£162 million to bury the queen

[StoneofDestiny]

£162 Million to bury the Queen! AIBU to think this could have been better spent improving Public Services like the NHS, Education, Housing etc

You must be joking?

She planned the funeral.

But it's not ok to spend £150m to boost the economy by 5x that?😐

You will never get that through to them because they don't want that to be true. Because then they'd have to be content instead of miserable!

She was certainly frugal with her own money. Millions kept offshore and invested in companies like Brighthouse. Lobbying Ministers for tax exemptions on her huge estates. Lobbying for more money.
but it’s ok because apparently she turned lights off?!

Yep. They could've popped her in a Daimler, driven her to the Chapel, popped her in and the NHS would have had all its problems resolved in one fell swoop.

We could have had a bus and everything. In fact, they could've use the bus instead of the Daimler.

Five hours

It’s not a personal funeral, it’s a state occasion.

The cost of state funerals doesn’t necessarily disappear if you abolish the monarchy.

The US has no monarchy but they hold state funerals for Presidents and some other public figures.

Since 1953 we’ve had two state funerals. (QE2 and Churchill).

The US has had 10 in that same period. 7 for ex presidents, one for unknown soldiers from WW2 and Korea, one for MacArthur and one for Ruth Bader Ginsburg. There were also others offered state funerals whose families turned them down.

Reagan’s cost $400m in 2004 and in 2018 H.W. Bush’s was over half a billion. There’s likely to be several in the next decade or two. Carter is 98, Biden 80, W. Bush, Clinton and Trump are all in their 70s. Even Obama is in his 60s now.

I've often thought this. Some people would just like the whole country to be a hospital. No money spent on parks or beaches or mountains. No entertainment. Just one big hospital.

Go to any A&E waiting room and it's like a day out anyway. Entire families chowing down on M&S sandwiches to have it confirmed that "YES!! That toddler has a temperature and here's some Calpol",

I dont begrudge her a penny of that money.

However I do begrudge Chas and the money spent on his coronation.

I've no problem with the tax payer stumping up some of the money but when the rest of us die we, or our families, are expected to pay for our own funeral whether we can easily afford it or not. I don't think a sizeable contribution from a family of such huge wealth would have been too much to expect, particularly at this financially difficult time for many. Pretty tone deaf.

They didn’t put the money in a big pile and burn it … most went on salaries for the police, forces and security services - and those salaries would be going straight back into the economy.

Ditto for the Coronation

And on the coronations. We’ve had two of those since 53. The US has had 18 of those. They are generally a bit cheaper and the cost is estimated to be around $100-150m of public funds topped up by private donations (although Biden’s was cheap because of pandemic).

I mean inaugurations in the US rather than coronations.

yes it’s alot of money - but I’m not sure what you want from raising a thread about it? What do you think should happen? We should all protest? Write a letter to the king? What did you expect? Local burial with 6 people attending? I’m just not sure what this thread wants to achieve. Btw - I’m
no royalist.

Frugal.and understated?
she lived her entire life in up mps luxury with every desire catered for
she wasnt,shopping in the supermarket looking for whoopsies, and going to second hand shops for her clothes was she?

Lap of luxury *

@Fruitful82 serious question, did you actually know the late Queen?

If not, all you're doing is projecting your own desire for a thrifty and sensible head of state on her. The only thing the public knew about her, apart from her love of the horses, was her inscrutability. It's the very thing that made her such a popular constitutional monarch - she could be anything and everything to everyone.

This amount is no surprise. We won't see the like again. We were on the world stage. Our nation deserved this.

I wonder if Charles is busy at his desk (checking his pen constantly) arranging his own State Funeral. I'd say he loves the idea of more pomp and ceremony. He could be buried in the gold dressing gown that he wore for the coronation.

I doubt he will have a simple funeral despite all his eco credentials which I don't believe he really has anyway. So there we have it, a monarch who said he was going to slim things down and the coronation was a day of gold coaches, big rocks on heads, gold robes, ah it was just a load of old indulgence. So what do you think? Will Charles do the co-op version or go for the big gig?

AIBU to wonder just how many SunLife over 50s plans she had to pay for it?! Imagine all the free ballpoint pens she got when she took the policies out.

Was that Pizza Express in Woking? 😜

(...Gets coat...)

Do you genuinely believe that it was an either/or situation?

That money wouldn’t have been spent on anything on your list if it hadn’t been spent on the Queens funeral.

The whole reporting of this is designed to froth the masses whilst hiding all of the rest of the mess that this government is creating.

We should be getting angry that in a supposedly economically advanced country that our government doesn’t have the money for everything on your list and then some.

Frugal?! HA!

Exactly… really annoys me how stingy some British people are sometimes 😂 if it was up to them we’d have no state occasions, nobody managing or facilitating or governing anything, no art, no culture, nothing beautiful, just 68 million nurses 😂

😭😭

Which countries don't have homeless people? And foodbanks. Which western countries don't have foodbanks? I'm guessing most health services would say they're not fully staffed either. It's the same with all western economies.

I love the RF. QE had a wonderful send off and I don’t begrudge my taxes being spent on it 😊