The balcony is the top level, right? This was what we call the dress circle, which is the first level of seats above the stalls.

Ok that is a fair point, but I don’t count that as a “3rd” (Return of the King is similar) because it is based on an independent book. I meant “third” sequels where it is just Hollywood scriptwriters spinning their wheels. I also totally forgot, I have seen Return of the Jedi and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade…

I have never seen a “3rd” movie sequel, except for The Godfather Part III. I mostly regret seeing that, but I feel that there are no other 3rds that are any better (please stop talking Die Hard people; there is only one Die Hard movie).

It is. Go see it.

I saw it in London, in the last row of the mezzanine (I think you call it?) and it was viscerally terrifying. They do not pull any punches. They do not show anything gory (Sarah Kane’s Cleansed at the National was much worse) but they imply it really, really well. There’s a Jez commenter called doittojulia (possibly…

Exactly this. They didn’t have time to rehearse both Trooping the Colour and the full State Opening of Parliament, so this became more low-key. I adore the hat though, and am sure that the choice was deliberate (especially since she took the time to change for Ascot later in the day).

The Queen was and is not a coloniser. In fact, one of the most significant aspects of her tenure has been the dismantling of the colonial structure. There is a great deal of evidence to suggest that she is not prejudiced. Most significantly, she is not supposed to be political in any way. However, she deemed the…

I’m sure Andrew, Beatrice and Eugenie would be delighted to take it off the hands of Charles’s branch of the family.

We have a constitution. It’s unwritten, and therefore constantly evolving. It has its drawbacks, but at least we’re not tied to anything as horrendous as your second amendment,

They haven’t changed their ways. Harry says as much in the interview. Instead of doing the boring, necessary and valued work of going around the country and visiting local charities and people, they are going to do high level promotional work for a few favoured national organisations.

1) The Crown Estates are neither owned nor held in trust by the royals. They never were. They were “handed over” in the sense that the king no longer had to run the government and gave up control of the funds that enabled that to happen. The Crown Estates were, and always have been, owned by the Crown, which is not…

I generally agree with you, but we have a constitution which is separate from the monarch - it’s just unwritten.

Sigh. So first, the Civil List doesn’t exist any more. You’re referring to the Sovereign Grant, which is a percentage of the income from the Crown Estates and which has recently been massively increased, from 15% to 25%. The Crown Estates belong to the Crown, which is not the Queen and is best thought of as the…

Mom jeans all day why you mad though.

The Labour party is, broadly speaking, a democratic socialist party. Corbyn himself is from the left wing of the party, whereas Tony Blair is from the right wing of the party (which has been greatly diminished). Corbyn is also pro-Brexit, even though Labour was nominally against it in the referendum.

It’s reprehensible in this context. This has nothing to do with the UK’s colonial past. Obviously we should remember it in general. But trying to conflate the two things is wrong.

And I’m saying that since the UK has had nothing colonialist or imperialist to do with any of the countries that these arseholes or their families come from since WWII, it is reprehensible to say that we shouldn’t forget about the UK’s colonialism and the people who were killed many years ago in support of that policy.

My family was starving in Ireland because of British actions. They then emigrated to the new world, where they were desperately poor, also because of rich white Anglo-Saxon people. (I subsequently emigrated back). You know what that doesn’t give me, or anyone else, the right to do, or even an explanation? It doesn’t…

We all know where Balmoral is, haha. Wherever he goes, we’ll be there, with fingers up and arses out.

I, for one, would make the trip. I suspect many others would join me.