Let’s party for our wonderful Queen

The Queen was 90 years old on April 21 and has been on the throne for 64 of those years.

She is the longest-reigning monarch in British history, served by 12 Prime Ministers, including one (David Cameron) who was born after she came to the throne! For the majority of us, there has been no other monarch.

As this year confirms, the weather in April can be unpredictable. The celebrations of Her Majesty’s 90th birthday were therefore delayed until the weekend of her official birthday, June 10-12.

The programme will include a Service of Thanksgiving in St Paul’s Cathedral on Friday, June 10, which is also the Duke of Edinburgh’s 95th birthday.

On Saturday, the Queen will take the salute at her birthday parade in London.

The Patron’s Lunch will take place in The Mall and in St James’s Park on Sunday. Among the 10,000 people attending, the Queen has invited 600 volunteers from organisations that have been awarded The Queen’s Award for Voluntary Service (QAVS).

The eight lucky people from Kent will be from Demelza Hospice Care for Children, Wealden Sailability, The Young Lives Foundation and Rainham Bereavement Friendship Group.

In line with the Queen’s wishes, Kent will be holding street and village parties and I hope as many people as possible will join in. In my local village, the tickets sold out in two days! The purpose of our parties in Kent is to bring our communities together and celebrate with Her Majesty and drink to her health while wishing her every happiness. I should like to thank the many people who have organised lunches for all their hard work, including local authorities, parish councils, local committees and my Deputy Lieutenants.

Kent has a proud tradition of cohesiveness within our neighbourhoods, in good times and bad. On June 12, let us pray for to the BBC website, if a party then successfully campaigned on a new EU promise, that government could claim that their election mandate overrules the referendum.

Such a challenge to our democracy, combined with further lingering economic uncertainty, would be very serious. I implore you to ignore negative campaigns, focus upon authoritative unbiased reporting and ensure you use your valuable referendum vote for the sake of future generations.