Happy Birthday Elizabeth

[kwbrown111]

Why's my last post not appearing

[JAWS]

54 years auld Lizzie has been on the throne.Want to make yourself feel old.Think of the year that you were born and then see how many years she had been Queen.

19 years she had been Queen when I popped out to say hello!!!!

That's frightening. I can remember seeing her father, the old King, after I started school.

[JAWS]

So what is so interesting about it? If you read some history books you would see that that is the norm in royal families, their mariages are arranged for political reasons and it's understood that they are going to have a bit on the side. Seems we are becoming such a prudish society that our leaders can commit heinous crimes like starting a war of aggression, kidnap and torture, spying on their own people and election fraud but for having an affair with your secretary you must be impeached.

How many of us here can put our hands on our hearts and say we never had a bit on the side and most of us get to choose who we want to marry? Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.

You've got me agreeing again Fred.

My favourite story about scandal-mongering is the one about Queen Mary, Edward the Seventh's wife who was slightly deaf.
When Ladies tried to "sympathise" with her "For her own good, you understand" about the latest bit of scandal about her husband, she would dramatically move her ear-trumpet to the ear on the side of the lady whispering in her ear. She would then, in a loud voice to draw everybody's attention say, "You will have to speak up my dear, I cannot hear what you are saying!"
Needless to say, that would rapidly put the troublemaker firmly in their place and left Queen Mary with her dignity intact.

It's a pity that more public figures in this day and age have lost the ability to pour scorn on the gossips with such dignity.

It's not much more than forty years ago that a senior member of the Labour Shadow Cabinet was having an affair with the Tory Prime Minister's wife. Nobody, either in politics or in the media, thought it worth mentioning, except perhaps in private, because it was not affecting their positions and was deemed to be a purely private matter.
Of course, we are much more mature about such matters nowadays, we treat them in a far more adult way.