NFR. God save the Queen.

[Holders]

While I am not really in favour of a monarchy I have to agree that it works well and if right now we were a Republic we may well have a President Blair in charge who we couldn't get rid of.

I'm no monarchist but when I look at the USA and Russia I'd rather have it.

[Russianrob]

Remaining British as long a our Beloved Queen is alive but after this changing alligence to the new Czar of Russia.Long live Czar Putin!!!

[Southcoastffc]

Maybe I'm getting old and of touch, who is this 'AOC'?

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandria_Ocasio-Cortez

[ByTheRiver]

Maybe I'm getting old and of touch, who is this 'AOC'?

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandria_Ocasio-Cortez

:54:

[YankeeJim]

YJ, I think you must be to the right of Genghis Khan.   :dft012:

If I were just slightly to the right of AOC, I'd still be a bloody communist. What she lacks in knowledge and intelligence she makes up for in naivete and ignorance.  She IS cute as a button. Til she opens here mouth.


God, this quarantine must be getting to me.  :031:

[Woolly Mammoth]

YJ, I think you must be to the right of Genghis Khan.   :dft012:

If I were just slightly to the right of AOC, I'd still be a bloody communist. What she lacks in knowledge and intelligence she makes up for in naivete and ignorance.  She IS cute as a button. Til she opens here mouth.


God, this quarantine must be getting to me.  :031:

Touche'

[Forever Fulham]

Am I the only one to think this?--I listened to the Queen's speech to the nation and her pronunciation, her diction, made me think how much the spoken word has changed in delivery over the last 60+ years.  I'm not talking about English as spoken by the former colonies.  No, I'm referring only to England.  It's the Queen, I know.  But still... 

[Russianrob]

As an English teacher l often tell my students that the only person who speaks the Queen's English now is the Queen.Wonderful dictation still.

[ron]

As an English teacher l often tell my students that the only person who speaks the Queen's English now is the Queen.Wonderful dictation still.

Wasn't that diction?  She's a constitutional monarch after all....

[Holders]

Am I the only one to think this?--I listened to the Queen's speech to the nation and her pronunciation, her diction, made me think how much the spoken word has changed in delivery over the last 60+ years.  I'm not talking about English as spoken by the former colonies.  No, I'm referring only to England.  It's the Queen, I know.  But still... 

Yet her own diction has itself moderated in that time. I think it was still only the queen and BBC announcers who spoke like that 60 years ago but in that time many, if not most, local accents have been heavily diluted - to our loss, I believe. No doubt general broadcasting, coupled with foreign imports, has been the main cause of this.

[Holders]

As an English teacher l often tell my students that the only person who speaks the Queen's English now is the Queen.Wonderful dictation still.

Wasn't that diction?  She's a constitutional monarch after all....

It was probably an autocue anyway.

[Forever Fulham]

They say television is largely to blame for the dilution of regional dialects.   And I believe that.  When I lived in Ealing, I never heard a BBC announcer or anchorperson who sounded like my girlfriend from Hartlepool.  It was all Oxbridge.   In the States and Canada, most news anchors and announcers have flat midwestern accents.  No Brooklyn or Louisiana or Minnesota or Boston-to-Maine voices.  No deep Texas drawls.  Canadian tv announcers sounded from Toronto or Calgary, not the Maritimes, and nothing with a franco lilt.  There was a time when Brits had a hard time doing a passable American accent.  Not anymore.  Now the TV show and film market is flooded with them.  I put that down to not only hard work, putting the time in, but also to the exponential increase in exposure to those sounds and pronunciations.  No more three channels of TV, and the TV shutting off at midnight.  A South Korean movie, Parasite, won Best Picture at the last Oscars.   The world is getting smaller. 

[Neil D]

The only accent still seemingly unwelcome on British news and current affairs television is a London one.  A Northern accent, especially from the North West, is de rigueur now.   People from the South have to affect a flat northern 'a' vowel to get ahead.  O tempora, o mores!

[Woolly Mammoth]

They say television is largely to blame for the dilution of regional dialects.   And I believe that.  When I lived in Ealing, I never heard a BBC announcer or anchorperson who sounded like my girlfriend from Hartlepool.  It was all Oxbridge.   In the States and Canada, most news anchors and announcers have flat midwestern accents.  No Brooklyn or Louisiana or Minnesota or Boston-to-Maine voices.  No deep Texas drawls.  Canadian tv announcers sounded from Toronto or Calgary, not the Maritimes, and nothing with a franco lilt.  There was a time when Brits had a hard time doing a passable American accent.  Not anymore.  Now the TV show and film market is flooded with them.  I put that down to not only hard work, putting the time in, but also to the exponential increase in exposure to those sounds and pronunciations.  No more three channels of TV, and the TV shutting off at midnight.  A South Korean movie, Parasite, won Best Picture at the last Oscars.   The world is getting smaller. 

The world is indeed getting smaller, that far corner of the earth is looking not quite so far. The advance of medical Science, the splitting of the atom, the internet, Edmund Hillary conquering Mount Everest, Archimedes, Scott of the Antarctic, Captain Cook, Christopher Columbus, Walt Disney, David Icke,  penicillin, the micro chip, the invention of the wheel, Alexandra Bell and the the telephone, gunpowder round about the 9th century give or take a 100 years.
I was glad to see the back of those Leeches as Humphrey Boggart said to Katherine Hepburn in the film the African Queen.