Palace guard loses his cool

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These are real soldiers however in these regiments they do both active duty (usually aboard like Afghanistan) and ceremonial duty in both instances they are armed. However ceremonial is not really security. If you think that standing perfectly still in a box is good security then you are very much mistaken. There have other security besides this for these buildings and the royal have the royal protection force, which is part of the met police.

Ceremonial duty is just part of the discipline of being in these regiments.

I think that the traditional guards at London palaces should be replaced with armed soldiers. According to my college Spanish teacher, the Palacio Real (Spanish equivalent of Buckingham, it's where King Juan Carlos lives) as well as other places like the main court, are guarded by army troops with submachine guns, and they DO mean business, and will not hesitate to point their guns at anyone. Spain has had decades of experience with homegrown terror, so they wisely junked tradition and went for the jugular. I'm surprised that Britain, with all the grief that the IRA gave them, hadn't replaced the traditional guards with real soldiers ages ago.

Since 9-11 the US Capitol and the White House have been guarded by Marines, and they do not let tourists anywhere near them, they don't even do tours anymore, the tourists have to look at the buildings from raised bulletproof platforms a half mile away, and all purses are confiscated and all pockets emptied lest any terrorist think of drawing diagrams. Downtown Washington has so many barricades and blast walls it's more like Baghdad. Some people here may remember when President Clinton closed Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the WH a dozen years ago, and bicyclists and rollerbladers glided by past the WH fence. Well, NOBODY except the Marines are allowed there anymore.

Rumor is they've made it so that the Capitol-WH area could function as a Green Zone during mass chaos in the US, the politicians would bed down in the basement of the Capitol and food would be helicoptered in. Self-contained power and water supplies and everything. The UK needs to get serious about guarding the royals and can those guards in favor of REAL guards, soldiers in uniform with guns who mean business. The tourists tend to forget that those guys have a real job to do. With real Marines, I assume that mistake would not occur.

Do those security guard do anything besides just stand there all day in that silly outfit? Are they forced to wear that silly hat for tourists to see? I don't see the point in the hat. Do they only guard the royal family home? Where does the royal family even get their money? I'm hoping British citizens aren't paying taxes to fund the royal family lifestyle. Does the royal family even do anything worthwhile?

i'm by no means a royalist, but to say that the 'Firm' don't do anything; stop and think about the tourist revenue they attract, in fct even the dead ones attract tourist revenue.

i can't lay into our colonial cousins about their lack of appreciation about tradition as they have none to speak of so this would be a bit of a one sided debate.

with regard to the guardsman taking a punt at the tourist; the guy deserved it. He was taking the p*ss because he thought that the guard could do nothing, he guessed wrong.

these guys do a real job overseas ( and i don't want to enter into a debate about government policy) that most people wouldnot/could not do.

with troops being killed on a regular basis the tourists behaviour is offensive to families who have lost someone and must raise Q's with serving troops like, why bother?.

to make an analogy; if i went to NY and started sledging the NYFD as having been onto a good earner with regards 9/11 and OT payments, i don't expect i'd be standing up too long.

so i suggest people here stop their whining from the comfort of their desktops and pay a bit of due respect. if you can't do that have wit and sense to keep your opinins to yourself.