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Rain Gryphon ([personal profile] rain_gryphon) wrote2013-07-26 09:36 pm
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Current Events

It was pointed out to me that between them, Elizabeth II and Victoria have reigned for 125 of the last 176 years. That's really a remarkable perspective to me, to think of those two in tandem like that, defining an age.

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I've now seen the video of that Spanish train disaster. That is one deeply impressive crash. He was going a good hundred miles an hour into that turn. It looked as though the train were just plain going too fast to make the curve.

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So, life without parole plus a thousand years. With good behaviour, he'll be released for burial 667 years after he dies.

They're tearing down his house because "We do not want it to be a symbol of Cleveland." Prolly a bit late there.

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Two years ago I was able to remark with assurance that Weiner was 'toast'. I'm actually kind of glad that I was wrong. Being a lecher really shouldn't disqualify a man from holding public office. Being stupid enough to get caught repeatedly is perhaps more of a problem, though.

[identity profile] whitetail.livejournal.com 2013-07-27 10:08 pm (UTC)(link)
Although that's an interesting statistic, I'd hardly say that Victoria and Elizabeth II define an age. Quite the contrary - the two reigns couldn't be more starkly different. Victoria's Britain was an imperial world power - THE sole superpower on the planet. Under E II R, Britain has lost all vestiges of empire, and is so impotent and weak now that even Scotland is poised to break away. The world leader in practically everything in the 19th century, the nation today, in general, is almost completely irrelevant on the international stage. Even English culture is in active decline. The UK actually now touts itself as "the most multicultural country in the world", and I don't think anyone can dispute that. When simply flying the flag of St George in its own country is frowned upon as insulting to other nationalities, it seems to me that England has completely lost all sense of itself.

All this, of course, is not Elizabeth's personal doing, but she's clearly shown herself to be in favour of all of these negative changes, and not speaking up for traditional English values in the least. Victoria stood for national and cultural strength; Elizabeth II, weakness. As monarchs, they are polar opposites in almost every way.

[identity profile] whitetail.livejournal.com 2013-07-28 09:12 pm (UTC)(link)
I found this on Tumblr last night and thought it to be of interest.

Image

[identity profile] arcturax.livejournal.com 2013-07-28 11:56 pm (UTC)(link)
My take on the Weiner thing and other politicans who get caught out in this kind of thing is if his own wife can't trust him, how can the voters?

[identity profile] kitten-goddess.livejournal.com 2013-08-04 02:27 pm (UTC)(link)
It turns out the idiot train driver was yakking on his phone at the time of the crash.