I’ve always liked and respected QE2 as the monarch of my mother’s motherland, but I can’t deny that the thought of young Liz crying, “Tally Ho” while striking my bare bum(definition #2…but, # 3 isn’t totally out of the question) hard with her riding crop hasn’t featured prominently in my dreams over the years…talk about a hot head of state!
I don’t know about this as it was probably before my time (and “Land Force Command” doesn’t sound like such a strange name to me), but what I dislike is that these changes by the current government seem to be designed to raise Canadians against each other. You can’t anymore just be against the concept of monarchy in theory, but not care very much about the issue (which is my case). The government insists that this country loves the Queen (and the Cambridges, for some reason), and if you disagree with this, you’re against this country. The money that’s being given to organizations that wish to celebrate the Queen’s jubilee is an incitation to make it an issue.
As for the Queen being attractive when she was younger, I’d say she was a lot like Diana. Not classically beautiful, but she had an aura about her, and a beautiful smile. I have a book, The Queen’s Jewels, about her personal collection, and there’s a picture of her in there wearing a sky blue ball gown, with a necklace of huge sapphires around her throat and smiling, and she looks absolutely stunning.
One slow march out of the tower, up 13 steps, a kneeling by a chopping block and one short sharp shock. No more queen. France managed it fairly successfully, though they used a tumbril and a guillotine.
I remember one of them - Clinton? - saying that meeting her was intimidating because in the role of President you don’t meet many people who are able to directly compare you to a bunch of your predecessors.
He doesn’t know. He’s just blurting out nasty nonsense. His descriptions of what he thinks her job entails makes that clear, along with his incorrect calculations on the balance of finances.
The French president has exactly two residences used as such : the Elysee Palace, seat of the presidency in Paris (and which isn’t really impressive by palace’s standarts), and the Fort de Bregançon, a small island on the mediteranean coast with a 18th century fort often used as a vacation residence. Two others, a mansion in Paris and a castle not long away from it are theorically official residences but only ever used respectively to house foreign guests and to hold international summits.
Well…I’d disagree with that. Maybe they aren’t of the upmost importance, but it seems to me that she has quite a lot of official duties. Especially for a woman of her age. Don’t know about you, but there’s no way I’d want to be UK’s king and have to spend most of my time attending boring events, shacking hands, reading someone else’s speech, and having every single head move I make scrutinized in all papers.
I read somewhere recently about the new husband of the heiress to the throne of one of the Scandinavian kingdoms (can’t remember which one). Despite them being rather low key by comparison with British monarchs, the poor guy had to endure two years of teaching about proper etiquette and such. Again might not be really important, but it seems it’s part of the job definition, and I wouldn’t want to have to go through that, either.
No such things happens, typically, in parliamentary republics where the President’s job is essentially ceremonial. How much squalid competition has there been for the presidency of the aforementioned Germany and Italy, for instance?
Here’s a nice slideshow. As rocking chair wrote, she didn’t meet LBJ in person. She’s met all others who’ve served since Truman, and met Hoover after he’d left office.