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The Queen dies, aged 96. The future of the monarchy

jon81uk said:
Most places are closing on Monday, why should only office workers and similar benefit from the bank holiday I don't see the issue with supermarkets and similar being closed similar to Christmas Day.
Also don't see the problem with the BBC livestreaming the lying-in-state (not on a main channel its a red button or iPlayer only thing), some people who can't make the trip to London may wish to see the crowd and the coffin and pay their respects in their own way. The last major similar thing was the Queen Mother lying-in-state in 2002 and I don't think offering a similar live-stream back then would have been as easy as technology has made things easier.

I agree the center parcs debacle is crazy though. Giving a majority of staff the day off makes sense, but forcing people out of accommodation for a day made no sense if they are in the middle of a seven night trip.
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I think the issue for me is that it all seems very forced upon everyone rather than allowing a choice. I don't want to watch the funeral, but when the likes of the BBC and ITV are just replacing their schedules with things relating to the death and funeral is just... bonkers to me. Also means that a lot of people who would normally be working lose out on hours which is kind of important currently. But nope the whole country must stop.

If you want to avoid it you have to... sit at home and use a streaming service I guess? (My current plan is to try and finish off the nursery.) At this rate the filling up of news and every small update being focused on will turn the country republican.

Considering the current crises in the world that we're basically having enforced mourning time is going into parody.
 
In future, perhaps it would be a good idea to give the Royalty stuff its own dedicated TV channel?

That way, people who want the constant coverage can watch it on BBC Royalty or whatever, and those who don’t can simply ignore the Royal channel and watch regular TV.

Of course, announce the deaths on BBC One or whatever, and perhaps do a short segment on other notable events as part of the news, but keep the more in-depth rolling coverage on the dedicated Royal channel. Perhaps have journalists saying “for more coverage on this issue, watch BBC Royalty” or whatever?

I don’t know what people’s thoughts are on that, but that seems like quite a pragmatic compromise to me.
 
Benzin said:
I think the issue for me is that it all seems very forced upon everyone rather than allowing a choice. I don't want to watch the funeral, but when the likes of the BBC and ITV are just replacing their schedules with things relating to the death and funeral is just... bonkers to me. Also means that a lot of people who would normally be working lose out on hours which is kind of important currently. But nope the whole country must stop.

If you want to avoid it you have to... sit at home and use a streaming service I guess? (My current plan is to try and finish off the nursery.) At this rate the filling up of news and every small update being focused on will turn the country republican.

Considering the current crises in the world that we're basically having enforced mourning time is going into parody.
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I agree some of the current coverage feels excessive, but the funeral doesn't seem so bad, I think everyone would have expected blanket coverage like that. The fact all the BBC and ITV channels are showing it is exactly what I expect.
Hopefully most decent employers will treat it as a paid bank holiday anyway.
 
Really, what are you missing on BBC One? Homes Under the Hammer? The One Show?

Last time this happened was 70 years ago, let the make a big deal of it if they want to. If you're not interested just don't watch it. That's what Netflix is for.
 
Matt N said:
In future, perhaps it would be a good idea to give the Royalty stuff its own dedicated TV channel?

That way, people who want the constant coverage can watch it on BBC Royalty or whatever, and those who don’t can simply ignore the Royal channel and watch regular TV.

Of course, announce the deaths on BBC One or whatever, and perhaps do a short segment on other notable events as part of the news, but keep the more in-depth rolling coverage on the dedicated Royal channel. Perhaps have journalists saying “for more coverage on this issue, watch BBC Royalty” or whatever?

I don’t know what people’s thoughts are on that, but that seems like quite a pragmatic compromise to me.
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Thats not the issue really, BBC could easily do that right now and move all coverage to BBC News or Parliament channels currently most coverage is on BBC1 and ITV1 with other channels showing other things (Bake Off was on C4 last night as normal for example). But at certain times such as the initial announcement and the funeral all channels will show the same content anyway, Monday lunchtime will have the same stuff on at least 10 channels I expect.
 
NuttySquirrel said:
Really, what are you missing on BBC One? Homes Under the Hammer? The One Show?
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My mum was pretty annoyed that Bargain Hunt was taken off air… she records it and watches it every night!

They’ve also delayed the premiere of Strictly Come Dancing, which I can sense will annoy quite a few.
 
Matt N said:
My mum was pretty annoyed that Bargain Hunt was taken off air… she records it and watches it every night!

They’ve also delayed the premiere of Strictly Come Dancing, which I can sense will annoy quite a few.
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On Thursday I was supposed to watch Saving Lives at Sea on BBC2 at 8pm, then Ambulance on BBC1 at 9pm. Obviously those were cancelled like the rest of the schedule. :pensive:
They're not on the BBC iPlayer yet, and probably won't be until they're eventually shown on the channels. Hopefully they'll be shown tomorrow instead of this week's episodes, with both series pushed back a week.
 
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NuttySquirrel said:
Really, what are you missing on BBC One? Homes Under the Hammer? The One Show?

Last time this happened was 70 years ago, let the make a big deal of it if they want to. If you're not interested just don't watch it. That's what Netflix is for.
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There are an awful lot of republicans who pay the licence fee.
There is the BBC news channel, put it on there 24 hours a day.
If there is something happening, cover it, fine.
Repeated tributes and royal anecdotes get tedious after the first hundred hours or so, with another hundred hours or so still to go.
And to keep hearing "the whole nation is mourning" when it very clearly isn't, is repeatedly sickening.
 
To be honest, I'm coming out of the other side of this mourning period resenting the royal family and the establishment even more than I already did. This forced mourning and narrative that the Royal Family is a wonderful thing and that everyone loves the queen is a bit sickening. I also really worry about a large section of the British public who lap up all this rubbish. It's no wonder we end up with rubbish politicians etc who repeatedly involve themselves in scandal and whatever and we just stand for it again and again. Evidently a large portion of British citizens enjoy licking the boots of their 'superiors' and fall in love with them, for some strange reason.
 
You're coming out of this mourning period already Mr Zola???
You lucky bugger, by my reckoning we aren't even half way through yet...
All those hours of coverage of the queue, we have a full four days of the joys of that.
Bit like the Wimbledon queue, but less green and a bit subdued.
 
God knows what I'll be like by Monday evening. I have got the day off, fully paid, but I now feel I deserve that for having to go through this almost unavoidable media and social propaganda exercise for almost 2 weeks.
 
rob666 said:
Yeah, you have the joy of the red button now Matt, a static camera, and dual loading.
Could we have accurate mph figures please...and thank you.
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As “mourners per hour” seemed to be popular when I did it for the Edinburgh vigil, I’ll get back to you later with an updated throughput figure for Westminster Hall!

Here’s hoping the livestream maintains a constant camera angle…
EDIT: Sadly, the livestream seems to like changing the camera angle, so the most consecutive readings I’ve managed so far is 4… I’ll try my best, though!
 
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OK…. it was somewhat difficult, but I had a go!

Westminster Hall was, if anything, harder to time than St Giles’ Cathedral, because there was a lack of any truly fixed point (I had to pick a random policeman to watch and press “Dispatch” whenever someone passed them… they’re going to be pretty still, surely?).

Alas, the livestream also keeps changing the camera angle every few seconds, so keeping tabs on a fixed point for any sustained period was difficult.

With both those things in mind, the accuracy of these figures is debatable. I had a good crack, however!

I managed 8 readings, and the average of those readings was 664mph, or a person every 5.4 seconds (people seemed to linger for a bit longer in Westminster). However, this was for one side only… as said above, Westminster Hall does have a dual queue situation going on, so the total throughput would be 1,328mph. Interestingly, that’s still lower than St Giles’ Cathedral…

But wait! I can go further… it should be noted that we know the total period of time for which the Queen will lie in state. And that an estimate of potential mourner figures across that time period has been provided.

Taking that into account, I could see how the real world throughput compares to the theoretical figure!

Whitehall have estimated that 750,000 people could see the Queen lie in state. The Queen will lie in state for 109.5 hours, therefore the theoretical throughput figure, courtesy of Whitehall, is approximately 6,849mph.

My timed figure was 1,328mph. Therefore, within my brief snapshot, about 19.4% of theoretical throughput was being attained.
 
But I wonder though, there must be some kind of fast pass system for this. Obviously it’s not something they’ll publicise, but let’s imagine if a big celebrity wants to pay their respects, for example say a Mick Jagger or a Richard Branson type of figure. I can’t imagine that they’d be made to go to the back of the queue in Bermondsey or somewhere and shuffle along overnight with the public. They must have some kind of system for letting certain people bypass the main queue and be batched in to the station, sorry I mean hall. Maybe you need to show your Knighthood to get that close.
 
On a serious note, the government actually has a live queue tracker streaming on YouTube:


If you’re thinking of joining the queue yourself, the queue is currently 2.6 miles long, with the nearest landmark being London Bridge.

I can sense that this could also be a very good outlet for the RideTimes fans among us to pay their respects if they get bored of keeping tabs upon Alton Towers queue times…
 
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