As soon as Buckingham Palace begrudgingly admitted that Queen Elizabeth was hospitalized overnight last week – and that the palace had covered it up – there’s been a pretty interesting conversation happening in the British papers about how QEII needs to take a larger break from public view. Basically, almost every royal commentator is of the opinion that the Queen needs to cull her schedule down to only a handful of big appearances, like Remembrance Day and the opening of COP26, the UN climate conference in Glasgow. COP26 will technically start on Sunday, but I think that’s just for the opening dinner or something like that. The real conference doesn’t begin in earnest until November 1st. The Queen had been scheduled to appear at the start, and they were holding that appearance up as make-or-break for the Queen. Well, the palace announced that she’s not going.
Queen Elizabeth II will “regretfully” not attend a reception at next week’s key climate conference in Glasgow following advice to rest, Buckingham Palace announced on Tuesday. A Palace spokesman said the Queen has ‘regretfully decided that she will no longer travel to Glasgow to attend the evening reception’. With the head of state missing from the event, it is hoped no world leaders will use her absence as a reason not to attend the summit, after it emerged that Xi Jinping – president of China, now the planet’s biggest polluter – is skipping the conference.
Last week a Buckingham Palace spokesman said the 95-year-old monarch was admitted for “preliminary investigations” after she followed doctor’s orders to cancel the trip and rest. A source close to the palace told CNN at the time that her stay in the hospital was “not Covid related.”
The Queen was expected to attend an evening reception in Glasgow on Monday. Buckingham Palace said she will instead deliver an address to the assembled delegates via a recorded video message.
[From CNN and the Daily Mail]
First of all, good! I’m glad they took this off QEII’s schedule. They should have cancelled her appearance as soon as she got out of the hospital – it was absurd to try to guilt-trip a 95-year-old woman to travel AND make speeches AND entertain world leaders. It was especially absurd given the fact that Prince Charles, Camilla, William and Kate are all scheduled to appear at the conference as well. Surely the “fab four” can bring the environmental glam to a dreary Glasgow conference? Also: do you think Will and Kate will go straight to Glasgow from their vacation?
As for the recorded video message – it still seems like she’s fine when she’s seated. It’s the walking around, standing and getting up that’s the problem. My guess is that she’ll be seated for the prerecorded video.
Photos courtesy of Backgrid and Avalon Red.
Well, although I am not a fan of hers, of her sons, of her daughter- of anyone other than Harry and Meghan- I do think it is monstrous what the courtiers put this woman through. She is 95 years old! She should be just doing a couple of easy appearances per week when not on vacation. She should not be travelling for work, under any circinstances. One fall going downstairs leaving an airplane and she is done!
I know they protect and cuddle Will and Kkkate at all costs and that TQ is the only one whose popularity is REAL, but is insane this woman works twice as hard as a couple pusshing 40!
I agree. They are having a difficult time with the aging process. At 95 her health can change drastically from day to day. They are slowly coming to realization that The Queen needs to do the very minimum if anything at all. She needs to spend her remaining years doing what she enjoys most. William and Kate have been saying for the last several years how they are prepared to be the future King and Queen it would be nice if they could just do the job as the 2nd in line….nothing more or less.
I’m not a fan of monarchies in general, but I have to say the fact that she was even planning to attend any conference or event at 95 (and after a hospital stay!) is incredible. It really does show how lazy and useless most of them can be / are, if the nonagenarian is outworking them all.
The woman’s old and shouldn’t be working. As I said yesterday I think she should just do special events. I do wonder if the Palace will scale back some of her appearances at the Jubilee because they have her scheduled to appear at several back to back events. That can’t be good her health.
If she gets to the Jubilee, let’s be real. It’s like Philip’s 100th birthday, these milestone events that seem to be tempting fate.
(I’m not wishing ill on her, to be clear, but there are no guarantees she’ll live as long as her own mother)
She’s earned her retirement, at 95.
Exactly @Esmeralda. Personally, I feel like it’s way too soon to predict and speculate what this frail 95 year old will do or say in the recorded video. She might be too sick to even address the nation on Monday. Its 5 days away and these frail seniors are just like NICU babies, they change like the clock changes time, it’s so fast and when they decline, its so fast you barely have time to catch your breath. Recovery is a very, very slow process for these populations and I wouldn’t be surprised if the queen can barely sit for 5 minutes, leave alone sit for 30 minutes recording a damn video. The BP courtiers should just let this woman be. No video appearances, no addresses to anybody, just let her be. I don’t know why these palaces are so averse to handing the reigns over to Charles, the queen was done 5 years ago but they keep pushing her envelope, geez!!! 🙄 🙄🙄
Honestly the COP26 is a major thing that the courtiers would have wanted her there for so the fact that she’s not going and they announced this 5 days in advance shows that she’s not well enough to go and she won’t “recover” in 5 days time. Or it could be COVID and she needs to isolate because she’s contagious.
I imagine her schedule will be cut back a lot (whether or not she’s got COVID) and she’ll stick to things in and around Windsor Castle and BP and everything else will get a Zoom call. It’ll be her retreat to private life and she’ll stay there until her death.
She’s really sick and I doubt she’s going to be around much longer. Also not to thread jack but Glasgow has put up billboards calling Chuck and baldy hypocrites and saying abolish the monarchy. Lolol the vacation pics are really pissing people off. Welp, when racist, petty Betty goes, they’ll flop.
I don’t think she is really sick….she just really old. It’s always day to day with some at that age. She’s probably suffering from cognitive decline. I notice that when tried to cut a cake with a saber. Although she was talking (normal) it was outside of her normal behavior. That was my first clue that something was off with her. I think the Palace is finally coming around to that fact and giving her the opportunity to live the rest of her life doing the things she likes (I hope). I also believe out of all of her children she spends the least amount of time with Charles and she rarely sees William/Kate.
I don’t think she’s at death’s door or whatever. It’s just her body ageing and behaving like a 95 year old’s body.
OMG @MMadison……you mentioned cognitive decline. It hadnt occurred to me that thats a real possibility. Its one of the reasons they said her address to COP26 will be “recorded.” I wonder if she’s been having any public slip-ups in cognition and they want to get ahead of that going forward.
Is she forgetting people’s names and faces and who they are? 0-0!?!
Those billboards gave me life – Glasgow is not known for its tolerance of fools.
@KFG I LOVE those billboards
It’s time for her to step back. Charles should take over and willnot and katie keene should be working for once. It’s looks so bad to be dumping that work on a 95 year old. Seriously i dont even think she wants to do any of this.
A regency needs to be put in place posthaste – Charles needs to formally assume the responsibility he’s wanted for most of his life. She’s too old, frail and possibly infirm to carry on as head of state. I don’t give a damn about her perceived ‘duty’, just that the country doesn’t fall further apart than it has already.
Could the UK be operating under a charles regency without there being a public announcement of same? Because if the BRFirm can get away with pulling the wool over their sheep’s eyes, they will.
It’s weird to me that anyone would think that heads of state are gonna be like, “well the Queen’s not going, so I don’t have to go either!” I mean, some might not show up, but that’s not going to be the reason (not the REAL reason, anyway). When people call her the “head of state”, it’s always with like, a mental dismissive wanking gesture. And that’s because she became Queen back when people still had some respect for the monarchy. After (if?) Charles takes the throne, the gesture probably won’t be just mental anymore.
@Miranda: That statement was made by someone who believes the world leaders were attending because the Queen was going to be there which is asinine and presumptuous. It gave off the same vibes of the statement the Palace put out to announce that Meghan and Harry were returning as working royals. Those leaders who already indicated that they were attending are not going pull out because the Queen has.
Lol, that was my reaction. I mean, it’s kind of hilarious to think of China flouncing off, declaring “No queen, no China, losers!”
The Royal Family is trying to stay relevant on the National stage. I doubt seriously any country was waiting on The Queen to determine if they would attend the conference or not. Just another indicator that the British Royal Family has ZERO place on the world stage. They should stick to Salty Island…. the rest of the world doesn’t care!
To her credit, she definitely shamed Scott Morrison into attending. She is still an asset at these events (especially as Boris tends to be merely an ass).
TBF I wouldn’t go if it was just f’n Charles the cad. I don’t respect a word of what he says and all his environmental talk is total crap given how he allows the monarchy and family to play by special rules.
The Queen does have a different cachet. She’s a historic person, personality aside, I’d be interested in meeting her out of mere curiosity. Meeting someone who was so close to the fabled King George and who was in the thick of the British war effort and saw the effects of the Blitz and such. That still means something to many people, diplomats who tend to be historical wonks especially.
I also found that hilarious. It’s an international climate change summit for world leaders, it’s not a Queen Elizabeth II book signing. She was going to be there as a one of many British cultural props to help set the scene—like tea in Royal dalton china or having British traditional landscape paintings on the wall—not as an actual, serious head of state sitting in on negotiations.
A 95 year old outworking two 40 year olds is a disgrace. Their fans have used age,marriage,babies and even “part time royal” excuse to defend them for their poor work ethics,wonder what excuse they would come up with on how and why the older royals are outworking the “future of the monarchy”
I wonder if the travel is part of the issue, if they don’t want her that far away from home (maybe it confuses her at this stage?)
At any rate she is 95 years old, they need to let her rest at this point. Didn’t Philip retire at 95? Let her do a few zoom calls a week, maybe she pops up for a local event at Windsor once a week, and let that be it. I don’t know how much she is “sick” at this point and how much she is just 95, but let the woman rest. Let the Cambridges pick up the slack (bc those are the two who aren’t doing anything else.)
I am certain there are many voices on both sides of the retire/ don’t retire within the palace. The Queen herself, I am sure. She’s a person who is her job. It is impossible for many to separate her as a woman, from her as the Queen. I suspect she may have that difficulty as well. Heck, yesterday I got to a clients house (I work in community health care) and she was hauling her yard waste bags to the end of her driveway. Cane in one hand, bag full of leaves and garden debris in the other. I reminded her that these tasks are not recommended and she said that she knew that, but worried if she stopped doing them, she’d never get going again. And that would be it: that would be the end of her. It’s a tough spot to be in.
That seems like the real hard line. How many tasks can you adapt or give up but still maintain your independence and sense of self? The struggle comes for most of us, though usually not so publicly as for TQ.
I agree with you Laura. There was a stage there a few months ago where all the negative stories were exploding at once and she seemed to go into overdrive- just after Philips death. Suddenly she was at every event. I think she is very very aware that the children and grandchildren are screwing up left, right and centre and she’s trying to sustain this failing establishment with every power she can muster. That must be enormously stressful for her.
It’s almost as if it were painfully clear even to the Queen now that raising generations to believe they are the bee’s knees just because they were born tends to backfire.
Yes the hard job of living in luxury, usurping democracy, being racist, clinging to stolen goods and a fortune built on the backs of people of the global majority. Her work is literally being a vestige of racism and antisemitism. So yeah no sympathy for her having to go meet people while receiving millions while other people work 3 jobs to live in squalor.
I totally agree with you on this at KFG🤷🏽♀️
I am glad she won’t be at the summit. She had no business being there in the first place. This is for actual leaders to meet and address issues. The royals invited themselves to this just as they did for the G7. I think is it orchestrated by the courtiers in a bid to make the RF seem relevant.
More like, it was the public servants who had to do the real work of organising it knew that they couldn’t leave BoJo to host it solo because he’s a blithering idiot who is completely out of his debt and has zero statesmanship. The queen can provide some gravitas that Johnson just simply cannot for even a second.
Yeeeeaaaah, Bobo the Johnson is only JUST above William on the ‘not screwing up public events’ rankings.
I do think a great deal of that is Johnson deliberately and rather competently cultivating a farcical public image where those individual screw-ups all meld into one massive joke that everybody tends to ignore, whereas Il Duce goes for super-serious strongman and that requires a much more competent team and far fewer verbal F#&%-ups to work properly. (The massive media conspiracy to embiggen himself is a minimum requirement for the super-serious strongman persona.)
I wonder if the two keenest greenest FFK and FFQ will be cutting short their vacation to take on this event. Or, allegedly having already returned from their vacation*, maybe they’ll be out and about to reassure the peasants that the line of succession is secure. Cuz with the pandemic and fuel shortages, that’s probably what Brits are most concerned about now, right?
If the courtiers are cancelling now, it makes it sound more serious. I dunno, if I were an ambitious middle manager in a company with an ailing CEO and this kind of chaos at the top, I’d be flying home to make sure I don’t get left out. Maybe it’s time to get off the beach (er, alleged beach) and get in the game, Cambridges?
* It’s Schrödinger’s vacation, y’all
I’m sure someone pointed this out when the story of “no, William was returning from vacation!” was circulated, but it just occurred to me: All major airports have separate areas for departures versus arrivals, right? How dumb do they think people are?
So I’m guessing HM may have tested positive for Covid and she’s isolating. That’s why she looks so good but is staying home from everything and doing zoom meetings. Regardless, a 95 year old needs to transfer the reins to the next in line. And William and Kate need to stop pretending they don’t have a nanny and do the jobs they are paid to do. William with 300+ events per year. Kate with 250+ events per year.
Cicely Tyson was fine and doing a sit down zoom interview for her book literally two days before she died. I’m just saying. I’m if the mind that QEII,could go anytime.
Same here.
She needs to relax and enjoy life. Now is not the time to push herself. Rest and chill out please.
She can’t afford to retire. Who is going to protect the nonce if she retires.
The entire rest of the Palace Industrial Complex and the government, who almost certainly have major players seriously involved in one or the other of Epstein’s criminal enterprises and whom Andrew would almost certainly end up taking down with him?
I think other monarchies like the Dutch have such a smarter model with how Beatrix stepped down for her son and can live the rest of her life in a retirement mode and let the new generation taken over. Although
in that case the ‘new generation’ was much younger than the 73 years old Charles is! I’m all for appreciating the senior population and contributions but come on. Reminds me of many of the super-senior US Senators and other figures who are pushing 90 but refuse to acknowledge it’s time to move on.
It is ridiculous to expect a 95 year old to have “make or break” public engagements. And who knows what the Queen’s medical issues all are, but the pandemic situation is acute in England and mask use and distancing are erratically used. “Fully vaxed” as she is, elderly age is a strong risk factor for breakthrough infections and severe ones.
Look at the pics of her from the G7 this and the pics of her with William. Now look at her most recent pics in the dark blue skirt suit. She lost a ton of weight to begin with, post-covid. And now she’s dropped even more weight in just a few months. She’s frail. Unless they can get her to stop losing weight put on twenty pounds and give her the kind of energy she had just two years ago, it ain’t looking good.
I was thinking of that, looking at these pictures. the difference between her in June/July and her now is really striking.
She’s literally shriveling away.
losing weight at that age is never good. there’s no way she’s able to put it back on once she’s lost it. also, she has horrible osteoporosis. it starts to affect lung and cardiac function. she’s got a year, tops.
All of this.
Just to set the record straight, the courtiers can’t force the Queen to do anything
They don’t have to force, they are master manipulators.
You know she could retire and go enjoy what’s left of her life.
No fan of the monarchy or this family but I give Queen Elizabeth her due for being hard working and dedicated. OTOH, I think she should have stepped down a few years ago in favor of Charles. IMO, I think it’s the Queen herself who is stubbornly hanging on and refusing to quit because she truly believes “she was anointed by God.” It doesn’t matter if everyone else thinks it’s rubbish or ridiculous, this is what the Queen has believed and continues to believe and will go to her grave believing.
I agree with others here who’ve mentioned that she’s noticeably declined since Philip’s death in June. I do believe Philip’s passing had a profound effect on her. Regardless of the ups and downs in their relationship, he was her first (and most likely only love) and was by her side for over 70 years. Since then the Queen has lost weight. QEII is visibly shrinking before our eyes. She’s increasingly stooped over and unsteady on her feet. It’s possible she could well go on like this, steadily declining for several more years. Or she could suddenly expire. I don’t wish her any ill. But it is long past time to establish a Regency and let Charles take over. He is the longest “Monarch in waiting” in Britain’s history. If the Monarchy lasts that long and Charles has inherited his parents longevity, William could be 60+ before he ever becomes King.
It has to be serious enough for her to have skipped Sunday service. Now that could fit in with her being potentially exposed to Covid. I mean William encountered Ed Sheeran who tested positive less than a week after they met in person without a mask and then William met with the Queen the next day. But it could also be a slew of things that happen to elderly people.
Charles has been doing things all week so really it’s W and K who need to pick up the slack by a lot.
I imagine they can get a robot with a monitor for a face and have the queen on. The robot can go around the room (queen on the monitor) and greet and chat with world leaders. She can do it sitting in a chair at Windsor. I’m sure the technology exist. (it’s been a trying day, I need a flight of fancy)
If we hear that Harry is flying out to the UK we’ll know that a) she doesn’t have COVID and b) her days are numbered.
Sheldon did that very thing in an episode of The Big Bang Theory!
Unless she’s not of sound mind she should do what she wants to do, no more, no less. I felt so sorry for my mother during the end days of her life with everyone telling her what, when, and how to do things she could decide for herself. That she was frail didn’t mean she’d lost her mind. Too often the aged are underestimated.