UK News
Insights from the UK and beyond
The royals on tour
Prince Charles is in Canada, the Queen is expected to go there next year and William is preparing to go to New Zealand and Australia – but are there signs that the locals are revolting?
Polls published in advance of Charles’ visit show support for Canada’s constitutional monarchy is weak, even if the public’s frosty opinion of the Prince of Wales himself has begun to warm just a bit.
Sixty percent of Canadians felt the constitutional monarchy was outdated, although 80 percent said it was an important part of Canadian history.
Polls in New Zealand show people generally in favour of the monarchy even if it seems to have little relevance to their lives but when William heads off afterwards to Australia he will find a much more developed republican movement.
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is an avowed republican whose announcement of William’s trip made it crystal clear that the young royal was coming because because he asked to, not because he was invited. Foreign Minister Stephen Smith says a split from the monarchy is inevitable in the next decade.
William, travelling without girlfriend Kate Middleton, can expect to bask in the lingering “Diana factor,” but this enduring phenomenon may actually work against the older couple in Canada.
Do you believe such royal visits have any point?
Snow event?
As I watched the snow fall gently from London skies on Sunday night, I asked an acquaintance if I would have to go to work the next day.
My Canadian “snow radar” — fine-tuned from living in the snowy cities of Toronto, Ottawa and Halifax — was telling me that there wasn’t going to be much accumulation, but given the regular daily London transit delays in fair weather during the rush hour, I had a gleeful feeling a “snow day” might be in store.
“If the snow is 3-feet deep you might get away with it,” said my acquaintance, who commutes in and out of London from the Southwest each day.
I awoke the next day to discover that he was wrong.
Almost the entire Tube system was shut, buses cancelled and within a few hours Heathrow, the world’s busiest international airport, had closed, although there was nowhere near 3 feet of snow.
The heaviest snow fell in southern England. Epsom, Surrey, had depths of 31 centimetres (12 inches), south London had 28 cm and the North Downs in Kent got 25 cm.
I am from the U.S. in theory…New York…This is not much snow to closed everything down.
-
The Wall
Queen Elizabeth came to our neighbourhood in Ottawa when I was a high school student. We got the afternoon off school to join in the festivities. So that visit had a huge point for me … the same way snow days and teacher pd days always did … the joy of an unexpected day off with nothing much to do!