The Princess of Wales..

[CurlewKate]

I just wanted to share some thoughts I've had since talking to some RL friends last night. I'm a Republican, and didn't actually post much on any of the threads on here. But I did read them, laugh at the ones I found funny and speculated a little IRL. I enjoy robust mental health, but I feel a little sad and down today about the news. And a little guilty. It occurs to me that it might be a real source of distress to some other people. Not the big media ghouls, of course, they have no shame and will just move on to the next thing without looking back, but for those of us who bought in to the whole farrago and maybe posted things we now wish we hadn't. So remember, the media often manipulates us, the establishment often lies to us and it's actually a good thing not to immediately take what we're told at face value. Don't beat yourself up and find someone to talk to if you feel really bad about it. Take care of yourselves.

It depends on the chemo but it won’t fall out immediately- think mine was the third session. And you can use a cold cap. It didn’t work for me but that was the nurse not putting it on correctly.

The invention of the internet was a major error for the human race. Put your phones down and mind your own business.

I apologise if you think I was accusing you of the nastiness about asking to see Kate, where she was, why she hadn’t come out, why she is hiding etc. That was not my intention. I was talking in general terms.

But in other countries, their press was aware that Kate was much more unwell than we were told. How?

You know those publications made all that up, right? They weren’t privy to what was really going on - that was kept incredibly tightly and did not leak. Overseas they were saying she was in a coma for weeks etc. That was pure fiction.

Just stop.

Indeed and of course there was always a chance they would be correct in saying she was more unwell than initially thought, but that doesn’t mean they actually had that information. Much like posters on here guessing what sort of operation she had. Some of them will have guessed correctly but that is pure chance as well (not that we know what operation she had, we don’t, but some will be correct in their guess by the law of averages)

Of course KP made a huge error, they created a cryptic information vacuum, fuelled it with fake images etc and then berated the public for wondering/worrying about what was going on.

I really don’t think this is true. They released a very clear and informative initial statement saying Kate had had major abdominal surgery and, following current medical advice, would not be resuming duties til after Easter. For the vast majority of people that was enough; it wasn’t remotely cryptic. They issued a further statement when she was released from hospital and began recuperating at home: so not an “information vacuum” unless you wanted a livestream bedcam.

”Fuelled it with fake images”: one. One image. The Mother’s Day pic. Not Kate in the car with her mother, not Kate in the car with William, not the farm shop video. One photo that Kate has taken responsibility for editing: if she didn’t tell staff how heavily it was edited, how would they know not to release it? Ten days after that pic, they filmed her statement; 12 days after, the statement was released. Not a lot of time, really.

I have no idea about berating the public? I don’t recall KP doing so. Wouldn’t blame them though.

The only “misstep” – and I really don’t think it was – was William dropping out of the service for personal reasons. Given what we know, they’d clearly just got the information about cancer, and rightly he prioritised his family in that moment. They said personal reasons because it was; anything else would now be shown for a lie, so they thought ahead. And they couldn’t tell the world it was cancer right there and then because they’d not had five minutes to digest it.

The Mother’s Day picture was an unforced error, but the rest is on the media, social media (including failure to control bots and disinformation campaigns), and the public.

Absolutely, @pelargoniums .
I think people have lost the ability to think logically and critically over this.

Do you work for KP? Because their non strategy was a disaster, unlike BP.

The fake Mother’s Day photo

Carole in the car - clearly wasn’t Kate given the weight she has lost.

Announcing it was surgery - but unrelated to cancer - it wasn’t necessary to announce it was unrelated to cancer, and as it turns out it is incorrect.

Absolute disaster, and did Kate a huge disservice in my view.

Your view clearly differs.

I am leaving it there. As I wish to respect their wishes for privacy and peace. You can carry on if you like.

Nicola 'Privy Councillor' Sturgeons sister wrote

"Get well soon Princess Kate. After this awful news I hope the media leave her in peace to recover." on FB at 5.35 PM on Friday.

If the Privy Council can leak like a sieve and hospital staff attempt to access your records (to sell), the lengths William and Kate may have gone to for a bit of privacy to process her diagnosis seem quite justified to me.

Mind you, aforementioned sister is apparently a 'psychic medium' so perhaps she found out from the cards (thinks nobody)

Unfortunately there are many who never had this ability. They just have the ability to shout louder than the majority. It has always been like this but the internet gives them a bigger platform. Noisy crickets, in the minority,but irritating

Haha! “I wish to respect their wishes as soon as I’ve had the last word.”

Of course I don’t work for KP, what a classic zinger. I’m not even a royalist.

“Carole in the car - clearly wasn’t Kate given the weight she has lost.” – so nothing to do with KP and their strategy, then.

“Announcing it was surgery - but unrelated to cancer - it wasn’t necessary to announce it was unrelated to cancer, and as it turns out it is incorrect.” It was correct at the time and stopped any speculation that it was cancer, which is a good thing. Especially when it turned out to be cancerous, and they didn’t yet want people to know: it meant cancer wasn’t part of the feverish speculation. It was Kate’s closely guarded secret.

@Polishedshoesalways they have said it wasn’t cancerous until they did further tests after the operation. If they had said it was major surgery but didn’t say it was non cancerous do you think no-one would have speculated it was cancer and she was at death’s door. Even with them saying it was non-cancerous some ghouls on social media speculated she was dead.

The photo with Kate’s mum wasn’t an official photo.

The only reason that people are still claiming that anything is fake is because of the mother's day photo. It was fabricated to such an extent, I said at the time the problem here is some people won't believe anything KP say or do in the future now.

How ridiculous. Not believe anything they say?
So you don't believe Kate's video message?

There are some unholy corners of the internet that believe Kate’s video statement is AI/deepfake/propaganda (for what I don’t know – on behalf of cancer? It gets enough press). The tin foil hat is actually the skull at this point.

@naturesform people were making up crap well before that photo

It's exactly the same scenario as with Charles, just on different timelines. His prostate enlargement was non cancerous. They told the public that by was of reassurance. When cancer (unrelated to the prostate enlargement) was detected and treatment for the condition needed, they made that public. With him, that could all happen in a relatively short space of time.

With Catherine, she needed surgery for an abdominal issue. They gave a clear timeline for her recovery and reappearance from the outset, based on the information they knew at the time. It was not thought to be cancer at the time, even though the surgery itself was major. They have then discovered cancer subsequent to the operation, probably after a further period of testing. Unlike Charles, she needed a longer period of recover from her operation before any cancer treatment could commence, and she needed to give the news to her children at a time when they were not having to face school/gossip every day. So there was 1. no point (due to needing to recover from the op) and 2. very good reason to delay a public announcement of her cancer.

What Charles didn't have was 1. a necessary delay in announcing his cancer and 2. an army of bad actors based in the US seeking to undermine his reputation by any means necessary and 3. immense pressure for "proof of life" photos that led to paps and members of the public taking images that have never been confirmed or denied by KP because that's not what they do - none of that was part of a PR strategy.

Any other year, the Mother's Day photo would have been a nice picture and there would be no controversy or forensic examination from parties interested in undermining them and perpetuating conspiracy theories for monetary gain. A statement alone without a picture would have fueled further frenzy (because the tin foil hat brigade was already in a frenzy before that point. The picture itself seems like a fair representation of the Catherine we saw on Friday and the children as they are, so composite/airbrushed/photoshopped or not, it is not a "fake" in any material sense with regard to the people in the picture.

None of the posters on here who have continually attempted to reason with the conspiracy theory posters and defend W&K against the onslaught of utter filth that has been written about them are to blame for any of this. It's laughable that the two groups are being equated.

Utterly ridiculous. I've seen the maddest arguments on here in the last couple of weeks.

A thousand times this

I notice Sarah Vine has apologised this morning.
That still leaves all those US actors/performers to do something similar.
I think Blake Lively has.

My mum was and looked ill when she had an operation and chemo. My uncle had cancer he looked very ill after his operation and chemo. Its a huge trauma on the body. It gets harder after every chemo treatment my mum and uncle struggled to eat and stay awake.

Kate will get better and she looks like she's getting better after her operation and chemo.

Me personally? Yes, I believe it.

I don't think they did themselves any favours by using an obvious green screen background though. These kind of choices only serve to fuel speculation.

Still waiting for @severalwhippets to apologise

A report in the Sunday Times today about a random meeting on a train with Catherine and the recent onslaught against her.

I thought these parargraphs are on the button, I could never find the right word for what people were doing to Catherine, but he nailed it.

"And that is why we should be sickened to the stomach by what has unfolded in recent weeks. I can’t help contrasting the quiet dignity of a woman explaining the trauma of a cancer diagnosis with the lurid gossip of those who TAUNTED her with ever more fantastical stories of why she was absent from public life. At almost precisely the time viral tweets were claiming she was recovering from botched plastic surgery or engaging in various depravities, she was commencing chemotherapy. When in her video she talked of her desire to protect her children, my mind went out to George, who is the same age as my son Teddy. Those young ears will unquestionably have been exposed to some of the vile speculation at the very moment he has been at his most vulnerable."

"For here’s the truth that has been absent from the Kate story. Most ordinary Brits felt she should have been given space after her operation, that she should have been left alone, that this admirable woman should have been given a chance to recover rather than being on the receiving end of bizarre speculation about an impostor going to a farm shop or oppressive analysis of the “crime” of touching up a family photo in the way many people do these days."

"A 1994 article in the journal of the Cato Institute put it this way: “Certain kinds of high-profile events have become traditional ‘starting signals’ for civil disorders … People near a ground on game day know that mischief is apt to occur. They relish getting drunk, fighting, enjoy the whiff of anarchy … Hooligans make a point of being where the trouble is likely to start.

This, to me, captures almost uncannily the actions of those who engage with the latest conspiracy, who retweet it, who amplify it, whether the “starting signal” is a story about Kate or some other quarry. "