The royals and Dan Wootton: Byline Times part 1 of 3-year investigation into how Wootton got information about the royal family

[queentim]

Following their series about the Crisis in British Journalism and MediaToo movement, Byline Times reporters have recently released the first report of the 3 year investigation into the link between the royals and (disgraced) TV presenter Dan Wootton.

The first report reveals how Charles and William were angered that Harry refused to remove the name of an aide (William's aide in Kensington) who was paid cash to leak stories about his wife Meghan, and son Archie. This included investigations by the Met.

As a result, Charles removed the $700,000 granted to support them, which would have seen Harry and Meghan living in Canada and representing the Queen, in an effort to bring them back to the UK by exposing their location in Canada and removing their security. This was the collapse of the 'Sandringham Agreement', which resulted in the signing of the Sussexes media deals.

Some highlights, but can be bought for £3.6:

▪ It followed news that a partner of a key aide to Prince William received £4,000 from The Sun allegedly for stories about the Duke and Duchess of Sussex when Wootton was executive editor.

▪ The Metropolitan Police looked into the alleged leaking but could not go to a judge for a warrant to search royal staff property without knowing the identity of the whistle-blowers.

▪ Two internal royal investigations followed – one involving Simon Case, who is today the embattled head of the civil service facing questions over the Government’s response to the pandemic.

▪ Byline Times has uncovered new photographic evidence of Wootton, the aide and the aide’s partner at a lavish private birthday party Wootton threw for his close friends in a £1,675-a-night hotel suite.

▪ Prince Harry sent formal ‘letters before action’ detailing the claims about Wootton and the palace to News UK.

▪ When the aide’s name was not removed from the legal letters, the Sussexes were cut adrift financially and left unable to protect themselves despite having a security threat level equal to the monarch.

▪ The royal household had thought the threat of exposure would force Harry and Meghan to return to the UK, where their profile could be controlled preventing them from eclipsing the future King

Exploding ‘Megxit’: How Dan Wootton and a Cash-for-Leaks Scandal Split the Monarchy

Charles was removed from direct involvement in the management of the Dutchys as a result of his activities . His mistress’s jewellery clothes staff travel and horses were being claimed as tax deductible plus his own servants .

Except Charles clearly wasn’t removed from the management. The annual reports going back for more than a decade make the governance perfectly clear: “The management of the Duchy operates under the overall guidance of The Prince’s Council, chaired by His Royal Highness”. If you are going to keep asserting that, you’ll have to show a source.

I also find your reference to “his Mistress” a rather silly dig. By 2005 Camilla had been divorced for 10 years and Charles 9. The Queen had included Camilla in her social circle from 2000 and Camilla had been living at Clarence House from 2003. They were clearly life partners, so I fail to see why it’s shocking that her expenses were included with his own. Meghan’s expenses for public appearances were covered by Prince Charles before she and Harry were married, too.

‘Potential ‘ for conflict of interest is public body speak for ‘FO you chancer’ as I’m sure you well know

This is nonsense.

The existence of a potential conflict of interest does not necessarily imply wrongdoing on anyone’s part. Sometimes they can’t be avoided (for example the common employee referral scheme which pays a bonus to a staff member for recommending someone they know for a vacant role). However, any interests which give rise to a potential conflict of interest must be recognised, disclosed appropriately and properly managed.

Management does not mean you have to take drastic action. It just means you need to ensure there are appropriate controls in place. In the example I gave of the employee referral scheme, that is managed by having independent staff members also involved in the recruitment process, for example. And that is perfectly fine.

Roussette · Yesterday 17:32

Seems a case of "if you don't like the information, don't believe it"

No
Personally I like to be able to question all public bodies. Don't you?

I certainly do.
Which is why I thanked Serenster for clearly laying out the legalities of the situation re RF/Tax liabilities.

Hasn't stopped the usual cries of "they're robbing the people" though, has it?

@Serenster I admire your patience

When everything is clouded in secrecy, despite posters like you trying to shut down questioning, I will remind you that won't happen. I have never used the phrase 'they're robbing the people' by the way. That's you saying that and obviously designed to goad.

Perhaps you could read some of the Guardian articles regarding the Monarchy and finances, you may well find it interesting.

Just one tiny part...
Elizabeth II and Charles III have extracted cash payments worth more than £1.2bn from two hereditary estates that pay no tax, in addition to the millions they receive in public funding for their official duties. In 2022, they received £21m each from the duchies of Lancaster and Cornwall respectively, despite a centuries old debate over whether the two estates in fact belong to the British nation.

I have done two links below. The first one is a summary. The other digs deeper with their special investigation called Cost of the Crown. Within that link there are many articles revealing how the Royal Family hides its wealth from public scrutiny.

Do have a look, it is enlightening. Also... have you heard of the Paradise Papers. They revealed that the Queen, through the Duchy of Lancaster, invested money in offshore tax havens. And Prince Andrew along with another 5 members of the RF used shell companies. MPs and Govt ministers have to declare shareholdings because of transparency rules. The Monarchy have no such rules and the Queen lobbied the government to change the rules so there was no public scrutiny.

Now... if you Badger want to sit back and accept everything that the RF do, and assume that one poster on here knows everything about royal finances, that is your prerogative. That's not for me.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/apr/07/british-royal-family-wealth-finances-cost-of-the-crown-summary

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/series/cost-of-the-crown

@Roussette very interesting post thankyou

Roussette · Today 08:42
Now... if you Badger want to sit back and accept everything that the RF do, and assume that one poster on here knows everything about royal finances, that is your prerogative. That's not for me.

I'll grant that The Guardian is a respectable paper, tho', of course with an extreme left-wing agenda. The articles are written by journalists who know the "house-rules". My son regularly reads me anti-monarchist bits...

Anything written by Dan Wootton & Co - you can keep it.

Serenster didn't claim to "know everything about the RF finances", but did spell out clearly the legal set-up.

@Roussette It's comments like these that detract from your credibility when Serenster has been calm, methodical and factual throughout her posts.

The guardian is not ‘extreme left wing.’ I think it leans left, but hardly ‘extreme.’

ALittleTeawithmilk · Today 09:56
The guardian is not ‘extreme left wing.’ I think it leans left, but hardly ‘extreme.’

You're right - I may have gone a OTT there. I put it down to arguing with said son...

£1.2bn from two hereditary estates that pay no tax, in addition to the millions they receive in public funding for their official duties. In 2022, they received £21m each from the duchies of Lancaster and Cornwall respectively, despite a centuries old debate over whether the two estates in fact belong to the British nation.

As I pointed out earlier in the thread, the duchies don’t pay tax themselves, but the beneficiaries of them do.

The Guardian is here engaging in exactly the concept that was mentioned upthread - its comments are accurate but misleading. The duchies don’t pay corporation tax, because they are not corporations. This is correct, but not it remotely sinister, as there are many, many large business in the Uk that are structured in the same way.

Take partnerships for example - also not corporations. They too do not pay corporation tax. Their profits are distributed to the agreed beneficiaries (the partners) and those individuals pay tax themselves on this as income.

Some of the UK’s biggest businesses are partnerships. Take law firm Freshfields for example. Its most recent set of financials show revenue of £1.84 billion. Average profit per partner was £2.09 million. So each partner received more than £2m from the firm and each paid income tax on that. The business itself did not pay tax.

There’s estimated to be more than 350,000 partnerships in the UK business landscape. So you can see that the duschies’ arrangements are not remotely unusual. And that’s before you get to the other historic bodies with similar charters. The Guardian doesn’t mention that though, does it? Nor that some of the biggest partnerships in the country don’t publish their financial accounts at all (law firm Slaughter and May makes more than Freshfields for example, but doesn’t publish anything).

Reading just the Guardian and not knowing the wider context isn’t going to help you weigh things up.

Did the Queen and Charles then pay 40% tax on that 21million in the same way as other beneficiaries? They 'voluntarily' pay tax. Do they 'voluntarily' pay tax in the same way as the rest of us pay it? The Duchies are deliberately murky in their ownership so that the 'debate around whether they belong to the State or the Crown' can rumble on with no one quite knowing what the liabilities are. I think Republicanism is extremely unlikely to happen in this country at least in my lifetime. But I do object to the lack of scrutiny if we have to have a Royal Family ( which it seems we do) and the enormous profligacy of its members. I would be happy with a much reduced Monarchy in terms of people, properties and staffing costs, much more like the European Monarchies.

Did the Queen and Charles then pay 40% tax on that 21 million in the same way as other beneficiaries?

I expect they pay 45% on their income over £125,140, actually (which is to say, most of it).

HMRC has this to say about collecting tax from King Charles and Prince William:

His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) is responsible for collecting tax under the Memorandum of Understanding [entered into in July 2023 and presented to Parliament]. The arrangements for providing information and making payments follow normal self assessment rules. The amounts paid are brought into account under the appropriate tax heading in HMRC’s general account.

As the Memorandum of Understanding makes clear, The King and The Prince of Wales are entitled to the same privacy and confidentiality in relation to their tax affairs as any other taxpayer. Accordingly, the government will not publish any information relating to monies paid under these voluntary arrangements.

Personally, I think I am remarkably measured but there you go... we can't all agree on my 'credibility' can we?

Interesting that your only posts on this thread are directed at questioning me.
There are other posters here who echo what I think

@Roussette just copy and paste from the internet and you will be loved.
I miss the days when people chatted .

@Samcro she did exactly that and you thanked her for it in your last post at 9.01 !!

I used to chat but tired of the constant harassment and aggression just because some posters didn’t like what I was saying. No point in engaging with that any more.

some posters do it occasionally , others fill a thread with it.

(Oh and I’ve noticed a few posts recently from people about the content of my posts. If I’m just quoting from something I tend to put in quotes. Most of my posts are all my own work, based on my own general knowledge)

For example….

'She'? Just stop now.
Thanks

I did write a lot of that post, it wasn't just a C&P job actually.

Course they are. As are mine.

I use either italics or quotation marks.

Can I suggest those who believe both Duchy's tax arrangements and the swivelling between public and private estates are entirely above board read the chapter on them in Norman Baker's excellent book?

As an aside I've just found The Scilly Isles - another national asset - have been claimed by the Duchy of Cornwall which can't come up with an explanation as to why.

Shades of her late maj nicking the nation's seabeds to enrich her own little purse.

As an aside I've just found The Scilly Isles - another national asset - have been claimed by the Duchy of Cornwall which can't come up with an explanation as to why.

History. In the same way that the Bailiwick of Guernsey is the last remnant of William the Conqueror’s Duchy of Normandy, and so gained its link to the UK when he successfully invaded in 1066. Over time it’s evolved to be a protectorate of the UK, but it still retains its historic separate status.