Mexicanpete said:

Taz said:

Mexicanpete said:

...

another_richard said:

Mexicanpete said:

...

Jonathan said:

Question to Tories…

Faced with two possible outcomes, would you rather hold on to office with Boris, or go down to a narrow defeat with Rishi?

I suspect HY is right that Johnson enthuses RedWall hard of thinking voters, but does he repell even more BlueWall feudal Tories? I suspect he does.

The Conservatives can go in one of two directions to make themselves electable at the next GE. By installing caring, one nation Conservative serial foodbank openers like Penny Mordaunt as PM or to promote the Conservative Party of 30p Lee Anderson ("if you don't like the Coronation, leave the country") in the corpulent shape of Johnson.

Even if the second option is enough to win the next GE, I suspect it dooms the party in the longer term.

It really is amazing that if you give away free food there's an unlimited number of people willing to take it.

What a dreary and implicitly unpleasant comment.

Rather like your comment up thread then about the red wall and it’s voters. Physician, heal thyself

"RedWall hard of thinking voters" is the term to which you are alluding I suspect. I stand by every word. For clarity that was not meant as a blanket coverage of RedWall voters, just those who vote for Johnson because " he's just like us" or "he understands us" or "he's got our backs".He hasn't, he's just a venal t***.

He used them and they used him.

Boris got to be PM and the red wallers got the extra NHS spending and full employment.

So who lost out ?

As we're getting self-pitying articles such as:

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/200k-a-year-and-struggling-affluence-isnt-what-it-was-6sdmx3ml8

I wonder if its middle class southerners who are now the bitterest demographic.

Richard_Tyndall said:

kamski said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Anabobazina said:

Leon said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Anabobazina said:

squareroot2 said:

Anabobazina said:

Good morning all. I’m sure everyone will join me in relief that the enforced TV bible bashing is behind us and we can settle into a proper weekend day of cooking programmes and football. And the rain has gone. Hurray!

You assume far too.much.

The relief among the people is palpable, on this bright spring morn. The rainy sermon is over, and just rejoice at that news.

I am much happier rejoicing at the fact that we have reconfirmed Constitutional Monarchy as the Settlement for this country until long after all of us on PB are dead and buried. Yesterday showed that perfectly and will have done us no harm in the soft power stakes around the world.

Yes, I know the @Anabobazina’s of this world will find this bewildering and the @malcolmg’s will find it loathsome and yada yada but yesterday made me happier about things in quite an important way

My national identity is quite important to me (not quite fundamental but certainly profound). For quite a few years an air of decline and malaise - sometimes almost terminal - has surrounded Britishness and Englishness, a form of slow but debilitating sickness, a kind of scurvy of the soul

Yesterday in all its nonsensical pageantry and glorious music and matchless history and predictable drizzle and architectural spleandour and ridiculous boring horsey marching and - most of all - its mysterious, pointless, luminous ritual which goes back ONE THOUSAND ONE HUNDRED YEARS - if not longer - with an English king being anointed in the Abbey built by Anglo Saxon kings 1200 years ago - made me put all of our recent travails in perspective. The deep perspective of enormous time

We are such an ancient nation, wreathed in legend and myth, assailed and venerated, reviled and revered, broken and blighted in places, yet bright and thriving in others: the last few years are NOTHING in comparison to all of that. They are a passing fever, soon forgotten

We do not repine. We are the English, we are the British. We’re still here

Only monarchy, I suspect, can enact this peculiar and reviving magic

I’m one of the most patriotic Englishmen you’ll meet, in a sporting context. I follow the England cricket and football teams with gusto. I don’t need the monarchy to feel national pride. Indeed yesterday’s long damp sermon was rather the opposite - dull, pious and boring! Hardly the stuff to stir the senses.

As I said yesterday evening to you, if you set out to be uninspired then you will be. Only someone with an utterly closed mind could fail to be moved and inspired by the vast history and tradition on display yesterday. Not just sat in museums to be shuffled past by bored school kids but actually being used as it was intended, as part of the heritage of our country.

"Only someone with an utterly closed mind"

really? you found it moving and inspiring. others didn't.

Yes really. If you have any onterest what so ever in the history of our country as Anabob claims to have (and I do recognise that as a German that does not apply to you in the same way as it would to a Briton) then yesterday's proceedings were absolutely moving and inspiring. The use of a gospel dating from the 6th century, a ceremony that dates back to the 10th century and all performed in a building that dates back to the 11th century. All utterly authentic and unique. If someone who purports to be a 'patriotic Englishman' is not inspired by that in favour of a couple of ball games no more than 250 years old then they surely do have a closed mind.

And Zadok the Priest. The debate ends here

Mexicanpete said:

Taz said:

Mexicanpete said:

...

another_richard said:

Mexicanpete said:

...

Jonathan said:

Question to Tories…

Faced with two possible outcomes, would you rather hold on to office with Boris, or go down to a narrow defeat with Rishi?

I suspect HY is right that Johnson enthuses RedWall hard of thinking voters, but does he repell even more BlueWall feudal Tories? I suspect he does.

The Conservatives can go in one of two directions to make themselves electable at the next GE. By installing caring, one nation Conservative serial foodbank openers like Penny Mordaunt as PM or to promote the Conservative Party of 30p Lee Anderson ("if you don't like the Coronation, leave the country") in the corpulent shape of Johnson.

Even if the second option is enough to win the next GE, I suspect it dooms the party in the longer term.

It really is amazing that if you give away free food there's an unlimited number of people willing to take it.

What a dreary and implicitly unpleasant comment.

Rather like your comment up thread then about the red wall and it’s voters. Physician, heal thyself

"RedWall hard of thinking voters" is the term to which you are alluding I suspect. I stand by every word. For clarity that was not meant as a blanket coverage of RedWall voters, just those who vote for Johnson because " he's just like us" or "he understands us" or "he's got our backs".He hasn't, he's just a venal t***.

There are plenty of Red Wall hard of thinking voters. Some of these will be working class, undoubtedly. Some of them will be comfortably middle class. Some of them will be poor. Some of them will be very well off. IQ is no respecter of social class.

We are all guilty of viewing the Red Wall as a monolithic bloc. It’s convenient. But, particularly for those of us - and I know there are Red Wallers on here from across the political spectrum - we know it’s not endless terraced streets of flat-capped, whippet-walking doughty manual labourers and their charwoman wives. There are plentiful green bits, there are well-off people, there are multi-million pound houses a few hundred yards away from poor council estates.

To drag this back to Brexit. IMHO there has to be, and will be, an electoral backlash for Brexit. Very few people are happy with it, now it has taken a concrete form. A narrow majority voted for it, but the headbangers delivered it.

The locals last week showed the Tories losing the Blue Wall and the Red Wall. Why is that? What unites them? What is the one policy that is unequivocally damaging the country? Who is responsible for championing and botching that policy?

There won’t be any national healing whilst it’s clear to anyone not ideologically hitched to Brexit that it’s been, and continues to be, a calamity.

Carnyx said:

kamski said:

HYUFD said:

DM_Andy said:

HYUFD said:

DM_Andy said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Penddu2 said:

I am sure it has already been done ... but here we are again...

Peasant Woman: Well, how’d you become king, then?

King Charles: The Lady of the Lake, her arm clad in the purest shimmering samite, held aloft Excalibur from the bosom of the water, signifying by divine providence that I, Charles, was to carry Excalibur. That is why I am your king.

Boris: Listen. Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical coronation ceremony.

Charles: Be quiet!

Boris: You can’t expect to wield supreme executive power just ’cause some watery tart threw a sword at you!

Charles: Shut up!

Boris: I mean, if I went around saying I was an emperor just because some moistened bint had lobbed a scimitar at me, they’d put me away!

Surely one of the arguments - if slightly tonugue in cheek - in favour of Monarchy is the fact that without it we would almost inevitably have President Boris. Having followed on from President Thatcher and President Blair.

In one stroke we move from one of the most uniting constitutional arrangements in this country to one of the most divisive.

There are ways of electing a head of state that avoid division. How about the President being elected by combined Houses of Parliament (House of Commons and Senate) with a 2/3rds or 3/4ths majority being required. That would force Conservative and Labour to agree on very inoffensive candidates, We could be living under the rule of President Attenborough right now.

More likely we would just end up with President Ed Miliband or President Hague if Parliament elected the President. So as Germany does you end up with the head of state being a ceremonial consolation prize for politicians who failed to become head of government which would be even worse than having a directly elected executive President. Without much tourism revenue either

Yeah, London would be without foreign tourists if we became a republic, what fools France and Italy were to get rid of their monarchy because now no-one visits Paris or Rome.

France and Italy have sunny weather and beaches and skiing resorts we don't. We get coronation, jubilee and Royal wedding revenue however

HYUFD said:

DM_Andy said:

HYUFD said:

DM_Andy said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Penddu2 said:

I am sure it has already been done ... but here we are again...

Peasant Woman: Well, how’d you become king, then?

King Charles: The Lady of the Lake, her arm clad in the purest shimmering samite, held aloft Excalibur from the bosom of the water, signifying by divine providence that I, Charles, was to carry Excalibur. That is why I am your king.

Boris: Listen. Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical coronation ceremony.

Charles: Be quiet!

Boris: You can’t expect to wield supreme executive power just ’cause some watery tart threw a sword at you!

Charles: Shut up!

Boris: I mean, if I went around saying I was an emperor just because some moistened bint had lobbed a scimitar at me, they’d put me away!

Surely one of the arguments - if slightly tonugue in cheek - in favour of Monarchy is the fact that without it we would almost inevitably have President Boris. Having followed on from President Thatcher and President Blair.

In one stroke we move from one of the most uniting constitutional arrangements in this country to one of the most divisive.

There are ways of electing a head of state that avoid division. How about the President being elected by combined Houses of Parliament (House of Commons and Senate) with a 2/3rds or 3/4ths majority being required. That would force Conservative and Labour to agree on very inoffensive candidates, We could be living under the rule of President Attenborough right now.

More likely we would just end up with President Ed Miliband or President Hague if Parliament elected the President. So as Germany does you end up with the head of state being a ceremonial consolation prize for politicians who failed to become head of government which would be even worse than having a directly elected executive President. Without much tourism revenue either

Yeah, London would be without foreign tourists if we became a republic, what fools France and Italy were to get rid of their monarchy because now no-one visits Paris or Rome.

France and Italy have sunny weather and beaches and skiing resorts we don't. We get coronation, jubilee and Royal wedding revenue however

HYUFD said:

DM_Andy said:

HYUFD said:

DM_Andy said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Penddu2 said:

I am sure it has already been done ... but here we are again...

Peasant Woman: Well, how’d you become king, then?

King Charles: The Lady of the Lake, her arm clad in the purest shimmering samite, held aloft Excalibur from the bosom of the water, signifying by divine providence that I, Charles, was to carry Excalibur. That is why I am your king.

Boris: Listen. Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical coronation ceremony.

Charles: Be quiet!

Boris: You can’t expect to wield supreme executive power just ’cause some watery tart threw a sword at you!

Charles: Shut up!

Boris: I mean, if I went around saying I was an emperor just because some moistened bint had lobbed a scimitar at me, they’d put me away!

Surely one of the arguments - if slightly tonugue in cheek - in favour of Monarchy is the fact that without it we would almost inevitably have President Boris. Having followed on from President Thatcher and President Blair.

In one stroke we move from one of the most uniting constitutional arrangements in this country to one of the most divisive.

There are ways of electing a head of state that avoid division. How about the President being elected by combined Houses of Parliament (House of Commons and Senate) with a 2/3rds or 3/4ths majority being required. That would force Conservative and Labour to agree on very inoffensive candidates, We could be living under the rule of President Attenborough right now.

More likely we would just end up with President Ed Miliband or President Hague if Parliament elected the President. So as Germany does you end up with the head of state being a ceremonial consolation prize for politicians who failed to become head of government which would be even worse than having a directly elected executive President. Without much tourism revenue either

Yeah, London would be without foreign tourists if we became a republic, what fools France and Italy were to get rid of their monarchy because now no-one visits Paris or Rome.

France and Italy have sunny weather and beaches and skiing resorts we don't. We get coronation, jubilee and Royal wedding revenue however

Of course it is the attraction of the monarchy that is bringing all the small boats over too...

Also, how often do we get coronation revenue?

And why is it the taxpayers who pay for the coronation while commercial operations get the revenue, in the absensce of hotel/overnight taxation on tourists?

20pc in the form of VATcomes back from additional spending on the occasion of the Coronation.. should cover most if not all of it.

Richard_Tyndall said:

kamski said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Anabobazina said:

Leon said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Anabobazina said:

squareroot2 said:

Anabobazina said:

Good morning all. I’m sure everyone will join me in relief that the enforced TV bible bashing is behind us and we can settle into a proper weekend day of cooking programmes and football. And the rain has gone. Hurray!

You assume far too.much.

The relief among the people is palpable, on this bright spring morn. The rainy sermon is over, and just rejoice at that news.

I am much happier rejoicing at the fact that we have reconfirmed Constitutional Monarchy as the Settlement for this country until long after all of us on PB are dead and buried. Yesterday showed that perfectly and will have done us no harm in the soft power stakes around the world.

Yes, I know the @Anabobazina’s of this world will find this bewildering and the @malcolmg’s will find it loathsome and yada yada but yesterday made me happier about things in quite an important way

My national identity is quite important to me (not quite fundamental but certainly profound). For quite a few years an air of decline and malaise - sometimes almost terminal - has surrounded Britishness and Englishness, a form of slow but debilitating sickness, a kind of scurvy of the soul

Yesterday in all its nonsensical pageantry and glorious music and matchless history and predictable drizzle and architectural spleandour and ridiculous boring horsey marching and - most of all - its mysterious, pointless, luminous ritual which goes back ONE THOUSAND ONE HUNDRED YEARS - if not longer - with an English king being anointed in the Abbey built by Anglo Saxon kings 1200 years ago - made me put all of our recent travails in perspective. The deep perspective of enormous time

We are such an ancient nation, wreathed in legend and myth, assailed and venerated, reviled and revered, broken and blighted in places, yet bright and thriving in others: the last few years are NOTHING in comparison to all of that. They are a passing fever, soon forgotten

We do not repine. We are the English, we are the British. We’re still here

Only monarchy, I suspect, can enact this peculiar and reviving magic

I’m one of the most patriotic Englishmen you’ll meet, in a sporting context. I follow the England cricket and football teams with gusto. I don’t need the monarchy to feel national pride. Indeed yesterday’s long damp sermon was rather the opposite - dull, pious and boring! Hardly the stuff to stir the senses.

As I said yesterday evening to you, if you set out to be uninspired then you will be. Only someone with an utterly closed mind could fail to be moved and inspired by the vast history and tradition on display yesterday. Not just sat in museums to be shuffled past by bored school kids but actually being used as it was intended, as part of the heritage of our country.

"Only someone with an utterly closed mind"

really? you found it moving and inspiring. others didn't.

Yes really. If you have any onterest what so ever in the history of our country as Anabob claims to have (and I do recognise that as a German that does not apply to you in the same way as it would to a Briton) then yesterday's proceedings were absolutely moving and inspiring. The use of a gospel dating from the 6th century, a ceremony that dates back to the 10th century and all performed in a building that dates back to the 11th century. All utterly authentic and unique. If someone who purports to be a 'patriotic Englishman' is not inspired by that in favour of a couple of ball games no more than 250 years old then they surely do have a closed mind.

Well, as a British person, I did not find it moving or inspiring. Maybe I didn't see the right bit, but I've seen more inspiring church fetes.

And it feels like an extremely insecure and/or arrogant statement to decree that others must find something moving and inspiring.

malcolmg said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

kamski said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Anabobazina said:

Leon said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Anabobazina said:

squareroot2 said:

Anabobazina said:

Good morning all. I’m sure everyone will join me in relief that the enforced TV bible bashing is behind us and we can settle into a proper weekend day of cooking programmes and football. And the rain has gone. Hurray!

You assume far too.much.

The relief among the people is palpable, on this bright spring morn. The rainy sermon is over, and just rejoice at that news.

I am much happier rejoicing at the fact that we have reconfirmed Constitutional Monarchy as the Settlement for this country until long after all of us on PB are dead and buried. Yesterday showed that perfectly and will have done us no harm in the soft power stakes around the world.

Yes, I know the @Anabobazina’s of this world will find this bewildering and the @malcolmg’s will find it loathsome and yada yada but yesterday made me happier about things in quite an important way

My national identity is quite important to me (not quite fundamental but certainly profound). For quite a few years an air of decline and malaise - sometimes almost terminal - has surrounded Britishness and Englishness, a form of slow but debilitating sickness, a kind of scurvy of the soul

Yesterday in all its nonsensical pageantry and glorious music and matchless history and predictable drizzle and architectural spleandour and ridiculous boring horsey marching and - most of all - its mysterious, pointless, luminous ritual which goes back ONE THOUSAND ONE HUNDRED YEARS - if not longer - with an English king being anointed in the Abbey built by Anglo Saxon kings 1200 years ago - made me put all of our recent travails in perspective. The deep perspective of enormous time

We are such an ancient nation, wreathed in legend and myth, assailed and venerated, reviled and revered, broken and blighted in places, yet bright and thriving in others: the last few years are NOTHING in comparison to all of that. They are a passing fever, soon forgotten

We do not repine. We are the English, we are the British. We’re still here

Only monarchy, I suspect, can enact this peculiar and reviving magic

I’m one of the most patriotic Englishmen you’ll meet, in a sporting context. I follow the England cricket and football teams with gusto. I don’t need the monarchy to feel national pride. Indeed yesterday’s long damp sermon was rather the opposite - dull, pious and boring! Hardly the stuff to stir the senses.

As I said yesterday evening to you, if you set out to be uninspired then you will be. Only someone with an utterly closed mind could fail to be moved and inspired by the vast history and tradition on display yesterday. Not just sat in museums to be shuffled past by bored school kids but actually being used as it was intended, as part of the heritage of our country.

"Only someone with an utterly closed mind"

really? you found it moving and inspiring. others didn't.

Yes really. If you have any onterest what so ever in the history of our country as Anabob claims to have (and I do recognise that as a German that does not apply to you in the same way as it would to a Briton) then yesterday's proceedings were absolutely moving and inspiring. The use of a gospel dating from the 6th century, a ceremony that dates back to the 10th century and all performed in a building that dates back to the 11th century. All utterly authentic and unique. If someone who purports to be a 'patriotic Englishman' is not inspired by that in favour of a couple of ball games no more than 250 years old then they surely do have a closed mind.

It is all Spitfires , Empire, we won the war and Germans keep cheating us at football.

And what, pray, is Scottish Nationalism but Braveheart, Robert the Bruce, neeps and tatties and We hate the fucking English, the colonizing bastards?

At least English Patriotism is sufficiently self confident not to be founded on racist hatred of another country

kamski said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

kamski said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Anabobazina said:

Leon said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Anabobazina said:

squareroot2 said:

Anabobazina said:

Good morning all. I’m sure everyone will join me in relief that the enforced TV bible bashing is behind us and we can settle into a proper weekend day of cooking programmes and football. And the rain has gone. Hurray!

You assume far too.much.

The relief among the people is palpable, on this bright spring morn. The rainy sermon is over, and just rejoice at that news.

I am much happier rejoicing at the fact that we have reconfirmed Constitutional Monarchy as the Settlement for this country until long after all of us on PB are dead and buried. Yesterday showed that perfectly and will have done us no harm in the soft power stakes around the world.

Yes, I know the @Anabobazina’s of this world will find this bewildering and the @malcolmg’s will find it loathsome and yada yada but yesterday made me happier about things in quite an important way

My national identity is quite important to me (not quite fundamental but certainly profound). For quite a few years an air of decline and malaise - sometimes almost terminal - has surrounded Britishness and Englishness, a form of slow but debilitating sickness, a kind of scurvy of the soul

Yesterday in all its nonsensical pageantry and glorious music and matchless history and predictable drizzle and architectural spleandour and ridiculous boring horsey marching and - most of all - its mysterious, pointless, luminous ritual which goes back ONE THOUSAND ONE HUNDRED YEARS - if not longer - with an English king being anointed in the Abbey built by Anglo Saxon kings 1200 years ago - made me put all of our recent travails in perspective. The deep perspective of enormous time

We are such an ancient nation, wreathed in legend and myth, assailed and venerated, reviled and revered, broken and blighted in places, yet bright and thriving in others: the last few years are NOTHING in comparison to all of that. They are a passing fever, soon forgotten

We do not repine. We are the English, we are the British. We’re still here

Only monarchy, I suspect, can enact this peculiar and reviving magic

I’m one of the most patriotic Englishmen you’ll meet, in a sporting context. I follow the England cricket and football teams with gusto. I don’t need the monarchy to feel national pride. Indeed yesterday’s long damp sermon was rather the opposite - dull, pious and boring! Hardly the stuff to stir the senses.

As I said yesterday evening to you, if you set out to be uninspired then you will be. Only someone with an utterly closed mind could fail to be moved and inspired by the vast history and tradition on display yesterday. Not just sat in museums to be shuffled past by bored school kids but actually being used as it was intended, as part of the heritage of our country.

"Only someone with an utterly closed mind"

really? you found it moving and inspiring. others didn't.

Yes really. If you have any onterest what so ever in the history of our country as Anabob claims to have (and I do recognise that as a German that does not apply to you in the same way as it would to a Briton) then yesterday's proceedings were absolutely moving and inspiring. The use of a gospel dating from the 6th century, a ceremony that dates back to the 10th century and all performed in a building that dates back to the 11th century. All utterly authentic and unique. If someone who purports to be a 'patriotic Englishman' is not inspired by that in favour of a couple of ball games no more than 250 years old then they surely do have a closed mind.

Well, as a British person, I did not find it moving or inspiring. Maybe I didn't see the right bit, but I've seen more inspiring church fetes.

And it feels like an extremely insecure and/or arrogant statement to decree that others must find something moving and inspiring.

Apologies I thought you were German.

And no it is not insecure at all. Just basic common sense and logic. To claim one is strongly patriotic and then to be uninspired by the history and symbolism that defines the country seems utterly deluded.

TheValiant said:

Leon said:

Yes. It is the most exclusive definition of mass shooting used by criminologists,. Some are much more widely cast - ie more than two people need to be shot in any way, etc. By these more expansive definitions there is basically a mass shooting every single day in the USA

Exceedingly worrying for the United States then, that many of them can't see (or more likely, refuse to see).

The 2nd Amendment is the problem. Not only does it give them the right to bear arms, but it ingrains in them a culture that bearing arms is both a RIGHT and is 'Right' (as in, people without firearms are weird).

I mean, this picture (and there are many on google, whether ironic or not) is a picture of a 'family day out':

Its not the mass killers who are the big danger but the possibility that you could be shot if someone thinks you have offended them in some trivial way.

Casino_Royale said:

another_richard said:

Did any PBers take that oath of loyalty yesterday ?

Yes, I have no issue taking an oath of loyalty to my King and Country, which I love deeply.

Why would that be a problem?

A problem only arises if the people who do have a problem with it are deemed by those who don't to be a problem. The whole 'compulsory demonstrative patriotism' thing - which before you know it becomes 'Patriots v Traitors' and all of that can of worms. You won't be guilty of this, I'm sure.

It would be interesting for the naysayers who are mostly young to revisit the threwds of theis Coronation weekend.in 40 yrs time.
When I was young , I didn't like classical music.. now it's my mainstay. Times change, people's tastes and more importantly their understanding evolves as they get older.

another_richard said:

Dura_Ace said:

rkrkrk said:

On topic - seems a real vindication of Starmer's strategy. The likes of Alastair Campbell who want him to come out for rejoining the EU have surely got this wrong tactically.

I do wonder who'll be the first prominent tory to break kayfabe on Brexit once they are in opposition and denounce it as an economic chastity belt. Maybe Gove.

It would be someone who opposes full employment, in particular full employment for the northern working class, and supports ever higher property prices in southern England.

There is a world wide shortage of skilled (degrees) labour

There is a world wide surplus of low/semi skilled (or skillable - train Chinese farmers to work in factories etc)

Which is why the experience of mass migration is different between those at the top and bottom of the labour market.

The real question is who will introduce the measures to protect the labour market at the low end against wages being driven back to minimum wage (if that) in a number of jobs.

Such measures could completely compatible with EU free movement, incidentally.

BlancheLivermore said:

Theuniondivvie said:

Dura_Ace said:

Ghedebrav said:

Leon said:

Mexicanpete said:

Nigelb said:

Benpointer said:

Nigelb said:

SouthamObserver said:

If the Tories replace Sunak, they would be declaring themselves a fundamentally unserious party and would suffer the consequences at the subsequent election. They would be destroyed. He’s the best hope they have - by a long distance.

The Mordaunt love really perplexes me. I thought she looked really peculiar. Her outfit was utterly bizarre. Her whole set-up and demeanour screamed high camp, nothing more. But I am clearly in the minority - at least on here!

Doesn't do much for me, either - other than recall some of the outfits in Disney's Alice in Wonderland - though I didn't actually watch the ceremony, so WDIK ?
Lot of middle aged men on PB probably explains it.

I was a bit surprised to see Mordaunt is 50, I must be getting old as she seems quite young looking to me. ..

Catherine Deneuve once remarked that you can stay slim, or keep away the wrinkles. Not both.

An interesting comment as PennyMordaunt has both the look and hairstyle of Catherine Deneuve.

Looking at her Rubensesque figure, I’d say Ms Mordaunt has gone for fending off the wrinkles - as did Catherine Deneuve

Not my sort of politician, but she really did look fabulous. A brilliant cut of dress, and tbh regardless of politics it’s great to see all these sad pervy tongues lolling out at a full-figured woman in her 50s. Balancing out, I thought Rishi looked very smart and youthful indeed too; a very subtly smart suit. Quite classy.

Boris once again a f’n disgrace though.

Mrs DA watched some of the "Arseholes' Halloween Party" (© malc) and opined that the king of Spain was the only one who looked like "a real king". No, me neither.

If it sheds any light, here’s a ropey portrait of him which I recorded just because it was ropey. He has a bit more face fur now I think.



At least he doesn’t resemble much his dad who now looks like the corrupt, entitled old rsole that he is.

Apols, one of them sideways pics that iPhones do on PB.

Edit the photo on the phone (eg trim a bit of the wall off), save it, and hey presto it posts to PB with the correct alignment

Finally a solution! Odd, though. You would expect whatever metadata Vanilla is misusing to be the same in both apple-taken and apple-taken-and-apple-edited photos.

Eabhal said:

Leon said:

A splendid interactive map from Unherd which breaks down constituencies by their views on Monarchy, Gender, Free Speech. Migration, etc. Some really unexpected results


https://election.unherd.com/immigration/

Classic example where we need a hex map. Hard to see what is going on in the cities.

Also not 100% convinced by the methodology - should be picking some religion up in the Western Isles. Weird result in Dundee on tax (might actually be true, fast growing bit of Scotland).

Gender is pretty interesting for Scotland. Free speech result is a bit scary, tbh.

An awful lot of peoples' definition of free speech extends only as far as the freedom of others to agree *exactly* with what they think is right and nothing else, unfortunately.

Richard_Tyndall said:

kamski said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Penddu2 said:

I am sure it has already been done ... but here we are again...

Peasant Woman: Well, how’d you become king, then?

King Charles: The Lady of the Lake, her arm clad in the purest shimmering samite, held aloft Excalibur from the bosom of the water, signifying by divine providence that I, Charles, was to carry Excalibur. That is why I am your king.

Boris: Listen. Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical coronation ceremony.

Charles: Be quiet!

Boris: You can’t expect to wield supreme executive power just ’cause some watery tart threw a sword at you!

Charles: Shut up!

Boris: I mean, if I went around saying I was an emperor just because some moistened bint had lobbed a scimitar at me, they’d put me away!

Surely one of the arguments - if slightly tonugue in cheek - in favour of Monarchy is the fact that without it we would almost inevitably have President Boris. Having followed on from President Thatcher and President Blair.

In one stroke we move from one of the most uniting constitutional arrangements in this country to one of the most divisive.

Is it necessarily one of the most divisive? Eg the German presidency seems far less divisive than the British monarchy. Even when the last but one had to resign because he faced prosecution for corruption in 2012 (he was later acquitted of all charges) nobody gave much of a shit.

Hard to imagine Charles facing prosecution for corruption, no matter what he's been up to.

Yes one of the most divisive. Look at the hatred expressed at figures like Thatcher, Blair and Johnson from the other side of the political divide (and often from their own side). None of them would command the overall respect of the public at large and the whole position would become a laughing stock. What sort of image would that project to the wider world.

And as others have already mentioned, I doubt 1% of the rest of the world could tell you who the German President was. With the exception of Macron because of the nature of the French Constitution, the rest of the European Presidents are non-entities who do nothing for their countries.

But why does having a non-entity as head of state make it 'one of the most divisive' arrangements? What you have written makes no logical sense to me.

dixiedean said:

another_richard said:

Mexicanpete said:

Taz said:

Mexicanpete said:

...

another_richard said:

Mexicanpete said:

...

Jonathan said:

Question to Tories…

Faced with two possible outcomes, would you rather hold on to office with Boris, or go down to a narrow defeat with Rishi?

I suspect HY is right that Johnson enthuses RedWall hard of thinking voters, but does he repell even more BlueWall feudal Tories? I suspect he does.

The Conservatives can go in one of two directions to make themselves electable at the next GE. By installing caring, one nation Conservative serial foodbank openers like Penny Mordaunt as PM or to promote the Conservative Party of 30p Lee Anderson ("if you don't like the Coronation, leave the country") in the corpulent shape of Johnson.

Even if the second option is enough to win the next GE, I suspect it dooms the party in the longer term.

It really is amazing that if you give away free food there's an unlimited number of people willing to take it.

What a dreary and implicitly unpleasant comment.

Rather like your comment up thread then about the red wall and it’s voters. Physician, heal thyself

"RedWall hard of thinking voters" is the term to which you are alluding I suspect. I stand by every word. For clarity that was not meant as a blanket coverage of RedWall voters, just those who vote for Johnson because " he's just like us" or "he understands us" or "he's got our backs".He hasn't, he's just a venal t***.

He used them and they used him.

Boris got to be PM and the red wallers got the extra NHS spending and full employment.

So who lost out ?

As we're getting self-pitying articles such as:

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/200k-a-year-and-struggling-affluence-isnt-what-it-was-6sdmx3ml8

I wonder if its middle class southerners who are now the bitterest demographic.

Red Wallers got a much worse NHS and the biggest real terms pay cut in living memory.
There was full employment in the northeast long before Boris Johnson.

The money has been provided to the NHS and the workers employed.

Now if neither is still not enough because of covid effects or an ageing population or because of NHS productivity problems then those are other issues.

When did the north-east have full employment ? 1950s ? The BBC was making documentaries about mass unemployment in Hartlepool in 1963:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p053r2q1/waiting-for-work

As for pay rises then yes many have lost out but that's because of energy and supply chain issues which have affected all the world and its better to be getting an 7% pay rise with 10% inflation than a 2% pay rise with 10% inflation.

kamski said:

HYUFD said:

kamski said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Penddu2 said:

I am sure it has already been done ... but here we are again...

Peasant Woman: Well, how’d you become king, then?

King Charles: The Lady of the Lake, her arm clad in the purest shimmering samite, held aloft Excalibur from the bosom of the water, signifying by divine providence that I, Charles, was to carry Excalibur. That is why I am your king.

Boris: Listen. Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical coronation ceremony.

Charles: Be quiet!

Boris: You can’t expect to wield supreme executive power just ’cause some watery tart threw a sword at you!

Charles: Shut up!

Boris: I mean, if I went around saying I was an emperor just because some moistened bint had lobbed a scimitar at me, they’d put me away!

Surely one of the arguments - if slightly tonugue in cheek - in favour of Monarchy is the fact that without it we would almost inevitably have President Boris. Having followed on from President Thatcher and President Blair.

In one stroke we move from one of the most uniting constitutional arrangements in this country to one of the most divisive.

Is it necessarily one of the most divisive? Eg the German presidency seems far less divisive than the British monarchy. Even when the last but one had to resign because he faced prosecution for corruption in 2012 (he was later acquitted of all charges) nobody gave much of a shit.

Hard to imagine Charles facing prosecution for corruption, no matter what he's been up to.

The current German President is a nonentity nobody outside Germany has head of who only got the job as a consolation prize after Merkel beat him in 2009 in the German Federal election for the Chancellry

Yes, as I said, the German presidency far less divisive in Germany than the British royal family is in the UK.

The current German President was the SPD candidate for Chancellor in 2009. Do you think CDU voters respect him? The previous one was a CDU politician. Do you think SPD voters respected him? Neither brought in tourism revenue either

Eabhal said:

Leon said:

kamski said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

kamski said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Anabobazina said:

Leon said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Anabobazina said:

squareroot2 said:

Anabobazina said:

Good morning all. I’m sure everyone will join me in relief that the enforced TV bible bashing is behind us and we can settle into a proper weekend day of cooking programmes and football. And the rain has gone. Hurray!

You assume far too.much.

The relief among the people is palpable, on this bright spring morn. The rainy sermon is over, and just rejoice at that news.

I am much happier rejoicing at the fact that we have reconfirmed Constitutional Monarchy as the Settlement for this country until long after all of us on PB are dead and buried. Yesterday showed that perfectly and will have done us no harm in the soft power stakes around the world.

Yes, I know the @Anabobazina’s of this world will find this bewildering and the @malcolmg’s will find it loathsome and yada yada but yesterday made me happier about things in quite an important way

My national identity is quite important to me (not quite fundamental but certainly profound). For quite a few years an air of decline and malaise - sometimes almost terminal - has surrounded Britishness and Englishness, a form of slow but debilitating sickness, a kind of scurvy of the soul

Yesterday in all its nonsensical pageantry and glorious music and matchless history and predictable drizzle and architectural spleandour and ridiculous boring horsey marching and - most of all - its mysterious, pointless, luminous ritual which goes back ONE THOUSAND ONE HUNDRED YEARS - if not longer - with an English king being anointed in the Abbey built by Anglo Saxon kings 1200 years ago - made me put all of our recent travails in perspective. The deep perspective of enormous time

We are such an ancient nation, wreathed in legend and myth, assailed and venerated, reviled and revered, broken and blighted in places, yet bright and thriving in others: the last few years are NOTHING in comparison to all of that. They are a passing fever, soon forgotten

We do not repine. We are the English, we are the British. We’re still here

Only monarchy, I suspect, can enact this peculiar and reviving magic

I’m one of the most patriotic Englishmen you’ll meet, in a sporting context. I follow the England cricket and football teams with gusto. I don’t need the monarchy to feel national pride. Indeed yesterday’s long damp sermon was rather the opposite - dull, pious and boring! Hardly the stuff to stir the senses.

As I said yesterday evening to you, if you set out to be uninspired then you will be. Only someone with an utterly closed mind could fail to be moved and inspired by the vast history and tradition on display yesterday. Not just sat in museums to be shuffled past by bored school kids but actually being used as it was intended, as part of the heritage of our country.

"Only someone with an utterly closed mind"

really? you found it moving and inspiring. others didn't.

Yes really. If you have any onterest what so ever in the history of our country as Anabob claims to have (and I do recognise that as a German that does not apply to you in the same way as it would to a Briton) then yesterday's proceedings were absolutely moving and inspiring. The use of a gospel dating from the 6th century, a ceremony that dates back to the 10th century and all performed in a building that dates back to the 11th century. All utterly authentic and unique. If someone who purports to be a 'patriotic Englishman' is not inspired by that in favour of a couple of ball games no more than 250 years old then they surely do have a closed mind.

Well, aris a British person, I did not find it moving or inspiring. Maybe I didn't see the right bit, but I've seen more inspiring church fetes.

And it feels like an extremely insecure and/or arrogant statement to decree that others must find something moving and inspiring.

OK then, here you go. Here is the most sacred element of yesterday’s ceremony in full. Give it a shot. It’s 5 minutes long

This is the moment when Charles is anointed, in a Biblical ceremony using Biblical words dating back to the coronation of King Edgar of England in 973AD. He is being anointed in an abbey built by Edward the Confessor in the 11th century and used by William the Conqueror for HIS coronation on Christmas Day, 1066

The music - Zadok the Priest - was specifically written for this exact moment of anointment by George Handel and used in all British Coronations since 1727. It was also written to be heard in this exact place: Westminster Abbey, the ancient church of the Anglo Saxon kings

Charles is ceremonially disrobed and then anointed by the Archbishop of Canterbury as the 6th century Augustine Gospels - one of the oldest books in the world - are open at the precise verses

https://youtu.be/SCZAEI4zouE

If you can watch this and genuinely claim you are not moved or inspired then fair enough. Tho I kind of pity you

Don't forget the chair and the stone.

That was the only bit that was properly spine chilling, plus the Greek hymn afterward. Seeing him get his kit off, Zadok, and then get hidden away like that... spooky.

The crowning itself seemed a bit preposterous - could they not lower the arches on the crown? The proportions were all wrong. And the blue on the horses was nasty.

Also the entrance and the cries of Vivat! Vivat! - again impossibly ancient

And the three cheers afterwards from the army in the drizzle. That was unexpectedly moving. You can see Charles is slightly emosh

https://twitter.com/royalcentral/status/1654832750094942211?s=61&t=GGp3Vs1t1kTWDiyA-odnZg

kinabalu said:

Casino_Royale said:

another_richard said:

Did any PBers take that oath of loyalty yesterday ?

Yes, I have no issue taking an oath of loyalty to my King and Country, which I love deeply.

Why would that be a problem?

A problem only arises if the people who do have a problem with it are deemed by those who don't to be a problem. The whole 'compulsory demonstrative patriotism' thing - which before you know it becomes 'Patriots v Traitors' and all of that can of worms. You won't be guilty of this, I'm sure.

@Casino_Royale has the right to publicly affirm his loyalty if he so wishes - I would like to think he respects my right not to. That doesn't mean I love my country any more or less than him. As long as we respect each other's decision, there's no problem at all.

The problem starts when that mutual respect is eroded either by a poisoning of the public debate or by legislation.

Leon said:

kamski said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

kamski said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Anabobazina said:

Leon said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Anabobazina said:

squareroot2 said:

Anabobazina said:

Good morning all. I’m sure everyone will join me in relief that the enforced TV bible bashing is behind us and we can settle into a proper weekend day of cooking programmes and football. And the rain has gone. Hurray!

You assume far too.much.

The relief among the people is palpable, on this bright spring morn. The rainy sermon is over, and just rejoice at that news.

I am much happier rejoicing at the fact that we have reconfirmed Constitutional Monarchy as the Settlement for this country until long after all of us on PB are dead and buried. Yesterday showed that perfectly and will have done us no harm in the soft power stakes around the world.

Yes, I know the @Anabobazina’s of this world will find this bewildering and the @malcolmg’s will find it loathsome and yada yada but yesterday made me happier about things in quite an important way

My national identity is quite important to me (not quite fundamental but certainly profound). For quite a few years an air of decline and malaise - sometimes almost terminal - has surrounded Britishness and Englishness, a form of slow but debilitating sickness, a kind of scurvy of the soul

Yesterday in all its nonsensical pageantry and glorious music and matchless history and predictable drizzle and architectural spleandour and ridiculous boring horsey marching and - most of all - its mysterious, pointless, luminous ritual which goes back ONE THOUSAND ONE HUNDRED YEARS - if not longer - with an English king being anointed in the Abbey built by Anglo Saxon kings 1200 years ago - made me put all of our recent travails in perspective. The deep perspective of enormous time

We are such an ancient nation, wreathed in legend and myth, assailed and venerated, reviled and revered, broken and blighted in places, yet bright and thriving in others: the last few years are NOTHING in comparison to all of that. They are a passing fever, soon forgotten

We do not repine. We are the English, we are the British. We’re still here

Only monarchy, I suspect, can enact this peculiar and reviving magic

I’m one of the most patriotic Englishmen you’ll meet, in a sporting context. I follow the England cricket and football teams with gusto. I don’t need the monarchy to feel national pride. Indeed yesterday’s long damp sermon was rather the opposite - dull, pious and boring! Hardly the stuff to stir the senses.

As I said yesterday evening to you, if you set out to be uninspired then you will be. Only someone with an utterly closed mind could fail to be moved and inspired by the vast history and tradition on display yesterday. Not just sat in museums to be shuffled past by bored school kids but actually being used as it was intended, as part of the heritage of our country.

"Only someone with an utterly closed mind"

really? you found it moving and inspiring. others didn't.

Yes really. If you have any onterest what so ever in the history of our country as Anabob claims to have (and I do recognise that as a German that does not apply to you in the same way as it would to a Briton) then yesterday's proceedings were absolutely moving and inspiring. The use of a gospel dating from the 6th century, a ceremony that dates back to the 10th century and all performed in a building that dates back to the 11th century. All utterly authentic and unique. If someone who purports to be a 'patriotic Englishman' is not inspired by that in favour of a couple of ball games no more than 250 years old then they surely do have a closed mind.

Well, aris a British person, I did not find it moving or inspiring. Maybe I didn't see the right bit, but I've seen more inspiring church fetes.

And it feels like an extremely insecure and/or arrogant statement to decree that others must find something moving and inspiring.

OK then, here you go. Here is the most sacred element of yesterday’s ceremony in full. Give it a shot. It’s 5 minutes long

This is the moment when Charles is anointed, in a Biblical ceremony using Biblical words dating back to the coronation of King Edgar of England in 973AD. He is being anointed in an abbey built by Edward the Confessor in the 11th century and used by William the Conqueror for HIS coronation on Christmas Day, 1066

The music - Zadok the Priest - was specifically written for this exact moment of anointment by George Handel and used in all British Coronations since 1727. It was also written to be heard in this exact place: Westminster Abbey, the ancient church of the Anglo Saxon kings

Charles is ceremonially disrobed and then anointed by the Archbishop of Canterbury as the 6th century Augustine Gospels - one of the oldest books in the world - are open at the precise verses

https://youtu.be/SCZAEI4zouE

If you can watch this and genuinely claim you are not moved or inspired then fair enough. Tho I kind of pity you

The music is ok if you like that sort of thing, which I don't particularly. The anointing leaves me cold. Amazed that you are so lacking in imagination that you have to 'pity' people who are unmoved by this. Maybe you are moved and inspired by everything that anyone has ever found moving and inspiring? In which case fair enough.

Penny She-Ra Mordaunt

kamski said:

Leon said:

kamski said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

kamski said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Anabobazina said:

Leon said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Anabobazina said:

squareroot2 said:

Anabobazina said:

Good morning all. I’m sure everyone will join me in relief that the enforced TV bible bashing is behind us and we can settle into a proper weekend day of cooking programmes and football. And the rain has gone. Hurray!

You assume far too.much.

The relief among the people is palpable, on this bright spring morn. The rainy sermon is over, and just rejoice at that news.

I am much happier rejoicing at the fact that we have reconfirmed Constitutional Monarchy as the Settlement for this country until long after all of us on PB are dead and buried. Yesterday showed that perfectly and will have done us no harm in the soft power stakes around the world.

Yes, I know the @Anabobazina’s of this world will find this bewildering and the @malcolmg’s will find it loathsome and yada yada but yesterday made me happier about things in quite an important way

My national identity is quite important to me (not quite fundamental but certainly profound). For quite a few years an air of decline and malaise - sometimes almost terminal - has surrounded Britishness and Englishness, a form of slow but debilitating sickness, a kind of scurvy of the soul

Yesterday in all its nonsensical pageantry and glorious music and matchless history and predictable drizzle and architectural spleandour and ridiculous boring horsey marching and - most of all - its mysterious, pointless, luminous ritual which goes back ONE THOUSAND ONE HUNDRED YEARS - if not longer - with an English king being anointed in the Abbey built by Anglo Saxon kings 1200 years ago - made me put all of our recent travails in perspective. The deep perspective of enormous time

We are such an ancient nation, wreathed in legend and myth, assailed and venerated, reviled and revered, broken and blighted in places, yet bright and thriving in others: the last few years are NOTHING in comparison to all of that. They are a passing fever, soon forgotten

We do not repine. We are the English, we are the British. We’re still here

Only monarchy, I suspect, can enact this peculiar and reviving magic

I’m one of the most patriotic Englishmen you’ll meet, in a sporting context. I follow the England cricket and football teams with gusto. I don’t need the monarchy to feel national pride. Indeed yesterday’s long damp sermon was rather the opposite - dull, pious and boring! Hardly the stuff to stir the senses.

As I said yesterday evening to you, if you set out to be uninspired then you will be. Only someone with an utterly closed mind could fail to be moved and inspired by the vast history and tradition on display yesterday. Not just sat in museums to be shuffled past by bored school kids but actually being used as it was intended, as part of the heritage of our country.

"Only someone with an utterly closed mind"

really? you found it moving and inspiring. others didn't.

Yes really. If you have any onterest what so ever in the history of our country as Anabob claims to have (and I do recognise that as a German that does not apply to you in the same way as it would to a Briton) then yesterday's proceedings were absolutely moving and inspiring. The use of a gospel dating from the 6th century, a ceremony that dates back to the 10th century and all performed in a building that dates back to the 11th century. All utterly authentic and unique. If someone who purports to be a 'patriotic Englishman' is not inspired by that in favour of a couple of ball games no more than 250 years old then they surely do have a closed mind.

Well, aris a British person, I did not find it moving or inspiring. Maybe I didn't see the right bit, but I've seen more inspiring church fetes.

And it feels like an extremely insecure and/or arrogant statement to decree that others must find something moving and inspiring.

OK then, here you go. Here is the most sacred element of yesterday’s ceremony in full. Give it a shot. It’s 5 minutes long

This is the moment when Charles is anointed, in a Biblical ceremony using Biblical words dating back to the coronation of King Edgar of England in 973AD. He is being anointed in an abbey built by Edward the Confessor in the 11th century and used by William the Conqueror for HIS coronation on Christmas Day, 1066

The music - Zadok the Priest - was specifically written for this exact moment of anointment by George Handel and used in all British Coronations since 1727. It was also written to be heard in this exact place: Westminster Abbey, the ancient church of the Anglo Saxon kings

Charles is ceremonially disrobed and then anointed by the Archbishop of Canterbury as the 6th century Augustine Gospels - one of the oldest books in the world - are open at the precise verses

https://youtu.be/SCZAEI4zouE

If you can watch this and genuinely claim you are not moved or inspired then fair enough. Tho I kind of pity you

The music is ok if you like that sort of thing, which I don't particularly. The anointing leaves me cold. Amazed that you are so lacking in imagination that you have to 'pity' people who are unmoved by this. Maybe you are moved and inspired by everything that anyone has ever found moving and inspiring? In which case fair enough.

Why are you trying to have a rational debate with @Leon, as opposed to an alcohol soaked shouting match?

Leon said:

HYUFD said:

mickydroy said:

DM_Andy said:

HYUFD said:

DM_Andy said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Penddu2 said:

I am sure it has already been done ... but here we are again...

Peasant Woman: Well, how’d you become king, then?

King Charles: The Lady of the Lake, her arm clad in the purest shimmering samite, held aloft Excalibur from the bosom of the water, signifying by divine providence that I, Charles, was to carry Excalibur. That is why I am your king.

Boris: Listen. Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical coronation ceremony.

Charles: Be quiet!

Boris: You can’t expect to wield supreme executive power just ’cause some watery tart threw a sword at you!

Charles: Shut up!

Boris: I mean, if I went around saying I was an emperor just because some moistened bint had lobbed a scimitar at me, they’d put me away!

Surely one of the arguments - if slightly tonugue in cheek - in favour of Monarchy is the fact that without it we would almost inevitably have President Boris. Having followed on from President Thatcher and President Blair.

In one stroke we move from one of the most uniting constitutional arrangements in this country to one of the most divisive.

There are ways of electing a head of state that avoid division. How about the President being elected by combined Houses of Parliament (House of Commons and Senate) with a 2/3rds or 3/4ths majority being required. That would force Conservative and Labour to agree on very inoffensive candidates, We could be living under the rule of President Attenborough right now.

More likely we would just end up with President Ed Miliband or President Hague if Parliament elected the President. So as Germany does you end up with the head of state being a ceremonial consolation prize for politicians who failed to become head of government which would be even worse than having a directly elected executive President. Without much tourism revenue either

Yeah, London would be without foreign tourists if we became a republic, what fools France and Italy were to get rid of their monarchy because now no-one visits Paris or Rome.

More people visit Paris than London

They don't

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_by_international_visitors

That’s pre Covid and pre Brexit. Who the F knows now. Things won’t settle down for years

Eg Bangkok is at the top of that list yet last year it got about 8 visitors

Paris hosts the Olympics next year which will give France a boost.

Richard_Tyndall said:

kamski said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Penddu2 said:

I am sure it has already been done ... but here we are again...

Peasant Woman: Well, how’d you become king, then?

King Charles: The Lady of the Lake, her arm clad in the purest shimmering samite, held aloft Excalibur from the bosom of the water, signifying by divine providence that I, Charles, was to carry Excalibur. That is why I am your king.

Boris: Listen. Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical coronation ceremony.

Charles: Be quiet!

Boris: You can’t expect to wield supreme executive power just ’cause some watery tart threw a sword at you!

Charles: Shut up!

Boris: I mean, if I went around saying I was an emperor just because some moistened bint had lobbed a scimitar at me, they’d put me away!

Surely one of the arguments - if slightly tonugue in cheek - in favour of Monarchy is the fact that without it we would almost inevitably have President Boris. Having followed on from President Thatcher and President Blair.

In one stroke we move from one of the most uniting constitutional arrangements in this country to one of the most divisive.

Is it necessarily one of the most divisive? Eg the German presidency seems far less divisive than the British monarchy. Even when the last but one had to resign because he faced prosecution for corruption in 2012 (he was later acquitted of all charges) nobody gave much of a shit.

Hard to imagine Charles facing prosecution for corruption, no matter what he's been up to.

Yes one of the most divisive. Look at the hatred expressed at figures like Thatcher, Blair and Johnson from the other side of the political divide (and often from their own side). None of them would command the overall respect of the public at large and the whole position would become a laughing stock. What sort of image would that project to the wider world.

And as others have already mentioned, I doubt 1% of the rest of the world could tell you who the German President was. With the exception of Macron because of the nature of the French Constitution, the rest of the European Presidents are non-entities who do nothing for their countries.

As opposed to Charles - a non-entity with a good publicity machine who does nothing for his country

DM_Andy said:

HYUFD said:

kamski said:

HYUFD said:

kamski said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Penddu2 said:

I am sure it has already been done ... but here we are again...

Peasant Woman: Well, how’d you become king, then?

King Charles: The Lady of the Lake, her arm clad in the purest shimmering samite, held aloft Excalibur from the bosom of the water, signifying by divine providence that I, Charles, was to carry Excalibur. That is why I am your king.

Boris: Listen. Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical coronation ceremony.

Charles: Be quiet!

Boris: You can’t expect to wield supreme executive power just ’cause some watery tart threw a sword at you!

Charles: Shut up!

Boris: I mean, if I went around saying I was an emperor just because some moistened bint had lobbed a scimitar at me, they’d put me away!

Surely one of the arguments - if slightly tonugue in cheek - in favour of Monarchy is the fact that without it we would almost inevitably have President Boris. Having followed on from President Thatcher and President Blair.

In one stroke we move from one of the most uniting constitutional arrangements in this country to one of the most divisive.

Is it necessarily one of the most divisive? Eg the German presidency seems far less divisive than the British monarchy. Even when the last but one had to resign because he faced prosecution for corruption in 2012 (he was later acquitted of all charges) nobody gave much of a shit.

Hard to imagine Charles facing prosecution for corruption, no matter what he's been up to.

The current German President is a nonentity nobody outside Germany has head of who only got the job as a consolation prize after Merkel beat him in 2009 in the German Federal election for the Chancellry

Yes, as I said, the German presidency far less divisive in Germany than the British royal family is in the UK.

The current German President was the SPD candidate for Chancellor in 2009. Do you think CDU voters respect him? The previous one was a CDU politician. Do you think SPD voters respected him? Neither brought in tourism revenue either

According to the Times, Steinmeier has approval ratings of ranging from 65% to 85% around the time of his re-election as German President. King Charles III has an approval rating of 55% according to YouGov and slightly more people think he will be a bad king than a good king. How is that less divisive?

Steinmeier is definitely less divisive because nobody cares. I just checked with my German wife, who does follow the news, and takes a little bit of an interest in politics, and she wasn't sure who the president is... Nobody respects or disrespects him because he is a non-entity.

The previous president wasn't a CDU politician, but I'm not expecting accuracy from HYUFD!

kinabalu said:

Eabhal said:

Leon said:

kamski said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

kamski said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Anabobazina said:

Leon said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Anabobazina said:

squareroot2 said:

Anabobazina said:

Good morning all. I’m sure everyone will join me in relief that the enforced TV bible bashing is behind us and we can settle into a proper weekend day of cooking programmes and football. And the rain has gone. Hurray!

You assume far too.much.

The relief among the people is palpable, on this bright spring morn. The rainy sermon is over, and just rejoice at that news.

I am much happier rejoicing at the fact that we have reconfirmed Constitutional Monarchy as the Settlement for this country until long after all of us on PB are dead and buried. Yesterday showed that perfectly and will have done us no harm in the soft power stakes around the world.

Yes, I know the @Anabobazina’s of this world will find this bewildering and the @malcolmg’s will find it loathsome and yada yada but yesterday made me happier about things in quite an important way

My national identity is quite important to me (not quite fundamental but certainly profound). For quite a few years an air of decline and malaise - sometimes almost terminal - has surrounded Britishness and Englishness, a form of slow but debilitating sickness, a kind of scurvy of the soul

Yesterday in all its nonsensical pageantry and glorious music and matchless history and predictable drizzle and architectural spleandour and ridiculous boring horsey marching and - most of all - its mysterious, pointless, luminous ritual which goes back ONE THOUSAND ONE HUNDRED YEARS - if not longer - with an English king being anointed in the Abbey built by Anglo Saxon kings 1200 years ago - made me put all of our recent travails in perspective. The deep perspective of enormous time

We are such an ancient nation, wreathed in legend and myth, assailed and venerated, reviled and revered, broken and blighted in places, yet bright and thriving in others: the last few years are NOTHING in comparison to all of that. They are a passing fever, soon forgotten

We do not repine. We are the English, we are the British. We’re still here

Only monarchy, I suspect, can enact this peculiar and reviving magic

I’m one of the most patriotic Englishmen you’ll meet, in a sporting context. I follow the England cricket and football teams with gusto. I don’t need the monarchy to feel national pride. Indeed yesterday’s long damp sermon was rather the opposite - dull, pious and boring! Hardly the stuff to stir the senses.

As I said yesterday evening to you, if you set out to be uninspired then you will be. Only someone with an utterly closed mind could fail to be moved and inspired by the vast history and tradition on display yesterday. Not just sat in museums to be shuffled past by bored school kids but actually being used as it was intended, as part of the heritage of our country.

"Only someone with an utterly closed mind"

really? you found it moving and inspiring. others didn't.

Yes really. If you have any onterest what so ever in the history of our country as Anabob claims to have (and I do recognise that as a German that does not apply to you in the same way as it would to a Briton) then yesterday's proceedings were absolutely moving and inspiring. The use of a gospel dating from the 6th century, a ceremony that dates back to the 10th century and all performed in a building that dates back to the 11th century. All utterly authentic and unique. If someone who purports to be a 'patriotic Englishman' is not inspired by that in favour of a couple of ball games no more than 250 years old then they surely do have a closed mind.

Well, aris a British person, I did not find it moving or inspiring. Maybe I didn't see the right bit, but I've seen more inspiring church fetes.

And it feels like an extremely insecure and/or arrogant statement to decree that others must find something moving and inspiring.

OK then, here you go. Here is the most sacred element of yesterday’s ceremony in full. Give it a shot. It’s 5 minutes long

This is the moment when Charles is anointed, in a Biblical ceremony using Biblical words dating back to the coronation of King Edgar of England in 973AD. He is being anointed in an abbey built by Edward the Confessor in the 11th century and used by William the Conqueror for HIS coronation on Christmas Day, 1066

The music - Zadok the Priest - was specifically written for this exact moment of anointment by George Handel and used in all British Coronations since 1727. It was also written to be heard in this exact place: Westminster Abbey, the ancient church of the Anglo Saxon kings

Charles is ceremonially disrobed and then anointed by the Archbishop of Canterbury as the 6th century Augustine Gospels - one of the oldest books in the world - are open at the precise verses

https://youtu.be/SCZAEI4zouE

If you can watch this and genuinely claim you are not moved or inspired then fair enough. Tho I kind of pity you

Don't forget the chair and the stone.

That was the only bit that was properly spine chilling, plus the Greek hymn afterward. Seeing him get his kit off, Zadok, and then get hidden away like that... spooky.

The crowning itself seemed a bit preposterous - could they not lower the arches on the crown? The proportions were all wrong. And the blue on the horses was nasty.

What about when he slipped into the 'supertunica'?

That was just a variation on Yousaf's Sherwani when he sworn in as FM.

Richard_Tyndall said:

kamski said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Anabobazina said:

Leon said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Anabobazina said:

squareroot2 said:

Anabobazina said:

Good morning all. I’m sure everyone will join me in relief that the enforced TV bible bashing is behind us and we can settle into a proper weekend day of cooking programmes and football. And the rain has gone. Hurray!

You assume far too.much.

The relief among the people is palpable, on this bright spring morn. The rainy sermon is over, and just rejoice at that news.

I am much happier rejoicing at the fact that we have reconfirmed Constitutional Monarchy as the Settlement for this country until long after all of us on PB are dead and buried. Yesterday showed that perfectly and will have done us no harm in the soft power stakes around the world.

Yes, I know the @Anabobazina’s of this world will find this bewildering and the @malcolmg’s will find it loathsome and yada yada but yesterday made me happier about things in quite an important way

My national identity is quite important to me (not quite fundamental but certainly profound). For quite a few years an air of decline and malaise - sometimes almost terminal - has surrounded Britishness and Englishness, a form of slow but debilitating sickness, a kind of scurvy of the soul

Yesterday in all its nonsensical pageantry and glorious music and matchless history and predictable drizzle and architectural spleandour and ridiculous boring horsey marching and - most of all - its mysterious, pointless, luminous ritual which goes back ONE THOUSAND ONE HUNDRED YEARS - if not longer - with an English king being anointed in the Abbey built by Anglo Saxon kings 1200 years ago - made me put all of our recent travails in perspective. The deep perspective of enormous time

We are such an ancient nation, wreathed in legend and myth, assailed and venerated, reviled and revered, broken and blighted in places, yet bright and thriving in others: the last few years are NOTHING in comparison to all of that. They are a passing fever, soon forgotten

We do not repine. We are the English, we are the British. We’re still here

Only monarchy, I suspect, can enact this peculiar and reviving magic

I’m one of the most patriotic Englishmen you’ll meet, in a sporting context. I follow the England cricket and football teams with gusto. I don’t need the monarchy to feel national pride. Indeed yesterday’s long damp sermon was rather the opposite - dull, pious and boring! Hardly the stuff to stir the senses.

As I said yesterday evening to you, if you set out to be uninspired then you will be. Only someone with an utterly closed mind could fail to be moved and inspired by the vast history and tradition on display yesterday. Not just sat in museums to be shuffled past by bored school kids but actually being used as it was intended, as part of the heritage of our country.

"Only someone with an utterly closed mind"

really? you found it moving and inspiring. others didn't.

Yes really. If you have any onterest what so ever in the history of our country as Anabob claims to have (and I do recognise that as a German that does not apply to you in the same way as it would to a Briton) then yesterday's proceedings were absolutely moving and inspiring. The use of a gospel dating from the 6th century, a ceremony that dates back to the 10th century and all performed in a building that dates back to the 11th century. All utterly authentic and unique. If someone who purports to be a 'patriotic Englishman' is not inspired by that in favour of a couple of ball games no more than 250 years old then they surely do have a closed mind.

I think inspired is the wrong word. It's something deeper than that. I made snarky comments on Twitter and to my wife while it was all happening, but inside I knew I was looking at something from deep in history: an absolute connection to the distant past. The King stripped bare before his Lord, a 6th century bible, an anointment. I read about this stuff when I studied medieval history at university. And now I was watching it. Not as some kind of re-enactment, but as real life. It was time travel. It was genuinely extraordinary. Something incredibly precious. And then ... ZA-DOK the PRIEST. I mean, bloody hell!!!!

Leon said:

kamski said:

Leon said:

kamski said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

kamski said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Anabobazina said:

Leon said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Anabobazina said:

squareroot2 said:

Anabobazina said:

Good morning all. I’m sure everyone will join me in relief that the enforced TV bible bashing is behind us and we can settle into a proper weekend day of cooking programmes and football. And the rain has gone. Hurray!

You assume far too.much.

The relief among the people is palpable, on this bright spring morn. The rainy sermon is over, and just rejoice at that news.

I am much happier rejoicing at the fact that we have reconfirmed Constitutional Monarchy as the Settlement for this country until long after all of us on PB are dead and buried. Yesterday showed that perfectly and will have done us no harm in the soft power stakes around the world.

Yes, I know the @Anabobazina’s of this world will find this bewildering and the @malcolmg’s will find it loathsome and yada yada but yesterday made me happier about things in quite an important way

My national identity is quite important to me (not quite fundamental but certainly profound). For quite a few years an air of decline and malaise - sometimes almost terminal - has surrounded Britishness and Englishness, a form of slow but debilitating sickness, a kind of scurvy of the soul

Yesterday in all its nonsensical pageantry and glorious music and matchless history and predictable drizzle and architectural spleandour and ridiculous boring horsey marching and - most of all - its mysterious, pointless, luminous ritual which goes back ONE THOUSAND ONE HUNDRED YEARS - if not longer - with an English king being anointed in the Abbey built by Anglo Saxon kings 1200 years ago - made me put all of our recent travails in perspective. The deep perspective of enormous time

We are such an ancient nation, wreathed in legend and myth, assailed and venerated, reviled and revered, broken and blighted in places, yet bright and thriving in others: the last few years are NOTHING in comparison to all of that. They are a passing fever, soon forgotten

We do not repine. We are the English, we are the British. We’re still here

Only monarchy, I suspect, can enact this peculiar and reviving magic

I’m one of the most patriotic Englishmen you’ll meet, in a sporting context. I follow the England cricket and football teams with gusto. I don’t need the monarchy to feel national pride. Indeed yesterday’s long damp sermon was rather the opposite - dull, pious and boring! Hardly the stuff to stir the senses.

As I said yesterday evening to you, if you set out to be uninspired then you will be. Only someone with an utterly closed mind could fail to be moved and inspired by the vast history and tradition on display yesterday. Not just sat in museums to be shuffled past by bored school kids but actually being used as it was intended, as part of the heritage of our country.

"Only someone with an utterly closed mind"

really? you found it moving and inspiring. others didn't.

Yes really. If you have any onterest what so ever in the history of our country as Anabob claims to have (and I do recognise that as a German that does not apply to you in the same way as it would to a Briton) then yesterday's proceedings were absolutely moving and inspiring. The use of a gospel dating from the 6th century, a ceremony that dates back to the 10th century and all performed in a building that dates back to the 11th century. All utterly authentic and unique. If someone who purports to be a 'patriotic Englishman' is not inspired by that in favour of a couple of ball games no more than 250 years old then they surely do have a closed mind.

Well, aris a British person, I did not find it moving or inspiring. Maybe I didn't see the right bit, but I've seen more inspiring church fetes.

And it feels like an extremely insecure and/or arrogant statement to decree that others must find something moving and inspiring.

OK then, here you go. Here is the most sacred element of yesterday’s ceremony in full. Give it a shot. It’s 5 minutes long

This is the moment when Charles is anointed, in a Biblical ceremony using Biblical words dating back to the coronation of King Edgar of England in 973AD. He is being anointed in an abbey built by Edward the Confessor in the 11th century and used by William the Conqueror for HIS coronation on Christmas Day, 1066

The music - Zadok the Priest - was specifically written for this exact moment of anointment by George Handel and used in all British Coronations since 1727. It was also written to be heard in this exact place: Westminster Abbey, the ancient church of the Anglo Saxon kings

Charles is ceremonially disrobed and then anointed by the Archbishop of Canterbury as the 6th century Augustine Gospels - one of the oldest books in the world - are open at the precise verses

https://youtu.be/SCZAEI4zouE

If you can watch this and genuinely claim you are not moved or inspired then fair enough. Tho I kind of pity you

The music is ok if you like that sort of thing, which I don't particularly. The anointing leaves me cold. Amazed that you are so lacking in imagination that you have to 'pity' people who are unmoved by this. Maybe you are moved and inspired by everything that anyone has ever found moving and inspiring? In which case fair enough.

Lol. You don’t like Zadok the Priest???? By general consent one of the most sublime pieces of music ever written?

OK, we will never find common ground here. Guten Tag

General consent?

It's OK. A bit patchy, a bit bombastic. It's not even in the top ten pieces by Händel, so far as I'm concerned.

kinabalu said:

Perhaps not liking Zadok the Priest can serve as a simple but infallible 'tell' that a person isn't a Patriot.

Look out for the league table of boy’s first names next year.

Eabhal said:

Leon said:

Eabhal said:

Leon said:

kamski said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

kamski said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Anabobazina said:

Leon said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Anabobazina said:

squareroot2 said:

Anabobazina said:

Good morning all. I’m sure everyone will join me in relief that the enforced TV bible bashing is behind us and we can settle into a proper weekend day of cooking programmes and football. And the rain has gone. Hurray!

You assume far too.much.

The relief among the people is palpable, on this bright spring morn. The rainy sermon is over, and just rejoice at that news.

I am much happier rejoicing at the fact that we have reconfirmed Constitutional Monarchy as the Settlement for this country until long after all of us on PB are dead and buried. Yesterday showed that perfectly and will have done us no harm in the soft power stakes around the world.

Yes, I know the @Anabobazina’s of this world will find this bewildering and the @malcolmg’s will find it loathsome and yada yada but yesterday made me happier about things in quite an important way

My national identity is quite important to me (not quite fundamental but certainly profound). For quite a few years an air of decline and malaise - sometimes almost terminal - has surrounded Britishness and Englishness, a form of slow but debilitating sickness, a kind of scurvy of the soul

Yesterday in all its nonsensical pageantry and glorious music and matchless history and predictable drizzle and architectural spleandour and ridiculous boring horsey marching and - most of all - its mysterious, pointless, luminous ritual which goes back ONE THOUSAND ONE HUNDRED YEARS - if not longer - with an English king being anointed in the Abbey built by Anglo Saxon kings 1200 years ago - made me put all of our recent travails in perspective. The deep perspective of enormous time

We are such an ancient nation, wreathed in legend and myth, assailed and venerated, reviled and revered, broken and blighted in places, yet bright and thriving in others: the last few years are NOTHING in comparison to all of that. They are a passing fever, soon forgotten

We do not repine. We are the English, we are the British. We’re still here

Only monarchy, I suspect, can enact this peculiar and reviving magic

I’m one of the most patriotic Englishmen you’ll meet, in a sporting context. I follow the England cricket and football teams with gusto. I don’t need the monarchy to feel national pride. Indeed yesterday’s long damp sermon was rather the opposite - dull, pious and boring! Hardly the stuff to stir the senses.

As I said yesterday evening to you, if you set out to be uninspired then you will be. Only someone with an utterly closed mind could fail to be moved and inspired by the vast history and tradition on display yesterday. Not just sat in museums to be shuffled past by bored school kids but actually being used as it was intended, as part of the heritage of our country.

"Only someone with an utterly closed mind"

really? you found it moving and inspiring. others didn't.

Yes really. If you have any onterest what so ever in the history of our country as Anabob claims to have (and I do recognise that as a German that does not apply to you in the same way as it would to a Briton) then yesterday's proceedings were absolutely moving and inspiring. The use of a gospel dating from the 6th century, a ceremony that dates back to the 10th century and all performed in a building that dates back to the 11th century. All utterly authentic and unique. If someone who purports to be a 'patriotic Englishman' is not inspired by that in favour of a couple of ball games no more than 250 years old then they surely do have a closed mind.

Well, aris a British person, I did not find it moving or inspiring. Maybe I didn't see the right bit, but I've seen more inspiring church fetes.

And it feels like an extremely insecure and/or arrogant statement to decree that others must find something moving and inspiring.

OK then, here you go. Here is the most sacred element of yesterday’s ceremony in full. Give it a shot. It’s 5 minutes long

This is the moment when Charles is anointed, in a Biblical ceremony using Biblical words dating back to the coronation of King Edgar of England in 973AD. He is being anointed in an abbey built by Edward the Confessor in the 11th century and used by William the Conqueror for HIS coronation on Christmas Day, 1066

The music - Zadok the Priest - was specifically written for this exact moment of anointment by George Handel and used in all British Coronations since 1727. It was also written to be heard in this exact place: Westminster Abbey, the ancient church of the Anglo Saxon kings

Charles is ceremonially disrobed and then anointed by the Archbishop of Canterbury as the 6th century Augustine Gospels - one of the oldest books in the world - are open at the precise verses

https://youtu.be/SCZAEI4zouE

If you can watch this and genuinely claim you are not moved or inspired then fair enough. Tho I kind of pity you

Don't forget the chair and the stone.

That was the only bit that was properly spine chilling, plus the Greek hymn afterward. Seeing him get his kit off, Zadok, and then get hidden away like that... spooky.

The crowning itself seemed a bit preposterous - could they not lower the arches on the crown? The proportions were all wrong. And the blue on the horses was nasty.

Also the entrance and the cries of Vivat! Vivat! - again impossibly ancient

And the three cheers afterwards from the army in the drizzle. That was unexpectedly moving. You can see Charles is slightly emosh

https://twitter.com/royalcentral/status/1654832750094942211?s=61&t=GGp3Vs1t1kTWDiyA-odnZg

Nicking this from a friend: that Charles is quite short (at least compared to the bishops), and rendered completely immobile by the all various regalia, the whole thing was as dressing a child into a kilt for a wedding. Or for a first day at school.

Definitely had that vibe I think. He didn't know his lines, looked very nervous; a helpless mortal ushered unto greatness (you're the wordsmith, please improve).

Yeah. You really got the sense of a heavy duty undertaken

Ain’t no way you abdicate after a ceremony like that

It’s a bit like the way getting married itself prevents couples splitting up. The vows really do make a difference

Rex Carolus made his vows to the nation, yesterday

Leon said:

DM_Andy said:

HYUFD said:

kamski said:

HYUFD said:

kamski said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Penddu2 said:

I am sure it has already been done ... but here we are again...

Peasant Woman: Well, how’d you become king, then?

King Charles: The Lady of the Lake, her arm clad in the purest shimmering samite, held aloft Excalibur from the bosom of the water, signifying by divine providence that I, Charles, was to carry Excalibur. That is why I am your king.

Boris: Listen. Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical coronation ceremony.

Charles: Be quiet!

Boris: You can’t expect to wield supreme executive power just ’cause some watery tart threw a sword at you!

Charles: Shut up!

Boris: I mean, if I went around saying I was an emperor just because some moistened bint had lobbed a scimitar at me, they’d put me away!

Surely one of the arguments - if slightly tonugue in cheek - in favour of Monarchy is the fact that without it we would almost inevitably have President Boris. Having followed on from President Thatcher and President Blair.

In one stroke we move from one of the most uniting constitutional arrangements in this country to one of the most divisive.

Is it necessarily one of the most divisive? Eg the German presidency seems far less divisive than the British monarchy. Even when the last but one had to resign because he faced prosecution for corruption in 2012 (he was later acquitted of all charges) nobody gave much of a shit.

Hard to imagine Charles facing prosecution for corruption, no matter what he's been up to.

The current German President is a nonentity nobody outside Germany has head of who only got the job as a consolation prize after Merkel beat him in 2009 in the German Federal election for the Chancellry

Yes, as I said, the German presidency far less divisive in Germany than the British royal family is in the UK.

The current German President was the SPD candidate for Chancellor in 2009. Do you think CDU voters respect him? The previous one was a CDU politician. Do you think SPD voters respected him? Neither brought in tourism revenue either

According to the Times, Steinmeier has approval ratings of ranging from 65% to 85% around the time of his re-election as German President. King Charles III has an approval rating of 55% according to YouGov and slightly more people think he will be a bad king than a good king. How is that less divisive?

Maybe it’s because even Germans have never heard of this anonymous dork

Stein-who?

Germany has chosen to be a very boring colorless country. Given its recent history I can understand why, and in many ways it has worked out for them. Bravo etc. Nonetheless it is really quite dull

Germany is quite an interesting country. Its attitude to its own history is maybe unique?

I was just listening to "Germany: Memories of a Nation" on BBC Sounds, quite an interesting series, I found.

kamski said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

kamski said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

kamski said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Anabobazina said:

Leon said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Anabobazina said:

squareroot2 said:

Anabobazina said:

Good morning all. I’m sure everyone will join me in relief that the enforced TV bible bashing is behind us and we can settle into a proper weekend day of cooking programmes and football. And the rain has gone. Hurray!

You assume far too.much.

The relief among the people is palpable, on this bright spring morn. The rainy sermon is over, and just rejoice at that news.

I am much happier rejoicing at the fact that we have reconfirmed Constitutional Monarchy as the Settlement for this country until long after all of us on PB are dead and buried. Yesterday showed that perfectly and will have done us no harm in the soft power stakes around the world.

Yes, I know the @Anabobazina’s of this world will find this bewildering and the @malcolmg’s will find it loathsome and yada yada but yesterday made me happier about things in quite an important way

My national identity is quite important to me (not quite fundamental but certainly profound). For quite a few years an air of decline and malaise - sometimes almost terminal - has surrounded Britishness and Englishness, a form of slow but debilitating sickness, a kind of scurvy of the soul

Yesterday in all its nonsensical pageantry and glorious music and matchless history and predictable drizzle and architectural spleandour and ridiculous boring horsey marching and - most of all - its mysterious, pointless, luminous ritual which goes back ONE THOUSAND ONE HUNDRED YEARS - if not longer - with an English king being anointed in the Abbey built by Anglo Saxon kings 1200 years ago - made me put all of our recent travails in perspective. The deep perspective of enormous time

We are such an ancient nation, wreathed in legend and myth, assailed and venerated, reviled and revered, broken and blighted in places, yet bright and thriving in others: the last few years are NOTHING in comparison to all of that. They are a passing fever, soon forgotten

We do not repine. We are the English, we are the British. We’re still here

Only monarchy, I suspect, can enact this peculiar and reviving magic

I’m one of the most patriotic Englishmen you’ll meet, in a sporting context. I follow the England cricket and football teams with gusto. I don’t need the monarchy to feel national pride. Indeed yesterday’s long damp sermon was rather the opposite - dull, pious and boring! Hardly the stuff to stir the senses.

As I said yesterday evening to you, if you set out to be uninspired then you will be. Only someone with an utterly closed mind could fail to be moved and inspired by the vast history and tradition on display yesterday. Not just sat in museums to be shuffled past by bored school kids but actually being used as it was intended, as part of the heritage of our country.

"Only someone with an utterly closed mind"

really? you found it moving and inspiring. others didn't.

Yes really. If you have any onterest what so ever in the history of our country as Anabob claims to have (and I do recognise that as a German that does not apply to you in the same way as it would to a Briton) then yesterday's proceedings were absolutely moving and inspiring. The use of a gospel dating from the 6th century, a ceremony that dates back to the 10th century and all performed in a building that dates back to the 11th century. All utterly authentic and unique. If someone who purports to be a 'patriotic Englishman' is not inspired by that in favour of a couple of ball games no more than 250 years old then they surely do have a closed mind.

Well, as a British person, I did not find it moving or inspiring. Maybe I didn't see the right bit, but I've seen more inspiring church fetes.

And it feels like an extremely insecure and/or arrogant statement to decree that others must find something moving and inspiring.

Apologies I thought you were German.

And no it is not insecure at all. Just basic common sense and logic. To claim one is strongly patriotic and then to be uninspired by the history and symbolism that defines the country seems utterly deluded.

Well, I can't speak for anyone else and I wouldn't claim to be strongly patriotic, but maybe that particular symbolism doesn't define the country for other people who nevertheless consider themselves strongly patriotic. Or is it delusional to disagree that the symbolism of the coronation is what defines Britain?

I think this debate hits the bullseye in terms of the peculiar challenge we face in defining “Britishness” right now.

Objectively, I agree with Richard - the depth of history on display is inspiring. Yet I can also understand a point of view that sees this as a very narrow definition of Britishness that excludes a lot of what makes me proud of our country. I can see why for some it is actively off-putting (eg the prominence of old whites men in the proceedings).

Those who scream ‘woke’ reflexively on the one hand, along with those who refuse to admit the value of this depth of national history on the other, are the truly closed-of-mind, in my view.

TheValiant said:

Leon said:

Yes. It is the most exclusive definition of mass shooting used by criminologists,. Some are much more widely cast - ie more than two people need to be shot in any way, etc. By these more expansive definitions there is basically a mass shooting every single day in the USA

Exceedingly worrying for the United States then, that many of them can't see (or more likely, refuse to see).

The 2nd Amendment is the problem. Not only does it give them the right to bear arms, but it ingrains in them a culture that bearing arms is both a RIGHT and is 'Right' (as in, people without firearms are weird).

I mean, this picture (and there are many on google, whether ironic or not) is a picture of a 'family day out':

It's a remarkable cultural transition in some ways. It's now far from 'I have a right to have a gun', it's 'I have (or should have) a right to carry any type of firearm anywhere I want, and there should be no limits on how many I have, no delays or (preferably) licensing which places any barriers to me and my gun'.

It's not a result of gun promoting entertainment, many places have that, nor some expression of rugged frontiersmanship spirit, many places have that too, nor some unique cultural situation of resisting oppression.

Penddu2 said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

kamski said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Penddu2 said:

I am sure it has already been done ... but here we are again...

Peasant Woman: Well, how’d you become king, then?

King Charles: The Lady of the Lake, her arm clad in the purest shimmering samite, held aloft Excalibur from the bosom of the water, signifying by divine providence that I, Charles, was to carry Excalibur. That is why I am your king.

Boris: Listen. Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical coronation ceremony.

Charles: Be quiet!

Boris: You can’t expect to wield supreme executive power just ’cause some watery tart threw a sword at you!

Charles: Shut up!

Boris: I mean, if I went around saying I was an emperor just because some moistened bint had lobbed a scimitar at me, they’d put me away!

Surely one of the arguments - if slightly tonugue in cheek - in favour of Monarchy is the fact that without it we would almost inevitably have President Boris. Having followed on from President Thatcher and President Blair.

In one stroke we move from one of the most uniting constitutional arrangements in this country to one of the most divisive.

Is it necessarily one of the most divisive? Eg the German presidency seems far less divisive than the British monarchy. Even when the last but one had to resign because he faced prosecution for corruption in 2012 (he was later acquitted of all charges) nobody gave much of a shit.

Hard to imagine Charles facing prosecution for corruption, no matter what he's been up to.

Yes one of the most divisive. Look at the hatred expressed at figures like Thatcher, Blair and Johnson from the other side of the political divide (and often from their own side). None of them would command the overall respect of the public at large and the whole position would become a laughing stock. What sort of image would that project to the wider world.

And as others have already mentioned, I doubt 1% of the rest of the world could tell you who the German President was. With the exception of Macron because of the nature of the French Constitution, the rest of the European Presidents are non-entities who do nothing for their countries.

As opposed to Charles - a non-entity with a good publicity machine who does nothing for his country

His ears, new ageyness, bumbling persona and willingness to debase himself to get hold of 1 million in cash in a briefcase provides joy for the nation.

Leon said:

Eabhal said:

Leon said:

Eabhal said:

Leon said:

kamski said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

kamski said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Anabobazina said:

Leon said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Anabobazina said:

squareroot2 said:

Anabobazina said:

Good morning all. I’m sure everyone will join me in relief that the enforced TV bible bashing is behind us and we can settle into a proper weekend day of cooking programmes and football. And the rain has gone. Hurray!

You assume far too.much.

The relief among the people is palpable, on this bright spring morn. The rainy sermon is over, and just rejoice at that news.

I am much happier rejoicing at the fact that we have reconfirmed Constitutional Monarchy as the Settlement for this country until long after all of us on PB are dead and buried. Yesterday showed that perfectly and will have done us no harm in the soft power stakes around the world.

Yes, I know the @Anabobazina’s of this world will find this bewildering and the @malcolmg’s will find it loathsome and yada yada but yesterday made me happier about things in quite an important way

My national identity is quite important to me (not quite fundamental but certainly profound). For quite a few years an air of decline and malaise - sometimes almost terminal - has surrounded Britishness and Englishness, a form of slow but debilitating sickness, a kind of scurvy of the soul

Yesterday in all its nonsensical pageantry and glorious music and matchless history and predictable drizzle and architectural spleandour and ridiculous boring horsey marching and - most of all - its mysterious, pointless, luminous ritual which goes back ONE THOUSAND ONE HUNDRED YEARS - if not longer - with an English king being anointed in the Abbey built by Anglo Saxon kings 1200 years ago - made me put all of our recent travails in perspective. The deep perspective of enormous time

We are such an ancient nation, wreathed in legend and myth, assailed and venerated, reviled and revered, broken and blighted in places, yet bright and thriving in others: the last few years are NOTHING in comparison to all of that. They are a passing fever, soon forgotten

We do not repine. We are the English, we are the British. We’re still here

Only monarchy, I suspect, can enact this peculiar and reviving magic

I’m one of the most patriotic Englishmen you’ll meet, in a sporting context. I follow the England cricket and football teams with gusto. I don’t need the monarchy to feel national pride. Indeed yesterday’s long damp sermon was rather the opposite - dull, pious and boring! Hardly the stuff to stir the senses.

As I said yesterday evening to you, if you set out to be uninspired then you will be. Only someone with an utterly closed mind could fail to be moved and inspired by the vast history and tradition on display yesterday. Not just sat in museums to be shuffled past by bored school kids but actually being used as it was intended, as part of the heritage of our country.

"Only someone with an utterly closed mind"

really? you found it moving and inspiring. others didn't.

Yes really. If you have any onterest what so ever in the history of our country as Anabob claims to have (and I do recognise that as a German that does not apply to you in the same way as it would to a Briton) then yesterday's proceedings were absolutely moving and inspiring. The use of a gospel dating from the 6th century, a ceremony that dates back to the 10th century and all performed in a building that dates back to the 11th century. All utterly authentic and unique. If someone who purports to be a 'patriotic Englishman' is not inspired by that in favour of a couple of ball games no more than 250 years old then they surely do have a closed mind.

Well, aris a British person, I did not find it moving or inspiring. Maybe I didn't see the right bit, but I've seen more inspiring church fetes.

And it feels like an extremely insecure and/or arrogant statement to decree that others must find something moving and inspiring.

OK then, here you go. Here is the most sacred element of yesterday’s ceremony in full. Give it a shot. It’s 5 minutes long

This is the moment when Charles is anointed, in a Biblical ceremony using Biblical words dating back to the coronation of King Edgar of England in 973AD. He is being anointed in an abbey built by Edward the Confessor in the 11th century and used by William the Conqueror for HIS coronation on Christmas Day, 1066

The music - Zadok the Priest - was specifically written for this exact moment of anointment by George Handel and used in all British Coronations since 1727. It was also written to be heard in this exact place: Westminster Abbey, the ancient church of the Anglo Saxon kings

Charles is ceremonially disrobed and then anointed by the Archbishop of Canterbury as the 6th century Augustine Gospels - one of the oldest books in the world - are open at the precise verses

https://youtu.be/SCZAEI4zouE

If you can watch this and genuinely claim you are not moved or inspired then fair enough. Tho I kind of pity you

Don't forget the chair and the stone.

That was the only bit that was properly spine chilling, plus the Greek hymn afterward. Seeing him get his kit off, Zadok, and then get hidden away like that... spooky.

The crowning itself seemed a bit preposterous - could they not lower the arches on the crown? The proportions were all wrong. And the blue on the horses was nasty.

Also the entrance and the cries of Vivat! Vivat! - again impossibly ancient

And the three cheers afterwards from the army in the drizzle. That was unexpectedly moving. You can see Charles is slightly emosh

https://twitter.com/royalcentral/status/1654832750094942211?s=61&t=GGp3Vs1t1kTWDiyA-odnZg

Nicking this from a friend: that Charles is quite short (at least compared to the bishops), and rendered completely immobile by the all various regalia, the whole thing was as dressing a child into a kilt for a wedding. Or for a first day at school.

Definitely had that vibe I think. He didn't know his lines, looked very nervous; a helpless mortal ushered unto greatness (you're the wordsmith, please improve).

Yeah. You really got the sense of a heavy duty undertaken

Ain’t no way you abdicate after a ceremony like that

It’s a bit like the way getting married itself prevents couples splitting up. The vows really do make a difference

Rex Carolus made his vows to the nation, yesterday

I mean, if he came across as anything other than entirely awestruck by the proceedings around him I think we’d be in trouble. Hill not being a megalomaniac is probably, on balance, a good thing.

kamski said:

Leon said:

DM_Andy said:

HYUFD said:

kamski said:

HYUFD said:

kamski said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Penddu2 said:

I am sure it has already been done ... but here we are again...

Peasant Woman: Well, how’d you become king, then?

King Charles: The Lady of the Lake, her arm clad in the purest shimmering samite, held aloft Excalibur from the bosom of the water, signifying by divine providence that I, Charles, was to carry Excalibur. That is why I am your king.

Boris: Listen. Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical coronation ceremony.

Charles: Be quiet!

Boris: You can’t expect to wield supreme executive power just ’cause some watery tart threw a sword at you!

Charles: Shut up!

Boris: I mean, if I went around saying I was an emperor just because some moistened bint had lobbed a scimitar at me, they’d put me away!

Surely one of the arguments - if slightly tonugue in cheek - in favour of Monarchy is the fact that without it we would almost inevitably have President Boris. Having followed on from President Thatcher and President Blair.

In one stroke we move from one of the most uniting constitutional arrangements in this country to one of the most divisive.

Is it necessarily one of the most divisive? Eg the German presidency seems far less divisive than the British monarchy. Even when the last but one had to resign because he faced prosecution for corruption in 2012 (he was later acquitted of all charges) nobody gave much of a shit.

Hard to imagine Charles facing prosecution for corruption, no matter what he's been up to.

The current German President is a nonentity nobody outside Germany has head of who only got the job as a consolation prize after Merkel beat him in 2009 in the German Federal election for the Chancellry

Yes, as I said, the German presidency far less divisive in Germany than the British royal family is in the UK.

The current German President was the SPD candidate for Chancellor in 2009. Do you think CDU voters respect him? The previous one was a CDU politician. Do you think SPD voters respected him? Neither brought in tourism revenue either

According to the Times, Steinmeier has approval ratings of ranging from 65% to 85% around the time of his re-election as German President. King Charles III has an approval rating of 55% according to YouGov and slightly more people think he will be a bad king than a good king. How is that less divisive?

Maybe it’s because even Germans have never heard of this anonymous dork

Stein-who?

Germany has chosen to be a very boring colorless country. Given its recent history I can understand why, and in many ways it has worked out for them. Bravo etc. Nonetheless it is really quite dull

Germany is quite an interesting country. Its attitude to its own history is maybe unique?

I was just listening to "Germany: Memories of a Nation" on BBC Sounds, quite an interesting series, I found.

The most interesting thing about Germany is, unfortunately and tragically, the Nazi era. There is so much more to Germany than that, of course, from its incredible musical traditions to excellent beer and quite nice curry wurst, nonetheless it is the Nazi bit that stands out

A great western nation overtaken by an enormous and world-changing evil. That is genuinely fascinating

However, I can see why it has given Germans, or immigrants into Germany, an aversion to ceremony and ritual, patriotism and regalia, and anything that smacks of national mystique

maxh said:

Leon said:

Eabhal said:

Leon said:

Eabhal said:

Leon said:

kamski said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

kamski said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Anabobazina said:

Leon said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Anabobazina said:

squareroot2 said:

Anabobazina said:

Good morning all. I’m sure everyone will join me in relief that the enforced TV bible bashing is behind us and we can settle into a proper weekend day of cooking programmes and football. And the rain has gone. Hurray!

You assume far too.much.

The relief among the people is palpable, on this bright spring morn. The rainy sermon is over, and just rejoice at that news.

I am much happier rejoicing at the fact that we have reconfirmed Constitutional Monarchy as the Settlement for this country until long after all of us on PB are dead and buried. Yesterday showed that perfectly and will have done us no harm in the soft power stakes around the world.

Yes, I know the @Anabobazina’s of this world will find this bewildering and the @malcolmg’s will find it loathsome and yada yada but yesterday made me happier about things in quite an important way

My national identity is quite important to me (not quite fundamental but certainly profound). For quite a few years an air of decline and malaise - sometimes almost terminal - has surrounded Britishness and Englishness, a form of slow but debilitating sickness, a kind of scurvy of the soul

Yesterday in all its nonsensical pageantry and glorious music and matchless history and predictable drizzle and architectural spleandour and ridiculous boring horsey marching and - most of all - its mysterious, pointless, luminous ritual which goes back ONE THOUSAND ONE HUNDRED YEARS - if not longer - with an English king being anointed in the Abbey built by Anglo Saxon kings 1200 years ago - made me put all of our recent travails in perspective. The deep perspective of enormous time

We are such an ancient nation, wreathed in legend and myth, assailed and venerated, reviled and revered, broken and blighted in places, yet bright and thriving in others: the last few years are NOTHING in comparison to all of that. They are a passing fever, soon forgotten

We do not repine. We are the English, we are the British. We’re still here

Only monarchy, I suspect, can enact this peculiar and reviving magic

I’m one of the most patriotic Englishmen you’ll meet, in a sporting context. I follow the England cricket and football teams with gusto. I don’t need the monarchy to feel national pride. Indeed yesterday’s long damp sermon was rather the opposite - dull, pious and boring! Hardly the stuff to stir the senses.

As I said yesterday evening to you, if you set out to be uninspired then you will be. Only someone with an utterly closed mind could fail to be moved and inspired by the vast history and tradition on display yesterday. Not just sat in museums to be shuffled past by bored school kids but actually being used as it was intended, as part of the heritage of our country.

"Only someone with an utterly closed mind"

really? you found it moving and inspiring. others didn't.

Yes really. If you have any onterest what so ever in the history of our country as Anabob claims to have (and I do recognise that as a German that does not apply to you in the same way as it would to a Briton) then yesterday's proceedings were absolutely moving and inspiring. The use of a gospel dating from the 6th century, a ceremony that dates back to the 10th century and all performed in a building that dates back to the 11th century. All utterly authentic and unique. If someone who purports to be a 'patriotic Englishman' is not inspired by that in favour of a couple of ball games no more than 250 years old then they surely do have a closed mind.

Well, aris a British person, I did not find it moving or inspiring. Maybe I didn't see the right bit, but I've seen more inspiring church fetes.

And it feels like an extremely insecure and/or arrogant statement to decree that others must find something moving and inspiring.

OK then, here you go. Here is the most sacred element of yesterday’s ceremony in full. Give it a shot. It’s 5 minutes long

This is the moment when Charles is anointed, in a Biblical ceremony using Biblical words dating back to the coronation of King Edgar of England in 973AD. He is being anointed in an abbey built by Edward the Confessor in the 11th century and used by William the Conqueror for HIS coronation on Christmas Day, 1066

The music - Zadok the Priest - was specifically written for this exact moment of anointment by George Handel and used in all British Coronations since 1727. It was also written to be heard in this exact place: Westminster Abbey, the ancient church of the Anglo Saxon kings

Charles is ceremonially disrobed and then anointed by the Archbishop of Canterbury as the 6th century Augustine Gospels - one of the oldest books in the world - are open at the precise verses

https://youtu.be/SCZAEI4zouE

If you can watch this and genuinely claim you are not moved or inspired then fair enough. Tho I kind of pity you

Don't forget the chair and the stone.

That was the only bit that was properly spine chilling, plus the Greek hymn afterward. Seeing him get his kit off, Zadok, and then get hidden away like that... spooky.

The crowning itself seemed a bit preposterous - could they not lower the arches on the crown? The proportions were all wrong. And the blue on the horses was nasty.

Also the entrance and the cries of Vivat! Vivat! - again impossibly ancient

And the three cheers afterwards from the army in the drizzle. That was unexpectedly moving. You can see Charles is slightly emosh

https://twitter.com/royalcentral/status/1654832750094942211?s=61&t=GGp3Vs1t1kTWDiyA-odnZg

Nicking this from a friend: that Charles is quite short (at least compared to the bishops), and rendered completely immobile by the all various regalia, the whole thing was as dressing a child into a kilt for a wedding. Or for a first day at school.

Definitely had that vibe I think. He didn't know his lines, looked very nervous; a helpless mortal ushered unto greatness (you're the wordsmith, please improve).

Yeah. You really got the sense of a heavy duty undertaken

Ain’t no way you abdicate after a ceremony like that

It’s a bit like the way getting married itself prevents couples splitting up. The vows really do make a difference

Rex Carolus made his vows to the nation, yesterday

I mean, if he came across as anything other than entirely awestruck by the proceedings around him I think we’d be in trouble. Hill not being a megalomaniac is probably, on balance, a good thing.

You never got the sense that the Queen was overwhelmed by it though.

Eabhal said:

maxh said:

Leon said:

Eabhal said:

Leon said:

Eabhal said:

Leon said:

kamski said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

kamski said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Anabobazina said:

Leon said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Anabobazina said:

squareroot2 said:

Anabobazina said:

Good morning all. I’m sure everyone will join me in relief that the enforced TV bible bashing is behind us and we can settle into a proper weekend day of cooking programmes and football. And the rain has gone. Hurray!

You assume far too.much.

The relief among the people is palpable, on this bright spring morn. The rainy sermon is over, and just rejoice at that news.

I am much happier rejoicing at the fact that we have reconfirmed Constitutional Monarchy as the Settlement for this country until long after all of us on PB are dead and buried. Yesterday showed that perfectly and will have done us no harm in the soft power stakes around the world.

Yes, I know the @Anabobazina’s of this world will find this bewildering and the @malcolmg’s will find it loathsome and yada yada but yesterday made me happier about things in quite an important way

My national identity is quite important to me (not quite fundamental but certainly profound). For quite a few years an air of decline and malaise - sometimes almost terminal - has surrounded Britishness and Englishness, a form of slow but debilitating sickness, a kind of scurvy of the soul

Yesterday in all its nonsensical pageantry and glorious music and matchless history and predictable drizzle and architectural spleandour and ridiculous boring horsey marching and - most of all - its mysterious, pointless, luminous ritual which goes back ONE THOUSAND ONE HUNDRED YEARS - if not longer - with an English king being anointed in the Abbey built by Anglo Saxon kings 1200 years ago - made me put all of our recent travails in perspective. The deep perspective of enormous time

We are such an ancient nation, wreathed in legend and myth, assailed and venerated, reviled and revered, broken and blighted in places, yet bright and thriving in others: the last few years are NOTHING in comparison to all of that. They are a passing fever, soon forgotten

We do not repine. We are the English, we are the British. We’re still here

Only monarchy, I suspect, can enact this peculiar and reviving magic

I’m one of the most patriotic Englishmen you’ll meet, in a sporting context. I follow the England cricket and football teams with gusto. I don’t need the monarchy to feel national pride. Indeed yesterday’s long damp sermon was rather the opposite - dull, pious and boring! Hardly the stuff to stir the senses.

As I said yesterday evening to you, if you set out to be uninspired then you will be. Only someone with an utterly closed mind could fail to be moved and inspired by the vast history and tradition on display yesterday. Not just sat in museums to be shuffled past by bored school kids but actually being used as it was intended, as part of the heritage of our country.

"Only someone with an utterly closed mind"

really? you found it moving and inspiring. others didn't.

Yes really. If you have any onterest what so ever in the history of our country as Anabob claims to have (and I do recognise that as a German that does not apply to you in the same way as it would to a Briton) then yesterday's proceedings were absolutely moving and inspiring. The use of a gospel dating from the 6th century, a ceremony that dates back to the 10th century and all performed in a building that dates back to the 11th century. All utterly authentic and unique. If someone who purports to be a 'patriotic Englishman' is not inspired by that in favour of a couple of ball games no more than 250 years old then they surely do have a closed mind.

Well, aris a British person, I did not find it moving or inspiring. Maybe I didn't see the right bit, but I've seen more inspiring church fetes.

And it feels like an extremely insecure and/or arrogant statement to decree that others must find something moving and inspiring.

OK then, here you go. Here is the most sacred element of yesterday’s ceremony in full. Give it a shot. It’s 5 minutes long

This is the moment when Charles is anointed, in a Biblical ceremony using Biblical words dating back to the coronation of King Edgar of England in 973AD. He is being anointed in an abbey built by Edward the Confessor in the 11th century and used by William the Conqueror for HIS coronation on Christmas Day, 1066

The music - Zadok the Priest - was specifically written for this exact moment of anointment by George Handel and used in all British Coronations since 1727. It was also written to be heard in this exact place: Westminster Abbey, the ancient church of the Anglo Saxon kings

Charles is ceremonially disrobed and then anointed by the Archbishop of Canterbury as the 6th century Augustine Gospels - one of the oldest books in the world - are open at the precise verses

https://youtu.be/SCZAEI4zouE

If you can watch this and genuinely claim you are not moved or inspired then fair enough. Tho I kind of pity you

Don't forget the chair and the stone.

That was the only bit that was properly spine chilling, plus the Greek hymn afterward. Seeing him get his kit off, Zadok, and then get hidden away like that... spooky.

The crowning itself seemed a bit preposterous - could they not lower the arches on the crown? The proportions were all wrong. And the blue on the horses was nasty.

Also the entrance and the cries of Vivat! Vivat! - again impossibly ancient

And the three cheers afterwards from the army in the drizzle. That was unexpectedly moving. You can see Charles is slightly emosh

https://twitter.com/royalcentral/status/1654832750094942211?s=61&t=GGp3Vs1t1kTWDiyA-odnZg

Nicking this from a friend: that Charles is quite short (at least compared to the bishops), and rendered completely immobile by the all various regalia, the whole thing was as dressing a child into a kilt for a wedding. Or for a first day at school.

Definitely had that vibe I think. He didn't know his lines, looked very nervous; a helpless mortal ushered unto greatness (you're the wordsmith, please improve).

Yeah. You really got the sense of a heavy duty undertaken

Ain’t no way you abdicate after a ceremony like that

It’s a bit like the way getting married itself prevents couples splitting up. The vows really do make a difference

Rex Carolus made his vows to the nation, yesterday

I mean, if he came across as anything other than entirely awestruck by the proceedings around him I think we’d be in trouble. Hill not being a megalomaniac is probably, on balance, a good thing.

You never got the sense that the Queen was overwhelmed by it though.

By all accounts she was petrified by the Coronation. Of course she was a young woman, and Charles is old, however he knows he is being watched by hundreds of millions in real time

kinabalu said:

maxh said:

kamski said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

kamski said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

kamski said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Anabobazina said:

Leon said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Anabobazina said:

squareroot2 said:

Anabobazina said:

Good morning all. I’m sure everyone will join me in relief that the enforced TV bible bashing is behind us and we can settle into a proper weekend day of cooking programmes and football. And the rain has gone. Hurray!

You assume far too.much.

The relief among the people is palpable, on this bright spring morn. The rainy sermon is over, and just rejoice at that news.

I am much happier rejoicing at the fact that we have reconfirmed Constitutional Monarchy as the Settlement for this country until long after all of us on PB are dead and buried. Yesterday showed that perfectly and will have done us no harm in the soft power stakes around the world.

Yes, I know the @Anabobazina’s of this world will find this bewildering and the @malcolmg’s will find it loathsome and yada yada but yesterday made me happier about things in quite an important way

My national identity is quite important to me (not quite fundamental but certainly profound). For quite a few years an air of decline and malaise - sometimes almost terminal - has surrounded Britishness and Englishness, a form of slow but debilitating sickness, a kind of scurvy of the soul

Yesterday in all its nonsensical pageantry and glorious music and matchless history and predictable drizzle and architectural spleandour and ridiculous boring horsey marching and - most of all - its mysterious, pointless, luminous ritual which goes back ONE THOUSAND ONE HUNDRED YEARS - if not longer - with an English king being anointed in the Abbey built by Anglo Saxon kings 1200 years ago - made me put all of our recent travails in perspective. The deep perspective of enormous time

We are such an ancient nation, wreathed in legend and myth, assailed and venerated, reviled and revered, broken and blighted in places, yet bright and thriving in others: the last few years are NOTHING in comparison to all of that. They are a passing fever, soon forgotten

We do not repine. We are the English, we are the British. We’re still here

Only monarchy, I suspect, can enact this peculiar and reviving magic

I’m one of the most patriotic Englishmen you’ll meet, in a sporting context. I follow the England cricket and football teams with gusto. I don’t need the monarchy to feel national pride. Indeed yesterday’s long damp sermon was rather the opposite - dull, pious and boring! Hardly the stuff to stir the senses.

As I said yesterday evening to you, if you set out to be uninspired then you will be. Only someone with an utterly closed mind could fail to be moved and inspired by the vast history and tradition on display yesterday. Not just sat in museums to be shuffled past by bored school kids but actually being used as it was intended, as part of the heritage of our country.

"Only someone with an utterly closed mind"

really? you found it moving and inspiring. others didn't.

Yes really. If you have any onterest what so ever in the history of our country as Anabob claims to have (and I do recognise that as a German that does not apply to you in the same way as it would to a Briton) then yesterday's proceedings were absolutely moving and inspiring. The use of a gospel dating from the 6th century, a ceremony that dates back to the 10th century and all performed in a building that dates back to the 11th century. All utterly authentic and unique. If someone who purports to be a 'patriotic Englishman' is not inspired by that in favour of a couple of ball games no more than 250 years old then they surely do have a closed mind.

Well, as a British person, I did not find it moving or inspiring. Maybe I didn't see the right bit, but I've seen more inspiring church fetes.

And it feels like an extremely insecure and/or arrogant statement to decree that others must find something moving and inspiring.

Apologies I thought you were German.

And no it is not insecure at all. Just basic common sense and logic. To claim one is strongly patriotic and then to be uninspired by the history and symbolism that defines the country seems utterly deluded.

Well, I can't speak for anyone else and I wouldn't claim to be strongly patriotic, but maybe that particular symbolism doesn't define the country for other people who nevertheless consider themselves strongly patriotic. Or is it delusional to disagree that the symbolism of the coronation is what defines Britain?

I think this debate hits the bullseye in terms of the peculiar challenge we face in defining “Britishness” right now.

Objectively, I agree with Richard - the depth of history on display is inspiring. Yet I can also understand a point of view that sees this as a very narrow definition of Britishness that excludes a lot of what makes me proud of our country. I can see why for some it is actively off-putting (eg the prominence of old whites men in the proceedings).

Those who scream ‘woke’ reflexively on the one hand, along with those who refuse to admit the value of this depth of national history on the other, are the truly closed-of-mind, in my view.

What value is there in defining Britishness iyo? Aren't we better off leaving it undefined?

Start to define it and it all falls apart very quickly. The meat of the Coronation yesterday was essentially an English affair with a bit of the other home nations thrown in.

Leon said:

The music - Zadok the Priest - was specifically written for this exact moment of anointment by George Handel and used in all British Coronations since 1727. It was also written to be heard in this exact place: Westminster Abbey, the ancient church of the Anglo Saxon kings

Charles is ceremonially disrobed and then anointed by the Archbishop of Canterbury as the 6th century Augustine Gospels - one of the oldest books in the world - are open at the precise verses

Where on earth do you get all this drivel from? The "Augustine Gospels" are "open at the precise verses"?

The St Augustine Gospels is a manuscript of the gospels. The gospels are Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. In the New Testament.

The lyrics of Zadok the priest are adapted from the first book of Kings. That's in the Old Testament.

As for your tripe about Westminster Abbey being "the ancient church of the Anglo Saxon kings", for heaven's sake! It was founded in 1065. That is very soon before "Anglo Saxon kings" stopped being a thing, in the modern parlance. The number that could have been crowned there is at most one (King Harold). And there is no explicit evidence where he was crowned.

Malmesbury said:

another_richard said:

Dura_Ace said:

rkrkrk said:

On topic - seems a real vindication of Starmer's strategy. The likes of Alastair Campbell who want him to come out for rejoining the EU have surely got this wrong tactically.

I do wonder who'll be the first prominent tory to break kayfabe on Brexit once they are in opposition and denounce it as an economic chastity belt. Maybe Gove.

It would be someone who opposes full employment, in particular full employment for the northern working class, and supports ever higher property prices in southern England.

There is a world wide shortage of skilled (degrees) labour

There is a world wide surplus of low/semi skilled (or skillable - train Chinese farmers to work in factories etc)

Which is why the experience of mass migration is different between those at the top and bottom of the labour market.

The real question is who will introduce the measures to protect the labour market at the low end against wages being driven back to minimum wage (if that) in a number of jobs.

Such measures could completely compatible with EU free movement, incidentally.

There's no shortage of people who would be happy for the wages of those 'below them' being driven down or for such workers behaving in a more servile manner.

Actually there no shortage of people who would be happy for the wages of those 'above them' being driven down as well.

On the other side the number of people who are not just benefitting but are also aware they are benefitting from full employment is pretty limited.

DM_Andy said:

HYUFD said:

kamski said:

HYUFD said:

kamski said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Penddu2 said:

I am sure it has already been done ... but here we are again...

Peasant Woman: Well, how’d you become king, then?

King Charles: The Lady of the Lake, her arm clad in the purest shimmering samite, held aloft Excalibur from the bosom of the water, signifying by divine providence that I, Charles, was to carry Excalibur. That is why I am your king.

Boris: Listen. Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical coronation ceremony.

Charles: Be quiet!

Boris: You can’t expect to wield supreme executive power just ’cause some watery tart threw a sword at you!

Charles: Shut up!

Boris: I mean, if I went around saying I was an emperor just because some moistened bint had lobbed a scimitar at me, they’d put me away!

Surely one of the arguments - if slightly tonugue in cheek - in favour of Monarchy is the fact that without it we would almost inevitably have President Boris. Having followed on from President Thatcher and President Blair.

In one stroke we move from one of the most uniting constitutional arrangements in this country to one of the most divisive.

Is it necessarily one of the most divisive? Eg the German presidency seems far less divisive than the British monarchy. Even when the last but one had to resign because he faced prosecution for corruption in 2012 (he was later acquitted of all charges) nobody gave much of a shit.

Hard to imagine Charles facing prosecution for corruption, no matter what he's been up to.

The current German President is a nonentity nobody outside Germany has head of who only got the job as a consolation prize after Merkel beat him in 2009 in the German Federal election for the Chancellry

Yes, as I said, the German presidency far less divisive in Germany than the British royal family is in the UK.

The current German President was the SPD candidate for Chancellor in 2009. Do you think CDU voters respect him? The previous one was a CDU politician. Do you think SPD voters respected him? Neither brought in tourism revenue either

According to the Times, Steinmeier has approval ratings of ranging from 65% to 85% around the time of his re-election as German President. King Charles III has an approval rating of 55% according to YouGov and slightly more people think he will be a bad king than a good king. How is that less divisive?

So still less than the late Queen Elizabeth II and the Prince and the
Princess of Wales then.

As mentioned Steinmeier is also a non-entity. Germans packed the streets when the King visited there, Brits wouldn't even know who the German President is let alone bother to turn out if he visited the UK. People from all over the world visited London for the King's coronation, I doubt even most Germans cared less about Steinmeier's inauguration as President

SouthamObserver said:

kinabalu said:

maxh said:

kamski said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

kamski said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

kamski said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Anabobazina said:

Leon said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Anabobazina said:

squareroot2 said:

Anabobazina said:

Good morning all. I’m sure everyone will join me in relief that the enforced TV bible bashing is behind us and we can settle into a proper weekend day of cooking programmes and football. And the rain has gone. Hurray!

You assume far too.much.

The relief among the people is palpable, on this bright spring morn. The rainy sermon is over, and just rejoice at that news.

I am much happier rejoicing at the fact that we have reconfirmed Constitutional Monarchy as the Settlement for this country until long after all of us on PB are dead and buried. Yesterday showed that perfectly and will have done us no harm in the soft power stakes around the world.

Yes, I know the @Anabobazina’s of this world will find this bewildering and the @malcolmg’s will find it loathsome and yada yada but yesterday made me happier about things in quite an important way

My national identity is quite important to me (not quite fundamental but certainly profound). For quite a few years an air of decline and malaise - sometimes almost terminal - has surrounded Britishness and Englishness, a form of slow but debilitating sickness, a kind of scurvy of the soul

Yesterday in all its nonsensical pageantry and glorious music and matchless history and predictable drizzle and architectural spleandour and ridiculous boring horsey marching and - most of all - its mysterious, pointless, luminous ritual which goes back ONE THOUSAND ONE HUNDRED YEARS - if not longer - with an English king being anointed in the Abbey built by Anglo Saxon kings 1200 years ago - made me put all of our recent travails in perspective. The deep perspective of enormous time

We are such an ancient nation, wreathed in legend and myth, assailed and venerated, reviled and revered, broken and blighted in places, yet bright and thriving in others: the last few years are NOTHING in comparison to all of that. They are a passing fever, soon forgotten

We do not repine. We are the English, we are the British. We’re still here

Only monarchy, I suspect, can enact this peculiar and reviving magic

I’m one of the most patriotic Englishmen you’ll meet, in a sporting context. I follow the England cricket and football teams with gusto. I don’t need the monarchy to feel national pride. Indeed yesterday’s long damp sermon was rather the opposite - dull, pious and boring! Hardly the stuff to stir the senses.

As I said yesterday evening to you, if you set out to be uninspired then you will be. Only someone with an utterly closed mind could fail to be moved and inspired by the vast history and tradition on display yesterday. Not just sat in museums to be shuffled past by bored school kids but actually being used as it was intended, as part of the heritage of our country.

"Only someone with an utterly closed mind"

really? you found it moving and inspiring. others didn't.

Yes really. If you have any onterest what so ever in the history of our country as Anabob claims to have (and I do recognise that as a German that does not apply to you in the same way as it would to a Briton) then yesterday's proceedings were absolutely moving and inspiring. The use of a gospel dating from the 6th century, a ceremony that dates back to the 10th century and all performed in a building that dates back to the 11th century. All utterly authentic and unique. If someone who purports to be a 'patriotic Englishman' is not inspired by that in favour of a couple of ball games no more than 250 years old then they surely do have a closed mind.

Well, as a British person, I did not find it moving or inspiring. Maybe I didn't see the right bit, but I've seen more inspiring church fetes.

And it feels like an extremely insecure and/or arrogant statement to decree that others must find something moving and inspiring.

Apologies I thought you were German.

And no it is not insecure at all. Just basic common sense and logic. To claim one is strongly patriotic and then to be uninspired by the history and symbolism that defines the country seems utterly deluded.

Well, I can't speak for anyone else and I wouldn't claim to be strongly patriotic, but maybe that particular symbolism doesn't define the country for other people who nevertheless consider themselves strongly patriotic. Or is it delusional to disagree that the symbolism of the coronation is what defines Britain?

I think this debate hits the bullseye in terms of the peculiar challenge we face in defining “Britishness” right now.

Objectively, I agree with Richard - the depth of history on display is inspiring. Yet I can also understand a point of view that sees this as a very narrow definition of Britishness that excludes a lot of what makes me proud of our country. I can see why for some it is actively off-putting (eg the prominence of old whites men in the proceedings).

Those who scream ‘woke’ reflexively on the one hand, along with those who refuse to admit the value of this depth of national history on the other, are the truly closed-of-mind, in my view.

What value is there in defining Britishness iyo? Aren't we better off leaving it undefined?

Start to define it and it all falls apart very quickly. The meat of the Coronation yesterday was essentially an English affair with a bit of the other home nations thrown in.

Unusually, I agree with both of you. Best left undefined. It is undefinable anyway

What happened yesterday was ONE important expression of Britishness - its sense of exceptional ancient-ness, its unconquered sceptrd isle aspect, but that is just one way of seeing it, and there are others, equally valid, indeed you need them all

The idea that rituals and music and flummery are intrinsically silly is mad, however. What are weddings? They are full of mad symbols and bizarre rituals. Anywhere in the world, if you find a wedding, there will be some opaque ceremony and lots of music and a fair amount of bling

The monarchy is the nation expressed as a family, so the funerals and weddings and inceptions of the royal family become the ritual ceremonies of the nation as a whole. Yesterday we got married to Charles III, which is a bit creepy but there it is. At least it wasn’t Andrew

ydoethur said:

The coronation was an awesome idea. I just got a very nice and completely free cold buffet lunch out of it in exchange for playing the national anthem once.

I hope they made you play at least three verses?

Chris said:

Leon said:

The music - Zadok the Priest - was specifically written for this exact moment of anointment by George Handel and used in all British Coronations since 1727. It was also written to be heard in this exact place: Westminster Abbey, the ancient church of the Anglo Saxon kings

Charles is ceremonially disrobed and then anointed by the Archbishop of Canterbury as the 6th century Augustine Gospels - one of the oldest books in the world - are open at the precise verses

Where on earth do you get all this drivel from? The "Augustine Gospels" are "open at the precise verses"?

The St Augustine Gospels is a manuscript of the gospels. The gospels are Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. In the New Testament.

The lyrics of Zadok the priest are adapted from the first book of Kings. That's in the Old Testament.

As for your tripe about Westminster Abbey being "the ancient church of the Anglo Saxon kings", for heaven's sake! It was founded in 1065. That is very soon before "Anglo Saxon kings" stopped being a thing, in the modern parlance. The number that could have been crowned there is at most one (King Harold). And there is no explicit evidence where he was crowned.

Only a fool would expect people who claim to be inspired by the incredible ancient authenticity of the rituals to actually know anything about real history.

Chris said:

Leon said:

The music - Zadok the Priest - was specifically written for this exact moment of anointment by George Handel and used in all British Coronations since 1727. It was also written to be heard in this exact place: Westminster Abbey, the ancient church of the Anglo Saxon kings

Charles is ceremonially disrobed and then anointed by the Archbishop of Canterbury as the 6th century Augustine Gospels - one of the oldest books in the world - are open at the precise verses

Where on earth do you get all this drivel from? The "Augustine Gospels" are "open at the precise verses"?

The St Augustine Gospels is a manuscript of the gospels. The gospels are Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. In the New Testament.

The lyrics of Zadok the priest are adapted from the first book of Kings. That's in the Old Testament.

As for your tripe about Westminster Abbey being "the ancient church of the Anglo Saxon kings", for heaven's sake! It was founded in 1065. That is very soon before "Anglo Saxon kings" stopped being a thing, in the modern parlance. The number that could have been crowned there is at most one (King Harold). And there is no explicit evidence where he was crowned.

Not so. Westminster Abbey as a sacred Anglo-Saxon site dates back to the mid 900s. Thorney island


“In the 1040s King Edward (later St Edward the Confessor) established his royal palace by the banks of the river Thames on land known as Thorney Island. Close by was a small Benedictine monastery founded under the patronage of King Edgar and St Dunstan around 960A.D. “

Sorry, old bean

https://www.westminster-abbey.org/about-the-abbey/history/history-of-westminster-abbey

kamski said:

Chris said:

Leon said:

The music - Zadok the Priest - was specifically written for this exact moment of anointment by George Handel and used in all British Coronations since 1727. It was also written to be heard in this exact place: Westminster Abbey, the ancient church of the Anglo Saxon kings

Charles is ceremonially disrobed and then anointed by the Archbishop of Canterbury as the 6th century Augustine Gospels - one of the oldest books in the world - are open at the precise verses

Where on earth do you get all this drivel from? The "Augustine Gospels" are "open at the precise verses"?

The St Augustine Gospels is a manuscript of the gospels. The gospels are Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. In the New Testament.

The lyrics of Zadok the priest are adapted from the first book of Kings. That's in the Old Testament.

As for your tripe about Westminster Abbey being "the ancient church of the Anglo Saxon kings", for heaven's sake! It was founded in 1065. That is very soon before "Anglo Saxon kings" stopped being a thing, in the modern parlance. The number that could have been crowned there is at most one (King Harold). And there is no explicit evidence where he was crowned.

Only a fool would expect people who claim to be inspired by the incredible ancient authenticity of the rituals to actually know anything about real history.

https://www.westminster-abbey.org/about-the-abbey/history/history-of-westminster-abbey

“In the 1040s King Edward (later St Edward the Confessor) established his royal palace by the banks of the river Thames on land known as Thorney Island. Close by was a small Benedictine monastery founded under the patronage of King Edgar and St Dunstan around 960A.D. “

And there you are

Leon said:

Chris said:

Leon said:

The music - Zadok the Priest - was specifically written for this exact moment of anointment by George Handel and used in all British Coronations since 1727. It was also written to be heard in this exact place: Westminster Abbey, the ancient church of the Anglo Saxon kings

Charles is ceremonially disrobed and then anointed by the Archbishop of Canterbury as the 6th century Augustine Gospels - one of the oldest books in the world - are open at the precise verses

Where on earth do you get all this drivel from? The "Augustine Gospels" are "open at the precise verses"?

The St Augustine Gospels is a manuscript of the gospels. The gospels are Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. In the New Testament.

The lyrics of Zadok the priest are adapted from the first book of Kings. That's in the Old Testament.

As for your tripe about Westminster Abbey being "the ancient church of the Anglo Saxon kings", for heaven's sake! It was founded in 1065. That is very soon before "Anglo Saxon kings" stopped being a thing, in the modern parlance. The number that could have been crowned there is at most one (King Harold). And there is no explicit evidence where he was crowned.

Not so. Westminster Abbey as a sacred Anglo-Saxon site dates back to the mid 900s. Thorney island


“In the 1040s King Edward (later St Edward the Confessor) established his royal palace by the banks of the river Thames on land known as Thorney Island. Close by was a small Benedictine monastery founded under the patronage of King Edgar and St Dunstan around 960A.D. “

Sorry, old bean

https://www.westminster-abbey.org/about-the-abbey/history/history-of-westminster-abbey

No doubt there was some kind of foundation before the present abbey was founded by Edward the Confessor, but "the ancient church of the Anglo Saxon kings" is history by 'Hello' magazine.

spudgfsh said:

rkrkrk said:

TimS said:

rkrkrk said:

On topic - seems a real vindication of Starmer's strategy. The likes of Alastair Campbell who want him to come out for rejoining the EU have surely got this wrong tactically.

Or alternatively, Brexit just isn’t either as salient or as popular in those regions as it used to be. So it’s not swinging votes. Meaning Labour could probably get away with being a bit more pro-European. They certainly shouldn’t be proposing rejoining though.

My mental model currently is the country is fundamentally Tory but can be persuaded to vote Labour when Lab are very credible and the Tories have got so punch drunk on winning they act stupidly.

Second condition holds but I don't think Keir should be taking any liberties with sounding pro European.

There's a spectrum of 'pro-European'. from the LibDems full on rejoin through to 'lets get better relationships with the continent'.

What KS could, and should, be saying is that Brexit, as delivered by the Tories, is not working for this country and we need to reassess and renegotiate what has been delivered. It's a long way from rejoin and it would be both deliverable and not frighten off brexit voters.

Disagree. Any mention of renegotiation = risk of restarting the argument and frighten brexit voters. If keir starmer starts getting asked about whether we will still be in a customs union or rejoin single market - that's a sign of failure.

Chris said:

Leon said:

Chris said:

Leon said:

The music - Zadok the Priest - was specifically written for this exact moment of anointment by George Handel and used in all British Coronations since 1727. It was also written to be heard in this exact place: Westminster Abbey, the ancient church of the Anglo Saxon kings

Charles is ceremonially disrobed and then anointed by the Archbishop of Canterbury as the 6th century Augustine Gospels - one of the oldest books in the world - are open at the precise verses

Where on earth do you get all this drivel from? The "Augustine Gospels" are "open at the precise verses"?

The St Augustine Gospels is a manuscript of the gospels. The gospels are Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. In the New Testament.

The lyrics of Zadok the priest are adapted from the first book of Kings. That's in the Old Testament.

As for your tripe about Westminster Abbey being "the ancient church of the Anglo Saxon kings", for heaven's sake! It was founded in 1065. That is very soon before "Anglo Saxon kings" stopped being a thing, in the modern parlance. The number that could have been crowned there is at most one (King Harold). And there is no explicit evidence where he was crowned.

Not so. Westminster Abbey as a sacred Anglo-Saxon site dates back to the mid 900s. Thorney island


“In the 1040s King Edward (later St Edward the Confessor) established his royal palace by the banks of the river Thames on land known as Thorney Island. Close by was a small Benedictine monastery founded under the patronage of King Edgar and St Dunstan around 960A.D. “

Sorry, old bean

https://www.westminster-abbey.org/about-the-abbey/history/history-of-westminster-abbey

No doubt there was some kind of foundation before the present abbey was founded by Edward the Confessor, but "the ancient church of the Anglo Saxon kings" is history by 'Hello' magazine.

Just admit you are wrong. It was founded by King Edgar in 960… and “This monastery Edward chose to re-endow and greatly enlarge, building a large stone church in honour of St Peter the Apostle. This church became known as the "west minster" to distinguish it from St Paul's Cathedral (the east minster) in the City of London.“