The Queen at the Royal Windsor Horse Show

[TigerLilyTail]

I've read so much about how she is frail/dying/already dead etc. and I'm so pleased to see her looking happy and animated at the Royal Windsor Horse Show even if she is still not walking around. I hope she will be with us for many more years.

www.bbc.com/news/uk-61437148

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10812857/Queen-smiles-arrives-Royal-Windsor-Horse-Show.html

it is the pomp and ceremony that people love about british royalty
they put on a show

we'd be on to William and Kate by now, if we had followed what the Netherlands have done. They have a very forward thinking RF. The children go to state school, they are slimmed down totally, a tenth of the staff our lot have got, they have jobs, and most importantly the public love them!

I agree that would be preferred, if only because it's cheaper and I doubt Charles would have been able to exert such influence with a different style of RF.

But I don't think that Charles or William could have achieved what the other royals you describe have achieved. They substantially below average intelligence and their entire lives are supervised. They've never interacted with an ordinary person unscripted. The machine around them is very conservative.

I agree that Charles is not the most popular member of the RF however he has pledged to reduce the size of the RF and as this has been repeatedly reported it will be hard not to carry it out .
At recent events I think C has been a bit more approachable and happier to mingle more .
I do think W will be a more more relatable King . He seems keen to listen and learn more than some royals . I cannot imagine any other member of the RF ( maybe with the exception of Sophie) who wound visit someone at home to bestow a Damehood.
Time will tell but I am really not sure how things will get worse as PP stated .

Yes I agree. Too many aides, men in grey suits, courtiers or whatever you call them.
They run the show really.

I was the PP who stated it will only get worse ??
It's all a matter of opinion of course but I think that. As I explained to you. Charles has a massive job ahead of him. Popularity for the RF is waning and will wane more once the Queen dies. He has to somehow revitalise and energise the RF, I just don't think he's capable of it.

But we'll see, won't we?

As far as William... he might well be a more relateable king but by the time he gets to the throne he could well be 60+

But ... we'd be on to William and Kate by now, if we had followed what the Netherlands have done. They have a very forward thinking RF. The children go to state school, they are slimmed down totally, a tenth of the staff our lot have got, they have jobs, and most importantly the public love them!

The public certainly do not love them.

Public confidence in king Willem-Alexander and queen Máxima has hit an all-time low, with just 54% saying they have faith in the monarch, according to an online survey of 26,000 people for television current affairs show EenVandaag.

Support for the royal family has declined for the past three years, but was as high as 80% for the king when he took over from his mother Beatrix in 2013.

And as I said in a previous thread, the Dutch royal family have had quite a few scandals, and the king and queen had to apologise on national TV for holidaying in Greece in breach of lockdown regulations.

The two years of coronavirus have been particularly damning for the royals, following a string of blunders over holidays, and culminating in a small party for oldest daughter Amalia when she turned 18 during the lockdown at the end of last year.‘

We have all had a hard time with the coronavirus rules but the king seems to think they don’t apply to him,’ one panel member wrote. ‘He should be setting an example.’

www.dutchnews.nl/news/2022/04/support-for-dutch-royals-slides-just-56-still-support-the-monarchy/

All of the European royal families have scandals of their own. They're certainly not all down to earth, Zara wearing, bicycling types. It's just that they're much less internationally famous than the British royals, so we don't tend to hear much about them.

Ahhh.... so we can slate the Dutch RF but not our own. Got you.

I'm scratching my head over what point, if any, you're attempting to make. However, I can say with some certainty that you haven't 'got me'.

I could dig around and find negative articles on anyone famous, any RF anywhere. Well done you for finding all that guff in direct comparison to what I wrote, it must've taken awhile.

Your tone is rather combative and patronising, so I'm not sure if it's worth engaging.

You claimed that the 'public loves' the Dutch royal family, offering a Twitter clip of them dancing around as evidence. The 'negative article' I linked to referred to a survey showing declining support for said royal family, and also discussed well known controversies surrounding them in recent years.

I'm not sure why you want to dismiss it as 'guff'. Which part of it do you think is factually inaccurate?

And there was a law brought in that ensures it will never go down. Only up.

So if there is a slimming down, they'll just individually have more money I suppose?

This is an interesting article. I doubt Monarchists will want to read it.

www.taxpayersalliance.com/the_sovereign_grant_needs_a_reality_check

Iced

Let's leave it shall we, I don't want to be rude.

You may not 'want' to be rude, but you've certainly managed it quite well in your 'responses' to me.

If you prefer not to engage with facts, I'll leave you to your Twitter clips.

@lameasahorse

“Why do people think slimming down the monarchy would be cheaper? The Sovereign grant is a large amount that goes to the Head of State to distribute. It is not related to the number of working royals. The grant was not reduced because Harry and Meghan are no longer working royals, it stays the same.”

The Sovereign Grant is based on profits from the Crown Estate 2 years previously so any change because of H and M wouldn’t be apparent yet. Also H and M stated that only 5% of their income was from the SG so not a huge amount relatively speaking .
Also the SG is to pay for staff etc who - I assume - will receive pay rises so not sure what this equates to in real terms .

This.

The problem is that the whole point of the Royal family is that they are not relatable. They are the elite. Surrounded by mystery, history and traditions. Having a relatable Royal family is a bit pointless.

But, I think the whole thing could be argued about endlessly.

I'm just glad to see the Queen looking happy after all the rumours that have been swirling around about how she's on death's door.

I am planning on baking a Victoria sandwich and doing a nice high tea to celebrate the Jubilee. I think when you look at how the world was when she first became Queen and how the world is now. I think it's remarkable how well she has adapted while still maintaining tradition. She definitely has made mistakes but I think she's done her best.

Perhaps (because she's not stupid) she knows she's dying and would like as much of a "retirement" as is possible for her to have. She saw her husband have a few precious years to himself before he died and perhaps she too would like to relax and just take a look at her family and her home and the world she will soon be leaving. Perhaps she deserves, after almost 100 years of public life, to end it looking dignified and regal, instead of as an object of pity. Perhaps she's earnt the right to chose what she does 🤷🏼‍♀️

I apologise if you feel I was rude. Not my intention.

The Twitter clip was just an illustration, that's all. An illustration of a different RF. No one's perfect. They aren't. But they are slimmed down and relateable. That is just my opinion, before you go and find some facts to dispute that!!

Have yourself a nice rest of the weekend.

This is very important. The pomp and ceremony would still create the same interest even if the royal characters were replaced with another person. No-one actually goes to see William or Charles or Edward or even the queen. They go to see the spectacle surrounding them - the clothes, the footmen, the procession, the glitter.

I thought that

Well put

In which case she could choose to abicate, or retire of us ordinary plebs who weren't born into the magical God given right of royalty.

She has episodic mobility problems, so presumably she has good days and bad days. It's not because she couldn't be arsed doing it and she did drop out at the last minute on medical advice.

My mum's in her seventies and has sciatica. There are days she feels good and is happy walking around and days she's in a lot of pain, so stays home. A lot of medical conditions are like this.

^^ This.

There would still be busbys, marching bands, gun salutes, pomp and ceremony even if there wasn't a RF.