Today is St George’s Day. It was delayed in the church calendar from its usual date of 23rd April so as not to clash with Easter, though this was not well publicised in advance and in practice not widely observed. The movement also means that St George’s Day clashes with Ed Balls Day!
I was disappointed to see no new appointments to the Order of the Garter either today or last Wednesday. Currently there are four vacancies among the ordinary Knights and Ladies Companion.
I was a little surprised to see that the News page on GOV.UK included “Prime Minister Liz Truss’s statement on the death of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II“, given that said prime minister resigned thirty months ago. Upon inspection of the Updates section, it seems the page was originally published with only the video link, and the transcription has now very belatedly been added. Amusingly, the note doesn’t even say “transcription”, but rather “translation”. Surely, Truss’s thoughts weren’t that incomprehensible, were they?
As the eightieth anniversary of VE Day in World War II approaches, it would be easy to miss that there were also commemorations for World War I still going on.
The ceremonies carried out today in honour of the Gallipoli campaign were of a notably lower key, but still quite interesting.
The Australian & New Zealand Army Corps fought at the time as part of the British Empire under George V. Today Charles III is monarch of all three realms in separate capacities.
His Majesty put out messages relating to the anniversary, which the Royal Twitter feed illustrated with photographs and flags. The letterhead uses the new illustration of the British royal arms with the New Zealand and Australian flags (both containing the Union Flag in the canton) are displayed diagonally in the top corners.
The Palace also Tweeted links to separate messages for Australian and New Zealand veterans, but there is clearly a mistake in the Tweet as the New Zealand link is given twice. Luckily the Australian message is easily findable from that page on the website.
The Princess Royal, President of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, attended services in Turkey (where the Gallipoli campaign actually took place). While there it appears she left a note from her brother attached to a wreath. The card still uses the old illustration of the arms. I didn’t see the princess’s own banner flying anywhere. The Master of Ceremonies introduced her as “senior member of the British royal family” alongside Sam Mostyn as Governor General of Australia, Christopher Luxon as Prime Minister of New Zealand and Ömer Toroman as Governor of Çanakkale Province. He then moved onto introducing the senior representatives of each country’s armed forces, including First Sea Lord Sir Ben Key. That Britain had a specific national representative among the latter group but not the former implies by default that Anne must be representing the United Kingdom in particular**. When it came to the laying of the wreaths, Toroman went first representing the host nation, then Anne lay hers “on behalf of the British royal family” while Mostyn and Luxon lay theirs “on behalf of the government and people” of their respective countries. Wreaths for Austria, Canada, France, Germany, Hungary, India, Ireland, South Africa and the United Kingdom were laid by their various diplomatic and military representatives, Britain’s being Ambassador Jill Morris. The order of precedence is interesting – most of the countries listed are simply in English alphabetical order***, but it is interesting that “the British royal family” as an institution got to be in the special group higher up the chain while the United Kingdom itself did not. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation has been livestreaming the Gallipoli Dawn Service (and many others) for the past several years and the YouTube videos are still up, allowing one to compare the small variations in the ceremony over time. It doesn’t appear that Britain normally has any representative, royal or otherwise, among the first section of attendees, and indeed the Australian and New Zealand representatives are usually a bit lower-ranking than the ones who attended this time.
The Duchess of Edinburgh was the principal royal representative for services in London – both at Hyde Park and at Westminster Abbey. Getty has a photograph of the order of service for the Hyde Park event. It is a less-than-impressive affair, the title being typed in bold, block capitals Calibri font (the default now on Microsoft Office) and the illustrations of the royal arms of Australia and New Zealand, the latter (still using St Edward’s Crown) clearly being taken from Wikimedia Commons. The order of service for the Abbey event uses the same illustrations.
ITN’s Royal Family Channel on YouTube has, as usual, provided a great deal of raw feed. I particularly enjoyed the wobbly footage of the camera operator navigating behind the Abbey’s arches.
In the stream for the Hyde Park service we can see at 5:42 that one of the wreaths has two cards on it bearing the conjugal arms of the Duke & Duchess – two separate shields slightly angled beneath a single princely coronet.
These events also bring up an interesting conundrum about the use of national anthems in the Commonwealth Realms – at the 12:08 mark in the same video, it is announced that “…an Australian soprano*, a music educator based here in London. This morning she will sing the national anthems of the United Kingdom and Australia. I’m also delighted to welcome Lance Corporal Bryony Williams of the New Zealand Army to sing the national anthem of New Zealand.”
The British anthem used here is God Save The King!, the Australian Advance Australia Fair! and the New Zealand God Defend New Zealand! sung in both Maori and English. Trouble is, New Zealand officially has two national anthems, the other being… God Save The King! That same song is also officially the royal anthem of Australia. For the hymn to be used to represent one realm against another feels a little diplomatically questionable. Perhaps it would be better in these kinds of circumstances to use the royal anthem to represent all realms together and/or use an alternative patriotic song to represent Britain in particular – probably the best choice would be Rule, Britannia! The abbey service has the British anthem at the beginning then the other two at the end. The service also includes a prayer “for His Majesty The King; for the Governors
General of Australia and New Zealand, and for all who govern the nations of the world”.
A minor point to note here is that New Zealand’s High Commissioner to the United Kingdom, Phil Goff, was dismissed last month after making critical comments about Donald Trump. A permanent successor has yet to be appointed so Chris Seed, a retired diplomat, is currently filling in.
The ceremony at the Whitehall cenotaph was attended by David Lammy and therefore produced a dozen photographs on the FCDO Flickr feed which are able to be uploaded to Wikimedia Commons. Sir Lindsay Hoyle also features prominently in these.
*Unfortunately the editing of the video cuts off the soprano’s name.
**Whether the multinational nature of the monarchy extends beyond the sovereign himself to the rest of the royal family is a long-running philosophical conundrum among Wikipedians and others.
***Ironically this tends to mean that the birthplace of said language comes at or near the end. I won’t rehash the tired joke about searching for Britain, Great Britain or United Kingdom on drop-down menus, but I will note this article by Michael Reiners for The Critic which was published coincidentally on the same day.
We find ourselves in the unusual situation where two of the large Commonwealth realms are simultaneously having federal general elections, with polling days in the same week. I was interested to compare the ways in which Canada and Australia go about dissolving one parliament and electing another.
In Australia, the relevant discussion is done in writing, with the government publishing both the Prime Minister’s letter and the Governor-General’s. These are not pro forma text, but there is little personal character in the prose which comprises mainly the essential technical details (especially the dates) and constitutional obligations. The proclamation itself is, compared to its British counterpart, remarkably short and unadorned. The Governor-General’s badge of office as seen in this letterhead still uses St Edward’s Crown. The monochrome government coat of arms in the Prime Minister’s letterhead is too small and low-resolution to determine, but probably the same.
The Canadian version has the dissolution of the old parliament, the issuance of writs of election and the meeting date of the new parliament done as three separate proclamations. Each individually is quite short, with apparent length padded out by the need to restate the monarch’s and governor’s style each time as well as the bilingual requirement. The familiar depiction of the Canadian royal arms is used, embedded as a vector image that loaded piece by piece. The crown here too is still St Edward’s, rather than the Tudor or Trudeau crown.
I know from previous examples that it is customary for the Australian dissolution proclamation to have a public reading, though have yet to find the video for this particular election.
One of the many books I picked up from Hull’s YMCA shop last year was The First Four Georges by Sir John Harold Plumb. The book was originally published in 1956 but my edition was from 1966. It is, rather self-evidently, a history of the lives and reigns of King George I, King George II, King George III and King George IV, who ruled the Kingdom of Great Britain and the Kingdom of Ireland from 1714 to 1800, then the United Kingdom of Great Britain & Ireland from 1801 to 1830.
At 177 pages it is considerably shorter than most of the other books in my collection and reading it was a breeze (helped by the improvement of the weather this month allowing me to sit and read it in the orchard on the weekends).
My first knowledge of the Georgian period came from Horrible Histories, followed by David Starkey’s Monarchy and Lucy Worsley’s The First Georgians. I also occasionally dipped into the Oxford History of England. Consequently by the time I got to this short volume there was much that I did not already know: The way each father and son hated each other, the development of rival royal courts that fostered the birth of government and opposition, the emergence of the cabinet and the prime minister, the persistent threat of Jacobitism, the poor choices all four kings made in wives, the explosion of political satire and the struggles over the American colonies.
Still, this book does a good job of covering a large number of topics in a relatively small number of words. The parts new to me were the details of George III’s early life, in particular his emotional crutches regarding his senior government advisers. The stand-out piece of prose was this howler on page 100, which suggested an alternative – or at least supplementary – and unusually explicit explanation for His Majesty’s madness:
The first year of George III’s reign had been taken up almost entirely by the problem of his marriage. Animal passion and the unique sense of public duty in the need for an heir combined to make the matter one of almost neurotic, compulsive frenzy for George III. In the end he settled rashly and unwisely on Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, a dim, formidably ugly girl. George himself regretted her plainness. Like his forbears, a sensual man, he was quickly stirred by feminine beauty but, unlike them, his high sense of morality would not allow him to indulge his fancies. Plain and undesirable as she was George III doggedly fulfilled his marital duties, and they bred child after child. On his part it was more an act of will than desire, and the strain on his already unsteady mind is thought to have been a strong contributory cause of those fits of insanity to which he became a prey.
Did George really lose his mind due to the strain of living with an ugly wife? That would have made for an interesting scene in the Alan Bennett play!
Yesterday Mark Carney made his first international trips as Prime Minister of Canada, visiting first France and then Britain. He held bilateral talks with Emmanuel Macron and Sir Keir Starmer, as well as an audience with Charles III.
The meeting with Starmer was snapped by Downing Street photographers and uploaded on Flickr. I have already copied them to Wikimedia Commons. These appear to be the first free-licence photographs of Carney’s premiership, as Canada’s own government’s policy on official copyright is some way behind Britain’s.
The conversation at Buckingham Palace had among the strangest opening exchanges I’ve heard from any of these:
Bit of a disaster today sir. My Order of Canada pin broke.
Oh.
Yes. It fell on the tarmac… which is proof that (among) our founding people (are) the British.
Do you want mine?
I’m not of that rank.
Obviously, the more substantive discussion in all cases was kept off-camera.
Lest it be forgotten that the royals have other duties, today the Palace revealed more detail about Their Majesties’ state visits to Italy and the Vatican, ending speculation that the latter would be postponed due to the Pope’s recent hospitalisation. The press release explicitly states that there will be an audience with Francis, but it tactfully does not specify where said audience will take place. It would be an interesting (if also tragic) subversion of the concept of a state visit if the host head of state was not actually in his home state at the time of the meeting.
Yesterday, following his victory in the Liberal Party’s leadership election, Mark Carney was formally appointed Prime Minister of Canada. This took place at a meeting of the Privy Council in the presence of the Governor General.
British cabinet inaugurations are not televised – instead we have to rely on merely reading the orders in council off the website later – but this gives us a good guide to what it might look like (minus the speeches and the anthem, of course): Each minister in turn gets up to take his or her oath of office, with those not already privy counsellors (including Carney himself) taking that oath as well. The Privy Council oath contains frequent acknowledgement of Charles III as King of Canada.
This being Canada, proceedings were conducted in both English and French. Given that the vocabulary of the oaths heavily favours the Romantic over the Saxon, it often sounded like the same sentences but in different accents.
At twenty-four members in all (including himself), Carney’s cabinet is considerably smaller than Trudeau’s. All the other ministers are incumbent members of the House of Commons, though only two (Dominic LeBlanc and David McGuinty) began their parliamentary careers before Trudeau became party leader. Arielle Kayabaga, a relatively junior member still in her first parliamentary term, has been appointed Leader of the Government in the House of Commons, a role which will probably be more burdensome than normal given the Prime Minister’s non-membership.
Parliament is, of course, the elephant in the room. The legislature last conducted chamber business on 17th December and was supposed to meet again on 27th January, but then was prorogued. The new session is expected to begin on 24th March. That would be the start of a new session, requiring Her Excellency to give a new speech from the throne with the government’s legislative agenda. That would be an opportunity for Carney to attempt a government “relaunch”, but this will be hampered by the parliamentary balance of power – not only the Prime Minister’s own absence, but the fact that the party as a whole has not won a majority of seats in the lower house nor a plurality of the popular vote since 2015. The new government is severely lacking in democratic authority and, with an absent leader, may well struggle to get its business through even more than Trudeau’s did.
The current (44th) Parliament is near the end of its term. Under law, the next general election can be no later than 20th October, but the Governor General can arrange one earlier at the Prime Minister’s request. The Liberals’ polling was remarkably poor in January at the point of Trudeau’s resignation announcement, but has recovered dramatically in the face of invasion threats from the United States and now, in what may be deemed Carney’s “honeymoon period” as a new leader, some polls suggest they could actually win again.
The Leader of the Opposition, Pierre Poilievre, has campaigned hard against the personality, posturing and poor performance of Justin Trudeau, embracing a populist style often likened to that of Donald Trump and associating himself with other prominent figures in that sphere of politics. Now that Trudeau himself is off the stage and Trump is Canada’s principal antagonist, this is likely to fall flat.
Supporters of Carney and opponents of Poilievre are drawing attention to the latter being a “career politician” who “never held a real job” in contrast to the former’s extensive business experience. Of course, being an elected lawmaker and a party leader is an occupation and has a skillset different to that needed for appointed roles in the state or private sector, so a having Parliament sit for an extended period without his opponent may work to the Conservatives’ advantage, as may a protracted electoral campaign. From a partisan perspective, therefore, it is in Carney’s interest for the general election to take place as quickly as possible.
Whether that is in the national interest is not certain: At a time of serious external and internal crisis, Canada has been without a functioning legislature for three months. Dissolving it now would prolong this situation for at least another month, maybe two. Then again, it’s not clear how functional that Parliament was anyway – Trudeau referred in his January speech to there being months of paralysis. Still, Carney might wish for some emergency legislation to be passed to deal with current events.
In the absence of Parliament, the Carney government must rely on ministerial powers and orders-in-council to carry out its agenda. The Prime Minister has already had himself photographedsigning some form of instruction to eliminate an unpopular tax which his predecessor had devised, though people learned in the constitution have questioned its validity – news sources are calling it an order-in-council but neither the text nor the format match this.
While I’m discussing the King’s Privy Council for Canada, indulge me a little in discussing its British counterpart: The council has recently launched a complete redesign of its website. Rather than one big PDF for each meeting, there is now a separate link for each individual order and proclamation with a search function, distinct from the list of business.
It would now be prudent to check up on the state of relations between His Majesty’s Governments of Canada and the United Kingdom, as well as the stance of Charles himself.
In his first public speech after taking office, Carney referred to Canada’s “proud British heritage”. He has already announced that he will be rapidly visiting both France and the United Kingdom in the next few days, the latter obviously involving a meeting with the monarch.
The King planted a tree in the back garden of Buckingham Palace on Tuesday to commemorateThe Queen’s Commonwealth Canopy. That it was a red maple tree did not go unnoticed. On Wednesday he held an audience for two representatives of Canada’s sentate, Gregory Peters (Usher of the Black Rod) and Raymonde Gagné (Speaker). The King presented them with a new ceremonial sword bearing his royal cypher. I note that the heraldic illustration etched onto the blade shows the Tudor crown rather than St Edward’s or the Maple Leaf version. There is also a carving of the crown at the pommel, but I can’t make out what the objects around the rim are supposed to be.
From 12th-14th March the foreign ministers of the G7 held a summit at Charlevoix, Quebec. A join statement was put out regarding the situation in Ukraine, but David Lammy remained curiously noncommittal on the US-Canada dispute. Sir Ed Davey, by contrast, has been pressing the government on this issue, as well as showing support in his characteristic way.
UPDATE (16th March)
Global News has this discussion about the mechanics of the carbon tax repeal.
Sixty-two days after Trudeau announced his intention to step down, the leadership contest for the Liberal Party of Canada concluded last night. The winner, to the surprise of almost nobody, was former bank governor Mark Carney. He garnered 85.9% of the vote, albeit on only a 37% turnout, which really shows how uninspiring the other candidates must have been.
Carney’s Wikipedia page is already describing him as “Prime Minister Designate”, though the exact date at which the Governor General will formally appoint him to that office has not yet been decided. Canada tends to do governmental transitions at a rather slower pace than Britain does, with the time between leadership elections (or indeed general elections) and ministerial appointments often being measured in weeks rather than hours, but most indications are that this one will take place unusually quickly.
That the leadership election should eschew two experienced cabinet veterans in favour of someone who isn’t even an MP is a little surprising. In the Canadian constitution, as in the British, it is not illegal for a non-Parliamentarian to be appointed to a ministerial office, but it is considered improper and, above all, politically impractical. The nearest British precedent for Carney’s situation, and even then it is a very poor one, would be the much-discussed case of Sir Alec Douglas-Home disclaiming his peerages to jump back to the Commons in 1963. A more thorough comparison of these two situations may be worth a separate article.
Accession to the premiership will, of course, give Carney the right to constitutionally advise the King of Canada, including advising him to speak on Canadian matters.
For the moment, Charles continues in a state of political limbo. Following a long-established royal tradition, he must express himself in a cryptic, plausibly-deniable way, often through subtle sartorial cues.
Today is Commonwealth Day, which includes a service at Westminster Abbey and the publication of a message by His Majesty. As the position of Head of the Commonwealth has no formal powers at all, it is not subject to “advice” from the secretariat in the way that ministers advise their monarchs, and thus this is a rare opportunity for Charles to speak his own mind. Of course, the message is meant to broadly encompass all fifty-six-and-counting members of the organisation, so is still a poor venue for a determined diatribe about any particular one of them, so any comment about the defence of Canadian sovereignty must again be inferred rather than stated outright.
Sir Keir Starmer has been similarly cautious, Tweeting about “further deepening the UK-Canada relationship together” but not saying anything specific about what that would entail. It was also announced two days ago that the Department of National Defence had commissioned a fleet of new destroyers based on a British design, but this is likely unrelated to the state of relations with the White House.
Returning to more familiar territory, I notice that where the Commonwealth Day message has been quoted inphotographic form, the coat of arms in the letterhead is now the new Timothy Noad illustration with the Tudor crown. Said illustration has also now replaced the earlier versions on the royal website as well. As I noted to Sodacan, the change was done at some point in the morning of Wednesday 5th March.
The most surprising recent development in the past few days has been the launch of another royal podcast. Whereas Camilla has been patronising The Queen’s Reading Room (of which a podcast is but one part) for some years, Charles has only just announced The King’s Music Room (probably named that way for congruence with his wife’s project), but it has already generated a lot more headlines. The format is very different from the Reading Room, being very explicitly the product of a partnership with Apple and only available to their subscribers, among which I am not.
I wonder how long it took to get those signs printed.
International affairs continue to move at a dizzying pace. Far from being able to write comprehensive essays about events, it’s as much as I can do to keep up with the photographs being uploaded.
Shortly after meeting President Trump individually, Starmer, Macron, Zelenskyy and many other heads of government met at Lancaster House for an emergency summit on the Russia-Ukraine war. This was sometimes described in the press as a European leaders meeting, but that was not strictly true as it also included Justin Trudeau, a North American.
Back in D.C., Ambassador Mandelson has already caused a minor diplomatic row by airing a view on the Trump-Zelenskyy negotiations which contradicted British government policy.
The Downing Street Flickr account uploaded many photographs of Starmer’s bilateral meeting with Trump as well as of the conference he hosted. The White House also released photographs of the former and the European Commission of the latter. This presented a challenge for me when organising the files on Wikimedia Commons. For the scenes at the White House I decided to use “Trump-Starmer bilateral” for the American photographs and “Starmer-Trump bilateral” for the British ones. For the summit I put (UK pic) and (EC pic) in brackets. Further complicating matters is that London, Brussells and D.C. all sit in different time zones so that the meta-data on different cameras are inconsistent.
Following the meeting, Zelenskyy flew to the Sandringham estate for a meeting with His Majesty. Today Trudeau did the same. The choice of Sandringham for this part was confusing for three reasons:
Sandringham is a privately-owned property, yet clearly matters of state were being conducted.
The King’s main London residence at Clarence House is only a minute’s walk from where the summit took place, whereas the journey to Sandringham is over a hundred miles.
Sandringham is normally only used by the royal family from Christmas to early February, not into March.
Sadly, no government photographs of the royal meetings were taken, onlycommercial ones. Although this could be considered a private rather than an official visit (and certainly not a state one) I was a little disappointed that the Ukrainian president was not appointed an honorary GCB.
The presence of the Prime Minister of Canada at an otherwise-European conference may seem a little strange, but of course Canada is a nation directly adjacent at the opposite end of the main adversary, as well as bordering the United States. Among the proximate causes of this summit is that the latter, long considered the keystone of any global military policy, may now me as much an antagonist as Russia is.
Given the great affection in which Canada is held by the British public, as well as the long-standing cultural and constitutional links between the United Kingdom and its former dominion, many viewers expressed disappointment that Starmer, whether in his meeting with Trump or at the subsequent summit, did not explicitly push back against Trump’s threats of both economic and actual warfare against Canada, which they interpreted as indifference to attack on a senior Commonwealth partner. That our shared monarch did not comment on the matter either was also of grave concern.
The King, of course, can only make an official statement on such a politically-charged issue on the formal advice of his Canadian government. It is yet to be confirmed if any such advice was given at today’s meeting. I can only hope that when such a statement is made, it comes with the correct coat of arms to hammer the point home!
Then again, it is also worth remembering that we are only a week from Commonwealth Day, and with it the annual Commonwealth Message. As the position of Head of the Commonwealth is one which has no formal powers even in reserve, it is one from which His Majesty can speak without ministerial advice. While a dedicated diatribe in such an instance would be inappropriate, a coded reference or two would not go amiss.
In the past five days President Trump has in rapid succession hosted bilateral meetings at the White House with Emmanuel Macron, Sir Keir Starmer and Volodymyr Zelenskyy. I have not watched any of these events in full in order to write a proper political analysis – frankly, the small snippets I did see were already enough to leave me rocking in a corner – so am instead simply focusing on some aspects of government heraldry.
During a meeting in the oval office, Starmer gave Trump a letter from Charles III inviting him on a second state visit to the United Kingdom. The letter was marked “Private and Confidential”, yet presenting it in this way meant nearly all the words were caught on camera. I have copied out the text below (keeping the line breaks and punctuation the same) with equals signs representing the words that got obscured:
Dear Donald,
I just wanted to write and thank you for receiving====
in Washington so soon after your Inauguration. Given the====
breadth of challenges across the world, I can only think that====
of our two countries has a vital role to play in promoting and====
the values which matter so much to us all.
I remember with great fondness your visits to the United Kingdom
during your previous Presidency, and recall our nascent plan for you to
visit Dumfries House, in Scotland, as the global pandemic began and all
bets – and flights! – were off… I can only say that it would be a great
pleasure to extend that invitation once again, in the hope that you might at
some stage be visiting Turnberry and a detour to a relatively near
neighbour might not cause you too much inconvenience. An alternative
might perhaps be for you to visit Balmoral, if you are calling in at Menie.
There us much on both Estates which I think you might find interesting
and enjoy – particularly as my Foundation at Dumfries House provides
hospitality skills-training for young people who often end up as staff in
your own establishments!
Quite apart from this presenting an opportunity to discuss a wide
range of issues of mutual interest, it would also offer a valuable chance to
plan a historic second State Visit to the United Kingdom. As you will
====, this is unprecedented by a U.S. President. That is why I would find
it helpful for us to be able to discuss, together, a range of options for
location and programme content. In so doing, working together, I know
we will further enhance the special relationship between our two countries,
of which we are both so proud.
Yours Most Sincerely
Charles R
The letter is described as emanating from Buckingham Palace, and is topped by the familiar red outline of the British royal arms, still the old version with St Edward’s Crown.
On a related note, Starmer recently announced that, owing to the escalation of international military tensions, his government would be redirecting funds from international aid to defence. Anneliese Dodds, Minister of State for Development, resigned from the government in protest. The Prime Minister’s response to her resignation is published on Gov.UK as a PDF. His letterhead is the lesser version of the arms, again still using St Edward’s Crown.
One place (or rather a great many places) where the Tudor crown can now be seen in use is in the arms of Queen Camilla, as used by companies to which her royal warrant was granted late last year. The first example I’ve actually seen (through other heraldists pointing it out online, rather than in person) is Heaven Skincare, which proudly displays the warrant in the navigation bar of its website. Deborah Mitchell, the owner, Tweeted a photograph of the coat of arms on her branded packaging earlier today.
One of a great many images which I’ve recently requested be renamed
On Wikimedia Commons, unlike on the English (and some other) Wikipedias, moving a page from one title to another is not something any registered user can do. To rename an image file requires higher-than-standard access levels, which currently are held by under two thousand accounts.
Applying for these rights – or nominating someone else – turned out to be pretty simple. Another user, Shaan Sengupta, nominated me on the basis of how many requests I’d recently made for the renaming of British government Flickr photographs. This nomination was approved almost immediately. I was also – though this had not been requested – granted Autopatrol rights.
This present comes slightly late for my eleventh anniversary as an editor, but is welcome nonetheless.
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Robin Stanley Taylor 
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