Word: queen
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Such explanations, however, have failed to quiet the protests over the costs of the whole enterprise. As recently as 1990, Parliament voted against taxing the Queen, though polls now show that about 80% of the population think the Queen should pay something. She is listening, and some sort of plans are on the drawing board. It is more likely that the next monarch will be faced with paying the bill. Even such pro-monarchy stalwarts as constitutional scholar Lord St. John (pronounced Sin-gin) of Fawlsey say that "in this day and age, the income-tax exemption is pretty hard...
...reason why even the most enthusiastic republicans do not see the end of the crown is the Queen herself. The most common comment about her is that < "she has not put a foot wrong" in four decades. When she succeeded her father in 1952, she found that he had left the institution in very strong condition, largely because of the family's performance in World War II. Elizabeth's parents stayed in London while the bombs dropped. As her mother famously declared when asked whether she or her children would flee the country, "The children will not leave unless...
...Queen inherited little of her mother's charm or her publicity smarts (to this day when the old lady travels in the ceremonial horse-drawn coach, tiny, hidden bulbs highlight her face). The present Queen's props have become national jokes -- the pack of corgis, the kerchief, the ever present purse with nothing in it, least of all cash. Like her father, she is shy. A recent TV show detailing her routines, Elizabeth R, has a painful vignette of the Queen visiting an old people's home. She asks one elderly soul, who is obviously not dressed for the street...
...might in the current climate question whether a nation needs to underwrite a performance like that. Sue Townsend, author of The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, has just published a novel called The Queen and I, which imagines that the royal family has been consigned to a public housing development by a stern republican government that has overthrown the monarchy. The book is both funny and impudent, but it contains a portrait of Elizabeth that is admiring in spite of itself. Townsend plays up Her Majesty's awkwardness, but of all her clan she adjusts best to her alien circumstances...
Homely values, so simple and yet, it seems, so elusive, are apparently the secret of her exemplary reign. In Elizabeth R, the Queen becomes eloquent when reflecting on her own outlook. She recalls the moment when she gave a young soldier an award for gallantry: "I said, 'That was a very brave thing to do.' He said, 'Och, it was just the training.' I have a feeling that, in the end, probably that is the answer to a great many things...