Queen Elizabeth celebrates 60 years as monarch

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Well done, your Majesty!

She succeeded to the throne on 6 February 1952 on the death of her father George VI.

Yay Queen! :slight_smile:

As a staunch republican I say, fair fucks to her! To the Queen!

Fine for you to say. You already have your republic. Here in Canada, getting rid of the monarchy, or even caring about the monarchy, takes up about 0.00000001% of the public’s interest. Far more important this past few weeks was the rearrangement of Tim Hortons cup sizes.

Talking about cup sizes in a thread about the Queen just seems…wrong.

I’m just glad I live in a country where our head of state is whoever happens to be the most charming and have the most political money to spend on vicious attack ads, rather than someone who is head of state because they popped out of the right vagina in the right order.

If she can hang in there for three years and 214 days she’ll pass Victoria. Then on to her 121st birthday so she can leave Pharaoh Pepi II in the dust.

She looks set to do it. For a woman her age she looks in good shape, and her own mother lived to be over one hundred years old.

Plus, she knows if she dies Charles becomes king.:smiley:

Bring back benevolent dictatorships, I say.

Bring back? Have you ever looked at the powers the monarch theoretically holds? If it wasn’t so encumbered by tradition and ceremony and "that just isn’t done’…

Seriously, though, one can argue that a Canadian prime minister with a majority government is much more of an ‘elected dictatorship’ than the Queen. Party discipline ensures the back-benchers vote along party lines when it counts for the purposes of the PM; and the biggest counteracting action, a vote of non-confidence against the government, is much harder to achieve thanks to that party discipline. They said that about Trudeau, and they’re saying it about Harper.

I don’t suppose she feels like celebrating all that much – it is the 60th anniversary of her dad’s death after all.

I like the queen. That’s all.

Congratulations to Elizabeth for serving for so long and at a great cost to having a life of her own. I mean, sure there are plenty of perks like castles and jewels, but a huge downside to being the queen.

Here, here!

I like having Queenie around, because she’s pretty much the last office-holder about whom I can say, “He/she is the only X that I remember.”

It’s a little morbid, though, that in a monarchy your office-holding milestones are always the anniversary of a relative’s death.

It’s also sort of sad that by the nature of the position that she doesn’t get to see her sons coronation. Something that a mother would most want to see.

Yeah, you don’t ever see her surfboarding off Malibu… no high-school proms or dates (it was all arranged when she was young), nothing like a normal social life.

Her father, somewhat uniquely, did not have that problem.

I watched Elizabeth’s coronation on our Zenith TV, with a round b&w screen. It was the first televised coronation.

And now you can review it on your much newer PC! See Youtube here.
(It switches to color partway through, just like the Wizard of Oz!)

There is a debate to be had about monarchy, I confess I have republican leanings but…but, I can’t help but be impressed by the fact that she has performed the task of “head of state” remarkably well for a remarkably long time.
I look at other heads of state around the world and the ways in which they are chosen and I’m not sure we would have been better served for the last 60 years had we gone down that path.
I suspect we have just been lucky though, I hold no hope that Charlie will be anywhere near as good.