I doubt that the way the queue has been routed was planned with with COVID-19 protection as the main priority but being strung out as it is in the open air rather than concentrated in one area with some sort of convoluted zig zag system is probably less likely to aid transmission of any pathogen.
Equating HM the Queen with modern "Celebrity Culture" doesn't fly for me. She was around long before any of that, and even the most ardent anti monarchist or republican should be capable of recognising her contribution over the years. In practical terms, having a monarch doesn't affect the average person much in their daily life but for those who think they know the price of everything and yet know the value of nothing, they need to consider that certain institutions can have a value that can't really be measured in those terms. If the Monarchy were abolished tomorrow, would the average person be financially better off? You need to look to successive governments and their policies for that. This way of thinking tends to appeal to a certain mean spiritedness in people.
Having looked at newsreel footage of the funeral procession of George VI it seemed enormous. Of course following WW2 the UK had a large armed forces contingent so there were more troops available to fulfil ceremonial functions. The procession for Elizabeth II seemed much more modest in comparison. Still very impressive, but more in keeping with the spirit of the age.
Perhaps the echo chamber of Facebook and similar makes people believe that there is strong support for abolition of the monarchy and maybe as the UK continues in its post COVID, post Brexit decline the monarchy will become a casualty as the UK becomes a smaller, meaner, more divided place. I certainly hope it does not. I don't really do social media. This thread is about the passing over of Queen Elizabeth II, whose life work has been to try to unify and keep united the countries of the UK as well as apparently having been a fine ambassador for what other countries see as British.
She has been flexible and adaptable to change, and affected people by the quiet force of her personality, even paradoxically her humility, as much as anything. No guarantee that someone else in her position would have performed so well, or become so manifestly well loved, or would do in the future. She just happened to be the right person at the right time.
It is a false claim that only royalists are death deniers. You only have to think of dictators such as Mugabe and Franco who tried to hold on to the bitter end.
I would not have said that I have been particularly a royalist during my life but being of a certain age and having lived through almost the entire reign and the changes of the last 70 years I can relate to the connection that many feel with Elizabeth II. The background, if not the wallpaper to my life.
Like many, I was in HM Forces in my younger days and though it's not a given, many ex servicemen will have strong feelings if not about the monarchy itself but about the late Queen.
Perhaps at the end of the day, when people mourn her passing, as she lies in her lead lined coffin and fades into history, they weep for themselves. Send not to ask for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for thee. She represented continuity. Who knows what an uncertain future might bring?
