OT: Prince Philip dies two months before he would have go this telegram from the Queen.

They are generated automatically, provided they get a state pension or other benefit. I'm not sure whether that would apply to him.

Sad that I know that, but happy that there is a reason I determined that a couple of months ago.

Philip was an interesting character: prone to put his foot in his mouth, but interested and influential in several surprising ways: - he was well ahead of the game w.r.t. conservation, particularly via the WWF - he was interested in and advocated engineering.

I remember an anecdote from the 60s, when he visited a telecomms station to hear one of the early trans-atlantic links. During the demo the entire facility lost all power, but the disembodied voice went on. He, quite correctly, suggested that he smelled a rat :)

In other news, it is reliably reported that Price Charles is in a foul mood because the wrong parent died.

(I'm using the word "reliably" in the same sense as people that think Russia Today and Fox news are reliable)

God forbid that you source was MSNBC.

Tom Gardner lives in the UK. MSNBC is based in New York - it seems to be a point venture between Microsoft and NBC.

It's not owned by any god-botherers, who might imagine that their "god" might forbid anybody from getting news from anywhere except their "god-certified" source.

A lot of people have been sharing their fond memories of Prince Philip in the wake of his sad demise. I recall bumping into him once on some back road near Balmoral Castle. I was in my Land Rover and he was driving his trap four-in-hand and his gee-gees were getting skittish for some reason. I didn't recognise him at first so just sat there waiting for him to pull over. Next thing I heard: "Get out of the way you blithering idiot - don't you know who I am??" I hastily pulled into a farmer's field to let him past whereupon he glared at me like I was nothing. I've always treasured that memory. He was a wonderful man...

And good at rapid character assessment. If that's a fond memory, I shudder to think how encounters with less servile creeps might get reported.

Bugger: beat me to it!

I remember another chance meeting with the Prince when I was in Norfolk one afternoon. I'd dropped my cellphone by the side of this unmade road - little more than a bridleway in fact - when HRH approached from around the corner in a magnificent solid gold carriage, going at a tidy clip pulled by 6 beautiful chestnut geldings, all decked-out in the most fabulous liveries. It was an arresting sight to behold. On this occasion I *did* recognize the Prince, so dropped to one knee and tugged my forelock as a gesture of abject supplication as he thundered past, deluging me with horse dung and foetid mud. "Peasant!" he cried back to me as he disappeared into middle distance. I managed to retrieve my phone, but it had been smashed to bits under the hoofs of his magnificent chargers. But that didn't matter. To me the encounter was priceless and I shall treasure the memory of it always. His untimely death is such a terrible loss to me personally for this reason.

Cursitor Doom snipped-for-privacy@nowhere.com wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

Alrighty then.

This does seem to be an invention. Apparently the UK Royal family does have a gilded carriage. Solid gold is heavy, and not all that rigid, and it would take more than six horses to move even a pint-sized solid gold carriage at all, so - unsurprisingly - none have ever been built.

Hallucinations do catch the attention of the hallucinated.

A rather unpleasant hallucination. Even six horses - all suffering from diarrhea - would have been hard pressed to create a deluge, and they wouldn't have been able to thunder past if they were that sick.

You don't use chargers to pull a carriage.

It is a priceless invention, and Cursitor Doom should treasure it, rather than sharing it.

Dying at 99 isn't untimely - statistically speaking the Duke of Edinburgh died rather later than one might have expected. It may have been a terrible loss for Cursitor Doom - he's clearly a loser, but my impression was that he had lost it years ago.

I think you're taking CD's memories a bit too literally. There is no doubt that the Duke was a very accomplished four-in-hand carriage driver (he represented the UK at world-class level), and could have been on the roads around any of his residences. He also didn't suffer fools gladly.

But he did have a good sense of humour. At a Cowes Week event some years ago he was on the water and there were a lot of boats jostling around. It seems the custom was to shout "Water!" if you believed you had right of way and wanted a boat in your path to move aside. One of your countrymen there wanted him to move aside, and shouted "Water!". The Duke didn't respond, so the guy shouted, even louder, "It's MY water!". To which Philip quietly replied "I think you'll find it belongs to my wife, actually".

I think you'll find CD is deliberately yanking our chains.

It is difficult to be sure in his case.

I'm pretty confident that was what he had in whatever it is he uses instead of a mind.

Good riddance. That whole royalty thing is such a scam on the citizenry

- living a life of the ultimate luxury without contributing a worthwhile bit. Leeches is what they are.

Not exactly fair. Constitutional monarch's are useful figureheads. They spend their time going around opening things and doing public relations, which leaves the prime minster free to get on with governing. US presidents waste quite a lot of time on that side of the job, and that part the job seems to have been what attracted Trump to it. Constitutional monarchs don't invite their supporters to march on the Capitol building (or the local equivalent).

German has a figure-head president to do the same job. France used to work like that, but De Gaulle fancied himself in the head-of-state role, and rewrote the French constitution in 1958 to give himself more political power. His scheme seems to work tolerably well - the elected president doesn't seem to have enough power to do any real damage, and the French prime minister can be kicked out as soon as he (or she) loses the confidence of the parliament. The US needs that protection, and seems unlikely to get it any time soon.

But that is the only side the public get to see in the media. in fact our oldest son, Quentin has much to be grateful to the Prince for, too. In his final year in school and knowing the chief gamekeeper on the estate he got a summer job as a gillie to the Prince on one of his deer-stalking forays into the Scottish highlands. They'd been on the trail of this one particular magnificently-antlered hart for several hours one boiling hot day. My boy made the fatal mistake of stepping on a twig and the noise startled the hart, which promptly bolted clean out of sight. The Prince was furious and set about thrashing the lad black and blue with his riding crop. Quentin was only wearing a thin waistcoat that day and the crop shredded it. When he came home in tears and covered in blood we saw the ugly red wheals on his back and asked what on earth had happened. When he told us of the incident involving the Prince both my wife and I were at once both horrified and angry. I beat the lad soundly with my belt whilst my wife hit him repeatedly over the head with her shoe. We then told him to go up to the estate first thing in the morning and apologize in person to the Prince. He duly did so, but the Prince was in no mood to forgive - understandably - and lashed out at the lad with his riding crop again.

Anyway, in due time, my son became very proud of the extensive scar tissue he'd thus acquired and went around on holiday bear-chested, fondly re-telling the tale to all inquirers. That was how he met his wife: she couldn't resist a man with scars. Now every year on their anniversary they would toast the Prince's good health. That won't be possible any more sadly, so all they have now are the cherished memories of a characterful old gentleman who just loved his blood sports more than anything else in the world. So there you have it - Prince Philip: conservationist, loyal consort, committed humanitarian and - as if that were not enough - a romantic match-maker! May Gawd bless Him...<sniff>

Cursitor Doom's creative genius is at about the level you'd expect.

Cursitor Doom lost his license years ago.

Sadly, Cursitor Doom didn't get anywhere near remotely credible. He presumably thinks that he is satirising somebody else's drivel, but whatever he was sending up would be stuff that is delivered only to right-wing nit-wits with a taste for implausible conspiracy theories. He could have other - associated - minority tastes, but he doesn't advertise them here.

Cursitor Doom snipped-for-privacy@nowhere.com wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

OK story boy... so you met him twice and your son was beaten by him... twice.

You could not be more full of shit and a transparent story telling lying f*ck if you tried.

Consider that a shoe, beating you over the head, punk.