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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

AIBU to loathe the Royal Family

401 replies

InWinoVeritas · 21/04/2017 18:29

The way the media is so gushing about everything Wills, Kate and Harry do, just been watching the evening news, there is a story about Wills and Kate doing a radio broadcast, makes me want to vomit..
And the issues about mental health - really? Do we need Royal 'endorsement' just to get more funding?

OP posts:
Want2bSupermum · 22/04/2017 01:54

Duchess talking about the transition to parenthood was very valid IMO. She had just given birth and was expected to walk out of the hospital the next day to waiting photographers. Those pictures went global. Here in NYC it was the major tv stations talked about for a week. No first time mother is going to waltz through that amount of pressure. On day two I was still on bed rest and hadn't showered in 3 days.

Pinkandwhiteblossoms · 22/04/2017 06:44

Do you really think your experience of giving birth and Kate's experience were in any way comparable though, Want2?

Kate will have had the very best medical care and attention: no worries there about flagging down a busy midwife, about trying to get some sleep in a ward afterwards with other people's babies crying all night, about getting a GP appointment when one of the children were ill. That's something going above and beyond money - even wealthy 'ordinary' people can't control this.

Re "wasting time loathing" - it misses the point. The role is being objected to, not the individuals who are born or married into that role. William and Harry - and George and Charlotte (and Kate) will have, have always had, the full power of the state to ensure that they are safe, happy and well, with the best of everything. For everybody else, has everyone has been vicariously complaining about since the announcement of the GE in June, it's cuts, cuts and more cuts.

No one is suggesting regicide or sticking the heads of William and Kate on spikes outside the Houses of Parliament. But it's living in a delusional bubble for them to somehow claim any common ground with the hoi polloi. The world is filled with thirtysomething women and men who lost their mother in their teens. Yes, it's very sad, but they do still have their father and grandmother alive FFS! They were hardly cast out to struggle through adolescence unsupported and alone and unwanted.

The idea that we are in some way interlinked with them, have things in common with them - they suffer from mental illness! They had a baby! They ... uh, George watches Peppa Pig - is nonsense. And in this instance it's patronising nonsense.

icanteven · 22/04/2017 07:05

I strongly oppose the monarch as a concept, and therefore think that the Royal Family should be stripped of all of their responsibilities and state funding.

In the interim, if William and Harry are actually DOING something with their time and raising awareness, then good for them. It's more than their parent's generation of royals did.

HOWEVER.

HUGE BUT.

The Tories have stripped funding for mental health support. William and Harry stepping in with this campaign to raise money and awareness for mental health support effectively takes the pressure OFF the government to provide for the people who need these resources most, and are deflecting our attention and outrage from where it should be - government cuts.

The Princes should not be raising this money/awareness. They should be pointing to the government and asking why the funding has be removed to the extent that huge funding drives are necessary in the first place.

Abraiid2 · 22/04/2017 07:09

In the interim, if William and Harry are actually DOING something with their time and raising awareness, then good for them. It's more than their parent's generation of royals did.

I'm no fan of Charles and Diana but this isn't true. Diana and AIDs and land mines? Charles and the environment?

LapinR0se · 22/04/2017 07:10

I find it a bit toe-curling that they are advocating for mental health while Kate says nothing about her very obvious eating disorder

LateDad · 22/04/2017 07:13

I'd rather not have a president: We might get a Donald Trump.

purplecoathanger · 22/04/2017 07:15

I'm torn really. I quite like the new royals tbh but I also dislike the idea that the lot of them are so privileged when everyday families struggle.

Otoh, raising mental health as something to be talked about can only be a good thing.

purplecoathanger · 22/04/2017 07:17

Where's the evidence that Kate has an eating disorder? Yes she's slim but she looks extremely fit and healthy to me.

Ankleswingers · 22/04/2017 07:18
Biscuit
user1471545174 · 22/04/2017 07:18

I don't think Kate has an eating disorder. She has that racehorse look that oodles of posh women have. She's sporty af too.

carabos · 22/04/2017 07:20

I'm a republican and would like to see the monarchy end when HMQ dies. I think Charles should be a sort of transitional head of state while the details are worked out and we move to a presidential system.

As to the individuals, I don't believe for one minute that William actually wants to be King and it would be a kindness to relieve him and his children of that burden. I imagine that as people, some of the royals are ok, some lovely and some awful, just like the rest of us, but it's not about them as people, it's about the institution.

tabbymog · 22/04/2017 07:41

I feel sorry for them in a way. They're born into something they feel they can't escape from, a solid gold, diamond encrusted prison. They have no choice as to what they might want to do with their lives. What the Universal Declaration of Human Rights says about freedom doesn't apply to them. I was afraid for Harry that he might end up like Prince Andrew, who had to leave the military, where he served in wartime and is regarded as a hero by the people he rescued, when he was 38 and wasn't eligible to apply for a permanent (career) commission because he doesn't have a degree. He had to find something else to do when he had no qualifications for anything else.

At least Harry has given himself a chance of making something better of his life even though he is still so very restricted. I applaud him for speaking out about mental health issues but it's a shame that it takes someone in his position to get it noticed more. It's noticeable though that no-one in government has said anything substantial about him doing so.

Prince Charles once said that he'd like to be a farmer in Italy. All that takes is money, which he has plenty of. After his grandmother died he could have done that, easily. Yes there would have been a furore but everyone would have got over it and secretly been envious of him for achieving what he really wanted. Should anyone really be made to live a life they never asked for and don't want, just because of an accident of birth? I think this country should be a republic; if it were would you vote for Prince Charles for President?

I don't hate them, I just wish they'd go away. There shouldn't be another monarch after this one, this is the right time for this country to become a republic.

AwaywiththePixies27 · 22/04/2017 07:45

The Princes should not be raising this money/awareness. They should be pointing to the government and asking why the funding has be removed to the extent that huge funding drives are necessary in the first place.

But as a Royal they can't can they? The Queen has to remain neutral politically and I assume so do the Princes given they're in line to the throne too.

They're highlighting it without breaking protocol as it were. It's the politicians jobs to highlight the cuts in mental health. Not the Princes who are doing all they can do without treading on any metaphorical toes.

WilburIsSomePig · 22/04/2017 07:45

You can 'hate' who you like I suppose. I do think it's odd to hate a whole family of people that you've never met and don't know but that's up to you.

AwaywiththePixies27 · 22/04/2017 07:48

I find it a bit toe-curling that they are advocating for mental health while Kate says nothing about her very obvious eating disorder

So because she's slim she obviously has an eating disorder. Confused

ArsenalsPlayingAtHome · 22/04/2017 07:52

IMHO she does look like she might have an eating disorder, I certainly wouldn't be surprised. She doesn't look especially healthy to me - very drawn in fact, like her skin is stretched too tightly over her face. But who knows? None of us, that's for sure.

noschooll4mee · 22/04/2017 07:56

YANBU

Chavelita · 22/04/2017 07:59

Someone makes the same, ridiculous point every time someone starts a thread about abolishing the monarchy, confusing the roles of prime minister/US president with a UK elected head of state -- 'ooh, I'd hate a President, we night get Tony Blair/Donald Trump!'

If the UK became a republic, there would be a discussion on what the role of an elected head of state would be, powers, salary, eligibility. And as, unlike the US, we have a Prime minister, it would be likely that a president would be a only figurehead with a mostly ceremonial role, therefore of no interest to power-seeking career politicians.

And the point is, you get to vote on who is elected, anyway, unlike the monarchy.

DonaldStott · 22/04/2017 08:01

I hate the concept of the monarchy. It is archaic, elitist, unfair and immoral.

I can't dislike them as individuals, but I also think it's bollocks that they 'work hard'.

Working hard is a 12 hr shift with no breaks as a nurse on shitty wages.

Hard work is on your feet, working in a factory for 10hrs a day

Hard work is not being dressed by a designer, chauffeured to an appointment. Giving a speech that was written for you. Shaking a few commoners hands, and being chauffered back to your multi million pound home paid for by the state.

AwaywiththePixies27 · 22/04/2017 08:05

My DS is very sporty and is as thin as a rake. He eats like a bloody pig! Grin no eating disorder there!

megletthesecond · 22/04/2017 08:11

I doubt kate has an eating disorder. She's just fit.

ArsenalsPlayingAtHome · 22/04/2017 08:26

DonaldStott

My thoughts exactly. Well said

pilates · 22/04/2017 08:34

YABU

Chavelita · 22/04/2017 08:39

Indeed, Donald.

But what baffles me is the fact that the overwhelming majority of people don't think this. Why do you have people who've struggled their whole lives to keep a roof over their heads and food on the table in minimum wage jobs, are at the coalface of cuts in the NHS and services, and worry about their children's futures in a deeply unequal country, but who, weirdly, still show up on royal occasions queueing to get a view from dawn, waving little flags and saying 'Her Maj, God bless 'er!'????

And those royal honours for ordinary people who've done charity work etc things enrage me -- the royals should be down in their bloody knees thanking the universe that someone in a minimum wage job on a Birmingham housing estate, with no privileges, is going around looking under bridges to give homeless people a meal, or giving asylum seekers language classes.

IfYouGoDownToTheWoodsToday · 22/04/2017 08:51

I really can't imagine the monarchy lasting much longer the way it is now. With every generation less and less people agree with having it. When the Queen goes, they will have to streamline to save money and stop giving out titles to people who do jack shit (Beatrice and Eugenie), if they want to survive.
Princess Anne has it right with her dc and others need to do the same.