"a member for Oxford" refers to "a member for Oxford City Hall"?

@MontereyJack,

Quote:

so were the kids Oranges or Stuarts?

You can't just go mixing oranges and stuarts like that, MJ.

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@MontereyJack,

If memory serves me correctly there was a boy who died from hydrocephalus. Actually Jack why not follow the link. You Americans tend to be a lot more interested in the Royal family than we are.

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izzythepush said:

Quote:

You Americans tend to be a lot more interested in the Royal family than we are.

It's probably the same reason that there is an entire TV program devoted to the daily life of meerkats, or there is a thread right here on a2k where every day there is a different picture of a bunny and an otter (and where I myself just posted an awesome video of a cockatoo feeding a dog noodles). The peculiar and exotic is always fascinating.

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If the Royals have fed anybody noodles lately, I'll be happy to post that video right alongside the cockatoo.

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@izzythepush,

izzythepush wrote:

http://www.britroyals.com/royaltree.htm

Hope you can access this from where you are.

$8 are required to get a picture of the tree, a bit of expensive:

http://www.britroyals.com/shopimages/poster_lg.jpg

Another version might be free. Who would like to post?

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@izzythepush,

Victoria married Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. She was already descended from George I, who was a scion of the Albertinian line of the Hapsburgs and the Hohenzollerns. Her Stuart ancestor, Elizabeth of Bohemia, was a distaff ancestress, and as such, did not contribute a family name. As she was female, the proper name of the family was Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. As has been pointed out, the name was changed to protect the guilty during the First World War.

The same thing happened with Louis Mountbatton. His mother was Alice, a daughter of Victoria, and he was born Louis of Battenberg. He changed the familiy name to Mountbatton in 1917.

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@Setanta,

A local lad as well(ish). When the IRA blew him up Romsy was packed with reporters, and one of our schools is called Mountbatten. If you're really interested I'll post a link, but I guess not.

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@izzythepush,

A relative of mine (by marriage) worked for Earl Mountbatten for a while.

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Well, i certainly condemn the murder of Mountbatten. That being said, Louis was doing fine in the RN commanding destroyers, but was a disaster when they booted him upstairs to command Combined Operations. The Dieppe raid was a disaster, and was carried out against the advice of Montgomery. Considering how inept Montgomery was, his advice against the operation ought to have told them it truly would be a disaster. Mountbatten later blithely passed off the slaughter of the Canadians at Dieppe by saying it provided many valuable lesson which were used in Normandy. The lesson used at Normandy were learned in the Med and the Pacific. Basically, he had "dash" and was in love with derringdo, and had friends in high places.

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@Setanta,

And the 'Hanovers' should be spelled "Hannovers".
Which isn't true either, since the dynasty is called 'Braunschweig-Lüneburg' ("Brunswick-Lüneburg").
To make it even more confusing: the dukedom of Braunschweig-Lüneburg is a bit different to the Electorate of Brunswick-Lüneburg ('Churfürstentum), the latter informally called the Electorate of Hannover.

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@Setanta,

The Empire had been founded on the gentry paying for military commissions. They thought it worked, and there was a deference towards the aristos that only started to fade in the 60s. That deference stood in the way of good judgement.

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@Walter Hinteler,

I thought we could dispense with canvassing Braunshweig-Luneburg for sake of the audience--of course, you're right about that.

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@izzythepush,

Montgomery was an unmitigated disaster, in my never humble opinion. Alexander was quite good, though. Of course, he didn't have the friends in high places that Montgomery had, and he didn't go whining to Eisenhower and Churchill if he didn't get things exactly the way he wanted them.

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Since we were talking about it ...

I just noticed (in a 1793 calendar for the Bishop-Princedom of Osnabrück) that there were two post offices in that town: the "Imperial Reichs Post" and the "Royal Great British and Electoral Brunswick-Lüneburg Post"

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@Setanta,

Setanta wrote:

Well, i certainly condemn the murder of Mountbatten. That being said, Louis was doing fine in the RN commanding destroyers, but was a disaster when they booted him upstairs to command Combined Operations. The Dieppe raid was a disaster, and was carried out against the advice of Montgomery. Considering how inept Montgomery was, his advice against the operation ought to have told them it truly would be a disaster. Mountbatten later blithely passed off the slaughter of the Canadians at Dieppe by saying it provided many valuable lesson which were used in Normandy. The lesson used at Normandy were learned in the Med and the Pacific. Basically, he had "dash" and was in love with derringdo, and had friends in high places.

I wonder whether " booted him upstairs " means as is or just a metaphor here? If being latter, what does it refer to? Humiliated him?

1 Reply

@oristarA,

oristarA wrote:

I wonder whether " booted him upstairs " means as is or just a metaphor here? If being latter, what does it refer to? Humiliated him?

Clearly he was not physically and literally kicked up some stairs so, yes, it is a metaphor. To kick or boot an incompetent or failing official or leader upstairs means to remove them from their post by promoting them to a largely ceremonial position of higher rank where they can no longer do harm, when to dismiss them would cause embarrassment or damage morale.

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@contrex,

contrex wrote:

oristarA wrote:
I wonder whether " booted him upstairs " means as is or just a metaphor here? If being latter, what does it refer to? Humiliated him?

Clearly he was not physically and literally kicked up some stairs so, yes, it is a metaphor. To kick or boot an incompetent or failing official or leader upstairs means to remove them from their post by promoting them to a largely ceremonial position of higher rank where they can no longer do harm, when to dismiss them would cause embarrassment or damage morale.

Excellent!
Thank you.

1 Reply

@oristarA,

The Peter Principle states that "in a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence", meaning that employees tend to be promoted until they reach a position in which they cannot work competently. It was formulated by Dr. Laurence J. Peter and Raymond Hull in their 1969 book The Peter Principle, a humorous [1] treatise, which also introduced the "salutary science of hierarchiology."

The principle holds that in a hierarchy, members are promoted so long as they work competently. Eventually they are promoted to a position at which they are no longer competent (their "level of incompetence"), and there they remain, being unable to earn further promotions. Peter's Corollary states that "in time, every post tends to be occupied by an employee who is incompetent to carry out their duties" and adds that "work is accomplished by those employees who have not yet reached their level of incompetence." "Managing upward" is the concept of a subordinate finding ways to subtly "manage" superiors in order to limit the damage that they end up doing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Principle

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@JTT,

JTT wrote:

The Peter Principle states that "in a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence", meaning that employees tend to be promoted until they reach a position in which they cannot work competently. It was formulated by Dr. Laurence J. Peter and Raymond Hull in their 1969 book The Peter Principle, a humorous [1] treatise, which also introduced the "salutary science of hierarchiology."

The principle holds that in a hierarchy, members are promoted so long as they work competently. Eventually they are promoted to a position at which they are no longer competent (their "level of incompetence"), and there they remain, being unable to earn further promotions. Peter's Corollary states that "in time, every post tends to be occupied by an employee who is incompetent to carry out their duties" and adds that "work is accomplished by those employees who have not yet reached their level of incompetence." "Managing upward" is the concept of a subordinate finding ways to subtly "manage" superiors in order to limit the damage that they end up doing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Principle

I read it through and laughed.
A good story about funny reality.

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"a member for Oxford" refers to "a member for Oxford City Hall"?

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