That I have a lump in my throat more for the class system than the funeral

[JessicaJoens5]

Sat here with a lump in my throat after watching the funeral but I think it's more to do with realising just how unfair life is and what a lottery life can be.

A lot of people in this country are living on the breadline, children are born into poverty, using food banks, lots of homeless, children moving into hotels whilst their parents wait for a house and so much more. Now this is not a thread to bash the royal family as people but I can't help but feel a bit down at the fact that a lot of their lives are luck - luck to be born into a life of privilege or luck of marrying into it.

Now I'm not saying it's easy to be a royal but I know if I had a choice of choosing to be a person born into privilege with the risk of press following me or another person who is living in a tiny flat or house, struggling to pay bills and having to use food banks whilst working a minimum wage job, I know which one I'd choose.

Not really sure what the aim of this thread is but maybe other people had similar feelings from the funeral?

I didn't say slavery started in England but the royal family played a significant role in the slavey abroad

@MelodyPondsMum I'm not directing this thread anywhere and if you read my posts, you'd see I mention there will always be rich and poor in the world; this thread is about the royal family and how sickening it seems to have all this money spent on a family who were basically in the right womb.

Nowhere on my thread have I said that the UK children have it worse than children in Afghanistan? But many children in the UK do have awful lives and belittling that with "others have it worse" is not the way to help the problem

That is absolutely true, but at the same time we are in the top 15 of countries for wealth inequality and the other countries in the top 15 are the likes of China, Russia, South Africa, Turkey etc etc.

Thats pretty shameful to be on that level

eu.usatoday.com/story/money/2019/05/28/countries-with-the-widest-gaps-between-rich-and-poor/39510157/

Imagine a land where everyone is equal, wealth is shared and land is divided into identical plots. What would motivate society? How would you encourage someone to work in a harder, more stressful role but for the same money? How would you prevent laziness, apathy, resentment and disorder?

It doesn’t have to be an either or economic system, just one that isn’t so imbalanced. By all means reward hard work, innovation but the system is so out of whack currently.

@MotherOfRatios interesting comments. I am 50+, working class origin, and have an impression that younger people aren’t buying this. I was brought up in a climate of negativity about who I was and who I could be. There is much more positivity with kids now and encouragement to aspire to better things; it’s a stark contradiction to hereditary privilege. Also, the Uk is more diverse now, more religions and more people with no religion. The monarch is head of the CofE, so it’s about religious privilege too - we need to become a secular state and separate the church from this. I’m looking forward to seeing some
opinion poll data on this.

I think the issue for me is living through what the Tories have done to this country has made seeing the sheer wealth and privilege harder to bear. The jubilee and now this.

I am also quite shocked at people’s defensiveness if you dare suggest that millions of pounds should not have been spent on the jubilee or the funeral. Like a pp said, a lot of people in this country do not realise the poverty and suffering of so many others. It’s easier for them to turn a blind eye and admire this privileged family. I heard the comment “the Queen has done so much for the country” countless times over the last 7 days. My answer “what else do the royals have to do when they don’t have to work for a living?”.

I think this thread is being derailed a bit - why are we even arguing about "who has it worse?"

YANBU. Through my lifetime, I have moved from loving the spectacle and pageantry that comes with this monarchy, to feeling we should tone down the profile and expense of the Royal Family to something more in keeping with the contemporary context, to finally, thinking it is time the monarchy went.

Like others, I have no personal vendetta against any of the 'Royals', it is just that I believe in the principles of equality of opportunity and true democracy, and a hereditary monarchy is jars against those ideals.

The funeral of QE2 (RIP) should be the death knell of an outdated system that supports something that goes against every so called 'British Value' that we preach.

Exactly this

The royal family outrage is a red herring and an easy simplistic apparent solution to the inequality in this country

It would solve nothing getting rid of them.

I suppose they’ve got to call it something to make it look like they have some purpose. “ Filthy rich and waited on hand and foot 24/7” doesn’t sound noble.
Basically people employed by them or the State manufacture situations to make them look good. Let Chazza be the last.

And if this stopped completely what do you think would happen? You’d have a situation where the rich would be in gated communities and families would be in slums.

When the very rich pay taxes it’s just coming out of their huge amount of disposable income. Do you also believe that it’s fair that billionaires could save millions of lives every year with absolutely no affect on their lives? And yet they actively choose not to. What sort of person would do that?

Can I also highlight that I'm no naive and I know the world will never be equal and this thread wasn't about that. This thread was about how the royal family are there through luck and it just made me feel a bit sick whilst watching the funeral that they were born to be "special"

This, exactly this.

I had a real sense of Royal
pageantry through the ages being watched by the working folks/peasants as the funeral cortege travelled along the Long Walk. A sense of profound inequality but a moving spectacle regardless.

Also a proportion of tax payers money funds the RF, the queen helped Andrew to pay that $12mill some of that money will have been tax payers money, that money could have gone to helping people not helping someone fight sexual assault allegations

I think it depends what you consider privilege.
Of course they are privileged in wealth beyond the dreams of most of us. But then think why we want wealth … basically because money brings greater freedom.

They are the exception though aren’t they. The more senior they are, the less freedom they have.

I’m nit sure how truly privileged that os, seems more like a poisoned chalice to me.

You're not helping the problem OP. You're encouraging an attitude which has posters pulling a 'only my backyard' ethos. They don't want to fund aid overseas. They don't want the Royals. What they want to do is entrench and protect their assets and their standard of living. That's not equality. That's not caring about poverty. That's not even a critique of the monarchy - because if your critique is 'they should share it with me' but I don't care about reparations or aid or global wealth disparity - then sorry your position is morally bereft.
The demographics that give most to charity (per percent) are those with the least. You're not speaking or representing them when your view is all about protecting your status and wealth; and not sharing it. You're also not representing them when your 'solution' has no class analysis. It's alsmost as though you thought you'd have a pop at the royals and don't really care about the issues.
One of the best ways to lift people from poverty, to bridge gaps in income disparity is to vote for parties that aren't the Tories. The other way is to instil a sense of collective values and collective responsibility. Those values and responsibilities mean looking wider.

Life isn’t fair. Whatever made you think it was?!

Unfairness due to birth happens on both large and small scales, all the way from royalty down to people who get handed inheritances and opportunities on a plate. I still recall with annoyance a fellow student who barely scraped through his qualifications and was handed a director role in Daddy’s firm aged 22. Meanwhile others including me on the same course got first class degrees and 20 years later still haven’t attained such a high or well paid role. Privilege is everywhere.

i will never understand the ‘oh well, life’s not fair/some people have it worse’ arguments. That’s not an argument FOR something.

oh well, life’s not fair, let’s just give up.

oh well, life’s much harder in other countries, let’s not try to improve ours or it might be somehow unfair to them.

If life isn’t fair, why don’t we try to make it a bit fairer where we can?

What MelodyPondsMum and bellac11 said really.

If we want a fairer society, we need to vote for it. But will we vote for it if it means less for us or or own. Probably not.

clearlycultural.com/geert-hofstede-cultural-dimensions/individualism/

@MelodyPondsMum of course I care about the poverty about the world but that's a whole different conversation! I don't understand where you're getting the point that I don't care about any country but the UK from?
I'm just keeping argument simple for argument's sake

To be accurate the British royal family played a significant part in supporting its governments during the period of the Atlantic slave trade in the 1700s, the slave trade as a whole is as old as time and over different periods and different continents and countries.
The Atlantic slave trade also involved France, Netherlands, Portugual, Spain, Belgium.

History does not occur in a vacuum

comparison is the thief of joy.

Life has never been fair. It never will be. Comparing a life of priviledge and one of poverty is meaningless. Have you never read Orwell's animal Farm? Even attempts to even up resulted in the opposite.

Doesn't mean we shouldn't try but this type of analogy is a pointless exercise which breeds resentment.

Why judge one's own DD's life as being less special than Princess Charlottes? Your DC are loved and healthy. Thats all that matters

😆

Try explaining that to the hoteliers who have made a fortune, or retailers...who have made a fortune. I could go on. And not just in London and Edinburgh, with their packed streets, but throughout the country.

That’s just the last 10 days.

The Royal Family are the most lucrative institution in the UK. They are the centre it’s soft power status around the globe and generate unquantifiable wealth for the UK.

So you get per wof the Royals and have a president. But he or she isn't the one you voted for. Infact you absolutely hate them.
Then this president has a package of expenses, but the don't actually bring any revenue into the country. Add in a few court cases, scandals, corruption.
You Happy now? Then they win a second term. However the opposition is even worse.
You would be ecstatic by now, never moaning and whinging at all. No green eyed monster in sight at all.
Life isn't fair. Never has been never will be. Whatever you do, whoever is in charge.
Nobody particularly cares about you or your precious little darlings. You will be off the planet in the new few decades, probably 60 max. Your name and opinions will be forgotten. Those in power will not. That is the difference.