Golden Juibilee

I keep hearing some statistic being thrown around but can never remember the exact details, so I was hoping someone could fill in the blanks:
So far there have been only 300 [more or less] applications [nationally? In London?] for street paties whilst in 1977 there were over 12,000 [approx, and again, where?]
If they have a party down Preistley Gardens I will sabotage it.

hmmm wait and see re actual vocalised public response to all this, i think, and how things grow through the months: kneejerk deference is almost dead, and the "royalists" the news media dig out are ever-more plainly sad mentalists — there are a fist-full of chickens of ALL KINDS that *could* come home to roost and i think may

taking sides: hurrah ma'am hurrah vs this is like the money spent on the millennium dome w/o the obvious good return

dg the news last night said they are now getting c.150 apps a day, ie more per day than at equiv time last time, if i was listening properly

Curses!
And the queen in that pic reminds me of Aphex Twin for some reason.

Ronan to thread!!

also there are going to be ten times more hill-top beacons!!

we must lobby for a wickerman!!

I can tell this is gonna be a good year for DG vandalism.

I for one will be getting out the bunting for a landing party because I love a good knees up, and if its an excuse to have a street party and get to know our neighbours then I'm all for it. I may subvert it too.

I'll be in Thailand with a bit of luck, or at home in front of the more important WORLD CUP.

Pete if there's boozing on that landing people will die.

I'm not against parties, just *these* parties. I think I'll hold my own party commemorating the brave men of the Cheka , heh heh heh.

I read the other day that the London Underground is going to run ALL NIGHT over the Bank Holiday weekend for only the third time in history - which seems like a rather shameless way of guaranteeing a party if you ask me.

150 enquiries to the hotline a day, not nec. actual applications for parties. On other hand, organisers also pointing to fact that everyone was pouring cold water on Silver Jubilee celebs in 77 until Easter, then it caught the public's imagination and really took off. I bet there won't be as many mugs and teatowls and such made this time round tho'.

One point made by old gawd-bless-yer-mum type on the news feature last night (and reinforced by Pete upthread?) that in 77 people living in the same street all knew eachother, now nobody knows who their neighbours are. True or popular myth I wonder?

"in 77 people living in the same street all knew eachother, now nobody knows who their neighbours are. True or popular myth I wonder?"

I didn't recognise a bloody soul in the '77 Old Barn Road party - in fact I suspect a couple of ringers had been brought in from Limekiln Lane and Surrey Street to deprive my brother of his rightful victory in the sack race. I had a terrible time.

"in 77 people living in the same street all knew each other, now nobody knows who their neighbours are. True or popular myth I wonder?"

For me it was true. Everyone in our little road had a party round a long line of trestle tables heaving with grub. I had jelly. Later I won a Silver Jubilee mug, but Andrew Waterhouse dropped it (deliberately, I reckon) and broke it. Still, my dad got hold of some commemerative SJ bottles of beer - one of which I still have, it stands on a bookself behind me.
People in Worcester are being charged a thousand quid per street to have street parties. But no-one seems to be bothered anyway.

What Ed proposes - spot on, as is Mark S's first post. I would also say that eg Duran Duran or Soul II Soul did infinitely more to remove the British people en masse from monarchism than eg the S** P******.

If they have a beacon on Portland I will sabotage it, or perhaps get them to move it to Maiden Castle which is in a remaining Tory seat, where such things belong, really. Certainly there's been enough movement of people and uprooting of old communities in the last 25 years for the phenomenon Jeff mentions to be partially true.

Early June 2002 - first anniversary of South Dorset kicking out the Tories. Now if I could organise a counter-street-party to commemorate *that* event ...

I would retain my hopes that the Golden Jubilee could be a great reaffirmation of devotion to the greatest English family on earth. The great problem will lie in the attempts that the current Socialist Government will no doubt make to sabotage it, such as playing the latest "hit" by Rick Astley upon "Radio One" as the Queen is parading through our great capital city with thousands of people, including at least two under the age of 40, cheering her. There is no excuse for such behaviour, even under the malign statist Mr. Blair.

"in 77 people living in the same street all knew eachother, now nobody knows who their neighbours are. True or popular myth I wonder?"

I think I saw the same news item with the old bat trundling out the usual old community spirit rubbish. Obviously I can't say what it was like in 1977 but back in the 80s when I lived in Arandora Crescent my parents only knew their immediate neighbours. Surely if this community spirit was so strong in '77 it wouldn't have evaporated in the space of 5 or 6 years, surely?

There's a lot of sentimentalisation of the past involved here of course, but the years after 1979 *have* seen greater and more rapid movement of people for economic reasons than was commonplace in this country before that, as a direct result of Thatcherite economic radicalism. So yes there probably *was* a decay of community spirit from say 1977-87, but I'd agree with your basic point, and certainly there was less community spirit in 1977 than in 1953 (but, even then, there was far less of it than the sentimentalists would make out, and so on).

The 'not knowing your neighbours' thing greatly overblown, I think, although that doesn't mean people necessarily like/bond etc with them. Doubtless people move more now than ever before, but it's hardly like UK '77 was a place where everyone had stayed in their little village. In the English side of my family, I don't know of anyone - going back to my great-grandfather's generation - who died in the same town or city where they were born. As for the Silver & Golden Jubilees, I wasn't living here in '77 so I don't know how true it was that EVERYONE bar a few punkers played along. I suspect things have changed: my grandmother was a big fan of Joe Stalin and suspected that MI5 had the house bugged, yet she loved the Windsors. Don't think you get so much of that now. What I think will happen this summer is that enough people will have parties to fill the news programmes and fascinate tourists, and the rest of us will get on with our lives and barely notice

i was 17 and found it quite easy to sidestep where i lived (shropshire): lady di's wedding seemed much more omnipresent (the dead di, not the dunedin di)

my mum gave me a jubilee pencil case: i considere sticking letters over the queen's eyes pistols-style but the pic was too wee and i could find no letters small enough (actually i was too lazy)

All the revelations about royal dysfunctionality since '77 and people's general decrease in national pride and tendency to "live on a large map" have undoubtably played their part in the indifference to street parties etc. However, there can be no doubt in my mind that there is a greater tendency to do things at the last minute now than there was in '77. This is a social change far greater than the growing tendency for people's neighbours to be strangers to them, and it is inextricably linked to the vast technological changes that have taken place since '77. Why have committee meetings to plan street parties months in advance, when you can send a few text messages and e-mails a few days before your celebratory bash?

Planning long in advance is not necessarily a good thing....in the museum in Abingdon they have an EDWARD VII coronation mug in a glass case!

sorry I meant EDWARD VIII.