A genuine question for royalists.

@Ukisgaslit Good posts.

@Ukisgaslit Thanks for the clarifications, and I agree that the obfuscation is unreal and exactly what they want us to believe.

Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practise to deceive"

Btw @waitamo the crown estates are not in royal hands - they do not own them . I agree the name is v misleading and needs changed

All the proceeds previously went to the state -and the Windsors got their hand out from an agreed amount after a parliamentary debate - this was the civil list.

Then the Tories - Cameron and Osbourne - changed the funding model after years of campaigning for this from Elizabeth ans Charles - and called it the Sovereign grant ( and made a rule that the amount can never go down !) .

Confused royalists will sometimes claim that the Windsors are generously ‘sharing’ their wealth with the tax payer ! Just as the Windsors hoped they’d think .

@waitamo

Thats not a new or revolutionary idea - even the Duchys are not theirs ! The Duchys are a medieval rip off which needs to stop now . I started a thread about this when the channel 4 programme exposing the abuses came out .

Royalists say there are other dukedoms . That’s their defence. What they don’t tell you is only the Windsor 2 are above the law and do not have to pay tax . As I’ve repeatedly stated Charles offered some tax - around 20% some estimates say - but only on what he chose to declare . He tried to get his mistress’s household expenses through as tax exempt .
William is even worse and has refused to reveal how much tax he pays ( neither pay capital gains or corporation tax )

So yes make the Duchys properly part of the Crown estate - and call it what it is the National estate .
By the way the Duchy rip off was debated by MPs over 100 years ago ! This is not new

I guarantee it would be extremely popular with voters

Slightly tongue in cheek, but why not remove all the Duchies and Crown Estates from Royal hands, and give an allowance to the Monarch for being HOS. That way there'd be none of this % of the profits justification, and the NHS could park their ambulances there as part of the cost of running the NHS, not as rental income to the RF.

Go on, take it all away, leave them with an official residence and a generous enough HOS allowance (which is how it works re other elected Heads of State) and see what the reaction is. I think if it was floated to the taxpayers it might get some traction.

But Communism.... lol 😊

For gods sake - politicians could easily be excluded .
A president - if we wanted one- would have no power and would not be able to accumulate billions off our backs

The Windsors have a great deal of secret power - they influence laws , exclude themselves from laws , they do not pay tax - only voluntarily and only on income that they select to offer a bit of tax on. William has stopped doing even that ! He’s more a raging despot than Charles despite all his talk of being a zoom king .
Their wills are sealed for one reason only - to hide their immense wealth and secret children.

Andrew’s behaviour and sealed documents shows how much power the Windsors have. And he’s not the only Windsor with questions to answer - Charles housed Peter Ball AFTER he has been convicted . Saville was reputedly brought into the royal circle by Mountbatten .

The monarchy in the UK is a sleazy disgrace .
Lets start with cleaning it up and see what’s left ( nothing I predict )

But if we have a President, it wouldn’t even have to be a former PM, anyone would be allowed to stand. We could easily end up with President Farage, perish the thought!

Rishi Sunak was awesome, but I really did like Boris on most things. Not everything, but most things.

I think that's a bit like saying in hindsight the luke-warm soup starter was ok because the main came out burnt to a cinder.

Nope.

Apart from being an adulturer; and turning a blind eye to parties at No 10 when the rest of us were being asked to isolate ...yeah, great.

Boris was alright

Because the alternative is a Trump, a Boris Johnson or worse....

1. Yes they are taxpayer supported but the sovereign grant is always less than the money HM Treasury receives from the crown estates.

2. so the NHS shouldn't face costs? If the NHS wanted to rent a warehouse from a private owner it should just be free because "clap clap we are the NHS".

@SoSoLongThat's exactly what they want you to think.

"No incentive to grab as much as they can before they are voted off", well I'm afraid the exact opposite is the case.

They can't get voted off, they make deals with the government precisely to grab as much as they can for all eternity. Look up the sovereign grant, if you can bear to look.

But that's also true of the royal family. Not one of them has avoided having a whiff of scandal and corruption attached to them.

And yet when Parliament pushed theirs too far, the monarch signally failed to act.

Ok @CatHairEveryWhereNow

I’ve just looked up a few of the countries you list as being particularly democratic
It is to do with their VOTING system and nothing to do with a few having a monarchy clinging on !

Its PR or multiple local assemblies and nothing at all to do with the remaining bicycling monarchies - much as pro royalists try to spin that line

@CatHairEveryWhereNow

These sweeping comparisons with ‘constitutional monarchies’ in Europe are really irrelevant re the UK and a bit of a distraction .

European monarchies keep their head down, cost substantially less ( even when viewed pro rata to population) than ours and most importantly of all , they are subservient to Parliament .
The fact that we persist with the medieval joke of a coronation is significant. William doesn’t even believe and is certainly not religious - I don’t think he will even have a coronation which would help .

We are told the Windsors have no power but that’s a lie . A lie proven by recent events . Andrew was and remains above the law - nervermind what else is being covered up .

No- the main reason Ireland and Norway are listed is probably due to their electoral system -I believe both countries use PR voting .

The fact is the UK in 2025 looks ( and is in my opinion ) backwards looking , hidebound and embarrassing.
You want a suggestion?
Stop the rip off of the Soverign grant that the tortes brought in after years of campaigning by Elizabeth and Charles and return to the Civil List with its annual Parliamentary debate. That could be done tomorrow .
The Windsors hated that debate . That’s all you need to know .

Also easily achieved would be the medieval rip off of William and Charles’ Duchies taken off them and folded into the crowd estates. .Also rename the crown estate ‘the national estate’

As for longer term - if we retain the Windsors - I doubt we will btw- they pay all taxes including back dated inheritance taxes and have a fixed salary as a president would.
Most people might be happy with those reforms
Problem is the Windsors wouldn’t be and would remove themselves - and stuff your ‘heritage’

Sorry, but what had that got to do with anything? Putin is fixing elections, North Korea is a dictatorship, postman pat has a black and white cat, Andrew Mountbatten whatever is a rapist…

But they don't have any real power OP

Not wishing ill on anyone, but I do wonder if the country might not be better off, were some terrible stroke of fate to cause the line of succession to take a side-step.

I would not prefer Harry or Andrew - and frankly wouldn't wish it on any of the kids till they reach adulthood.

We have in past skipped over 50 +people with Hannovians and we did side step Edward VIII and got the much better George VI. So not against it but not sure who you have your eye on as a stand out candidate.

It is the downside to monarchy we have were succesion is set - it wasn't always as clear cut - but act of succsion could be change by Parliment - they don't have to go down direct line they could do anything with it really - it's already been recently modified to stop prioritizing boys/men.

That why I'd want to know what the new system would be - there are downsides to this one - and upsides so is any new system would have to be better because there will be a price for the change.

If look at the deomocatic index:

Top ten are Norway, New Zealand, Sweeden, Iceland, Switzerland, Finland,Denmark, Ireland, Netherlands and Luxembourg.

Norway is constitutional democracy with a consitional monarchy. UK is at 17th in world still considered a full democratic system . USA is at 28th - consider a flawed democracy even France has now slipped into being veiwed as a flawed democracy by the Enconomicts group.

So Ireland, Iceland, Switzwrland and Finland all republics would be worth a look - absolutely not the USA system and probably not France as we don't want something worse than current UK. The rest of the top ten have constitional monacharies or with Luxembourg a Grand Duke but similar set up. I don't want changes that would make us less democratic and that's clearly a risk.

Much as it's a daft system to still have in 2025 it's still a stable one that many of the most democratic governments in the world still have - so if we do want to get rid of UK Monarchy I'd want a better reason that I don't like it or it's not fair.

Plus I'd want to know why we'd spend time and money doing it now when there a huge backpile of issues in UK that could do with attention and money. If we spend money in courts working how who owns what and poltcial energy fighting on what we put in to replace current sytsem - that time and money not spent on education, health, infrastructure/housing or defence all of which kind of feel more important to most voters.

If republican were serious they'd put forwards actual plans and explain to voters why it's a better system - why it was worth the cost. Instead they just moan about RF - who aren't great but are mostly irrelvant or could be contained better by politicians who don't have to keep granting them or crown exemptions - they could say no and likely would have public on side.

I think we need a public information campaign about why the Magna Carta isn’t a valid argument for anything in the 21st century.

Or of the king who had his head chopped off…