Australia breaking news says Buckingham Palace has ordered all palace staff across the UK to immediately report to London. Speculation rife the Queen or Prince Philip has died. Official notice due out at 700 Zulu.
What say you, UK Dopers? Any local news?
Speculation on Facebook is that Prince Philip has gone to the great beyond and the wags are out in force already. I saw one comment that, if the rumors are true, half of Australia’s knights are dead. One Mr Abbott will be sobbing into his hanky.
No further news. Would be a bit inconvenient. I wonder if they would want to halt today’s elections so that everyone can go around pretending to look sad.
“You could safely assume the Queen and Prince Phillip are not dead,” Buck House official says to New Zealand TV. NZ Prime Minister says he’s not been put on notice of any event.
Charles then?
I’ve got the Queen and Phillip in the Death Pool.
I’m sure they’re fine.
My guess: This is a relatively routine meeting, perhaps announcing to the household that they will be moving out of the palace for several years due to renovations (money was recently appropriated for this), and the media has inflated it into an emergency meeting about matters of extreme significance.
Well, it’s gone past 8am GMT, and no announcement, so I guess it’s just a staff meeting after all.
Evidently the announcement, whenever it arrives, is going to be followed by a statement from Number 10. That bumps it up into being far more significant than I was guessing when this whole thing started. I don’t think it would be an abdication; the Queen’s views on that are pretty clear, and I’m not sure she would make such a decision without Parliament sitting. A regency, perhaps?
Edit: Prince Philip is retiring this autumn. That’s not what I was imagining when I saw Downing Street was involved, but there you have it.
That’s… less interesting than I was expecting and hardly the sort of thing what would necessitate an “Everyone, Get In Here!” response, surely?
The man is 95, and even going first class all that air travel can be exhausting. Give the guy a break.
LONDON — Buckingham Palace announced Thursday that Prince Philip, the 95-year-old husband of Queen Elizabeth II, will retire from public life starting in the fall.
“Prince Philip will attend previously scheduled engagements between now and August, both individually and accompanying The Queen,” said a Buckingham Palace news release issued following a night of frenzied speculation prompted by emergency meetings by palace staff.
Quite a let down. Wouldn’t a palace memo suffice? Prince Philip is retiring. Tea and biscuits will be served at 10.
A full out meeting that requires people to travel is usually a bit more important than this.
Philip has a long record of service dating back to WWII. Glad the old chap is getting some rest.
According to the BBC there are 780 organisations with which he is associated. Disentangling all that will take a lot of effort and time.
Well, some of those might be something like the Cafe Balmoral frequent diner’s club, and it’s just a matter of turning in his loyalty card after it’s been punched for his tenth sandwich, and he collects his free drink.
But it’s still got to be done, and in a manner consistent with his station. Royal patronage / matronage has real meaning - the Royals do a lot of work for their charities - and the loss of royal association will be a big blow to many of the 780.
Previous reports have indicated that HM and the Prince have been handing off patronage duties to the younger royals. Reassigning 780 patronage posts by the fall is going to take a lot of administrative work.
I sure as hell thought Prince Phillip had died when I saw all the news alerts on my phone this morning.
I thought London Bridge was in Lake Havasu City, Arizona.
The previous one is. They built another one. It’s verra nice.