Royal Secrets

[Extiainoiapeial]

Critics flag ‘worrying trend’ of keeping royal files under lock and key as thousands set for release to public

This should be interesting. A big cover up again, no doubt.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/jan/11/fears-grow-over-censorship-of-secret-queen-elizabeth-and-philip-papers

The public have a right to know. Too much secrecy.

ha ha
I knew that when I typed - however, PK is enmeshed with the RF so
it would be almost in sess tew us, is what I was attempting to convey

@YesThatsATurdOnTheRug
Hi Yes,
Just wanted to post this about costs. You are incorrect they are cheap. They really are not.

9 key points

1. The royals cost a lot more than publicly declared, at least £510m a year.
2. The true cost includes the sovereign grant, which itself is set to rise by £45m a year.
3. The cost includes lost revenues from the Duchies of Cornwall and Lancaster, which the record shows are state assets at the disposal of parliament, not the private property of the Windsor family.
4. The Sovereign Grant is funded wholly by the government, not the Crown Estate. The Crown Estate is a state asset, created in 1960 to manage some Crown (state) lands, but it’s only been since 2011 that it has been used as a smokescreen for royal expenditure, by artificially linking the grant to Crown Estate profits.
5. The huge and growing cost of the royals is primarily due to personal and private costs, such as an excessive number of homes, avoidance of large tax bills and private incomes being drawn from the duchies.
6. Using or abusing public office for private gain is a form of corruption, and this corruption is why the monarchy costs so much. Secrecy, dishonesty and deference all feed a culture of impunity and entitlement.
7. Comparable heads of state cost as little as £5m a year, excluding security.
8. There is no evidence to support claims of an economic benefit from having the monarchy.
9. The cost of the monarchy should and could be slashed to just £5-10m a year, while these revelations should help fuel a debate about abolition of the monarchy in favour of a democratic and accountable alternative.

@Shetlands"I'm really shocked that people are accusing Penny of an affair with the DofE. She was a great friend and fellow carriage driver. Where's your evidence of anything more?"
I totally agree. PK was married to the grandson of Lord Mountbatten and a close family friend. There was a time when the press thought she was having an affaire with Charles, after a pic was leaked of Charles with his arm around her on holiday. Turned out she had just learned her daughter was dying of cancer age 5. I really do not think there is anything in these rumours at all.

We don’t pay for the police and nurses to all have multiple luxurious homes and for them all to go to Eton do we. Ridiculous comparison.

Can someone not think about the future? I do have DC and GC and incidentally my DC are of the same opinion as me

But they don’t need your few quid. And they don’t need my few quid, that I’ve worked really really hard for, but which i am forced to pay regardless. They are millionaires and billionaires in their own right, with unearned immense privilege and wealth. We pay this family to be better than us, but they’re not. It’s 2025, not 1525 - why do we still have this archy institution that’s being sustained by us the tax payer? And what’s wrong with France? At least their head of state gets democratically elected unlike here, where the head of state is decided through accident of birth.

@TankFlyBossW4lk

Thank you for your post.

I don't care a fig about affairs. Get on with it, the royal family are no different to any other family in that respect. Except of course Andrew and sex trafficked girls and I see Mountbatten has been mentioned on here, without any talk of his well known taste for young boys.

It's the secrecy, smoke and mirrors and opacity that is the problem for me. Someone said this...
It cost £113.5 million for security for the RF and VIPs . This is part of the £3+ billion Met Police budget. You are wanting transparency - which surely means more than just the cost which is easily available to anybody with Google.

There is far far more to it than that. Every time a royal goes anywhere,....that's local police, local councils, and local communities having to bear the cost, often wiping out any reserves they have. Every time they go on one of their commonwealth jaunts, those countries have to pay, sometimes sharing the cost with the UK. But of course we don't know the details as again this is shrouded in secrecy

Apart from MI5, no other public body has this level of secrecy. The monarchy is not subject to the FOI act, and can at whim have documents sealed, like Andrew and his Trade Envoy days sealed until 2065. Why ? He had a publicly taxpayer paid for job, yet we can't know where he went, who he went with (this is important) and what he did.

But I don’t want my £1.50p going to support the life style of a billionaire and his family, just because he has a crown on his head, because one of his ancestors won a fight in some muddy field somewhere, a thousand years ago. That money should go to people who are in complete need, who have paid taxes all their life, and yet on days like today, will sit in the dark, without heating, because they can’t afford the bills for these things. How is that right, in a rich modern democracy?

I think they were probably alive during the shagging. Though if not, I can see why it might be censored.

We support a lot of people with our taxes that some may prefer not to.

Friend of a friends dc doesn’t work. Has dcs. Lives in a flat, rent paid by council, in a property granddad owns. IMO that’s cheating the system.

Or those claiming benefits while doing work for cash in hand.

At least I can see where the money goes for the royals. I’d be paying for whoever was head of state. So not that fussed really.

I don’t demand personal details from doctors, teachers, nurses etc that my taxes also pay for.

At least I can see where the money goes for the royals

Well, I can't! That's the whole point of the thread, it's all shrouded in secrecy.

As for personal details, I don't want to know.

I don't want my taxes paying for murderers and paedophiles who have committed heinous crimes and will spend the rest of their lives in prison. I don't want my taxes paying for a subsidised canteen at Westminster for MPs or for Rachel Reeves to be able to claim thousands in expenses for a fuel bill for her 2nd home whilst cutting the WFA for pensioners. But such is life.

Ok, you love the royal family, unconditionally, and that’s great, but in 2025 there is no reason to have a medieval, archaic institution, that is the monarchy, headed by individuals who live in immense and unearned privilege and wealth, most. We pay them to be better than us, but they’re not. In in a democratic society, the head of state needs to be an elected individual and not because of accident of birth. An unelected head of state billionaire should not be asking for my £1.50p contribution, or you £1.50p, as well, to maintain a anachronistic institution, and a life style of unimaginable luxury and privilege. I am sure on a personal they are lovely people, but they have so very much, in comparison to the vast majority who have so very little. How is that right in 2025?

Don't 100% follow your comment sorry, but if I have assumed it sort of correctly, I do agree of course. But what I was more trying to say is that, in my opinion, if there was anything massively scandalous in the files which are under discussion here, then they likely wouldn't have been selected to be permanently preserved at a place of public record, but would have been retained at the original government department or conveniently 'lost'/'misplaced' or 'destroyed' (see for example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ForeignandCommonwealthOfficeMigratedArchives).

In my experience, lots of the truly shocking detail which arises from files of public record comes from files relating to sectors of society that have been deemed historically 'less than', and as such, the powers that be of the time may have retained a degree of arrogance about how they are preserved/ are less 'careful' lets say about covering up their previous bad behaviour, whereas the records of the royals are always deeply scrutinised due to their nature. Just my opinion though of course and doesn't mean I couldn't be wildly wrong!

Best thing to do in any case and especially if people feel there is something to uncover is to continue to make these access requests via the FOIA which is everyone's right - just because the files are closed doesn't mean they will stay that way - there have been plenty of ICO/Tribunal decisions which have overturned these kinds of things.

A democratic and accountable alternative 🤣 what like France has?! As I said originally, even if it is six times more (the 510m figure) that's still only a tenner. Big whoop. I'd much rather that that some random elected individual who might god forbid start having opinions!

For those speculating why PK was at the DoE's funeral, she was representing his Mountbatten family as Countess Mountbatten. Her husband the Earl has Alzheimer's.

What is wrong with France? You keep saying this but yet can’t cite any examples of how it’s monarchy, being abolished 233 years ago, has served to the detriment of France, since then? Clearly France has done very well throughout the last centuries , without a royal family. All countries have their problems, for sure, but there’s nothing relatively worse happening there than in the UK?

France has a head of state who charges around causing political chaos. Just google the issues Macron causes. Our head of state has no real influence on the political agenda at all. They basically have two layers of people like Boris or Kier, as if one isn't bad enough!

As I've said before there's no need to be unkind, saying I 'can't cite examples', I hadn't seen anyone request them and anyway it's not a history essay, use google! I'm not so emotionally charged about it that I'm going to write screeds. I just like that we have figureheads rather than active political electees. Their personal lives just shouldn't really matter as long as they're discrete, which they generally are!

Benefit cheats do often get prosecuted, unlike tax evaders who cost the Treasury much more money.

We can't see where the money goes for the royals. It's all shrouded in secrecy and many people were shocked at the recent Channel 4 Dispatches which shone some light on the lack of transparency in the Royal Family's financial affairs.

We would certainly pay less for an elected head of state and hopefully it would be someone less mediocre than the current members of the Royal Family. They have no special talents, intelligence or compassion (the entire opposite in some cases) so I'm not sure why they are revered and treated with such deference.

It's the Guardian/Observer shit stirring again to try and prove their "radical" credentials. Their is really nothing new here.

As a life long Guardian reader I do find their views on the monarchy to be somewhat tiresome.

We don’t know how the monarch’s opinions has influenced decisions. They certainly have them: Prince Charles spent years promoting the environment and dodgy complimentary therapies.

i really don’t care how many affairs they’ve had (if legal. Andrew is another matter. ) But I really do want to know if the late queen pushed for a change in policy to our detriment.

I do think, fine, have a Royal Family, but why do we support so many of them and for them to have so many properties? Harry has gone, but once Williams kids are of age, we'll be supporting 3 adults to go round doing what? Shaking hands and cutting ribbons? After paying for the best education money can buy? Some people want Edwards kids and Beatrice and Eugenie dragged back in ' to support William ' who barely does anything, despise being the heir to the Throne. Why has money to fund Palace repairs gone to to the King instead of being taken out directly and used to maintain a property which they clearly haven't used any of their vast fortune to maintain during their long tenure? We should be reducing the sovereign grant, not increasing it. It remains to he seen if the grant goes down once the renovations have taken place. If they can't bear to spend their own money maintaining their residences, then they should reduce the number of properties they have and open up Buckingham Palace all year round to pay for it's maintenance, if they attract so many tourists. Let the tourists pay for it.

Ooh, I bet she could dish out some serious sleb dirt!

For all we know, Queenie herself might have had a bit on the side!

Penelope Keith is probably feeling overlooked.

Not sure how you have come to the conclusion that I love the Royal Family unconditionally from my post, however,many people would prefer to have the Royals, albeit a slimmed down monarchy, than an elected Head Of State.

Having a Royal as a Patron of a charity provides vital publicity and helps to raise more money. You only have to look at the crowds when there is a Royal event and the tourists who come to this country to see they are still very popular. I can't see an elected Head of State having the same effect.