Royal Pantomime

[StoneofDestiny]

Prince Harry founded The Invictus Games. These games have a serious point, a real purpose and offer a real contribution to reminding us of the significant service and personal sacrifice by injured armed forces personnel. The competitors are certainly inspiring, showing examples of how determination and training can overcome disability.
Never was there a greater contrast in the Royal Family, showing these games and an articulate Harry and Meghan promoting them and the total pantomime of Prince William and the female Royals parading in new outfits on the way to Easter Service.
I'm no royalist and want the whole institution abolished - but what a contrast this was! Or am IBU?

Of course it’s self promotion, they’re there with a Netflix crew

The Royal tour was victim of the woke brigade, who appear to want to airbrush and re-write history. I actually felt very sorry for W & K who were on the receiving end of it all. As far as I'm aware, they weren't personally responsible for the slave trade

As a PP pointed out, it depends which article you read if you want to decide how the last tour went. I followed it and I agree with @Badger1970 that it was a great tour but the woke brigade white saviours had to have their say

If we 'did away' with the RF as you would like, we'd need to replace them with other people to do their jobs who would NOT bring in the tourism money they do

One Head of State would be much cheaper to run than the current royal Family. We'd not be keeping all their extended family, paying for all the Palaces and staffing them with servants whether occupied or not. We'd not have the position donated to their children as a right either. It would be a position based on merit - and the country could determine what type of Head of State it wanted.

Palaces and ceremonial parades would still bring in tourists and money, whether there were royals Jin them or not. Just as they do in countries that became Republics.

@LoveSpringDaffs - insults, as you have no doubt heard, are the last resorts of insecure people with a crumbling position trying to appear confident.

@StoneofDestiny

Didn't see much self promotion by Harry and Meghan - like it or not, it's 'his event' and he promotes it and it has a value internationally. (Though whatever they say will be interpreted at 'having a go').

Harry can do Invictus with or without monarchy.
William and Kate have no value outside monarchy.
Monarchy has no real value at all - impressive things can and are being done by more people who are not royal, than has ever been done by 'royal family' members.

Last time I checked the estimated cost to.tax payers was over 70 million per year, but according to forbes the royal family's contribution to the UK including all tourism can in over estimated 1.5 billion to the economy. But don't let facts affect your judgment.

Where as Harry and Megan's nextflix show and so called charity is to fill their own pockets.

I just don’t get the whole royal family institute. These people are absolutely no better than anyone else and their lavish lifestyle is bankrolled by the taxpayer. I would have so much more respect for a person who goes out and does an honest days work (spending half a day in hair/makeup and eyewateringly expensive outfits and turning up to events with the most insincere plastered on fake smile/giggling that actually makes them look like halfwits does not qualify as work to me) They are so so disingenuous and insincere I would hate for a cent of my wages to go on supporting them. Why do you think they deserve to live off hard working ordinary folk? What makes them so special?

Didn’t Harry attend services like this when he was happy to be seen as part of the Royal Family

What makes them so special?

If I were getting an award and I was given the choice of getting it from Queen Elizabeth or Wanttobehappy123, Wanttobehappy isn't going to get a look in. I'd rather get it from her than any politician too. And I guess a lot of people feel like that and that's what makes them so special.

And a consultancy called Brand Finance estimated in 2017 that the monarchy’s annual contribution to the UK economy to be around £1.8bn a year, drawing in an additional £550m of tourism revenues a year, and an increase in trade, from the Royal Family acting as ambassadors, supposedly worth £150m a year.

That might sound impressive – and it’s certainly more than the higher estimates of the Royal Family’s costs to the public purse – but it’s important to put those numbers in context

Overseas visitors are estimated to have spent £22.5bn in the UK in 2016. And total UK exports summed to £543bn. Viewed from that perspective, the additional royal-related revenues start to look somewhat trivial.

Moreover, we should treat even estimates of economic activity linked to the royals with a large dash of scepticism.

The only way to reach these numbers is to estimate the counterfactual – what would have happened to UK tourism or trade if the Royal Family didn’t exist? Or if the official Royal Family was significantly smaller and less expensive to run?

That’s not easily done. Would foreigners really be less likely to visit the UK’s historic palaces if they were no longer lived in, from time to time, by the Queen, or Prince Charles?

Would the monarchy be less of a tourist draw if the likes of lesser working royals such as Princess Alexandra and the Duchess of Kent were no longer funded by the Sovereign Grant?
@ZerotwoZero - from The Independent

The economic boost from visits and festivities related to royal celebrations should certainly be treated with caution given these can displace economic activity as well as create it

This seems to have happened around Prince William’s wedding in 2011, when many UK residents appear to have left the country

Stop press. Read all about it.
Royal shocker.
Two future heads of the Church of England go to church on the most important day in the Christian calendar and they put on nice clothes to show respect.
🙄😏

@LetitiaLeghorn

What makes them so special?

If I were getting an award and I was given the choice of getting it from Queen Elizabeth or Wanttobehappy123, Wanttobehappy isn't going to get a look in. I'd rather get it from her than any politician too. And I guess a lot of people feel like that and that's what makes them so special.

Wouldn’t it be lovely to get an award from them with one pedo son holding onto her apron strings, Charles who has displayed an enormous lack of morals in his life time and William and Harry pulling each other’s hair out. Honestly there like something out of eastenders

@RonaldMcDonald

The last Royal at our was an unmitigated disaster. I’m unsure anyone truly can say otherwise.

It looked like a colonial rehash and felt tone deaf and at best somewhat racist throughout.
Why they did not highlight the brilliance of innovation, engineering, stem, education, business, sport, tourism of the region I’ll never know.
The uncomfortable white people dancing was too much. As was the cos play Land Rover troop inspection and drive by
Kate’s clothing bill was astronomical but this is to be expected from old school British Royal Family Tours. They could have highlighted designs from the region.
Compare their Tour with The Princess Royal’s and it was utterly different.
It was a terribly received Tour.

It was a total PR disaster. They are dispatching the Wessexes also to the Carribean soon. Why that tour is going ahead i do not know, hopefully they learnt the lessons from the Cambridges and Sophie can draw on her PR working days

I cant imagine Sophie's warbrobe is going to be any cheaper than Kate's .

@StoneofDestiny

If we 'did away' with the RF as you would like, we'd need to replace them with other people to do their jobs who would NOT bring in the tourism money they do

One Head of State would be much cheaper to run than the current royal Family. We'd not be keeping all their extended family, paying for all the Palaces and staffing them with servants whether occupied or not. We'd not have the position donated to their children as a right either. It would be a position based on merit - and the country could determine what type of Head of State it wanted.

Palaces and ceremonial parades would still bring in tourists and money, whether there were royals Jin them or not. Just as they do in countries that became Republics.

@LoveSpringDaffs - insults, as you have no doubt heard, are the last resorts of insecure people with a crumbling position trying to appear confident.

I’ve said for a long time that when the Queen dies I do believe Charles will seriously strip back the TF like has happened in other countries. Whilst I believe Senior Royals serve a purpose, we do NOT need a Princess Michael of Kent et al

*RF not TF

Honestly there like something out of eastenders

But that’s EXACTLY why many people like them. At times the RF have been like the family from Shameless, but with fancy outfits and bigger houses. It fascinates us, people love gossip and scandal, especially when it’s from ‘the other half’ and to many it’s comforting to k ow that ‘the other half’ also have the creepy uncle, feuding siblings, affairs etc like every other family

Not that it’s a competition it I don’t think MM exactly kept a cheap wardrobe as a working Royal. I remember a (gorgeous) £3,500 Valentino coat that only ever saw the light of day once. I don’t think she ever wore anything from Zara IIRC

And yet, despite that, @Wanttobehappy123, I would still rather get an ward from her than from you or Boris Johnson, Keir Starmer or Ed Davies. And that's why she's so special.

@Wanttobehappy123. They don't live off the tax payer. They bring IN more than they cost. It's a net GAIN to the country.

@StoneofDestiny yep keep proving you've NO idea what you're talking about, then contradicting yourself. Well done.

@StoneofDestiny

I could spend all day telling you the benefits of the DofE scheme to young people

Thank you, I am fully aware of many schemes supporting people. The D of E scheme is run by volunteers, not by the deceased Duke.

Do you seriously believe Harry is sat answering the phones and doing the filing at Invictus?

Do you seriously believe Harry is sat answering the phones and doing the filing at Invictus?

No - do you? Odd question.

@JudgeJ

Harry didn't found the games, he developed an existing idea. It's sad that he and the Mrs are using these injured veterens to promote themselves, I would like to see him remove himself from the Invictus games and give the limelight where it belongs, on the competitors.

Utter nonsense. Harry and Meghan are not using these people. What a ridiculous thing to suggest.

@PlasticineMeg

Not that it’s a competition it I don’t think MM exactly kept a cheap wardrobe as a working Royal. I remember a (gorgeous) £3,500 Valentino coat that only ever saw the light of day once. I don’t think she ever wore anything from Zara IIRC

Your right, it is not a completion. I am sure the other working Royal females clothes are not cheap either.

@StoneofDestiny yep keep proving you've NO idea what you're talking about, then contradicting yourself. Well done

Thank you - but I don't. I'm sure your insightful and intimate knowledge will stun all - probably why you share so little of it.

There is no need in a democracy for a Royal family - any of them. Nothing changed when any of them 'dropped out' or died - Queen Mother, Princess Margaret, Princess Diana, Prince Philip, Prince Andrew

• we were no put in crisis, no essential function stopped - nothing. There are so many of this family who are enjoying privilege for doing little or nothing that benefits the public (even Prince Charles accepts that). There seems an endless supply of homes the Queen can allocate to them and many 'grace and favour' apartments in prime locations.

Let's not forget - these are independently wealthy millionaires - yet the queen only stated paying tax in 1992-3! We have to pay taxes to support them, she kept her own tax until forced to pay under pressure. Wonder where Andrew learned to screw people over finance?
.

@Badger1970

The Royal tour was victim of the woke brigade, who appear to want to airbrush and re-write history. I actually felt very sorry for W & K who were on the receiving end of it all. As far as I'm aware, they weren't personally responsible for the slave trade

They benefit from it though, in case you did not know.

I thought this thread was to announce another royal It’s a Knockout

That was great

Best bit was Prince Edwards tantrum