Thread by @PennyRed

Right. So. The fact that the 'accessible' part of the Great Big Queen Queue has been permanently shut down should be getting way more attention. Here's why. Let me tell you a story from last night: #QueueForTheQueen

The idea behind the Accessible Queue is that the very old, sick or disabled people can 'pay their respects' without having to walk for 14 hours in the cold. There were limited, staggered time slots. Yesterday it was shut it down by lunchtime. So what did those people do?
>

What do you think they did? They Queued. Some of them had already travelled long distances and made a huge effort to get there. They gave it a go anyway. In my group, the oldest Queuer was 84, and quite frail, but he insisted on trying- it was that or go home. >

And he was not the only one. Not by a long way. Given that the Queueing demographic skews older anyway, that means that you have tens of thousands of really old and sick people doing a brutal march for fourteen hours with no stopping, no breaks to sit down. >

>We looked after our guy as best we could, but by hour 10, everyone was struggling. Just before the security gates, with an hour still to go, the stewards tried to make him leave the line. Not so he could skip ahead. They tried to make him go home.
But he insisted. >

The police might have physically stopped him, but only if they could find something to arrest him for. And he kept on walking. By this time it was 2am, and he was really struggling. >

Some of the women in our group pleaded with the stewards to make an exception. People around us who had had very strong feelings about Queue jumpers earlier were totally okay with this- he was so close, of course he had to get his chance to finish! >

Eventually they let him and his wife leave, and we saw them ushered ahead- but I don't know if they made it. I really hope they are both okay.
Let me stress that doing the Queue, at its peak, was a serious physical challenge. I'm 35 and in good shape and all of me hurts today.

I cannot believe that with all the planning that went into this- plans that have been in the works for years- nobody would have clocked how many of the people who most wanted to do this would physically need to 'queuejump'. Or the consequences if that system broke down. >

I worry that people are out there right now suffering serious or permanent damage because more thought went into making sure the mourners didn't leave flowers somewhere inappropriate than went into looking after everyone else in the late Queen's age group.

Bear in mind that hundreds of people have collapsed or fainted and needed to be treated by paramedics since this all began. Dozens have been taken to hospital. I imagine the overlap between those critical cases and 'people who should have been in the Accessible Queue' was HIGH.