I was an ardent Royal fan, but Andrew back today, WTH

[DistingusedSocialCommentator]

I still admire HRH Prince of Wales & his immediate family.

I was a fan of our King, that is until today. Why on earth was
Andrew allowed back on the scene?

I do not like being treated like a fool, nor do millions of others in the UK.

The time has come to have a referendum if the Monarchy is to remain.

Am I the only one who read this and thought ‘isn’t the Queen dead?’

I still can't get used to the fact that you don't mean QE2. my immediate thought was "eh how could they be led by the Queen when she's dead"

😂

Clearly not haha

Andrew was in the front row, but along the row after the working royals.

He was sat between the Duchess of Gloucester and Marina Ogilvy (who was with her mother Princess Alexandra).

No, for a split second, I thought like you, sorry! Queen Camilla has grown on me.

‘Working’ royals… stop the world I wanna get off.

That’s not him , he was in the opposite side of the church. That’s the Duke of Gloucester, I think .

@cyclamenqueen I meant the man two places left of the Duke of Gloucester, but it is a bit blurry.

As I was reading this I had the Housemartins song ‘the people who grinned themselves to death’ playing. Spooky.

(for those who don’t know the chorus is ‘the people who grinned themselves to death, they smiled so much they failed to take a breath, and even when their kids were starving, they all thought the Queen was charming’)

Genuinely interested as to why you admire any of them? What have they done to draw your admiration? I can’t think of anything 🤷‍♀️

That was unnecessary and OTT, IMO.

I am no fool, I am aware of the costs you state.
However, in the scheme of things, and IMHO, Wiiliam/Kate and their little ones are a multi-billion pound asset to England, especially London.

Having said what I said in my OP, the media had wound me up but the FM's here helped by their posts and I have a lot of respect for our new Quen and King Charles.

You are allowed to dislike them, but you have posted OTT and inappropriately.

@jm9138 absolutely love that song! 😄

@DistingusedSocialCommentator they are not a multi billion pound asset at all - what evidence do you have of that? The tourist argument is an absolute nonsense - you only have to look at the most visited attractions in the UK to see that.

"Unconvicted man goes to church with family members"..... not shocking, not a big deal. He can go wherever he likes.

Yes, William and Kate - when at times I see them on TV - their smiles, caring, sensible stance and their general presentation in public is something I nd millions around the world admire.

TBH, when Charles did what he did to Princess Diana, I went off him. However, in recent years and now Camila as well, they have grown on me, especially our Queen who appears to be the most lovely person I've seen on TV

Admiring someone for being able to smile in public seems odd to me but no matter.

Come now. Don’t you know how much they do? And you know I wouldn’t do that job for any money. I don’t know what that job is exactly but it is bloody hard and I know I wouldn’t do it. It is so hard you have to be trained from birth to do it. And who would we have instead? President Blair? No thanks. The master of the house says that the monarchy is important because it gives continuity and structure to society and without someone at the top how will we all know our place? He is real class my master. Not like ‘new money’. You can really tell old money because it is polite and unpretentious and doesn’t pay tax because it is all wealth rather than dirty ‘income’.

Just look at the number of visitors to London that come to see where some of the Royal family live. Then the spend billions of food/eating out/hotels/shopping/taxis/theatres/et/c/etc and then this has a knock-on on effect the tens of thousands of the people/companies that provide a service to these outlets in turn the shops/hotels they leas/rent/lorries and vans that supply the secotors/the media/airlines/airprots/trains - over the years its tens of billions of pounds has come into London because of this family

Will be stuck in my head the rest of the week now. What happened to bands who sang catchy songs about being working class? I guess it stopped when you needed to go to public school or be a rapper to get into the music industry. (Note to self - do not derail Prince Andrew thread. Nonce goes to funeral is very important to discuss)

It was a remembrance service for a family friend.
It was appropriate for him to attend but why he and Sarah walked in front of the paparazzi smiling and laughing on the way to the ceremony I cannot imagine. The laughing reminiscences are for the eulogy and wake, not for the walk to the service. He (they) should both know this. It's very basic etiquette, let alone Royal protocol.

Now you are calling me a "fool" just because of the facts that you disagree with.

No one agrees with everything and your views are entrenched. Hopefully, in time, you will at least recognise the good work some of them do and not deny the fact that they earn England/London multi-millions indirectly

If our Royal family was quoted on the stock market, trust me they'd be worth over 15 billion, sterling,

But that’s just total bollocks 😄. Correlation doesn’t prove causation. Thousands of tourists come to London. Some of the royals live in London. That doesn’t mean they come to London to see the royals - the buildings maybe, but not the people.

Look at the actual EVIDENCE - look at the stats for most visited tourist attractions. Just because you want something to be true doesn’t mean it is.

It is absolute bollocks - if we abolished the monarchy tomorrow London’s tourist trade would be as buoyant as ever.

I saw, read and got upset - why was he leading?

"Get upset", that's exactly why the Daily Mail wants you to do. Terrible paper, better ignored.

The problem is we got rid of our monarchy too soon, gave all the power to parliament and then they had no reason politically to get rid of them. I don’t think people realise one of the reasons politics is so shite in this country is the lack of power sharing. The government wants to do something no one can really stop them. The lords used to be able to but now they can just delay a bit (well, I say ‘now’ - it has been like that for over 100 years). If a law is breached they just change the law. We used to have the EU that could rein them in a bit but no longer. So no government in the UK will ever vote for a stronger lords or to have an elected head of state because then they will lose some of their power. Turkeys voting for Christmas. So they all go on about how important and marvellous the monarchy is. And the populace lap it all up whilst moaning how crap politics is and how helpless they feel whilst not realising an unelected head of state is a big reason for that.