To be edging towards an anti-Monarchy position purely because of the Cambridges?

[Buxhoeveden]

As a couple they are starting to grate.

Is it too early to focus on them?

Yes but there's a difference between doing that for one person and doing it for their extended family.

This is from the CourtCircular - all of Kate's appearances in 2015

15 Jan -visitied Clove Duffield Art Room
16 Jan - visited Fostering Network
19 Jan - Opened Kensington Aldridge Academy and Leisure Centre
10 Feb - visit to Bethlem and Maudsley Hospital
11 Feb - attended a Reception for Palliative Care Programme
12 Feb - Ben Ainslie Racing Office visit
18 Feb - Visit to Emma Bridgewater Factory
24 Feb - Chairman's Dinner
25 Feb - Went to National Portrait Gallery
9 March - Commonwealth Day Observance
11 March - visited Turner Contemporary Rendezvous
12 March - watched the production of Downton Abbey
13 March - Service to mark the end of Combat Operations in Afghanistan
17 March - Presenting a shamrock to Irish Guards
18 March - Home-Start Children's Centre
27 March - Visit to Stephen Lawrence Centre
2 May- Gave birth!
5 July- Baptism of Charlotte
26 July - America's Cup World Series in Portsmouth

not all that much really!

I also think it is ridiculous to say that someone doing some charity work and with a full-scale personal staff works very hard. I doubt very much that Kate is doing her family's laundry, cooking, toilet-cleaning, hoovering, food shopping, dish-washing or personal admin. She gets to do the mothering part without the never-ending graft of tidying up after the little buggers - I'm sure she does get the disturbed nights etc, but having a nanny means if she wants to have a nap the next day she can knock herself out. She gets chauffeur-driven everywhere - no struggling with a pram and a toddler on the bus, or trying to find a parking space. If Prince George has eg riding lessons, someone will drive him there. I imagine the dentist and doctor come to him. She's also not short of a few bob - she's not exactly on SMP, despite her allegedly being on maternity leave. Best maternity pay in the country for very little personal effort.

she basically had three pages of engagements this year, for comparison, the Queen has had SEVENTEEN!

William 5
Harry 4
Charles 17
Camilla 10
Andrew 10

Some might say William and Harry are slackers...

Court Circular

Even the Duchess of Gloucester does more than them... :/

I'm sure the Queen isn't beyond hoiking her royal bosom at family members who aren't putting enough ribbon cutting hours in.

I'm not so sure. She is extremely indulgent of her offspring and grandchildren, though in the way of her class and generation.

That's her prerogative to a personal extent, but it's also a big part of the reason why many of her subjects don't like them.

I suspect she thinks it's none of our business what she or her family do and they follow suit.

I am surprised she has not made one or two charities her own.

Diana is synonymous with AIDS and landmines, but she also supported the homeless, many charities for the disabled and also had a connection with children's charities.

For championing people with AIDS and for her work on land mines, Diana was a true trail blazer. But Catherine does not even have to go down the controversial, trail blazing route. She could focus on children and specifically those children with disabilities and really make a difference.

Kate has gone for an anti-bullying charity, hasn't she? I can't remember whether she's a permanent patron or it was a one-off.

It did make me smile because it was after a long spate of stories from ex-classmates who slated her during her Waity Katie years.

Diana collected charities like stamps in her pursuit of sainthood.

And then she broke free of Charles - fine - but she jettisoned scores of them leaving them bereft - quite shitty, really. You don't pick someone up to make yourself look good and then drop them.

I hold no brief for Kate - beyond thinking she has nice hair - but it's wiser to choose causes that you are interested in. She might not be interested in the sick or other people's children.

Diana hugged a child with AIDS in 1989. Given how frightened people were of AIDS at that time, it was an extraordinary thing to do.
She also disliked Jimmy Saville intensely when others within the royal family and political world embraced him as a close friend.

As I get older, I go off the whole monarchy more & more. I'm positively racing towards republicanism now.

I think this must have something to do with the younger generations: as much as I dislike HMQ and her oaf of a husband, and despise their unearned wealth, she does do what it says on the tin. Diana was a total anomaly; Anne's OK because she doesn't milk it; all the others seem bumped-up, greedy, arrogant and much too expensive.

The Cambridges seem to have slotted into a celebrity style of royalty - get photographed a lot, look good, take the money and answer to no-one. It's immensely irritating.

I'd quite like them to have to give everything back to the nation and be paid a nice big salary for the job of "being a royal". And get fired if they fuck it up.

"Kate tried to do without a nanny for George but had to relent."

So what?

She can be as hands on a parent as she wants even with a nanny!

I just don't get the unquestioning adoration of the royal family from a significant proportion of the population. In this day and age how is it ok for one family to be deemed better than everyone else simply by dint of their birth? It goes against all democratic principles. I don't see why people can't see this. This is the most important argument against the monarchy for me - irrelevant of the individual personalities and how hardworking or not they are.

If you start to pull apart the other arguments for the royal family though then they just don't hold water. The one about them being a big draw for tourists in particular is just nonsense. If anyone bothered checking the Visit England website for example they'd see that the only 'royal' tourist attraction that featured in their most recent top 50 of the most popular attractions in England was the Tower of London. Hardly a great draw for tourists then. Windsor Castle, an inhabited royal residence open to the public, doesn't even feature on the list.

There are plenty of countries that don't have a royal family or that no longer have a royal family and they still have an incredible draw for tourists so it's nonsense to think that abolishing the royal family would mean this lucrative market (which doesn't actually exist) would just dry up. It's also a shame that people can't see what a great country we live in and cant accept that there are much more attractive things to tourists than a royal family.

I don't care that they 'only' cost 56p or 67p or whatever the latest figure being bandied about is. It may only be pennies per annum but when that is added up per head of the population per annum it runs into millions and over the years it quickly runs into billions. Shocking if you ask me. I would much rather that money went to funding cancer research, building hospitals or helping all the families struggling to make ends meet than the royals.

So back to the original question...OP YANBU to start questioning the validity of the royal family but I do think YABU to question it based on the actions of a couple of individuals from that family when IMO the whole thing stinks

limitedperiodonly
I quite agree, she might not be interested in "other people's children". I was only giving an example of something uncontroversial she could do real work and have real impact on.

If she cannot find any charity she has feeling for, she is to be pitied.

The royals do earn their own wealth even if they stopped being royal they wpuld still be the wealthiest family in the world. The cost on the tax payer is covered by the queen nd her income tax as a country we would be worse off if we got rid of them and she decided to take her wealth overseas.

Also some families are better than others and have access to better opportunities due to location wealth and education. There are jobs the vast majority of people could never get due to not knowing the right people of having enough money or education and thats part of life

Here are her charities:

The Duchess of Cambridge works in support of organisations which reflect her personal charitable and philanthropic interests. She does this though her own charity, The Royal Foundation of The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and Prince Harry, and through supporting other charities by promoting their work as their Royal patron.

The Royal Foundation:

The Duchess of Cambridge together with her husband and brother-in-law established The Royal Foundation of The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and Prince Harry in 2011, which they intend to use as the main vehicle for their philanthropic activities. The Royal Foundation has three main areas of early focus, which are supporting the Armed Forces, Conservation and Young People.

The Duchess of Cambridge works with her Foundation to establish projects which reflect her own charitable aims. For exmaple, in 2013, The Duchess of Cambridge launched M-PACT Plus is a major initiative to provide support at a young age for children whose parents and families are affected by parental drug and alcohol misuse. Created and funded by Comic Relief and The Royal Foundation, the project focuses on a partnership between two charities of which The Duchess is patron, Place2Be and Action on Addiction.

More information is available at www.royalfoundation.com

Royal Patronages

Additionally, The Duchess of Cambridge holds a number of charitable patronages, which complement the work of her Foundation.

Patron of Action on Addiction (from 5/1/2012)
Royal Patron of East Anglia’s Children’s Hospices (from 5/1/2012)
Royal Patron of The Art Room (from 5/1/2012)
Patron of the The National Portrait Gallery, London (from 5/1/2012)
Patron of Place2Be (from 19/4/2013)
Patron of SportsAid (from 19/4/2013)
Patron of The Natural History Museum (from 19/4/2013)
Patron of the 1851 Trust (from 13/10/2014)
In addition, The Duchess of Cambridge is a volunteer in the Scout Association, and has volunteered time privately with groups in North Wales and elsewhere as opportunities arise.

I'm really at some of this discussion. I'm naturally a republican, always have been, but recognising that it's unlikely to happen any time soon (certainly not while the Queen's alive), I think there are better, more winnable battles to fight, so keep it in its box for now.

But I think the RF are as much the victims of the situation as anyone. Yes, they may benefit a great deal financially, but it's at an unimaginable personal cost.

What 'whingeing' has William done? I've not noticed this. I don't understand why people are so angry about the mother of a three month old baby taking the time to recover from the birth and bond with her baby. Has nobody considered the possibility that she might be BF'ing and find it hard to spend more than a few hours away from the baby? I don't see why she shouldn't be allowed to watch the odd tennis match or partake in a bit of scuba diving. I used the opportunity of maternity leave to do a few things - and take a few holidays - because I knew that there wouldn't be time when I went back to work.

And I really don't understand what on earth the Middletons have done to attract the appalling viciousness that they seem to provoke. Seriously! I'm extremely impressed by Carole and would hope that I'm as good a mum to my children as she has been to hers. I think she's amazing.

She could be Patron of eleventy billion charities, it still doesn't translate into a decent number of royal engagements (which are abysmal). She is young, fit and healthy - something that Prince Philip isn't, and he still manages to outdo her on the number of actual work days by miles though whether or not he should be allowed out alone to open his big mouth is debateable. She has never, ever demonstrated a strong work ethic - so I don't suppose she should be any different now.

I'm not a massive fan of the Cambridges, but I thought that photography thing was awful. The paps were actually taking children with them to get them to play with them so they could get pictures. How awful is that? Exploiting a child so you can get pictures. And poor George, feeling like he can never play with other kids for fear they're just baiting him. It's awful people will stoop that low.

Treats - because she has never shown herself to be a worker. If she'd done a similar number of engagements as the other seniors then I think there would be more sympathy for her 'maternity leave' (which seems to involve plenty of time away from breastfeeding in order to attend non 'work' things)

She's had two extremely difficult pregnancies in three years and has two very young children to look after. Given how many other members of the Royal Family there are, I'm not surprised that they've allowed her to 'slack off'.

All these engagements they do are just 'make work' anyhow - nobody suffers if they don't do them. And it really doesn't matter how much "work" she did beforehand - given how young her children are, I think it's a good choice of priorities to be spending her time with them instead of chasing round the country at endless ribbon-cuttings and small talk making.

Treats I admire Carole Middleton too. And her husband. They seem like nice people who have grafted and have a lovely bond with their kids. They seem to have made a success of both home and business and marriage and fair fucks to them for it.

But their kids....James is an entrepreneur who makes losses every bloody year, Pippa is.....doing god knows what these days, tbh, and Kate has taken it bloody easy since the day she left college.

They don't even have to pay rent! James and Pippa still live in that Chelsea flat Daddy bought years ago (and good job he did too!).

It seems to be 2nd-Generation-wealth-laziness.

But I disagree that Royal patronage is meaningless. Its fair to say that the charities popular royals pick can get a huge bump in public profile, and I've heard that donations improve significantly after they get a report in the papers about a Royal visit.

I'm shocked that the personalised marshmallow business hasn't made James Middleton a multi millionaire yet.

Shocked I tell ya.

Treats - and many other women have difficult pregnancies that they work through. Her Nanny and her Mum look after the children to allow her to go off on holiday and attend various functions etc - she's just not someone who has ever worked, which is why there is not much sympathy for her need for more time off under the guise of maternity leave. She's perfectly able to work - she simply chooses not to.

Personalised what??!