Anger Over No 10’s Un-British Proposals To Spank Calorie Counts On Beer, Wine And Spirits

Number 10 plans to spank calorie counts on all alcohol served in pubs was today branded un-British and an attempt to nanny the nation.

Documents leaked last night revealed health chiefs want to force larger chains to reveal the number of calories for every beer, wine and spirit ordered in their bars.

The scheme, drawn up by Matt Hancock’s Health Department, could see calories displayed on pump labels and menus at franchises such as Greene King and Fullers.

Critics characterised the proposals as madness and disruptive for pub chains that are already fighting to claw back losses from the pandemic.

The Adam Smith think tank told a news outlet that everyone already knows if you put away a few jars a day you’re likely to get fatter and that the cost is going to fall on businesses who will now need to redo their labelling.

And it seems that the Department of Health has spent the whole time, during COVID on a campaign against food and drink when it should be concentrating on the pandemic, which it’s done a poor job of responding to.

Matt Lambert, CEO of the Portman Group alcohol regulator, told a news outlet that the labelling changes would put a further financial strain on an industry that has been put under relentless pressure by the COVID pandemic.

As part of the proposals, leaked to a news outlet, all alcohol sold in stores could also be legally obliged to publish the same nutritional information.

Health chiefs have proposed including an alcohol warning on every bottle from the chief medical officer Chris Whitty, who has gained a cult following during the pandemic.

As well as details of how fattening the alcohol can be, the plans would additionally see labels include information on the risks of drink driving.

A pint of Guinness contains 210 calories, approximately the same as a KitKat Chunky. A large glass of white wine is slightly more calorific (240), the same as a pack of Starburst sweets.

Matt Lambert, CEO of the Portman Group said that the alcohol industry is committed to giving consumers detailed information to help them make well-informed decisions about drinking and that they welcome the consultation and its aims.

And this will ultimately be dictated by a digital ID on your smartphone and a cashless culture – had too many calories – transaction declined! The Government says no! And bad citizens will be controlled and restricted!

This is a huge problem because the Government will be able to see precisely what we’re consuming through smartphone apps and payment methods – twenty units of alcohol this week – no train tickets or cinema for you! And don’t forget your junk food shops, Pizza, McDonald’s et cetera.

“I’ll have a bottle of Malbec – no hang on, there’s five calories less in the Shiraz”. Sounds absurd, that because it is – a waste of time, effort and money.

Fauci Warns Women Who Received The Johnson & Johnson Vaccine In The Last 13 Days To Be Alert To Symptoms

Dr Anthony Fauci has advised women who’ve had the Johnson & Johnson vaccine to be alert for symptoms of an adverse reaction, as US agencies warn against the vaccine’s usage until more investigation can be done.

On Tuesday the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recommended a pause in the use of the Johnson & Johnson jab.

Their recommendation was made after six people, out of the 6.8 million to receive the jab so far, reported blood clots. All were women aged 18-48.

Johnson & Johnson announced that they were further hampering the rollout of their vaccine in Europe, and halting clinical trials.

Fauci appeared on CBS News on Tuesday night and said that people who’d received the Johnson & Johnson jab in the last 13 days should be alert to warning signs, and he said that if anyone had it a month or two ago, then they didn’t need to worry about anything.

He said that if they were in the time frame of inside a week or two of having been vaccinated, that they should remember one thing – that it was a pretty isolated event, and it was less than one in a million, but he said that having said that, people still needed to be alert to some symptoms, such as severe headaches, some difficulty in movement, or some chest pain and trouble breathing.

Asked by Norah O’Donnell whether women should be especially aware, he said yes, adding that they were now examining whether the reaction was hormonal, and he said that there have been similar types of happenings that have transpired during pregnancy, and those clotting abnormalities are known in women who take birth control pills, so certainly there could be a hormonal aspect to it.

Scientists will be looking at whether birth control pills could have played a part in causing blood clots in the women who got the Johnson & Johnson vaccine and fell ill.

One patient, a 45-year-old woman in Virginia, died following her Johnson & Johnson vaccine in March, and authorities announced on Tuesday that the CDC was investigating the woman’s death.

The CDC’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) system notes that the woman who died started having headaches six days following vaccination and was then hospitalised once the headache worsened and she had begun dry heaving.

A head CT scan showed haemorrhaging, extending up to 1.6 centimetres and finally, cortical vein thrombosis, as recorded in the six other cases. She died on March 18, 12 days after getting a vaccine dose administered by a school.

Fauci needs to ideally warn all women who are being prescribed and currently taking any kind of Contraceptive medication, and anyone who gets the vaccine has to understand that this is one big clinical trial that they’re volunteering into, and one that has no recourse against the developer if things go awry, and sadly this is what occurs when things are rushed and the public are being used for beta testing.

End Of An Iconic Eyesore

An iconic south London shopping centre built in 1965 on a bomb-damaged 1890s estate is being ripped down to pave the way for a £1 billion town-centre regeneration.

It was originally believed that the three-storey Elephant & Castle Shopping Centre in Southwark would become a commercial hub for south London, with its 115 shops taken on mostly by local traders.

But, as the capital expanded and swanky indoor shopping malls sprung up citywide, the 55-year-old shopping arcade quickly became redundant, before later falling into disrepair.

Now, Keltbray, a specialist construction and engineering company, is set to demolish the 2.5-acre site and replace it with a £1 billion development, including approximately 1,000 new flats – 116 of which are social rental homes, a new tube station for the Northern Line, and two new university buildings.

One of the sites best-known features an elephant with a castle on its back, was taken away to be restored but is set to be put back once construction begins.

When the construction is finished, the sculpture will take pride and place in the new town centre, along with old signage and artefacts from the shopping centre.

Campaigners have blasted the lack of affordable homes, inexpensive retail space and council housing in the new plans.

In November, a judge granted permission to appeal Southwark Council’s decision to grant Keltbray planning permission to tear it down.

Images taken at the site show walls pulled down as the demolition begins, with the area blocked off to the public.

The shopping centre was opened in 1965. The building was built on the sight of the Elephant and Castle Estate, built in 1898, which was later damaged by bombs in the Second World War.

The £21 million shopping centre was designed to bring Londoners away from the busy roundabout below to carry out their shopping.

Ray Gunter, then minister of Labour, unveiled the iconic statue of an elephant carrying a castle on its back which was taken from a since demolished pub.

The new plans, which were granted planning approval in 2019, strive to keep noise and disruption to a minimum throughout construction.

The demolition process is estimated to finish in the summer of 2021, with construction commencing the same year.

The new Northern line station to be constructed on the demolished zone is future-proofed for the Bakerloo line extension with significantly enhanced capabilities.

Two new structures, one for the University of the Arts London and another for London College of Communication, will also be built, and Keltbray said the project will bring substantial employment to the region.

But is this going to be the amazing place they say it is, or is it going to be in five years a total mess hidden in graffiti? Because sometimes nothing changes, whatever it costs because usually, it’s the people that make the area and not the buildings, and it will probably end up being a bleak, grey, soulless, miserable wind tunnel with no eco-credentials, like they all are.

Over 10 per cent of the flats are being earmarked for social housing, and I’m sure it will be marvellous for those turning up on boats to get housed in a brand new development in the heart of one of the most costly cities in the world, and all for free.

And it’s no surprise that some people don’t want to work or do anything in this country. The others, however, just carry on laying down in front of the steamroller one by one.

But it’s about twenty minutes walk from the city, and of course, they will sell, but they will have to live alongside boat people.

Student, 18, Studying Animal Management Wins Battle With College

A vegan student studying animal management has won a fight with her college over the right to skip a farming module that would have included a trip to an abattoir, forcing tutors to find her a more suitable assessment.

Fiji Willets, 18, didn’t expect the topic of farming to come up when she signed up for the BTEC National Extended Diploma in Animal Management in South Gloucestershire and Stroud College.

She joined after reading it was excellent for people who like animals but was horrified to learn that the animal management course could see her work on a farm and perhaps visit an abattoir.

The teenager complained to tutors, who told her the unit was compulsory, so she enlisted the aid of vegan rights advocates to upturn their decision.

After many complaints, and despite assurances from the college that the module would be ethically planned, she’s finally been told she can do a more suitable unit instead, while other students stay with the original course.

The 2021 prospectus for the BTEC course says it’s ‘Great for people who love animals, want a career within the animal care industry, are passionate about conversations and the countryside, like hands-on work and varied responsibilities and like being outside in all weathers.’

Fiji, from Downend, Bristol, said that she’s a vegan because she loves animals, so to visit a farm where she would be supporting a farmer would be wrong and that she would have been denied a college education.

And she said that she couldn’t just break her way of living solely to pass a course and that she hopes she can now be an example to other vegans so they don’t have to go through the distress she went through.

But after joining, she realised she had to take and pass, a module on farm industry, the branch of agriculture which centres on breeding animals for produce.

Students were expected to visit working farms and an abattoir visit was also discussed, according to the Vegan Society, which supported Fiji’s case.

The society claims that Fiji began suffering from anxiety and raised concerns with her tutor, but was told she had to complete the module or fail.

It’s alleged that she tendered a formal grievance to the college, which maintained a backup module was not available.

A similar complaint was issued to the Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA), who supported the college. However, the case was escalated to the awarding body for non-compliance with equality law, and college tutors subsequently changed their minds.

Being vegan is up to the individual, but actually, we can’t eat anything without ending its existence, and plants are just as viable as animals and humans, so all we can do is eat mindfully and not to excess, although some people might say that plant life is nothing like an animals life or human life, simply because plants don’t have a brain or nervous system – hence they can’t feel pain and animals can.

Plants might not be alive in the human sense, nor do they have a nervous system or feelings, well not that we know of, and some people have difficulty eating dead animals but have no problem having a fun day out fruit picking, can you spot the difference?

What it boils down to is some people can eat vegetables, someone else might eat meat, and both are fine as long as we don’t eat people, and you should see how many animals are sacrificed to harvest vegan crops – rodents, birds, insects et cetera, and all because they’re not large ruminant animals, but that doesn’t mean they don’t count.

Why Making Women Retire Later Comes With Hidden Costs

A study has found that reforms that pushed back the age women can claim the state pension have not saved the taxpayer money, and it said that women who stay working into their sixties compensate by reducing the care they provide for their parents.

Researchers said in a report that for every woman working 30 hours a week in her sixties, it costs £5,600 to make up for the care she would otherwise have provided for older relatives.

It points to a serious downside to pension reforms that swept away women’s retirement age of 60 and pushed back the point at which women can claim the state pension by six years or more.

Academics led by Ludovico Carrino of King’s College London said that women in the United Kingdom who work more hours due to the rise in their state pension age reduce free caregiving to older parents, who get less overall care as a result.

The paper, presented at a conference of the Royal Economic Society, weakens ministers and civil servants assumption that later retirement benefits the country.

The study was based on more than 7,000 women aged 55 to 65 who were tracked from 2009 to 2018 in the Understanding Society project.

Many stayed working in their sixties which researchers said had a significant impact on the £130 billion-plus yearly cost of care for the elderly given free mainly by middle-aged daughters.

The study found the likelihood that a woman would give more than 20 hours a week of care to her older relative dropped by half if she worked after the age of 60, and a woman working 30 hours a week would decrease the care given to her parents by 330 hours a year.

That makes the cost of taxpayers of replacing the hours of care lost for each working middle-aged woman £5,600 a year, a sum determined from a standard pay rate for carers of £17 an hour.

The study didn’t account for the income for the nation generated by women working in their sixties who wouldn’t have been paying much less in income tax had they retired, and the report said parents who get less help from their daughters do not get more help from other family members or formal services as a counterbalance.

Consequently, care for older parents narrows when their daughters work longer due to deferred state pension age, and researchers said reforms could incorporate more free care for old people whose family carers have jobs, or subsidies for employers to allow adjustable hours for older workers who have caring responsibilities.

Although it’s not actually retirement age, it’s state pension age because there’s actually no retirement age in the United Kingdom, implementation of retirement went out with the dinosaurs.

But never the less many women can’t afford to retire to care for elderly relatives because they can’t claim state pension, particularly single women.

However, this then becomes sexist because why can’t a man provide care for the elderly, and why is it always women’s work?

Times are evolving and men should be stepping up to care for their elderly, and it appears that this research has been extremely sexist, and this is just gender typing and we women should be irritated by the lack of equality.

This is blatantly sexist because it says that a woman’s role is to care for the elderly, and it seems that only women are competent in caring for someone!

What Are Remploy Workers Doing Now?

About 2,000 workers lost their jobs when Remploy factories closed.

Remploy was set up in the 1940s, and it was perceived as a new way of tackling the issues of disability and employment, with one purpose, to give disabled miners and those injured in war, a job for life.

But now, the concept of segregated employment seems an antiquated concept to many.

The Government said that the Remploy factories were running at a loss, and their focus was to help disabled workers into mainstream employment, but that doesn’t appear to be the case because when disabled people are looking for a job, employers take one look at them, after being handed their CV and they never call them back, and numerous disabled people still feel excluded from mainstream jobs.

And the Government said that disabled people would work together in harmony – that might be the case in a perfect world, but the world isn’t perfect and there are still countless obstacles to overcome.

The Government further said that attempts were being made to fill the gap and that they were getting numerous people into work or training each day, and they had specialist disability employment advisors available in Jobcentres, although the Government was criticised by the Work and Pensions Select Committee for a lack of specialist advisors for disabled people.

Even though the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) said it had employed 300 more advisors with disability training, taking the total to 1,400.

Since the factories wound up, Remploy evolved into a specialist recruitment service that has managed to find several disabled people jobs, but not all of them, which means many of those being employed by Remploy were out of work.

The Remploy factories were set up after World War Two to provide work for servicemen and civilians who were injured and disabled, and for almost seventy years the factories provided sheltered, paid work for thousands of people with disabilities, doing things like making radiation protection suits for the Army, wheelchairs for the NHS and furniture for schools, but Remploy sold or closed its remaining factories in 2013.

Employees at Remploy were left in tears when they were told that the factories were to be shut down, and they were left heartbroken because they worked so hard, and were proud because it meant that they could pay their own way, rather than getting any benefits.

However, a spokesperson for Remploy at the time said that the move would allow for more disabled people to be found work in mainstream employment, and he said that it was not a cost-cutting exercise.

However, one Labour Euro MP at the time who had fought to keep one of the factories open, said it was nonsensical to think many of the staff could work in mainstream employment, and he said that they’d been fighting for months with workers and unions in Southend to keep the factory open and that the truth was that many of those workers would not be able to adjust to a mainstream workplace.

And that they needed the opportunity to remain in the kind of workplace which not only gave a pay packet but also a sense of pride, respect, social outlet and independence of being in a dedicated working environment.

Remploy was set up under the 1944 Disabled Persons Employment Act by Ernest Bevin, who was then minister of Labour, to become yet another plank in Welfare State formed by the Attlee government in 1945.

After the Second World War, Clement Attlee’s Labour government wasn’t about to repeat the pitiful scenes 30 years earlier of limbless soldiers playing mouth organs on the streets.

So, Remploy was formally established in April 1945, and its first factory opened in Bridgend, South Wales, in 1946. It made violins and furniture and many of the workers were disabled miners.

Remploy was an early brand name that was first registered by the Ex-Services Employment Corporation.

Derived from ‘re-employ’, the name was adopted by Remploy in 1946, until then, it was called the Disabled Persons Employment Corporation.

At its height Remploy had about 100 factories scattered across England, Scotland and Wales, employing over 10,000 disabled workers, and the factories produced and manufactured goods and services ranging from, in the early days, violin making and bookbinding through to furniture making – Remploy workers were skilled covering a broad spectrum of sectors from textiles to motor components.

But it was Tory Minister Michael Portillo who kick-started Remploy’s dissolution when in 1994 he ended a scheme guaranteeing the factories priority for government contracts, and this imposed competitive tendering on the company.

By 1995 Peter Thurnham, a then Tory MP who crossed the floor to the LibDems in 1996, wrote a paper calling for Remploy to be taken under the private sector umbrella, where he believed it would be more successful.

In late 1999 Remploy announced it was going to merge a number of its factories and close others, and anything up to twenty sites were to be affected, and on a cold February afternoon about 60 Remploy workers and trade union activists from about the country convened outside Parliament and held a 24-hour vigil.

And though few in number they made their presence felt, and MP after MP came out to give them their support and solidarity to their cause.

Even John Snow newscaster stopped and chatted with them for half an hour, and inside a few days of the protest a cessation was placed on the closures, and Remploy was saved for the time being.

From January 2006, each Remploy factory had the right to a minimum of one reserved public contract, but despite this, the company did very little to seriously take advantage of this resource, and as a result, the factories continued on a downward trajectory until in May 2007 the company announced a tranche of factory mergers and closures.

This galvanised the unions into action, and demonstrations and gatherings were organised up and down Britain, and every major city with a Remploy site held some kind of action.

Las Vegas Family Is Awarded $29.5 Million After Aspiring Actress Is Left Brain-Damaged

A jury has awarded $29.5 million to a family of a woman who’s been left brain-damaged after being treated for a severe allergic reaction by an ambulance service in Las Vegas in 2013.

Las Vegas Review-Journal reported that aspiring actress and model Chantel Giacalone, who was 27 at the time, went into anaphylactic shock after biting into a pretzel infused with peanut butter while in Las Vegas for a convention.

Chantel is now a quadriplegic and lives in her parent’s dining room where they give her 24-hour care.

She can only communicate with her eyes and has to be fed through a tube.

Giacalone’s lawyer, Christian Morris, said she lost oxygen to her brain for minutes after seeking treatment from MedicWest Ambulance, which was running the medic station that day.

Christian Morris argued in a civil lawsuit that MedicWest Ambulance negligently treated her allergic reaction, and he explained that neither of the two medics on-site that day had IV epinephrine, an adrenaline treatment for severe allergic reactions that is required by the Southern Nevada Health District.

According to testimony during a three-week trial, the requirement was established by a task force the company sits on.

Christian Morris said the medics instead used intramuscular epinephrine, but IVs are needed for full anaphylaxis, and he argued that the price of the medication was only $2.42.

The lawsuit was seeking more than $60 million in damages for medical expenses and emotional distress, but MedicWest dismissed any wrongdoing and said the outcome was inevitable because of Giacalone’s heightened sensitivity to peanuts.

Attorney William Drury argued Giacalone never lost consciousness.

Father Jack Giacalone said after the verdict was delivered on Friday that at least his daughter would be taken care of and that he was happy about that, and he said that all the agony that they’d been through for the last eight years, he was not thrilled about and that he hoped MedicWest changed their ways.

Giacalone had roles in productions such as the 2009 movie ‘The Butterfly Effect 3: Revelations’, ‘Hollow Walls’, and ‘Skyler’.

Her father added that before attending the trial he told his daughter not to worry and that the truth would come out, and that they were finally going to find out what happened to her that day.

He said that she began crying, and he said that she’s still in there, she still has emotions, and she’s crying.

Her reaction was so severe that a full IV was needed, and that is supposed to be on hand, but it wasn’t! And she ended up with brain damage, and no amount of money can fix or compensate for that.

No one can perceive the pain her parents and family have been through. The money is enough for her to be cared for, but it’s never enough for the life long emotional cost to those who love her.

One-Jab Janssen Vaccine Is Set To Be Approved Within Days

Britain’s fourth COVID vaccine would be just days away from being approved for use, as the Government plans to extend the rollout to the under 50s.

A decision by the health regulator on the single-dose Janssen jab is expected to be made within the next ten days, and the Government’s order of 30 million doses, which it secured last summer, will add to the UK’s increasing stockpile.

The announcement comes as hundreds of thousands of the 17 million doses of the Moderna vaccine are also coming on stream.

The first injections were given in Wales last week, and are now being stretched to the rest of the United Kingdom, and the renewed speed of the rollout means that Ministers are now in a position to offer jabs to the under 50s, just as lockdown rules are eased tomorrow and pubs, restaurants, gyms and hairdressers prepare to welcome back their customers, and more than £300 million is expected to be spent on the hospitality industry this week.

The United Kingdom also smashed its daily record for second jabs for the second day running, with 450,136 doses given on Friday, taking the number of second jabs to 6,991,310, or 13.3 per cent of all UK adults.

A total of 32,010,244 people have received their first dose, which is approximately 61 per cent of all adults, and on April 6, the latest day for which data was available, just 221 people were admitted to hospital with COVID 19, while the 2,589 positive tests represent a drop of nearly a third in a week. However, another 40 deaths were recorded.

A Mail on Sunday poll has found that the return to pubs, restaurants and shops has been welcomed by huge numbers of people, and the most popular change to lockdown rules is the return of visits to the homes of friends and family, which has been welcomed by 86 per cent of people.

Deltapoll discovered that voters overwhelmingly supported the use of vaccine passports to speed up the relaxation of COVID restrictions, with 63 per cent in support and only 25 per cent opposed.

The UK’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency is studying data from trials of the Janssen jab, made by the US firm Johnson & Johnson, amid allegations that its use has led to extraordinary rare incidents of blood clots.

It uses similar technology to that being used in the AstraZeneca vaccine, which was last week restricted in the United Kingdom to the over 30s because of the same rare side effect.

As for people supporting vaccine passports in real life, are these findings questionable, or flat out fake poll propaganda? And what we’re putting into our bodies is not really a vaccine because a vaccine by definition gives immunity to a disease, and at the moment we have no idea if this jab gives immunity to anything.

In the best-case scenario, it simply decreases the risk of getting a severe case of a virus if one catches it. Therefore, this is a medical treatment, not a vaccine, and do you really want to take medical treatment for an illness you don’t have?

The establishment insists that this medical procedure is safe, but they can’t possibly know this because the long term effects are entirely unknown, and will not be known for numerous years. They may speculate that it’s safe, but it’s dishonest for them to make such a claim that can’t possibly be known, and it’s only a COVID suppressant at best!

Vladimir Putin’s Fearsome Special Unit Of Tank Robots Will Go Into Action Soon

The first special unit of tank robots is to be established soon in the Russian army amid new strains of war with neighbours Ukraine.

Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu inspected his unmanned firepower at the 766th Production and Technological Enterprise in Nakhabino near Moscow, and the defence ministry declared that the first unit with strike robots would be set up in the Russian Armed Forces to operate five Uran-9 robotic systems or 20 combat vehicles.

And it was announced that troops would undergo training to operate Uran-9 robotic vehicles in special military units.

A video shows the unmanned tank in action, and it’s armed with a 30mm automatic gun, Ataka anti-tank missiles and Shmel flamethrowers.

The Russian army currently holds mine clearance robots called Uran-6, firefighting Uran-14s, as well as assault Uran-9s.

Underwater and spy robots are also in development.

Shoigu ordered the robot designers to improve the technical capability of his unmanned army to overcome the impact of strong electromagnetic radiation as well as radioactive pollution.

He said that they expect to continue expanding the range of robots, which, of course, were already in demand in the military today, and he said that these would be heavy robots, for mine clearance, and everything related to the further development of scouts, radiation and chemical reconnaissance robots, and that this applied to surface and underwater robots.

The strike and mining clearance robots have been battle-tested in Syria, ahead of the formation of the first unit, and Vladimir Dmitriev, head of the Kalashnikov Concern said that faults had been identified during the tests in Syria. In particular, the issues of control, decreased mobility, and poor military intelligence and surveillance functions that had been considered by engineers and were corrected.

It’s unclear if Russia is deploying its new-age robot tanks with the massing of firepower now underway on Ukraine’s borders, but it’s pretty bad when adult men can’t solve anything diplomatically, but on the other hand, Vladimir Putin is hardly what you would call a grown man – he’s more of a gnome with a superiority complex.

Robots fighting a war, why doesn’t Vladimir Putin take it to the next stage and make it into a video game, that way no lives will be lost or harm done, and he can still have some fun!

Philip’s Funeral Is Set To Be Next Saturday

Straight to the point in death as in life, the Duke of Edinburgh always maintained he wanted a funeral with minimal fuss.

His wish for what is known as a royal ceremonial funeral similar to the Queen Mother’s, rather than a full state funeral, had already been granted.

But the pandemic will have a significant bearing on those plans, and the Queen and her senior officials have been discussing how best to proceed, with final approval down to Her Majesty.

Sources say it’s almost certain, however, that any aspect of the arrangements expected to attract a crowd will not take place, meaning the ceremonial aspects will be restricted and mourners will total no more than thirty.

Under the previous plans, known in the royal household as ‘Forth Bridge’, his body would have been embalmed immediately and taken to the Albert Memorial Chapel by St George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle.

The Mail understands that Philip’s coffin was at the castle, where the Queen is in residence, most probably resting in her private chapel of worship, but during the weekend it was likely to have been moved to the Albert Memorial Chapel, which was built by Henry VII as a royal mausoleum. Philip’s coffin is likely to rest there with little ceremony, resting on two simple wooden platforms called catafalques.

Under pre-COVID plans, it would have been taken to London by road and brought to St James’s Palace to reside temporarily in the intimate Chapel Royal.

The College of Arms said there will be no laying in state and Philip’s coffin would rest at Windsor Castle before his funeral in St George’s Chapel, most likely next Saturday.

It’s likely to have been dressed with his personal standard, which displays references to his Danish and Greek royal heritage, his Mountbatten roots and Edinburgh title, and a decorative garland from his family.

A vigil by his children, Charles, Anne, Andrew and Edward, is expected to take place at Windsor, and on the day of his funeral, Philip’s coffin is expected to be taken by bearers from the Queen’s Company, First Battalion Grenadier Guards.

And the duke will be placed on a gun carriage belonging to the King’s Troop Royal Horse Artillery, drawn by a Royal Navy gun crew, the carriage, being a personal request by Philip, which is the one that carried Queen Victoria at her funeral in 1901.

Maybe when the maniacs governing the nation decide to drop their dogmatic constraints on our Civil Liberties, then perhaps a National Memorial Day could be held in honour of Prince Philip, so that the British people that want to, can pay their respects to a man who served the Queen and Britain for so long.

And perhaps this Government could allow at least one exception to the COVID regulations because it’s not every day that a British Queen loses her husband, and I’m so weary of the fact that this Government seem to be in control of public life.

And it appears that our Government have their fixed agenda, howling from every corner of the media, and the cowards in Downing Street and parliament continue to hide behind their sofas.

However, the rules are Her Majesty’s rules – indeed they’re enacted in her name in law, so of course, she will expect her subjects to respect them as well, and it seems that Prince Philip made very specific arrangements for his funeral and had aimed at something low key than an enormous London event.

Having said that, his extensive lifetime of service appears to have been cheated of final honour and dignity that numerous people will believe he deserved, and that his funeral must now be greatly curtailed, despite the hundreds of representatives who would otherwise have been present and are surely still more than willing to attend, and likewise the very many thousands of ordinary people who would have turned out to pay their respects, who will now be asked to watch at home.

Design a site like this with WordPress.com
Get started