Queen under medical supervision at Balmoral | Hacker News Reader

Queen under medical supervision at Balmoral

bbc.co.uk

45 pointsBerislavLopac51 comments

Queen Elizabeth II has died - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32768834 - Sept 2022 (1082 comments)

First of all - I hope the Queen goes back to good health. Seems to have been a good monarch over an extremely long period of time, which also included a ton of technological and societal change.

Second - "London Bridge is down". I can't help but wonder what happens if the actual, physical London Bridge experiences a catastrophic failure falls to the river. What's the codename for that event? "Escape London Bridge is down"? "London Bridge is down, literally, for real, no, I mean it"? "The Queen has climbed to the roof"?

"London bridge collapsed/ is broken", "London bridge is down and I don't mean the queen" etc. seem perfectly serviceable.

Although I would like it to be "her majesty has died" for symmetry reasons

Prince Charles has travelled to Balmoral.

The Duchess of Cornwall has also travelled there and the Duke of Cambridge is on his way.

This isn't a normal "senior royal is unwell" announcement, especially considering her age and fragility.

The interupted the normal broadcasting schedule of the BBC to have a news broadcast about it. Notes passed in Westminsiter during session to update people. Doesn't sound to good for her.

Aha, so it's not just for the Balmoral Highland Games then?

If my 90+year-old mother/grandmother/family matriarch were sick, I would also prioritize traveling to visit her over approximately anything else.

This could be Operation London Bridge.

Look for where prince Harry and the other, lesser, members of the family are.

Harry and Meghan are on their way to Scotland now, just reported

Operation London Bridge

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/mar/16/what-happens...

-- Couple of interesting things picked up from researching the Queens physician referenced in this article - Sir Huw Jeremy Wyndham Thomas -

Huw is a Welsh first name - a variant of Hugo or Hugh - https://www.babynames.co.uk/names/huw/

Royal Victorian Order is a thing - and has some interesting members - https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Victorian_Order

A Bachelors degree can be "promoted" to Masters - https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_of_Arts_(Oxford,_Cambridge...

You can book a consultation with him - https://www.kingedwardvii.co.uk/make-an-appointment?consulta...

The Queens doctor doesn't have a traditional MD - he has a Bachelor of Arts - Bachelor of Medicine and a PhD in molecular genetics --

The other comment was downvoted, presumably people thinking it was a joke, but it is called Operation Unicorn too if she's in Scotland

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_London_Bridge#Operat...

And she is.

Operational code names tend to be secret until after the fact. What's the point of having a code word if everyone knows what it is?

Because then, when they make the movie about this, it would be much easier to sell it to the unsuspecting public. Duh!

Sometimes, a phrase encapsulates all that is to be done. Its utterance, evoking both confirmation and action in one.

The article was published on Fri 17 Mar 2017 07.40 GMT when Theresa May was PM:

> For Elizabeth II, the plan for what happens next is known as “London Bridge.” The prime minister will be woken, if she is not already awake, and civil servants will say “London Bridge is down” on secure lines.

Interestingly, the current PM is also a she.

> The prime minister will be woken,

Totally unrelated but is this correct grammar? I realize I've never seen "woken" without "up", as in "woken up". To avoid using "up" I would've leaned towards some form of awoke, but am not sure I've ever seen something like "she will be awoke" either. Always fun to encounter grammatical edge cases you're unfamiliar with in your native language.

-- getting into some cumbersome and annoying English - tenses and principal are often confusing - awoken is the most correctly - woken is fine - awoke is first person past principal - so you're right "she will be awoke" is grammatically incorrect - https://www.englishgrammar101.com/module-3/verbs-types-tense... --

> awoken is the most correctly

I thought of "awoken" initially, but if I hadn't seen the other wordings before, I don't recall ever seeing the word "awoken" at all! Or if I have seen it before, I second-guessed myself after reading variations of "woke/wake" so much in a short period of time. Thanks for your response

I think we (Brits) now draw with Norway for the most Female PMs (3 each).

Of course 2 of these in the UK never won general elections...

Not true. Amazingly, Teresa May won one in 2017.

Ah damn, I always forget that one!

I wish I could :(

We had in France a few female PM: the current one, Edith Cresson and maybe someone else.

0 female president, though.

Finland also has our 3rd woman PM right now. Though one of them was only PM for 68 days.

Nice work! I will see how long our current PM makes it before I condemn anyone for only making 68 days...

Norway has only had two female PMs:

Gro Harlem Brundtland (labour), three governments between 1981 and 1996.

Erna Solberg (conservatives), 2013-2021.

Maybe a bit macabre, but live updates are here: https://www.bbc.com/news/live/uk-62834633

Wait, no live pulse diagram? That's not the data driven future I've been promised.

It is an interesting statistical fact that someone in their mid 90s is less than 50% likely to make it to 100. Quite different to say a 46 year old making it to 50. There's a real cliff beyond the 80s as frailty takes hold.

At least she'll have her family by her side.

I don’t understand why people like kings, queens, popes and in the US Supreme Court justices don’t retire when they get old. Instead you see them being dragged out into the public while they are barely alive and certainly can’t perform their tasks in any reasonable manner. Retire in dignity and let younger people do a better job.

> kings, queens

... abdicate regularly [0][1]

> popes

The most recent pope to leave office retired. The current one has said he is considering it.

> Supreme Court justices

By my count [2], 7 of the last 10 justices to leave office retired.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_Carlos_I [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beatrix_of_the_Netherlands [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_justices_of_the_Suprem...

Leaving Charles in charge? Sometimes "over my dead body" is quite literal.

At least she stuck around to make sure Boris actually left.

Humans care about the weirdest things.

-- Turns out tradition may have an evolutionary reason -- Cultural Traditions and the Evolutionary Advantages of Noninnovation

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/284099630_Cultural_... --

Wow, I can't believe she will eventually die.

I thought royalties live forever!

Damn you reality! Where's neo when you need him?!

    Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.

"96 year old woman might die soon" is not a new or interesting phenomenon. Unless she wrote a compiler or published a whitepaper I'm unaware of, the Queen isn't relevant to this community, and this isn't even news yet. Flagging.

Congrats, you've mastered copy and paste.

Well, she’s the head of state of a number of countries and the commonwealth. Represents political and social continuity. This has historical significance, which might be of interest to some of the readership. She was trained as a mechanic and is one of the few old enough to have been an adult in the war. Her death might, maybe will, be responsible for a number of commonwealth states changing their structure of government.

Bit more significant to RL than one might think.

  >Her death might, maybe will, be responsible for a number of commonwealth states changing their structure of government.

Should boost Scotland's chances of voting for independence too. As I don't think Charlie boy is anywhere near as popular.

And the owner of one of the largest investment firms in the world.

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