and their stated intention to make their own livings from now on, speculation regarding the nature of their forthcoming "proper jobs" has been rife.

For me, the most interesting question is "Will we see Meghan playing herself in The Crown?" Laughing out loud

Well if they do get jobs it might encourage the others to come off the Super dole like Fergie the peado and their brats not to mention a whole host of them. And before anyone says 'Tourism' they can f**k off thats another lie thats kept them fat. Why the f**k does anyone need a King or a Queen these days?

Can't believe how childish it is all getting - royalty, politics, identity politics, sport. celebrity, non celebrity media twerps, relationship people, people not in relationships, parents, partners, grandparents, siblings, modern kids, my own parents. It is like everything has turned into a fourth rate soap opera. Obviously it means that the past looks different or possibly just clearer. I'm seeing my few mates and the wider range of kids at school I was with in the 1970s as the real adults - in almost every case victim adults - and most of the adults who were around them - parents, teachers, doctors, older siblings - as having been generally spiteful and total tripe. The only huge exception to the rule was when I was at independent school and 11 and 12 year olds there were already chips off the old future looking block. Blair, Cameron. That sort of arsehole.

I still don't get this every bit as much as others don't get me. When people who don't know me are allowed into my house they pretend away all of the crabs with smiley faces, the fluffy snowmen in summertime and a lot of laddish leaning football and music memorabilia as if they never saw it and look at the books declaring I must be intellectual. Which I am not. Many too note my total lack of status in work and professional life and assume I am simultaneously immature. They can't get their heads around it. Yesterday I watched six episodes of The Furchester Hotel and it suited me far better than most of the rubbish that is on purely because it was reassuringly nice. I find it more normal than almost anything else I encounter. Then I looked at my old photos of mates and me in our 30s on holiday having a laugh. Lovely countryside. Grins with no need for an enforced shrieky "aren't we having fun - not". We walked a lot, laughed a lot, beered a lot.

There are pictures of me tying the shoe laces of my one armed mate who spent all of his time laughing and playing the guitar and never spoke about his disability. There is another of him in the bridal bed of our shared room with his thumb up looking ridiculous. And while they always fell out with each other at certain points none fell out with me. Ironically it was me who was the most nervous in others' company and while thoroughly enjoying it then had a need for retreating for three months. Not them. It's all so weird. I suppose the biggest challenge I find is that I had a strong preference for young middle aged heterosexual male company in young middle age. I have never really known why. Maybe deep down I am a woman or something but it doesn't feel like it. Thank God no one said to me at two "you need a sex change" because it would have promoted the physical above normal communication and the physical in anyone is death waiting to happen. I can't understand how when people like the Inbetweeners crave sex they don't see it is route one to their own graves.

Sometimes I beat myself over it to try to understand it. I am aware that I was often accused of being "too nice". Yet I think now it has something to do with the fact that when they did get spiteful or petulant I saw it as emerging from a childish spite in their family, personal and professional relationships which at least when with me they did escape from so that it was dulled down. Whereas those who never escaped those things - and I'm in that position now with no one of that sort around - were in the main just bloody atrocious like three year olds who are driven by money and hate the Muppets. Anyhow good luck to Harry in his trench with Meghan. I hope she grows up soon or by 60 when their "kid" is an "adult".

While once again I expressed my sentiments crudely and should know better. I would have to add that the concept of a republic dates back to BC.
What galls me is the idea of spending billions from the Public Purse pampering and supporting a dysfunctional family while their alleged 'Subjects' are dying on hospital trolleys while waiting to be seen by a doctor on a 30 hour shift. It is at best perverse and it always has been .
On a lighter note Charles has been a Prince longer than the Disney Prince Charming so that has to give him some credibility I suppose.

'Dysfunctional family' is probably the key to all this hoo ha. I'm sure We've all experienced or seen others experience, pain-in-the -arse in-laws who think they should dominate the family and lay down how everybody should live their lives. I mentally cheered when this couple gave the 2 fingers to the 'Royal Christmas' and did their own thing. They may well be utterly pissed off with the family and with having to obey Auld Lizzie's every whim. The money thing is a separate issue, but apart from that, I wish them good luck in building a happier life than they'd have tied in with the Royal bores.

Unfortunately I think this going to help the monarchy survive.The more free loaders there are the more chance of a revolution.

I am not a particular fan of the current royal family but nobody has yet addressed what a viable alternative should be (despite my posing the same question when the subject has come up on various threads in the past). There is no major country that has the head of its legislature as its head of state (including France, USA, Ireland, Italy, Germany, Japan, Russia...). There are important reasons for that.

Do we really need or want more politicians and more elections (Brenda of Bristol would despair)? And why do we think it would be any more cost effective, given the costs incurred in running, for example, the French presidency (replacing Buckingham Palace with the Elysee Palace) or the US presidency (replacing the costs of Harry & Meghan's private air trips with the upkeep of Air Force 1)? And would the prospect of the election of a British President Trump or a presidential Boris Johnson really placate the dissenters?

Grant me thirty years of equal division of inheritances and a free press, and I will provide you with a republic.
Alexis de Tocqueville

To get rid of the Royal Family we'd need another referendum, and something tells me that after the last one didn't go as smoothly as planned we won't see another for a very, very long time.

Also, they're great soap and the Daily Mail had about 50 plus pages this week devoted to Harry and Meghan, so they've become fantastic hissable villains now that evil and wicked parliamentarians trying to stop brave and true Brexit are gone.

Quote: Teddy Paddalack @ 11th January 2020, 8:08 AM

Grant me thirty years of equal division of inheritances and a free press, and I will provide you with a republic.

That's a very interesting offer. But I don't think anyone's going to give you that. Indeed, are you sure you've got 30 years?
I'm pretty sure I haven't.

Quote: chipolata @ 11th January 2020, 10:24 AM

To get rid of the Royal Family we'd need another referendum

Or a revolution...

I should have explained that It's a quote from the 19th century, not a offer Billy. I was rather hoping that my inclusion of the persons name that the quote is credited to, would have made that crystal clear? However I apologise for my assumptions and as way of apology I stand ready to explain further using my socks as puppets if needs be?

Trump does it again. The taking out of a rogue general had Democrats and liberals the world over condemning him. A few days later Iran's govt. is condemned by its own people after lying about shooting down a passenger plane. It's also ruined its dreams of having nuclear warheads - Boom. Oops, sorry wrong country, we all make mistakes.

Meghan now nearly as unpopular as Trump and as controlling as the state of Iran. Get's us to spend £2.5M doing up a house to her tastes then tells us they're only going to use it for the odd weekend as they're moving to Canada where the papers aren't as nasty. I hope the Queen tells her where to get off. Kindly eff orff and don't come back you gold digging new age hypocrite.