King calls for creative ways to tackle inequality

[AshLeaf]

AIBU to think this displays a breathtaking lack of self-awareness from one of the richest men in the world?

Well, how about you make a start with that Charles?!

That should of course read: they (the RF) are part of the problem not the solution.

What I am aware of, is how things have been gradually getting worse for most people and standards of living are declining, with money being concentrated in fewer and fewer hands I am in my 60s now and I can see how, over the decades, things have been getting progressively tougher for younger generations; and it is not questioned nearly as much as I should be.

Against that background, Charles's income is set to increase by £45 million (more than 50%) in 2025-6. And he sees fit to lecture the rest of us about finding creative situations to inequality?

I’m still not used to it being King!

It just doesn’t sound right and I immediately think - momentarily - of the fleeting 80s pop star. King Calls For Creative Ways to Tackle Inequality And Limahl Agrees With Him would be an even better headline 🤣

If you are living in the UK, then you appear as wealthy to the rest of the world as the King appears to you.

Does this mean you should sell all your belongings and give the money to people living on the street in Rio? Would this actually help, on the larger scale of things?

Personally, I would be happy to do with a less to make the world better, if everyone else was contributing as well. If I just do it on my own, I ruin myself for nothing.

That's a good point about relative wealth... but whilst the average person in the UK does indeed live a life that much of the world would view as immense wealth, we're hardly unusual in that there are probably around a billion other people in the world with a broadly similar level of wealth and standard of living.

Still a minority, of course, but a very significant proportion of the world's population nonetheless. By contrast, people like Charles must be in the top 0.0001% of people in the world by wealth and profligacy of lifestyle.

You don't actually know what I contribute....I do actually give to charity and manage with less. So do many other people. I feel that people should contribute what they reasonably can to support the poor and vulnerable.

But unlike the Royals, I have also actually paid taxes for decades which (among other things) contribute to the alleviation of poverty. I have never advocated that the royals should just hand over all their wealth; just that they should contribute on the same basis as everybody else and in proportion to their wealth. I don't think the Royals are solely to blame for it, but they are a symptom of the problem which is gross inequality.

There are tried and tested ways of alleviating poverty. Some countries do a lot better than we do, and we should emulate them. We don't need 'creative solutions'; just a country committed to acting in the interest of all its people and contributing to alleviating poverty overseas. The Head of State should be taking a lead on this, not hectoring the rest of us and putting the onus on the rest of us to 'get creative'.

I point out that I have also have not inherited vast wealth amassed over generations and centuries, through dubious means.

This.

Also, contribute a few billion ££££ to state schools so they could offer the facilities and opportunities the public schools offer.

The dismissive comments ( thankfully very small in number) here re the royals ballooning wealth are really gobsmacking . Oh it’s only 20 million here and there - small change right ?

The civil list at least allowed for some parliamentary debate . Elizabeth hated that and devoted her efforts to getting the civil list stopped and replace by the sovereign grant . Osborne and Cameron were happy to oblige .

This sovereign grant has ballooned since and happily for the Windsors without so much as a minute of debate . All done behind closed doors - as per their usual modus operandi .

Now does the money Charles takes from the taxpayer increase by 45 million or 45 % this year ? Oh what am I saying! What’s 45 million ! It’s nothing !

There are so many Byzantine sources of wealth that the royals access - the House of Commons have frequently commented that no, the so called accounts are not transparent
We know the Windsors describe the Duchys as public when it is financially advantageous for them to do so .

Oh and remember Elizabeth paying off Andrew’s accuser ? Duchy money . And that’s none of your business ! Your job is to pay your tax and keep inflating the royals coffers

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/ng-interactive/2023/apr/05/revealed-royals-took-more-than-1bn-income-from-controversial-estates-king-charles-queen-duchies-cornwall-lancaster

@Ukisgaslit Good post. I couldn't agree more. I recently mentioned on one of the inheritance tax threads about the Queen deciding she didn't want her private estate that she left to King Charles to be subject to inheritance tax something that neither Charles or William have addressed and so the law was changed. God knows how much extra money that meant that King Charles inherited. That was money that should have come to country.

It's disgusting that Prince William can be so greedy, ignorant and (literally entitled) that he thinks it's ok to have this multimillion (more?.) unique tax relief whilst thinking he can lecture everyone on homelessness. It is sickening.

Remember that Price William is choosing to keep his finances private. It's not surprising.

Yes this is true . Charles did make the ( admittedly doctored / limited ) duchy of Cornwall accounts available

Wiliam declined to do so when he was handed them
It was ‘ too early ‘ apparently .
He’s ‘still learning’ isnt that his general excuse for everything ?

The Windsors have always been greedy and DGAF about their ‘subjects’ .
They continue to get away with so much but more and more people are keeping notes .

And as the UK fails and more people suffer , the Windsors plonk on their ugly crowns and scoop up half a billion a year for mumbling about ‘learning about homelessness’ but cut their own income ? Don’t be ridiculous.

Oh the irony!

Remember that Price William is choosing to keep his finances private. It's not surprising.

Yes. And let's remember that whilst Charles agreed to pay voluntary tax on his Duchy Cornwall income and disclose how much to us (below what the general public would pay, I hasten to add)....William has REFUSED to disclose how much he has paid. Could be £4.50 for all we know!

Sorry, hadnt read your post, I'm repeating you!

The civil list at least allowed for some parliamentary debate . Elizabeth hated that and devoted her efforts to getting the civil list stopped and replace by the sovereign grant . Osborne and Cameron were happy to oblige

Osborne and Cameron did us a HUGE disservice and then John Major passing a bill that says the sovereign Grant could never go down, only up. So even during covid they received the same amount of money for doing even less than they do now. If that is possible.

Then of course Elizabeth applied for the emergency heating covid assistance for the Palaces. Until she was told that perhaps it wasn't a wise move as this was an extreme poverty handout

You couldn't make it up

It's a good thing (for him) that he is not subject to a probationary period. In any normal job he would probably be on a performance improvement plan.

I suspect William has learnt from his granny and great granny's knee about entitlement but not much about ' service' even tbough that means different things to the Royals. How can he still be learning? Again, it hardly a major shock that his 90+ year old grandmother died and he was going to be PoW. Why was he not being prepared for it? Could he just not be bothered? Never mind managing the Duchy. He couldn't even be bothered to learn a bit of Welsh, when he lived in Wales and was on course to be PoW. He started learning when he became PoW, as if it wasn't a given that would be his title. He is getting away with a lot because of his sick wife and because Harry is the current Royal whipping boy.

Remember that Price William is choosing to keep his finances private. It's not surprising
probably because it doesn't fit in with the just like you image the Wales's love to portray.

Thanks for highlighting this programme.
Did anyone else notice the timing of the announcement that the king will stop Andrew’s £1000 000 payment ?
Carefully timed to distract from the Dispatches programme no doubt . The PR is so clumsy .

So a few related questions :
why was Andrew being paid £1000000 a year in the first place ?

Why stop it now after years of saying they are ‘stopping it’ but failing to . Is it really being stopped or is it the usual out of one pocket into another that the Windsors use as wheeze to fool the sheep ?

I was about to ask if this million was public money . Silly question . It’s ALL public money All of it - even their so called ‘privately owned’ Balmoral and Sandringham were paid for by the public . Victoria claimed she was bankrupt and took the begging bowl to parliament

But guess what - over one hundred years ago Victoria read the room and took a reduced annual payment from the population, she opened the accounts on the Duchys and paid income tax on them! She also - get this Charles- she contributed to the cost of her jubilee

We now know of some of the Royal corruption ( sexual abusers Mountbatten and Andrew) financial greed and bags of cash , manipulation and secret deals with the media etc
And yet the Windsors are happily pocketing an extra 45 million annually from he crippled Uk economy .
No shame

Well... indeed.... I have no idea @Ukisgaslit why on earth he was being paid £1million anyway. If his ex wife (I lump them together because even though they've been divorced for 30 years, they live together and no doubt their finances are intertwined)... if she can afford a £5M property in Mayfair, Andrew can't be that brassic.

I agree with you. No doubt he will still be receiving an allowance, it will just be coming from somewhere else. It just needs to be hidden from the useless yearly Royal Report which the public are privy to.

I would imagine the 'Charles is pushing Andrew out of the Windsor Royal Estate' headlines will ramp up. It always does when there's something to hold our noses about... like the Dispatches programme tonight.

How can ANYONE think this is right?

https://archive.ph/k2CGM

I have archived this as it's behind a paywall

I would just ask anyone who is interested or concerned about inequality to spare the time to read this.
Yes, it's a long read but worth looking at

That's all

Thankyou for this article, it is well worth reading - I find the suggestion that King Charles’ assets amount to rather more than £600 million to be entirely believable - and the article doesn’t even include assets we own and pay maintenance etc for, but which are entirely and exclusively available for the Royal Family’s use.

I like Charles’ ambition to ‘scale down’ the Royal Family, I hope (but don’t expect) that that includes returning some of this obscene wealth to the country. This money was earned by the labour of our forbears, often in terrible conditions. Maybe it’s not just Caribbean countries which should be demanding reparations

I haven’t read that article @BustingBaoBun but I will.

Im still shocked by the Dispatachea programme - and believe me I didn’t think my opinion of the Windsors could fall lower than it was .
Please watch it .
Even the most brain washed royalist must feel some anger at the revelations. I knew William was an empty suit mouthing platitudes for PR but now we see him claiming fmto care about homelessness while being a slum landlord !

William is charging the taxpayer 25 million to allow the government to use Dartmoor prison.

Charles is charging the NHS 11 million to use car parking space for ambulances . The ambulances were designed to help improve the response time to emergencies . Charles’ PR had the temerity to tweet about ‘being happy to have granted a warehouse to the NHS ‘ - but kept the bill they were charging quiet

These are public services ( NHS ) that the royals are charging rent to. So they only only take from the taxpayer in security costs / billions for their coronations and jubilees etc but they are charging our public services millions and millions in secret !

They do not own these Dutchys . 100 % of the revenue went to state before Elizabeth Windsor got it changed by Osborne .

The royals are taking over 100 000 000 annually from the people in their so called sovereign grant meanwhile they are secretly creaming off rent from charities ,schools and the nhs etc

Charles Is patron of Macmillan cancer and Marie curie cancer charities . Lots of pr there and brain dead royalists claiming he helps charity

He charges these charities rent ! So when you donate to charity some of that money is going directly to Charles and William .
So much rent in fact that both MacMillan and Marie Curie have had to leave the building .

Never mind the fact that William and. Charles do not pay corporation tax because they are ‘royal’

I wish they’d all stfu.
Chazza wants to tackle inequality.
Camilla domestic abuse.
William apparently is going to cure homelessness.
Because of course they all have such vast first hand experience of these matters.
And all oblivious of how fucking entitled and hypocritical they sound.
The French had the right idea in the C18.

@Ukisgaslit it's well worth a read but it's long! It has uncovered every plot of land owned by the Duchies. (which are called 'private fiefdoms' !)

The Duchy Files show the royals charge for the right to cross rivers; offload cargo onto the shore; run cables under their beaches; operate schools and charities; and even dig graves. They earn revenue from toll bridges, ferries, sewage pipes, churches, village halls, pubs, distilleries, gas pipelines, boat moorings, opencast and underground mines, car parks, rental homes and wind turbines

The detail on this, within this article is shocking.