Well, I hated the coronation…

[TheColourofspring]

I can see I am in the minority on here but I found yesterday to be distasteful on a gigantic scale. To watch the most privileged people travel in gold coaches & be decorated with diamonds and gold that is priceless in the face of millions of people struggling to eat/heat their homes just feels so wrong.

Our primary school has just opened a food bank. There are kids & families in crisis- children coming into school hungry & smelly as families can’t afford to wash clothes (I am not joking) - living in Dickensian conditions. Some of the teaching staff use the foodbank.

Yesterday was a display of obscene wealth. The royals didn’t even pay for it- we did. How can we find money for that absolute nonsense yet we can’t find money for large swathes of the population to feed themselves.

While Charles was sitting there in his gold costume holding these priceless items, plenty of families weren’t eating. It made me really angry.

I am tired of all the arguments for a royal family- how somehow these displays are quaint. Yesterday was an obscene display of wealth, inherited privilege and everything that’s wrong with this country. Seems a conversation about the royals is long overdue.

@Bloodsweatntears but did the rest of the world look at us and think ‘ooh, Britain is great, let’s invest/travel ’? Or did they think ‘ooh it’s all a bit embarrassing. They have made it really difficult to trade with post brexit and have shut themselves off from the rest of the world and are now showing off with some pointless ritualistic bollocks’?

Well perhaps it’s time to give members of the RF - especially the so-called minor ones - the chance to “make it happen” for themselves.

Half the peasants in the mall were slack jawed tourists who can't believe their luck at having a £100 million show chucked in for free. You would have thought they could have bought a second glove for all that money !

France is a hugely unequal and divided society!

Lucky tourists.

Once in a lifetime event, we won’t see this for another 70 years!

@TheColourofspring

I am totally with you I haven't got the poll open on my MN so haven't voted, but I am behind you all the way. Just be prepared for plenty of attacks because Royalists cannot stand to have anything criticised about any of them (except H&M of course. That's different lol)

I watched it. I was told as a non Royalist I was a hypocrite for watching it. I cleaned my grouting on the floor tiles at the same time and I watched the bits I wanted. Surely I could not comment on it if I hadn't? Because I would've been told... you didn't see it so you don't know how spectacular it was so you can't post on it!

I found the music wonderful, the horses and military etc moving. I found a lot of it nauseating particularly C&C on the balcony with the crowns plonked on their heads looking down at the masses. I felt so uncomfortable with that... Charles crown having a 734carat diamond in it from South Africa who just recently have said they want it back as it was presented to the Monarchy whilst under our colonial rule.

And don't start me off on the heavy handed police approach to any dissent. 2am on the day of the Coronation had the Night Stars (City of Westminster Night Safety Team) who carry rape alarms for women, arrested and kept in handcuffs for 14 hours. Let alone the Republic protestors at a venue not disturbing anyone and agreed with the Police weeks in advance. All handcuffed and taken away.

So... threads like this are very welcome. Thank you

If you want change, you need to address politics, not make an empty gesture.

Getting rid of the monarchy will not make any difference to people's ability to feed their kids.

Please stop resenting other's wealth. Even if those individuals have less doesn't automatically mean you will have more . You need to make that happen yourself

In the words of Martin Luther King..
“It’s all right to tell a man to lift himself by his own bootstraps, but it is cruel jest to say to a bootless man that he ought to lift himself by his own bootstraps."

But getting to remove them every few years doesn’t make things better. I much prefer a head of State that has no political allegiance and spends their whole life serving the country.

I think it's unlikely Charles will leave another 70 years

I don’t know. Imagine how many quiches are going to be binned today.

Listen to the Housemartins - genius lyrics
‘The people who grinned themselves to death
Smiled so much, they failed to take a breath
And even when their kids were starving
They all thought the queen was charming’

France is soooo unequal I can't believe you've actually really lived there and not noticed??

Given that you have said that you are Welsh and don’t like the Union Jack, how much of this is anti-Britishness?!

This!

The coronation is something that will bring in an awful lot of money to the economy from selling TV rights, hotels and catering for people coming from overseas (many of those interviewed yesterday), investment in future tourism etc. People enriching themselves from gearing society and concealing all the profits in the Cayman Islands, Panama, Bermuda etc benefits only them.

There is an argument about the symbolism of the Royal Family reinforcing the class system but if we had a Republic we would have Presidents and their family members trying to enrich themselves every five years. And no one would want to see their weddings/investitures etc.

Shut the front door.

So you are saying Charles won’t live until he is 144???

I can only imagine the world is laughing at us right now. We look ridiculous. A load of ostentatious twaddle and a conspicuous display of wealth is in poor taste when so many people are struggling.

People are poor because of the a) the Tory government b) Brexit c) a general economic downturn.

Get cross at these things not the kings coronation. That won't change anything.

We wouldn’t be better off at all without the royal family. If we had a republic instead, their wealth wouldn’t suddenly go to help struggling families have plenty of food and cash for the energy bills and treats. No doubt the country’s economy as a whole would in fact, be worse off without them.
I feel the pared down family of royals on the balcony yesterday are hard-working, decent-thinking, caring people who do a good job for this country on the whole. They have their own set of hardships, fears, family problems and work-worries I’m sure, even though poverty isn't one of them. The jewels, crowns, orbs, bangles and gold coaches etc that were on display yesterday belong to the country not to them individually. They have existed for centuries and were brought out, not to offend, but as part of the coronation tradition.
It’s good to have empathy for the terrible struggle of hundreds of families in our communities and to find ways to help them but yesterday’s display of sparkly wealth and the COL crisis are not connected.
Yesterday was about the pomp, pageantry and tradition. Today is about entertaining us with the concert. Tomorrow is about volunteering or community or resting with a day off for some. Take what you can from it if you can.
Some of us, including struggling families in poverty, might still be uplifted or find some small positive thing about some aspect of it all, to spur us on. I think that’s what the King wanted and intended.
Sad that you hated it yesterday OP.

@Dibblydoodahdah some of it maybe. But does that I mean I can’t question the system & the privilege? I am not keen on the role of the prince of wales either as wales doesn’t need to be bestowed with an English prince. But that’s only part of my argument. I have inequality, I hate seeing hungry kids. It’s all of it.

Charles is 74 years old - we'll likely see another coronation in roughly 20 years or so, if not sooner. Of course that doesn't mean it isn't a fairly rare event, but I don't think there will be another king/queen lasting as long as Queen Elizabeth did.

I think you could get rid of the royals and yet poor people would be no better off.

Quite. Govenment would not pass on the savings to the plebs.

If you long for a Republic, who would you like to see as President?

We just got on with our usual weekend yesterday, don't have terrestrial TV and were generally not affected by it. We didn't view it. But...

Couldn't get away from the pompous nonsense at the train station however, as the tannoy had the king and queen making an announcement about their "special day"🤦🏻🙄

I agree OP, ridiculous obscene amount of wealth for one family. Riddled with sex offender sympathisers. Also the RF wealth has only come into existence on the back of slaves. Hardly worth celebrating.