The Royal Family

[tonyh29]

8 minutes ago, Genie said:

I was chatting to a colleague today at our daily startup meeting. He was saying that he watched a lot of the funeral, then he mentioned he was back in Romania and it was being broadcast live there too.

I've seen one agency estimate that 4.1 billion people watched it around the globe , not entirely sure how they come up with those figures when we already know that at least half the men on the planet were out mowing the lawn whilst it took place  

but as Macron said  , she was "The Queen " and  I'd imagine the interest around the world was huge

 

 

[Panto_Villan]

5 minutes ago, tonyh29 said:

I've seen one agency estimate that 4.1 billion people watched it around the globe , not entirely sure how they come up with those figures when we already know that at least half the men on the planet were out mowing the lawn whilst it took place  

but as Macron said  , she was "The Queen " and  I'd imagine the interest around the world was huge

I'm sure it's a huge event but I find those figures a bit suspect. I reckon they must include anyone that sees indirect coverage of it too - like people who see a few shots of it as part of their daily news coverage, etc. But even then it seems to stretch credulity a little.

I also saw the figure of 2.5 billion quoted which I find a bit more believable personally. That's only 1/3 of the entire human population.

Edited September 20, 2022 by Panto_Villan

[Genie]

I wonder what percentage of the worldwide are aware that “The Queen” died, 95%?

I can’t think of another death that would reach more people.

[ender4]

2 minutes ago, Genie said:

I wonder what percentage of the worldwide are aware that “The Queen” died, 95%?

I can’t think of another death that would reach more people.

The Pope  

The current USA president at any point

Chinese president

Putin

Zelensky

Michael Jackson

Kim Kardashian?

 

 

[Genie]

Just now, ender4 said:

The Pope  

The current USA president at any point

Chinese president

Putin

Zelensky

Michael Jackson

Kim Kardashian?

 

 

I don’t personally think any of those would quite reach the same depths of the population, but would undoubtedly spread far and wide.

[Panto_Villan]

1 hour ago, Zhan_Zhuang said:

It is interesting...

Thing is how many people would give up their hereditary, wealth, titles, pay taxes and lose earnings if placed in their position?

Of course many can claim to be true moral agents yet it is all theoretical. It's easier to point fingers and criticise after all, it comes natural to many unfortunately.

This is one of the interesting things about the "abolish the monarchy" debate - what would the Windsors be left with if they abolished the monarchy?

They were rich and powerful before they ascended the throne - I mean, you don't get to be king / queen unless you're already one of the top dogs. There's plenty of other rich aristocratic families with hereditary wealth floating around, so nobody seriously expects the royals to be left with nothing if we abolished the institution (well, outside VillaTalk). I imagine the arrangement probably would be that the Crown Estate (worth about £15bn) becomes formal property of the UK government while the privately held assets (duchy of lancaster / cornwall worth ~£1.5bn) remain the property of the Windsors. 

So I don't think it's necessarily fair to say that the royals are simply in it for the money. They were rich and privileged before they became royals and they'd be rich and privileged as billionaire private individuals if the country voted to get rid of them.

If you gave me the choice of being the King or just being a plain old billionaire, I'd definitely choose being a standard billionaire. To be honest I'm pretty sure I wouldn't even pick being King over my own life right now. The appeal of being a billionaire to me is the fact I could live a life of freedom, with minimal obligations - which is the exact opposite of being a royal.

[Panto_Villan]

30 minutes ago, ender4 said:

The Pope  

The current USA president at any point

Chinese president

Putin

Zelensky

Michael Jackson

Kim Kardashian?

Yeah, none of those people would / did have the same reach as the Queen. I think you massively underestimate how famous she was.

Nelson Mandela, perhaps. If a US president was assassinated JFK-style then maybe they'd be up there. But if Joe Biden had a heart attack and died of natural causes he probably wouldn't even get half of Americans watching his funeral, let alone (apparently) half the world.

[Mic09]

The Pope is more popular with a larger audience than the Queen was. The death of a pope is a more frequent, yet bigger event. 

Outside the commonwealth (and as we can read on this forum) even inside of it,  the monarch is nothing more than a fun interesting thing.

The pope is an actual monarch in a real authoritarian sense and has people who actually subscribe to his Catholic domain. If you are ever looking for a real monarch, look at Vatican. 

[StefanAVFC]

 

[Xann]

1 hour ago, bickster said:

Cheap mans Hovis Ad music  

How dare you?

The Hovis music is Czech

[Jareth]

13 hours ago, sidcow said:

Ermm, isn't that what happens. We've had 40 odd monarchs since William The Conqueror. We just swap in the next one. Some of them lived Medieval lives, some lived Victorian lives.  We definitely can say we'll just swap in Charles, in fact i think I can absolutely guarantee we will. 

We've got Charles - but he has the potential to piss a lot of people off, and I can't see him being held in the same sort of high esteem as Liz was - they're poles apart when it comes to being the monarch. Whatever happened with the royal family, defenders of it could point to good old stable Liz, she who epitomised British spirit - Charles can't be the same sort of monarch, he's a serial shagger happy to accept suitcases of money off sheiks in exchange for honours (alledgedly). Whatever goodwill there is right now for him, will be quickly forgotten and then where is brand GB? We've run out of the old guard and the new lot are looking very shaky. 

[Mr_Dogg]

1 hour ago, Panto_Villan said:

I'm sure it's a huge event but I find those figures a bit suspect. I reckon they must include anyone that sees indirect coverage of it too - like people who see a few shots of it as part of their daily news coverage, etc. But even then it seems to stretch credulity a little.

I also saw the figure of 2.5 billion quoted which I find a bit more believable personally. That's only 1/3 of the entire human population.

Surely that's just could watch it if they had wanted to. Most people would have been working or sleeping or eating or mowing.

 

[Genie]

7 minutes ago, StefanAVFC said:

 

I saw a headline yesterday in The Sun saying This morning has been cancelled amid the backlash over Phil and Holly jumping the queue. 
t

Then buried down the story was the fact it was cancelled due to the coverage of the funeral. Scummy paper always the same.

[Panto_Villan]

6 minutes ago, Mic09 said:

The Pope is more popular with a larger audience than the Queen was. The death of a pope is a more frequent, yet bigger event. 

Outside the commonwealth (and as we can read on this forum) even inside of it,  the monarch is nothing more than a fun interesting thing.

The pope is an actual monarch in a real authoritarian sense and has people who actually subscribe to his Catholic domain. If you are ever looking for a real monarch, look at Vatican. 

Do you have any evidence to support your claim? All the viewing estimates I've seen suggest the Queen's funeral was significantly more widely watched than the last Pope's funeral was - the most I've seen estimated is 2bn, vs 4bn for the Queen. And John Paul II was an unusually popular Pope, no?

Sure, the world has increased from 6.5bn to 7.7bn since 2005 but it seems a bit of a stretch to definitively claim that the Pope is more popular than the Queen. And deciding the Queen is unpopular because VT doesn't like her much seems a weird choice; I can't imagine VT has much nice to say about the Pope either.

1 minute ago, Mr_Dogg said:

Surely that's just could watch it if they had wanted to. Most people would have been working or sleeping or eating or mowing.

 

No, I think it's people who actually watched some of it (not necessarily live). Something like 80% of the world has access to a TV so I guess it's just anyone who sees a snippet of the coverage at any point.

[tonyh29]

2 minutes ago, Mic09 said:

The Pope is more popular with a larger audience than the Queen was. The death of a pope is a more frequent, yet bigger event. 

Outside the commonwealth (and as we can read on this forum) even inside of it,  the monarch is nothing more than a fun interesting thing.

The pope is an actual monarch in a real authoritarian sense and has people who actually subscribe to his Catholic domain. If you are ever looking for a real monarch, look at Vatican. 

Only 2 Popes have died in my 52 year life time so they aren't that frequent  ...  even if they are double the deaths of Queens in my lieftime 

Jean paul II funeral has "estimated " viewing figures lower than Diana's funeral , and Harry & Megans wedding ...  obviously TV audiences isn't the sole bench mark for defining a big event , but it would suggest for whatever reason , global the Uk royal family captures a heck of a lot of peoples attention.

[Mic09]

2 minutes ago, Panto_Villan said:

Do you have any evidence to support your claim? All the viewing estimates I've seen suggest the Queen's funeral was significantly more widely watched than the last Pope's funeral was - the most I've seen estimated is 2bn, vs 4bn for the Queen. And John Paul II was an unusually popular Pope, no?

Sure, the world has increased from 6.5bn to 7.7bn since 2005 but it seems a bit of a stretch to definitively claim that the Pope is more popular than the Queen. And deciding the Queen is unpopular because VT doesn't like her much seems a weird choice; I can't imagine VT has much nice to say about the Pope either.

No, I think it's people who actually watched some of it (not necessarily live). Something like 80% of the world has access to a TV so I guess it's just anyone who sees a snippet of the coverage at any point.

The Pope died in 2005 after 20+ years of reign. No/little social media back at the time. Few people had phones. The queen died after 70 years in the time where you wake up to a sound of a tweet. 

I think you are underestimating just how Catholic much of the world is. It's not a quirky old lady on the throne with a Paddington Bear - many catholics actually see the Pope as the direct line to St Peter. He is an actual monarch with actual political and worldwide influence.

The reason the queen was so popular is because she was there for 70 years and because Americans find the whole thing intriguing. 

Anyway, I think that the pope would beat the queen in a fight. 

 

[ender4]

7 minutes ago, Panto_Villan said:

 

No, I think it's people who actually watched some of it (not necessarily live). Something like 80% of the world has access to a TV so I guess it's just anyone who sees a snippet of the coverage at any point.

Yeah, i guess it depends how many minutes count as a 'watch'.   If say 2 minutes count as a watch (like Netflix count), then i watched the Queen's funeral and the Pope's funeral. 

But if the whole funeral counts as a 'watch', then i watched neither.

[bickster]

Quoting viewing figures as some sort of evidence of anything is daft, it's a daft as claiming the billions of pounds that flow into the country as a result of having a Royal Family.

Why do I link the two together? Because they are both based on totally bogus methods of estimation.

[tonyh29]

25 minutes ago, Genie said:

I saw a headline yesterday in The Sun saying This morning has been cancelled amid the backlash over Phil and Holly jumping the queue. 
t

Then buried down the story was the fact it was cancelled due to the coverage of the funeral. Scummy paper always the same.

 

Problem I have with this  ( well that's not the correct word as I really don't care about Schofield and Holly )  is that they appear to have been there working , didn't file past the queens coffin or jump any queue 

but social media  got a hold and everyone got outraged and nobody is interested in the truth  .. I'd imagine webuyanycar will drop Schofield quietly some time soon , hes a bit toxic as a brand right about now 

The power of twitter and  stupidity wins again 

 

Edited September 20, 2022 by tonyh29

[El Segundo]

11 minutes ago, Jareth said:

We've got Charles - but he has the potential to piss a lot of people off, and I can't see him being held in the same sort of high esteem as Liz was - they're poles apart when it comes to being the monarch. Whatever happened with the royal family, defenders of it could point to good old stable Liz, she who epitomised British spirit - Charles can't be the same sort of monarch, he's a serial shagger happy to accept suitcases of money off sheiks in exchange for honours (alledgedly). Whatever goodwill there is right now for him, will be quickly forgotten and then where is brand GB? We've run out of the old guard and the new lot are looking very shaky. 

I think you are falling into the same old trap of believing the public and media images.  The vast majority have no idea what either Liz or Charles were/are like as people.  The media in particular decide who is to be presented favourably and who is to be cast as the panto villain (and let's face it the monarchy is nothing more or less than a pantomime).  Look at how they have cast Megan Mharkle as the baddie, rather than asking if the Queen could have done more to address the racism and other abuse she and Harry claim to have experienced not only from the media but from within Royal circles as well.  Look at how they have mostly cast Diana as the wronged party and Charles as the baddie.  My ex-Brother-in-Law was a sailor on the Royal Yacht for a while and he told me some tales that don't quite fit the accepted narrative.   So Charles got a divorce,, like millions of other Britons and Commonwealth Citizens have done,  apparently so he could marry the woman he's always loved.  That makes him all the more human to me.  People claim to want a modern monarchy, more in touch with the people,  but then expect him to be judged by pointless rules that were in place nearly a hundred years ago that forced his Great Uncle to Abdicate.   Charles hasn't got a chance of being held in high esteem if the media decide he'll be their whipping boy.