Aberfan

The Crown: Queen Elizabeth's popularity at her death could lead to a favourable depiction of her least flattering moment

Retrieved on: 
Tuesday, November 7, 2023
Diamond, Grief, Platinum Jubilee of Elizabeth II, Ipsos, The Crown, Time, Mining, Survivor, Life, Aberfan, Diana, Princess of Wales, Grenfell, Interview, The Queen, Buckingham Palace, COVID, 2012 Olympic Marathon Course, Platinum jubilee, Noise, Death, Monarchy of the United Kingdom, Film industry, Entertainment, Crown, Queen

In this controversial interview, Diana said:

Key Points: 
  • In this controversial interview, Diana said:
    I don’t think many people will want me to be queen.
  • Diana, now no longer in line to be Queen of England, resolved instead to be “queen of people’s hearts”.
  • Nonetheless, the following year Ipsos recorded a temporary drop in satisfaction with the queen from 75% in 1992 to 66%.
  • Supported by her popularity at her death, it will likely present the queen’s inaction in 1997 as a temporary misjudgement in a long life of public service.

A rebounding monarch

  • This was partly due to a succession of milestones which encouraged public celebration of the royal family and its matriarch.
  • These include the royal weddings of 2011 and 2018, the televised christening of Prince George (2013) (the so-called “republican slayer”), and the queen’s Diamond (2012) and Platinum Jubilees.
  • These fond cultural memories will form a vital counterpart to The Crown’s treatment of the queen’s brief fall from grace.

A nation grieves

  • The phenomenon of collective grief suggests that she may have stood, for some, for our own pandemic losses.
  • While mourning Diana as “the people’s Princess”, the series will likely end with Queen Elizabeth as the ultimate queen of hearts.


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Bethany Layne does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

A combination of social, organizational and technical factors caused the Titan's implosion

Retrieved on: 
Thursday, July 6, 2023
Deep sea, Technology, Advertising, Travel, Pacific Northwest, Failure, Tourism, Accident, Culture, Turner, Disaster, Nuclear energy, Aberfan, Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station, Risk, Ethics, Coal mining, Knowledge, Hand, Death, Titanic, Safety, Insurance, Demolition, Risk management, Renewable energy, Titan

But perhaps the OceanGate Titan submersible craft was doomed from the start.

Key Points: 
  • But perhaps the OceanGate Titan submersible craft was doomed from the start.
  • Given the disaster, it is surprising that the advertising web pages for future Titanic excursions have not yet been taken down.
  • Perhaps, it is reflective of a rapidly evolving situation with a company in crisis.

Reasons for failure

    • Concepts explaining the Titan’s failure can be traced back to ideas developed 45 years ago.
    • Barry Turner, an organizational sociologist and safety pioneer, studied long-forgotten disasters.

Normal accidents

    • An accident, then, could be considered an inevitable — normal — outcome.
    • Perrow sought to establish a basis for understanding why accidents will happen involving high-risk systems that someone has decided we cannot live without.
    • Accidents due to manned exploration of a treacherous 111-year-old shipwreck site, while tragic, are limited to direct participants.

High-reliability organizations

    • Dangers of normal accidents were balanced against the safety culture of high-reliability organizations.
    • In supporting the safe management of complex technologies, high-reliability organizations emerged.
    • Notwithstanding rare exceptions resulting in disasters like Chernobyl or Fukushima, nuclear power plant operators are high-reliability organizations.

Acknowledging complexity

    • They accept that the tasks at hand are complex, with a real potential to fail in new unexpected ways.
    • Photographs of the interior of the ill-fated Titan submersible show bare walls with no resemblance to a stereotypical cockpit with its bells and whistles.

A wake-up call

    • If not doing so at present, these companies should mimic the organizational culture of high-reliability organizations.
    • Read more:
      What was the 'catastrophic implosion' of the Titan submersible?