you can see exactly what she thought of the music in the last photo…she’s wearing ear-plugs!

One must be impressed by one’s butchery of one’s own language. :P

A fabulous weekend for the British ruling class and it’s sycophantic apologists.

“A group of long-term unemployed jobseekers were bussed into London to work as unpaid stewards during the diamond jubilee celebrations and told to sleep under London Bridge before working on the river pageant.

Up to 30 jobseekers and another 50 people on apprentice wages were taken to London by coach from Bristol, Bath and Plymouth as part of the government’s Work Programme.”

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/jun/04/jubilee-pageant-unemployed

Solidarity with our subjugated British neighbours? Not to mention the fact that the Irish media seem intent on following the lead of the Royalist propaganda machine, the BBC.

I think you just hate happiness.

Cheer up, Benny.

Also from the great man…

“We confess to having more respect and honour for the raggedest child of the poorest labourer in Ireland today than for any, even the most virtuous, descendant of the long array of murderers, adulterers and madmen who have sat upon the throne of England”

He also said “We serve neither King nor Kaiser.” He would have to change the gender of both if he were here now. By God I wish he were.

Queen Elizabrit.

Queen Lizard Breath

All monarchy (England,Spain,Morrocco,Holland,Thailand, Saudi Arabia etc) is archaic, undemocratic and simply a power structure enabling a privileged few to live off the many.How any intelligent person with self-respect would bow to another human being and passively subordinate themselves in law, is phenomenal in my opinion.The British queens motto, which is essential to its values, is “Dieu et mon droit” meaning essentially “God and my right” or a better translation would be “My divine right”. The establishment believe the monarchy gained its rights from god.

If you don’t believe in god, you will instantly feel this “divine right” is nonsense full stop and if you do believe in god, you must ask the question “Why did god pick her/him and not me?”. You will of course ask yourself no such question because the whole idea of monarchy is absolute sh*te and secretly you all know this!! Pomp and ceremony and wasted taxes around the globe to keep a few in their finest.To say “they don’t do any harm” is also wrong as the money they largely waste on themselves could be much better spent on the young,old and sick worldwide.I have nothing against individual monarchs but against monarchy as a whole.

Maybe its because most people aren’t as narrow-minded as you and prefer to live and let live.

I think you missed my point. While the Royal Family may warrant some media coverage, it would seem to a lot of people to be excessive and biased. For example, take another antiquated and irrelevant institution, like the Catholic Church. While it may garner excessive media coverage, it is for the most part objective, often times critical, and rightly so. Why is the monarchy continually portrayed in such a favorable and uncritical light?

Also, it is not narrow-minded to challenge the hypocrisies of society, it is however to accept them unquestionably.

Can’t the world just be run along whatever lines Benjamin Smith arbitrarily rules right and proper?

And if not, why not?

Are the principles of democracy and accountability not universally held in the western world? If so, the existence of monarchy is a savage hypocrisy.

The UK has one of the longest continuous traditions of parliamentary democracy in the world. You can’t really fault the UK on that score, and the monarch has historically been held to account. Charles I notably had his head cut off by the warty Republican, Cromwell.

The uk has a democratically elected government. The queen is only a figurehead, and the institution of the monarchy brings in far more in tourism revenues than it costs the taxpayer there. Let them at it I say…

The UK, the beacon of democracy. While the British taxpayer is exploited by monarchical decadence, and it’s parliamentary democracy proceeds with imperialist war mongering. Interesting that.

So a precedent already exists for a British monarch being held to account and having his head chopped off? Something for British subjects of today to think about….

@Mattoid

Note that the Queen is an ‘un-elected’ figurehead. And surely the tax used to pay for Royalist “celebrations”, not to the mention the 17 trillion the Queen is worth, would help shore up some of that tourism revenue, which in correlation to the monarchy is very difficult to substantiate.

“British taxpayer is exploited by monarchical decadence”

50p a year for every man woman and child.

How much did this obscene Jubilee “celebration” cost? And do you not think this money could be better spent elsewhere? You know, on the poor, the sick etc., remember them? – This Royalist apologism is facile.

Do you tend to see the cost more than you see the value of things?

What price a nation’s celebration.

All the talk of undemocratic exploitation would be more relevant if it wasn’t for the fact that opinion polls have consistently shown that the majority of brits support the monarchy…

Why bother arguing about it?We dont have a monarchic system here in Ireland so we shouldn’t be bothered, just as I wouldn’t be bothered about the monarchy in Spain or Thailand etc.

@BENJAMIN where do you get the figure 17 trillion from? Best estimates for the Queen’s net worth is less than 500million.

And there has been a fair amount of negative media coverage of the royal family over the years….remember when Diana died, for example?

At least the British have, on the whole, a stable and pretty decent national figurehead to bring the country together. Celebrations such as this are great for the national psyche.

Every developed nation on earth has a significant number if under privileged, and as it happens the royals work inredubly hard for hundreds of charities to try and help improve their lot.

Don’t you know that 96.2% of statistics are made up? ;)

Give over !

Mark, we’ve done both – you may have missed this article all about the mini-marathon: http://www.thejournal.ie/lets-hear-it-for-the-girls-dublin-mini-marathon-in-pics-470168-Jun2012/.