It's shocking how much harder the older Royals are working

[tatalan]

The Princess of Wales barely outworked Queen Elizabeth who died in early September after cancelling a series of engagements.

Charles and Anne look to be carrying the monarchy at present. The Earl and Countess of Wessex are grafting hard as well.

What do William and Kate spend their days doing? Surely as young energetic members of the RF, they should be pulling their weight.

So ‘Jill being surprised and saying it was just a photo op’ is your opinion on what Jill was thinking rather than a link to a reputable source.

True, and as I said earlier Kate should be compared with Diana or Princess Anne when they had young children. Not Anne as she is now! I have no idea how many engagements she undertook when Peter and Zara were primary school aged but I'm assuming it was less than she currently does.

William OTOH hasn't really got an excuse but let's see what their event numbers are like at the end of next year.

I bet Catherine did irritate Meghan as Meghan is a natural for the role required of a royal. Since a little girl she has been standing up for causes and is a natural speaker. She has also worked hard to get where she is both in school and in acting. Catherine, dare I say it, is a bit boring.

Not my words, copied From Sara Paine's comprehensive review on Amazon:

1. British taxpayers fund over a hundred Royal buildings, including Buckingham Palace, St James’s Palace, Clarence House, Marlborough House Mews, Kensington Palace, Windsor Castle, Frogmore House and Hampton Court Mews. The Queen personally owns Balmoral and Sandringham, which were bought with public funds, but they qualify for taxpayer support as they are used for official business and they remain the Queen’s private property.

2. The Queen is estimated to be personally worth at least £350 million. Although she is not legally obliged to pay tax, she ‘chose’ (under public pressure following the Windsor Castle fire) to start voluntarily paying income and capital gains tax in 1992. A 2017 data leak of the Paradise Papers also revealed that the Duchy of Lancaster, which manages investments for the Queen’s £520m private estate, invests around £10m in the Cayman Islands and Bermuda-based funds - British overseas territories with no corporation tax and at the centre of the offshore financial industry.

3. Wills are public documents in the UK and have always been open for inspection as an essential safeguard to prevent theft and malpractice. However, since 1911, the Royal Family has been allowed to ‘seal’ selected wills – or declare them private – in the interests of upholding the dignity of the Crown. This means that exact figures on the wealth of the Royal Family are hard to come by.

4. The Queen presides over a merit-free awards system that maintains a top-down mediaeval hierarchy of court favourites that has existed for 700 years. A lot of the time, she awards honours to her own family for no apparent reason. Prince Charles now has 31 decorations available to him to wear and even Princess Anne holds 24 military positions. The Order of Merit - limited to 24 members and given to reward those who give ‘exceptionally meritorious service towards the advancement of art, literature and science’ – also includes amongst its members the Duke of Edinburgh and Prince Charles.

5. Most members of the Royal Family still charter flights or helicopter flights at public expense instead of using much cheaper methods such as scheduled flights, trains or even cars. In the most recent figures, a total of £69.4 million of taxpayer funds went on official duties such as travel, as well as other costs including staff, hospitality and property maintenance - a rise of £2.4m or 4% from £67m in 2018/2019. Recent examples of taxpayer funded travel costs include Harry and Meghan's tour of southern Africa: £246,000, the Prince of Wales’ flights for a two-day visit to Oman: £210,345, Prince Andrew taking a private plane to Northern Ireland to attend the Royal Portrush Golf Club's Open championship: £15,848 and Princess Anne taking a charter flight to Rome costing £16,440 so she could watch Scotland play rugby (in her capacity as patron).

6. The Privy Council, (a formal body of advisers to the Sovereign which originated in Anglo Saxon times) can amend Acts of Parliaments without anything being reported in the Press. Prime ministers use the Council, which officially reports directly to the Queen, to make arbitrary decisions for which they are not accountable or subject to democratic inspection. These include allegations that the British intelligence services were involved in torture during the so-called ‘War on Terror’ and the forced deportation of the Chagos Islanders to make way for an American military base.

7. Despite being ‘public servants’ on the taxpayers’ payroll, the Royal Family is exempt from the Freedom of Information Act and Is not obliged to abide by the standards of behaviour set out by The Committee on Standards in Public Life. This means that they can carry out their roles in almost total secrecy (unlike accountable politicians, councillors, Lords etc) and are free to accept privately any holiday, the use of a castle, private jet, luxury car, yacht or loans all without any requirement even to record these gifts (although official gifts are recorded). British taxpayers have no right to know who is buying favour with the people who form an integral part of their constitutional system. The questionable business relationships and friendships of some family members such as ‘Air Miles Andy’ Prince Andrew are something that no other public servant could get away with.

8. The Queen Mother acquired assets worth up to £70m in her lifetime which were then bequeathed to her daughter the Queen free of inheritance tax, thanks to a private deal between the Queen and John Major when he was Tory prime minister in 1993.

9. The Royal Household pays face value for the Maundy Thursday coins that the Queen distributes every Easter (one for each year of her age), however the taxpayer pays for the full cost of the specialist minting, which is never revealed to the public for ‘commercially sensitive’ reasons.

10. The Duke of Edinburgh still receives an annual allowance of £359,000 from taxpayers despite retiring from being a ‘working Royal’ in 2017. (The Queen makes up the shortfall needed to maintain his office from her private funds, the Duchy of Lancaster). There are currently 12 working Royals which entitles those individuals to certain privileges, such as taxpayer-funded security which costs a total of around £106 million per year. Working royals also tend to have access to ‘grace and favour’ residences and many are also gifted private country homes by the Queen in her private capacity. Although many royals have access to the Sovereign Grant for official royal duties, the cost of their day-to-day lives is not covered by public funding. Surprisingly the idea of a ‘working royal’ is a mid-20th century one.

11. The Royal Family continues to expand. At the 2018 Trooping of the Colour, the Queen was surrounded on the balcony at Buckingham Palace by 44 members of her extended family (many of whom you will not have heard of).

12. The British Royal family is at the top of the European Royalty league in the receipt of public money receiving around £82 million in 2020. Some comparable figures are:

Netherlands (2020): £39 million
Norway (2019): £34 million
Belgium (2018): £12 million
Spain (2018): £7 million

Royal Families in Spain, the Netherlands and Denmark all make do with two palaces each; the UK Royal Family has 15 palaces plus Balmoral, Sandringham and those owned by the Duchy of Cornwall.

Full marks to Norman for his detailed and up-to-date research that has gone in to this book against, it appears, opposition from those who don’t appear to be that keen that this kind of information is more widely known.

I'm pretty sure she did say it (jokingly but not), however the video doesn't seem easy to find anymore somewhat unsurprisingly. I don't have time to trawl the internet for it tbh but I remember it from the time. Take it or leave it! I

A question for the defensive posters on here. Do you think this is the best we can offer? Our Royal Family represent us and IMO this kind of thing is not a great look when we're talking about people with every possible resource at their disposal.

I would like to see more from them. You're entitled to your opinions obviously but as a British citizen, or subject, I think that's a fair comment and it's not meant to be below the belt or part of some tedious competition between K&W, and M&H.

Just seen this - no, not defensive. I think you might be projecting a bit. There is some fair criticism here about people who are meant to be public servants. And it's clear Jill Biden was unimpressed - watch the video for yourself. Attacking the source which as I explained was the best I could find with some quick Googling, doesn't address the actual issue which is essentially a work performance one.

I’m hardly defensive - you’re the one who is projecting your opinion of Kate onto Jill Biden and then trying to imply that Jill was
bitching about Kate - clearly you’ve made it all up.

You are entitled to your opinions, but you should be clear that’s what they are, just your opinion.

the UK Royal Family has 15 palaces plus Balmoral, Sandringham and those owned by the Duchy of Cornwall.

I daresay the definition of a palace is flexible.

Buckingham Palace
Kensington Palace
St James Palace
Windsor Castle
Hampton Court Palace
Palace of Holyrood House
Hillsborough Castle (Official home of Secretary of State for Northern Ireland)

I'm sure someone can enlighten me on the other nine.
And of course The Monarch (The Queen in her lifetime and now King Charles) can't live in them all! Most are historic homes open to the public, or used as offices of state.

Proving what a wonderful historic legacy this country benefits from.

Eight, not nine as I remembered an extra one just before posting.

LOL ok.

It seems unlikely that a professional, diplomatic person like Jill Biden would publicly diss a future Queen of the United Kingdom after an official meeting.

@ShamedBySiri

Thats what I thought, Jill Biden is a professional, I was so surprised, at least we know to take the posters future comments with a pinch of salt.

Apologies for the Daily Mail link, but here is a comparison to Diana when she had very young children. She did significantly more than the current PoW does.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4077950/amp/Kate-William-slammed-doing-HALF-official-engagements-Charles-Diana-did-age.html

I take it back then @AreOttersJustWetCats! Interesting to see how the Mail were once critical of W&K when now they've almost elevated them to sainthood.

That’s an article from 2016.

K&W were grandchildren/in law of the monarch at the time. C&D were next in line.

@tatalan and a happy new year to you.

Right, but her rate of engagements hasn't increased has it? Despite the Queen and Prince Philip stepping back from things towards the end of their lives. We don't know what 2023 will bring, but Kate will need to double her engagements to be at the level of previous royals in her position.

I would expect Kate to do more engagements in her first year as PoW than Diana, given that she's had a lot of time to prepare for the role and her children are all at school now. Diana was pitched right into it all at 20 and was pregnant with William soon after.

I apologise, I haven't been able to find it either. I must have misremembered based on how I interpreted her reaction.

Kate and William, well William, are in favour of a deeper look at visits. It’s all about impact and the visits they go take months of prep work to ensure maximum impact for the charities. The days of turning up and opening a shopping centre are long gone ai think. I mean I say that as someone whose local shopping centre was one of the first events of P. Diana. I remember seeing a library in Cornwall opened by Duke of Windsor when he was a Prince. That kind of stuff can’t happen anymore. Having said that they do need to get out their more and press the flesh. And make a better fist of it then the Caribbean tour when they go abroad.

I remember seeing a library in Cornwall opened by Duke of Windsor when he was a Prince.

Wow!

@walkinthewoodstoday

Well said. Bravo! Will Royalists read it? Unfortunately that is doubtful.

And for those talking about royal properties, they actually have 27. That ranges from a small cottage of which I think there might be one or two, to mostly huge estates and palaces. I can list them all if anyone doubts this. They are in every part of the United Kingdom.

IIRC, one of Meghan and Harry's gripes while expecting their first baby was that they would be getting an inflated workload to cover Kate and William wanting to stay at home with their children despite being about to have their own younger family they would have to leave. Plus, for all the tabloid criticism towards Meghan for allegedly wanting only glamorous gigs despite her obvious hard work on numerous smaller projects, it's always Kate and William who get the really desirable visits. Major sporting finals, foreign travel in the lap of luxury, please don't try to tell me they're not amazing and cushy. I understand the reasons - William is direct heir and if the rumours are true then Kate presumably has to get whatever she wants for now to keep her sweet - but most people would give their eye teeth for opportunities like those.

The Queen only died in September and you’re saying Kate is lazy and not doing enough 🤨 Surely official engagements are organised many months in advance. I bet if she was doing loads of engagements she would be criticised for neglecting her children. Whatever Kate and William do will never be enough for some of you as you clearly dislike them and enjoy picking holes. Sad and pathetic.

I think posters are talking about years, not months since the Queen died. Well... I am anyway. I wouldn't be criticising her for doing loads of engagements, it's what she should be doing as far as I'm concerned.

I don't dislike them. I have issues with the whole institution, that much is true.