Is anyone else thinking the optics are off: royals in a golden coach whilst the UK is in a cost of living crisis?

[MsPinkMarshmallow]

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11456933/Prince-Princess-Wales-greet-South-African-president.html

People are struggling to heat their homes, feed their kids and pay their mortgages but the royals are in the Mall in a golden carriage and giving state banquets.

Can't we just get rid of the lot of them?

@Serenster and @maulperton ( since you seem to be a double act )
Nothing on earth is perfect - which is why you try to deflect the issue by asking for a example of perfection .

That is very different from admiring and metaphorically bootlicking the useless dimwits currently calling themselves 'royals' and laughing all the way to the bank.

@Maul you like to present a 'reasoned argument ' about the society and its functions -and you always claim the royals are the best system.
So justify ( off the tip of my head and in no particular order )

• royals exempt from 160 laws and counting
• royals literally above the law
• royals paying a voluntary token tax
• the queen banning black workers from her offices until the 1990 s

That's your idea of a healthy society ??

And btw , you can keep your king . Isn't that guy in Greece still swanning about despite being turfed out . Just no more money land and unearned power .
They can prance up and down the Mall if they pay for it themselves .

And one other thing occurs to me - monarchists love to repeat the lie that the monarchy brings in money .
Well with the economy falling off a cliff what is all this talk ( lies) of slimming it down?? Surely they should be expanding to save us all!!
( that's sarcasm btw)

Talking of wasting tax payers money, HS2 should have been stopped a long time ago, it's already out of date and they've cut the most important part up north. £100 billion +. What a joke.

I am an old gimmer but I have to take issue with this "optics" thing. Those are the things gin and vodka come out of in the pub.

Heads of state are normally exempt from many/all laws. Not unique to Britain, nor restricted to monarchies.

The queen banning black workers from her offices until the 1990s

(I’ll have to respond to this in individual posts…otherwise it will be far too long 😀)

The Queen’s household - in line with most of society in the 1960s - did not permit
“coloured immigrants or foreigners” to take clerical roles (they were allowed to work as domestic servants).

It is unclear when this practice ended. Buckingham Palace has confirmed that its records showed that people from ethnic minority backgrounds were employed in the 1990s. It did not keep records on the racial backgrounds of employees before the 1990s, so it cannot identify when the rules changed.

As for Britain as a whole, the UK government chose not to adopt various EU laws to protect people from discrimination until the Blair government post-1997. The key act in the UK wasn’t actually passed until 2010. Prior to those changes, discrimination on the basis of race/sex/sexuality and religion was alive and well and practiced all across the UK

So you can definitely judge the Palace for their attitudes in the 1960, but you will need to judge the whole country for them too - the Palace was absolutely not out of step with current social attitudes and values there. Your hypothetical Head of State will inherit a Department that had exactly the same historic practices, by the way…

Royals exempt from 160 laws and counting/Royals literally above the law

Firstly, not all laws apply to all people. Most of them also have a lengthy list of exemptions (navigating them can be a nightmare!). As an allegation, without details, this is utterly meaningless. I imagine, as pointed out upthread, many of them have to do with general immunity for a head of state, which is a well-established (dating back to Roman law) and found all over the world.

Your hypothetical Head of State in your hypothetical utopian Republic would also have this protection, and various exemptions. (You may find it difficult to find people interested in taking the job on if it didn’t come with this protection). Some of the exemptions will also has to do with protecting the position and personal privacy of the people in the role (strange I know, but some people think they are entitled to know everything about every aspect of their lives just because they are head of state. Again, something your hypothetical new head of state will likely also want…).

Royals paying a voluntary token tax

I don’t understand why there’s problem with the tax being voluntary? Surely it is better that they chose to pay than not. Especially because this is one of the exemptions you were shouting about - turns out in practice the exemption here is meaningless as they don’t rely on it. The royals pay tax at the usual rate - so, Prince Charles for example pays the top rate of 45% of tax on his earnings (much of which are well over the threshold for the highest rate). As they are not allowed to accept freebies they also pay VAT on all goods and services they use.

I also note you’ll need to pay each of your rotating hypothetical Heads of State a generous pension (isn’t Liz Truss guaranteed £140,000 a year for her six weeks as PM?) - something you don’t need to worry about for the monarch who literally don’t retire.

I think these two articles sum it all up really

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/oct/11/ministers-may-face-legal-action-documents-queen-hidden-wealth
www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/feb/07/revealed-queen-lobbied-for-change-in-law-to-hide-her-private-wealth

No transparency.

Firstly, not all laws apply to all people. Most of them also have a lengthy list of exemptions (navigating them can be a nightmare!)

Yep.

Exemption from FOI requests must be a handy little gadget to have in the toolbox.

Exemption from FOI requests must be a handy little gadget to have in the toolbox.

You may be interested to know that the office of the French president is also exempt from their FOI law (so are most government activities). An outgoing French President is entitled to a security detail, a diplomatic passport, a guaranteed pension for life, housing, first class train tickets and up to seven funded staff. (I picked France as a comparison, but all the above is fairly standard).

Anyone else thinking they'd like to vote in Serenster as Head of State in a Republic? Such clarity and logic and calm in the responses!

You may be interested to know that the office of the French president is also exempt from their FOI law (so are most government activities).

Government exemption is hardly a surprise but in any case drawing a comparison between an elected representative and a sprawling unelected dynasty seems a bit irrelevant.

To be fair you do see royals a reasonable amount up in central london. I’ve seen them twice in the last couple of months. Once wills and Kate drove past and once wills and Kate followed I think by Harry and Meghan ( might not have been them). The tourists both times we’re delighted!
plus the fact they are not just empty buildings for long dead people matters. Lots of tourists love the family intrigues etc.
yes you have the history which will remain but it’s current stuff too. Lose that at our peril!
plus it’s a constitutional monarchy. The king literally represents the state. I think we have one of the best systems of governance in the world and still replicated and used by lots of other’s countries too.
better than a republic imo.

An elected head of state would be awful. Constantly changing every how many years. Isn’t France on its 5th republic now and look at Vichy France during the war. That literally couldn’t happen with a monarchy as they’d need to be all dead ( and there’s a long line of succession to kill)
the royals stayed in Windsor/ london.
monarchy brings stability and consistency and constancy and familiarity and reliability and resilience hence it lasting for 1000 years plus. Yes individuals within the monarchy might not bring those things ( the queen did) but the system ( the crown) does.
I don’t know how anyone can argue against that when we’ve just had a ruling, popular monarch that’s brought all those things for 70 years plus we’ve got Charles, William and George lined up for the next 70 years too.

Are you joking?! So you happen to have seen two Royals whilst just walking through London but do you think out of 68 million population of UK what's the likelihood of that?!!!!!

Zilch!

My adult DCs live in London, work in central London, one of my DCs has seen Wayne Sleep twice (a family joke about that!) No royals whatsoever

It's not normal to just happen to see members of the RF, dont pretend it is

Well I did see members of the royal family twice in the last couple of months as did many tourists who were delighted. It’s just an anecdote to counter the “ you never see them”
well yes you do! They are real people that drive about.
I wasn’t looking for them they just drove past and actually now I think of it I see them driving along a40 a fair bit presumably having flown into raf Northolt or perhaps coming from Windsor.
maybe I’m luckier than most! 😁

I also saw Joan Collins the other day with her husband Percy. It’s not unusual to see famous people if you are up in central london a lot ( as I am)

So you are saying you can walk about London and happen to see Royals? Bullshit!

My adult children have lived in London for a long time and have never ever seen anyone royal or remotely royal in any part of London and they mix in central London a lot with their work and socialising. Sorry you are talking bollocks

Well they are not hanging about in the right places 😁
how do you think Charles gets about if not driving in a car on London roads? He doesn’t walk that’s for sure. Same with wills and Kate. I bet if your kids lived in Windsor they would report seeing them driving about almost daily.
and you can spot a royal convoy a mile off almost literally as bike outriders stop all the traffic for them . So you know they are coming and can speculate as to who it is!

You cannot pretend tourists come to Britain to actually SEE a member of the RF!

Many years ago, I worked in a hotel which had a lot groups of American visitors. They would always take a day trip to London and frequently came back expressing disappointment that they hadn't seen the Queen so I'm sure there are tourists for whom the possibility of seeing a RF member is an attraction.

If you hang about outside buck palace long enough you stand an average chance of seeing someone. Probably some one boring but possibly someone good. Many tourists do! But yes more likely you see no one at all but the possibility is there 😁
tourists definitely love it if someone royal drives past.

I don’t get the anger or denials about the fact that the royals drive about in cars in london and elsewhere and people might see them. They don’t have wings to get about. They might get helicopters I guess but even that can involve driving to and from an airport.
it’s really not something to get excised about

You said Central London. Now you are saying Windsor.

No, they don't live in Windsor. So dont pretend people who socialise and/or work in central London can regularly see members of the RF.

My DCs do this and have for a long time and never have seen any member of the RF

I suppose it's possible there have been more royals milling about London in the past couple of months following the death of the queen and the associated admin but to suggest they're routinely seen a 'reasonable amount' is a stretch.

They're far more likely to be holed up in their country estates or on holiday recuperating from their immense workload.

Buck palace is in central london ( could see any royal) Windsor caste is in Windsor ( could see will and Kate as they live there) will and Kate might drive to and from buck palace. It’s not hard to understand.
buck Palace and Windsor are probably a half hour journey to each other especially with bike outriders stopping all the traffic.
I’m not making this up 😁

The last thing my DCs would do is hang about outside Buckingham Palace.

To reiterate, you said anyone can see members of the RF in Central London.

Incorrect. Unless you hang around outside Windsor Castle or BP