Watching Trooping of the Colour - AIBU to feel proud or is it an anachronistic, expensive waste of money?

[Isdinnerreadyyet]

Been watching Trooping of the Colour. I just love the bands, the precision of the marching, the horses - all of it TBH. We do it better than anyone else IMO. Also good for tourism as many tourists come to the UK for the pageantry, palaces etc.

AIBU to feel proud?

Or is it an anachronistic, expensive waste of money?

It’s despicable and embarrassing for us all.

😆 🤣

The drum horses have the rank of 'Major' 😂

Good comeback 👏

Well it beats using hyperbolic language.

It’s what I think 🤷‍♀️

So what's despicable about it?

It's representative of a certain kind of traditionalist, low-level authoritarian, small-c conservative, backwards-looking, insular, Brexity Britain.

Odd that none of those things represent me yet I love it. 🤷‍♀️

That's interesting. What do you love about it?

The spectacle, the pageantry, the skill, the gorgeous horses. I love the whole thing. I went to the dress rehearsal a few years ago and the atmosphere was fantastic.

I agree, Blossomtoes.

I'm sorry - I don't know which pp that quote is from, but to me it's representative of a small-minded, all-too predictable, knee-jerk and not very imaginative type of mindset which just loves to judge, label and sneer at people rather than engaging with different viewpoints.

I love tradition (folk music, folklore, vernacular architecture, Vaughan Williams etc), I can be a bit nostalgic sometimes (so, backward looking occasionally) but I'm a strong Remainer and think of myself as a liberal-minded person. You can be 'small c' conservative without necessarily being a Conservative voter, you know!

I'd go so far as to say that the person who posted that quote is someone I'd cross the street to avoid - I don't like small-mindedness.

I’m just heading out but basically…are you really ok with being subject to ofter people based on an accident of birth? People who cheat the law to hide their wealth and don’t seem too concerned about paedophilia?

They’re our ‘betters’ and yet I don’t recall them chucking any money our way during, say, Covid, when millions of us were out of work, or to food banks when some people die hungry.

I don’t know what else to call the entire self-satisfied self-serving system except despicable. Blow my mind that people are happy to be subjects? To this lot? Get fucked.

It's not embarrassing for us ALL, as the thread demonstrates.

I was going to say that 'despicable' is a bit hyperbolic, but actually, you do you, because one thing I can agree with you about is - if you don't like something, or what it seems to represent, then even something innocuous can provoke disgust. I'll give you a for instance...which will probably sound just as ridiculous to you!

I feel like that about Glastonbury (the music festival, not the village). I hate crowds, camping, loud, amplified music, portaloos, not being able to wash very thoroughly, queueing for everything in either blazing heat or rain and mud. That bit I just find not to my taste - but I'm always disgusted at the mess people leave behind - the ankle-deep trash and often their tents, which will go straight to landfill. I think I prefer the people who watch TtC - they are more considerate, house-trained and generally nice - as far as I'm aware they don't leave a ton of landfill behind in their wake - but if anyone knows otherwise, I'm happy to be corrected!

So yes, we can all be disgusted by things which others find pleasant - I admit that even though I love TtC.

Interesting that you use your post to judge, label and sneer at the previous poster (me) rather than engage with my viewpoints.

So the one quality you don't recognise in yourself in my list is Brexity. Fair enough. Shades of grey and all that...

Enjoying TotC doesn’t mean being happy to be a subject though. I’m an equal opportunities pageantry and tradition enjoyer. I watched the Pope’s funeral too. And a bit of his investiture or whatever it’s called (though that was in a roadside cafe in Spain) and I’m not a Catholic - in fact I’m atheist. You can enjoy the spectacle without supporting the current reason, and you can think the people performing are amazingly skilled and talented and be proud your country has kept those skills going without being a mad nationalistic xenophobe.
I’m a distinctly left wing Welsh person who thinks we should be in the EU still and who is Indy-curious and not a royalist.

I don’t recognise any of myself in your comments. Still like pageantry though. It’s impressive and clever and supports all kinds of different skills and trades.

Isdinner - I get what you're saying.

I have never been able to feel that any existing political party represents my views. In some things, I'm further left than Jeremy Corbyn and in others I'm a Tory. I like the Lib Dems except for some issues. I live a super-green lifestyle and am very conscious of environmental issues, but I don't like the way the Green Party has gone and I think some environmental activists just alienate people.

I cannot and won't be pigeon-holed, which makes life difficult for me in many ways - especially at election time! But I've met far more hard-line lefties in my life than hard-line Tories and working with them made me understand Stalin's Terror and the brutal, ideologically-imposed famine in the Ukraine in the 30s (killed 12 million people whom Stalin didn't like - more than Hitler's genocide).. I met people who had the same hatred of other classes and categories of people and expressed a wish to be violent towards them. It absolutely chills my blood.

I'm putting on my helmet for this comment but I think violent class hatred isn't very British. Apart from the Civil War, we've always favoured evolution over revolution and I'm proud of that tradition.

👏 👏 a refreshing bit of nuance.

There is a difference between violent class hatred and not wanting to have a Monarchy…..

1. There's a long way between liking pageantry and being proud of Troopng The Colour.

2. You value traditional skills, trades and pageantry but you're not a traditionalist?

Never said there wasn't! I'm not linking the two. I'm referring to my own experience in my working life of very nasty left-wingers. The only poster who scares me in this connection is the one who thought the Bolsheviks had the right approach to monarchy. I will give that person the benefit of the doubt and assume that they don't know the gory details of the fate of the Romanovs - and I completely agree that they should have been deposed and a democratic government put in. It's not the politics - it's the lust for violence that I find repulsive.

You can enjoy the spectacle without supporting the current reason

You can up to a point. We'll all have our limit of when the cause of celebration became too much for us to just "love the spectacle".

You describe yourself as left wing but you're happy to support a military parade for a hereditary monarch in your own country because you like the spectacle. That absolutely fits my definition of a small-c conservative. Someone who instinctively prefers tradition to change.

That absolutely fits my definition of a small-c conservative. Someone who instinctively prefers tradition to change.

I think I'm a small-c conservative then!

I love tradition and don't relish change.

I wish my town had a bank still. I wish I could deal with real people in shops, banks, on phone enquiry lines etc and not machines and bots. I wish kids read books more and were less obsessed with their phones, I wish they still got time to play outside. I wish the BBC was still the power it used to be and that the TV schedules weren't packed with absolute trash most of the time.

Change isn't always good, and tradition isn't always bad. What a bizarre point of view!

But I know a couple of people who were very proud of their participation in TtC, and I enjoyed hearing about their experiences.

They were all working class men who'd played brass instruments and joined the army. They ended up in the Grenadier Guards and were part of the bands as well as being serving soldiers.

They saw TtC as a showcase for their precision, dedication and skill and told me being part of it was one of (if not THE) best day(s) of their lives.

I get that - and I wouldn't disparage them for the world!

1. I’m proud the skills inherent in the pageantry have been kept going

2.I don’t understand what you mean - valuing traditional skills is not incompatible with being forward thinking. Everything builds on what went before. Do you think to be forward thinking we should totally abandon the ability to tailor, embroider, work wood to a high standard? I think, in fact, that the way forward is less reliance on the machine made…