OK, I just had a sad thought, I remembered that Rolls-Royce is now owned by Mercedes anyway.
Sad days indeed.!

Btw. Rolls is owned by BMW. Still German. BMW also owns Mini.

 

One reason (of many) we went from a sharp end of a feather to ball points !

https://ca.yahoo.com/news/leaky-pen-irks-king-charles-152140365.html

Leaky pen looks much more promising than leaky muzzleloader BTW ;p

 

Cars and Flags.

https://www.marca.com/en/lifestyle/uk-news/2022/09/17/6325d45aca4741a3358b4583.html
Chinese factory flooded with orders for British flags
Ninety minutes after Queen Elizabeth II died, orders for thousands of British flags started to flood into a factory south of Shanghai.

 

Ninety minutes after Queen Elizabeth II died, orders for thousands of British flags started to flood into a factory south of Shanghai.

Who'd a thought?
Hope people know the correct way up to fly them.
Theoretically still a crime in the UK to fly it upside-down.

 

I came to Canada 55 years ago to get away from all that, so, in the interest of good taste, will refrain from adding my comments here.

 

But he is Your King.

 

I came to Canada 55 years ago to get away from all that, so, in the interest of good taste, will refrain from adding my comments here.

Oh, come on. Tell us how you feel. She's not going to hear what you say.

 

Oh, come on. Tell us how you feel. She's not going to hear what you say.

OK, If you insist :-
I went to a certain very well known university in England, on scholarship. The majority of the students (in the early 60s) were sons of landed gentry (members of the ruling class who had been granted title to land by royalty). They are brought up to believe that they have a divine right to their family's inherited title and are therefore superior to the "commoners" who have no such right. The first son automatically inherits the family title. The rest have to buy a university education to enable them to get a commission in the military or to sit on boards of directors (anything but work for a living!).
Because my parents had no title.I was regarded by my fellow students as a "commoner". This was pointed out to me on every possible occasion. In spite of that, I graduated with honours but I was left with a very poor opinion of the snobbish ruling class. When I got out into the working world, I found that in Britain it was far more important who you knew than what you knew if you wanted to get ahead. The result of all that was that I emigrated to Canada in 1967 and established a very successful technical career.
I will always judge a person by their morals and what they personally achieve in life, not by who their family and associates are or how much wealth they accumulate..

 

In the rest of Europe, especially in Germany from my experience, there is a ruling class as well. Very difficult (but possible) to move up the ranks to the C-suite office as a commoner. However, the easiest ticket to the C-suite is not being the child of an executive into your dad's company because there are nepotism rules. However, executives insure they have a network of other executive friends /acquaintances that they can trade tit-for-tat. That is, a wink and a handshake between executives at supplier and customer often results in the child of the supplier's kid getting a rapid-rising career at the customer's company and vice-verse. They are called "Kunde Kinder" or "customer's children". With LinkedIn, and some casual conversation, it doesn't take long to figure out where the line connects A and B.

It happens in the US as well, but on a less obvious basis. Usualky, the kids of executives show their background of hot-shot attitudes, bold comments and risks that anyone with a mortgage and/or a student loan balance would never risk their careers in that way. The boldness gets rewarded just by the fact they are bold and show their willingness to go out on a limb. In addition, their executive parents also know how businesses recruit and which schools create executives and which don't (guess which schools theor children magically get accepted into?). So, executives breed executives around the world - not just in the UK. Congrats on your technical career - but technical work is too much effort for someone bred to be an executive (also, technical jobs require knowing technology and a donation to the school can't make that happen).

 

We cannot escape the reality that the world is ruled by the ruling class.
(signed, Captain Obvious).

 

OK, If you insist :-
I went to a certain very well known university in England, on scholarship. The majority of the students (in the early 60s) were sons of landed gentry (members of the ruling class who had been granted title to land by royalty). They are brought up to believe that they have a divine right to their family's inherited title and are therefore superior to the "commoners" who have no such right. The first son automatically inherits the family title. The rest have to buy a university education to enable them to get a commission in the military or to sit on boards of directors (anything but work for a living!).
Because my parents had no title.I was regarded by my fellow students as a "commoner". This was pointed out to me on every possible occasion. In spite of that, I graduated with honours but I was left with a very poor opinion of the snobbish ruling class. When I got out into the working world, I found that in Britain it was far more important who you knew than what you knew if you wanted to get ahead. The result of all that was that I emigrated to Canada in 1967 and established a very successful technical career.
I will always judge a person by their morals and what they personally achieve in life, not by who their family and associates are or how much wealth they accumulate..

Knowing a little about the rigid class structure of the UK I can understand your disgust with it.
When I was a boy we would throw rocks at the French Catholic kids, but we also threw rocks at the Orange men when they marched.

I really liked throwing rocks at those orange men.
Something very un Canadian about them
The french kids enjoyed throwing rocks back at us really a lot me thinks...
That was very Canadian...

 

Knowing a little about the rigid class structure of the UK I can understand your disgust with it.
When I was a boy we would throw rocks at the French Catholic kids, but we also threw rocks at the Orange men when they marched.

I really liked throwing rocks at those orange men.
Something very un Canadian about them
The french kids enjoyed throwing rocks back at us really a lot me thinks...
That was very Canadian...

What was the goal of the rock-throwing at the French Catholic kids? Did you expect them to share their accent, their religion or their sandwiches?

 

The majority of the students (in the early 60s) were sons of landed gentry (members of the ruling class who had been granted title to land by royalty). They are brought up to believe that they have a divine right to their family's inherited title and are therefore superior to the "commoners" who have no such right.

The class thing was also one thing that did not go down well with me, it was even more evident when I served in H.M. forces, I don't recall one of our officers that did not come from an "upper-class" family.
I followed the same route 3yrs after you did.

 

What was the goal of the rock-throwing at the French Catholic kids? Did you expect them to share their accent, their religion or their sandwiches?

Wrong on all three counts it was their girls....
French girls were fast
Nope all kidding a side its just what you did.
They went to different schools, sporting events between teams from different boards were like organized warfare.
Ah the good old days...

I was baptized twice because some folks in my family were suspicious of a priest that did not speak our language from the old country
And he could not be a Greek lol....

Amazing how this country has changed....
Used to be if you wanted to do any kind of business with the city around here you had to be a member of the orange order

 

English kids called the French kids “pea soup”.
French kids called the English kids “cup-o-tea”.

 

English kids called the French kids “pea soup”.
French kids called the English kids “cup-o-tea”.

Just plain cruel.

 

English kids called the French kids “pea soup”.
French kids called the English kids “cup-o-tea”.

I heard that, but I never actually heard that said.
A French kid was a Pepsi....
They drank Pepsi and had bad teeth was the correlation.

I was called all kinds of things.
But being a slav the distinction was made we were not English.
MUCH different today but some ethnic groups in Canada had a real chip on their shoulder, and rightly so.
I worked in places like this, a small town with a paper mill and all the workers were mostly french but the management was anglo-Canadian.
The two did not mix at all.
Linguisitc divide aplified problems between labour and management at the contract table

To this point I notice the idea of Queen has probably prevented a lot of problems in Canada.
Since she was not elected there was nothing to argue about.
And she made a point of being nice without getting political.
A president would be a problem,
Getting everyone to except a new political possition and assign powers to it as head of state would open a whole can of worms

 

The thing that defines this era I live in is change
I cling to things that are familiar, I try and make the old things run, patch them up
I shun the new things, the equipment and procedures that they tell me are better.
Just because they are not what I am used to, I don't like them

I've never been a huge fan of the royal family, but the Queen was a constant.
Her smiling face on stamps and coins, it hung on the walls in gov buildings and schools.
Her crest was on some of the food brands I ate approved by the crown fit a a queen table ( true or not ).
Her picture smiled down on the buffet table during the lunch at the Polish combatants association functions ( Mmmm ..... Cabbage rolls and Bigos ).
Photos of her and her father hung in the company main office from vissits over the decades ( managers changes, ownership changes but don't touch the pictures ! )

I watched her funeral today.
One less thing I can look at that does not change in a world of rapid, often confusing and unsettled change.

 

The thing that defines this era I live in is change
I cling to things that are familiar, I try and make the old things run, patch them up
I shun the new things, the equipment and procedures that they tell me are better.
Just because they are not what I am used to, I don't like them

I've never been a huge fan of the royal family, but the Queen was a constant.
Her smiling face on stamps and coins, it hung on the walls in gov buildings and schools.
Her crest was on some of the food brands I ate approved by the crown fit a a queen table ( true or not ).
Her picture smiled down on the buffet table during the lunch at the Polish combatants association functions ( Mmmm ..... Cabbage rolls and Bigos ).
Photos of her and her father hung in the company main office from vissits over the decades ( managers changes, ownership changes but don't touch the pictures ! )

I watched her funeral today.
One less thing I can look at that does not change in a world of rapid, often confusing and unsettled change.

Well, the rotation of royals will surely speed up in the coming years... unless Charlie lives to 140+. Then we can be certain their are two classes of medical care, too.

 

Yes I'm in the UK,
Spent a lot of my life working around the world ,

The Queen has just been laid to rest,
god bless her,

When the new prime minister the day before was invited by the queen to form a new government,
the queens hand was clearly bruised from a drip having been in place for a long time
she was clearly in hind site, very much running on empty,
but she still did the ceremony , and form the video you would not know she was even slightly off colour,

now that's dedication to duty

I'm no royalist, and was in Turkey when her death was announced,
and had a dammed good scotch to mark passing of an age.

But watching the TV today , and all the run up, as so many others I saw , I had tears in eyes

The UK system is a monarcall one ( made up word ? )
we have no "constitution" , its mainly "custom" .

The royals do a hard job,
Look at the number of "servants" any CEO of a big company has by comparison,

It has to be said though
one thing the UK can still do is put on a dammed good show ,