Princess o Wales. All the speculation confirmed.

euan

Timcito said:

euan said:

That’s the correct approach to call what the Royal Family have engaged in this year as misinformation. When you carry out such blatant attempts then the only result is wild and rampant speculation. 

I have great sympathy for the individuals suffering, but they are part of a wider institution and it is fair to be critical of that and their actions within it. That includes either actively or passively participating in that misinformation.  

It’s also clear that the Royal Family is now trying to use the situation to gain sympathy and public goodwill cache. This is just cynical as any of the press fuelling speculation. 

What I’d say is that with so many of the working Royals out of action either directly or indirectly, it just proves how little they are really needed. 

I have great sympathy for the individuals suffering, but ...

There's the magic "but" which so often invalidates the concession that precedes it. Did you not consider that she might actually be scared and that broadcasting her infirmity serves to reinforce that she might die prematurely? That the royal family did not seek maliciously to "engage in misinformation," as you put it, but were rather trying to spare Kate the brutal exposure that she might die soon before the nation?

And then to accuse her and them of "cynically" "using the situation to gain sympathy and public goodwill" - for real? I got nothing of that. I saw a young woman, visibly ill, talking with great dignity and self-control about something that probably frightens and upsets her because she's been hounded by ignorant and idle-brained speculation.

Your sympathy does not seem to run too deep, from what what you say here.

You seem to be thinking I’m commenting on Kate Middleton the person. I’m commentating on the Royal Family institution, the one they loveable self refer to as the “The Firm”. 

Her reason to keep the news quiet are valid and again I am sympathetic towards that. But again the Royal Family couldn’t stay quiet, “she’ll be back soon”, “here she is well look at this great family picture”, “oops Kate did a bad photoshop”. These are examples of how the Royal Family has always conducted its media strategy and it massively backfired here.

And I made no insinuation that Kate Middleton herself was cynical in her video. But what we have seen, in the well established Royal commenter sect has been deployed with their various talking points. The direct communication from the Royal Family and trading for access is well known these days. 

You can disagree with me, but don’t go misrepresenting what I said. 

guyinlyon

What's up with the water at Windsor Castle? Charles and Katherine both getting cancer within weeks of each other...

Offset

I'm assuming that anyone who declares indifference to Kate's illness has never had a cancer diagnosis.

It fucking sucks.

LionAquaLooper

Offset said:

I'm assuming that anyone who declares indifference to Kate's illness has never had a cancer diagnosis.

It fucking sucks.

Don't even need to have had it yourself.  Just knowing someone who's had it, or knowing someone who's been affected by someone dying from it is enough.  

Offset

LionAquaLooper said:

Offset said:

I'm assuming that anyone who declares indifference to Kate's illness has never had a cancer diagnosis.

It fucking sucks.

Don't even need to have had it yourself.  Just knowing someone who's had it, or knowing someone who's been affected by someone dying from it is enough.  

Yes, agreed.

crunchman

Devil#20 said:

As far as privacy is concerned then yes, on a detailed level of exactly what the problem is I agree. However, wingnut came clean about his cancer so why not Catherine? As far as it goes they, to an extent, forego their right to absolute privacy as we, the taxpayers, keep them in the luxury to which they are accustomed and so that privacy is somewhat tempered by things like this being in the public interest or being public domain. 

They have school age kids.  Having it as the biggest story on the news in term time would make life very difficult for the kids.  They have announced it at the beginning of the Easter holidays when they have had time to talk to their kids and can insulate them from all the idiocy for a couple of weeks, so that it hopefully has time to blow over a bit.

ICBM

I have very great sympathy with her, especially as apparently from what I understand, she had serious reservations about joining this circus in the first place - exactly because of the public intrusion and lack of privacy being married to a royal heir would bring.

The “photo” was a major mistake though, as it’s now become clear that it’s entirely fake, and easy to spot as such by anyone who knows much about digital image work. Either she was very poorly advised, or very naive if it really was her own doing. Hopefully they will have learnt from this.

And it does matter - the media were right to call it out. As said already, you can’t have fraudulent images passed off as genuine representations in the media, even for apparently good reasons, or it becomes the thin end of a dangerous wedge.

Pjon

Offset said:

I'm assuming that anyone who declares indifference to Kate's illness has never had a cancer diagnosis.

It fucking sucks.

Is that a fair comment when the vast majority of people will either contract cancer during their lifetimes and/or know plenty of people who contract or die from it?

Devil#20

Offset said:

I'm assuming that anyone who declares indifference to Kate's illness has never had a cancer diagnosis.

It fucking sucks.

I don't think anybody has done that and yes it does suck big time. Lost my mate to it earlier this year age 42 (kidneys to lungs to brain). Leaves wife and 2 young kids. He remained positive and upbeat for them to the end, which I'm not sure I could have maintained. He was liked by all and it wasn't just women crying at his funeral. 

Offset

Pjon said:

Offset said:

I'm assuming that anyone who declares indifference to Kate's illness has never had a cancer diagnosis.

It fucking sucks.

Is that a fair comment when the vast majority of people will either contract cancer during their lifetimes and/or know plenty of people who contract or die from it?

I can only speak from my own personal perspective.

Shrews

My late wife had three cancer diagnoses in her time. The first before I met her. The 2nd "clue" came via our telephone answerphone. She had gone in for some tests on a bad back. She told me then that she thought that the cancer had returned (she had gone 7 years clear). Of course, I told her not to be so silly, it was just a bad back.

I kid ye not that the message on the answerphone was to contact the 'tumour clinic' at the hospital for an appointment. Unbelievable. 

What hit me hardest was what the nurse said at our meeting (she was lovely and only being well-meaning), she told my wife that she should not worry because she had know many people live for 8 more years or so after such a diagnosis. Of course, she was only trying to be positive and let my wife know she still had plenty to live for and could lead a normal life. But for me it was like someone saying 'You've got 8 years'. There was now a limit, and from aged 51 onwards I would be a widower. Of course I was thinking of her and the time we had left, but I couldn't help but think of living life without her too.

Her third diagnoses was close to 9 years later. She wanted to take a break from the constant chemo she was enduring, every 2nd Wednesday for maybe 18 months. She got tired of the rigmarole and the tiredness. Some types worked, others didn't. She was at a stage where she was taking chemo drugs that were only just on the market. Basically running out of options. So she asked her oncologist if she could take a break, to which he agreed, he then asked her if she had any other issues and she told him 'double vision'.

Here everything changed, she was kept in for 3 days for tests, and then she informed me that she had 8 weeks to live. Brain tumour. Her 8th week would have been Christmas week. She actually lived until the end of February.

Breast cancer - 2005 - beat that with radiotherapy and 8 chemo treatments, then went 7 years clear
2012 - cancer returned in her spine and she was now classed as terminal. Radiotherapy. She got through the treatment and no permanent damage to her spine because of the cancer or treatment. We celebrated with a trip to Santorini.

2013 - the cancer spread to her lung and liver. She had 8 more chemo treatments. She had an infection after her 8th and was lucky to live. The nurses had tried to drain the lung but had injected into the wrong lung (her healthy one). This lung collapsed. This left her breathing through her damaged (cancerous) lung. She was blue in the face when I arrived one evening and could not speak. I kicked off, but thankfully it was enough to get her rushed to Stoke University hospital, who saved her life. A week later she was home. More checks showed the cancer in her lung and liver had gone. We celebrated with a trip to the South of France.

She had beaten it again, but it was there 'somewhere'.

In 2016, a rise in her cancer marker and some headaches resulted in a scan and brain tumour(s) diagnosis. She was rushed into hospital, but, unfortunately they could not remove all the tumours. But she came out of it scarred but with no life checking effects (obviously there was a risk she could have been left impaired mentally and physically). Small cancerous cells remained. They would grow in time. 

She went three years then, with various treatments and then permanent chemo for those last 18 months to try and keep her marker down. Then of course the final diagnosis that the tumour was untreatable.

I thank God every day for many, many things that occurred in that time. That in the main she wasn't in pain, that she could walk and talk and even work for long periods throughout her treatment. I know many of you don't believe but it gives me comfort knowing she is now in a place of Bliss and all that cancer shit is gone.

This is possibly the shit Kate, William and their kids have in font of them. William also has his dad going through it. They are going through the battle we went through and I wouldn't wish it on anyone.

But, there is hope, people do survive it, and not just for a few years. My sporting hero is Bob Champion, you only have to read his story or watch the film 'Champions' to see that it can be beat. He has so far lived for 45 years after his diagnosis, a lifetime. So whilst it didn't work out for my lovely wife, there is always hope, and it can be beat and life can get back to normal.

Timcito

euan said:

Timcito said:

euan said:

That’s the correct approach to call what the Royal Family have engaged in this year as misinformation. When you carry out such blatant attempts then the only result is wild and rampant speculation. 

I have great sympathy for the individuals suffering, but they are part of a wider institution and it is fair to be critical of that and their actions within it. That includes either actively or passively participating in that misinformation.  

It’s also clear that the Royal Family is now trying to use the situation to gain sympathy and public goodwill cache. This is just cynical as any of the press fuelling speculation. 

What I’d say is that with so many of the working Royals out of action either directly or indirectly, it just proves how little they are really needed. 

I have great sympathy for the individuals suffering, but ...

There's the magic "but" which so often invalidates the concession that precedes it. Did you not consider that she might actually be scared and that broadcasting her infirmity serves to reinforce that she might die prematurely? That the royal family did not seek maliciously to "engage in misinformation," as you put it, but were rather trying to spare Kate the brutal exposure that she might die soon before the nation?

And then to accuse her and them of "cynically" "using the situation to gain sympathy and public goodwill" - for real? I got nothing of that. I saw a young woman, visibly ill, talking with great dignity and self-control about something that probably frightens and upsets her because she's been hounded by ignorant and idle-brained speculation.

Your sympathy does not seem to run too deep, from what what you say here.

You seem to be thinking I’m commenting on Kate Middleton the person. I’m commentating on the Royal Family institution, the one they loveable self refer to as the “The Firm”. 

Her reason to keep the news quiet are valid and again I am sympathetic towards that. But again the Royal Family couldn’t stay quiet, “she’ll be back soon”, “here she is well look at this great family picture”, “oops Kate did a bad photoshop”. These are examples of how the Royal Family has always conducted its media strategy and it massively backfired here.

And I made no insinuation that Kate Middleton herself was cynical in her video. But what we have seen, in the well established Royal commenter sect has been deployed with their various talking points. The direct communication from the Royal Family and trading for access is well known these days. 

You can disagree with me, but don’t go misrepresenting what I said. 

I do not think I misrepresented what you wrote Perhaps what you said didn't come out right - hey, it happens to all of us. .

But Kate is, obviously, a member of the royal family and will doubtless have had the ultimate say as to whether she could make such an appearance. Do any of us seriously believe she's just a hapless victim of the 'evil' royals and their Machiavellian stratagems to deceive and manipulate, in the way you suggest? If anything, I would imagine the, in your words, "engagement with misinformation" was probably an attempt to protect her from a lurid collective media extravaganza which would dig up her health history and churn out 'exclusive' inquiries as to how soon she will die, what she will soon look like, and what will happen to her children once she's under the sod.  

It didn't work, and the truth is out. The party can really begin now ...

Offset

@Shrews - I welled up reading your post.  It was extremely moving but there is, as you say, always hope.  I'm so pleased you could draw some comfort despite such sad circumstances.

Jfingers

Also @Shrews ; - I literally cried reading your post. I've lost several people to the vile disease, including my Dad at 68.

That was 16 years ago, I still cry about that sometimes.

It's a big fuck cancer from me.

Shrews

The one underlying constant that Kate, William, Charles, Camilla, the kids will all go through is that once diagnosed it is almost impossible to get away from it. It seems like every time you turn on the TV you see a cancer advert, every time you read a paper or magazine you see a cancer advert.

Cancer Research, Macmillan, all useful for many, but there are hardly noticeable for most. But when cancer is in the immediate family it seems never-ending. Thankfully of course. 

The disease will give bad days and not so bad days. Never really good days, no matter how it is combatted. Healthier days, memorable days, smiling days and what could be described as happy days, but always with a cloud of the Big C.

For the purpose of this thread, I just wanted to state how it is (and of course everyone is different, I can only tell the story of my wife). The experience of it was different to how I thought it might be. I thought there would be more pain, but there was more tiredness. I thought there would be more sickness, but it was more weakness and instability. I thought it would be more 'giving up and negativity' but it was more, let's do stuff.

With Kate, this is about a mum with a young family who is right bang in the media spotlight. Sure they are privileged, but she still has cancer. She is going through this shit, likewise William, who's been watched and scrutinised, for even the slightest body language issue, how he looks, what he says if asked etc.

When he probably just wants to say fuck it, grab his wife and kids, and hole up in a log cabin somewhere.

Timcito

There seems evidence now that much of the antagonistic and empty-headed speculation was fanned by them Ruskies.

 https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-68637136