Lady Louise 21st birthday - end of privacy?

[PrettyFlyforaMaiTai]

So first of happy 21st birthday to Lady Louise!

I wouldn’t have even realised save for seeing a few articles online showing her celebrating with her boyfriend. The photos have been credited to Facebook and shows her posing for a photo and looking into the camera, but also a photo of her posing for a selfie and not seeming to be aware someone is photographing her. It looks like the media have been trawling through her/friends Facebook accounts or else someone has sold her out. Is this is now that she is 21? Is she not entitled to privacy any more? Is she going to get stalked and papped from now on?

I would expect the chances of a journo having an offspring at the same university is quite high.

They don't really have deep insight in to how she's finding it, rather its a list of activities that loads of people could see her do, with a gloss that there's nothing she's doing that's markedly different to what any sporty OTC type student does

I liked It's a Royal Knockout

😊

I'd quite like to see the out-take version.

Eddie's epic flounce.

Meat Loaf threatening to push Charmless into a moat.

And that's the sideshows we know about 😎

I hope that Lady Louise turns out to be as much of a credit to the royal family as her parents.

I still don't understand the garden centre job - she's technically a princess although so far has chosen not to use the title and lives on a huge estate she's hardly strapped for cash, unless her parents started asking for rent money when she turned 18 :-)

she's hardly strapped for cash

How do you know what cash she has at her own disposal? She might have wanted to earn her own money, and equally important, get some work experience.

Usually people are on here moaning about the RF having plenty of money. It's a nice change to see the opposite 😂

Even if you ignore the fact that her parents clearly want their children to work and understand money, it was a very good way of testing out what the press were going to be like with regard to her privacy and if she was going to get her teen and uni years and be afforded relative privacy or not.

Beatrice and Eugenie are so close in age to William and Harry they were always wrapped up in most of the agreements about the privacy of the "young royals".

Louise, and James, is a bit of an outlier in that she's one of the grandchildren generation, but so much younger than the rest of them and the great grandchildren are much younger again.

Marina Hyde and Richard Osman are planning to talk about It's A Royal Knockout on The Rest is Entertainment podcast in the next week or so. I suspect they will be pretty disrespectful-so be warned.

I say all credit to her, when she clearly didn't need to!

GB news has an article this evening saying that she works in a student canteen during the week, maybe her parents aren't supporting her through her Uni.

I would doubt that very highly. She's probably doing it for the student experience. Plus she knows she is going to have to work for a living, and a lot of students get some form of work experience alongside their studies.

She doesn't have to work for a living, she could choose to take up her title and possibly become a working royal, because in a few years the UK is going to be short of those or she could follow B&E's example and marry someone wealthy, but she has spoken about being interested in a career in the military or diplomacy service, I think that shows independence on a new level for female members of the royal family.

I've seen her mother quoted as saying that Louise and James had been brought up with the expectation that they would have to work for a living. I imagine Beatrice and Eugenie style, because they always seem to have plenty of time off for holidays etc and Euge lives at least some of the time in Portugal.

Maybe her mother found her own career, prior to being in the RF, fulfilling and not just a way of earning a living, and wants her daughter to also have a career?

I imagine that being so low down the line of succession they planned for Louise and James to be like Zara, Peter etc and eventually like Margaret’s children and grandchildren - included in the big family gatherings such as Christmas but not part of any official engagements.

Maybe in William’s reign drafted in to provide more warm bodies for events where they have to mingle with several hundred people at a time like garden parties and diplomatic functions but not needed for the ceremonial things like Trooping etc.

I doubt we’ll have any Jubilees in Charles’ time as it would be a miracle for him to get to 25 years. And then who knows what the public mood will be by the time William reaches his 25 years.

Princess Anne said in an interview that the idea of slimming down the working royals sounded better when there were more of them, there's already two or three less than there were three years ago and I'm not sure how long the Duke of Kent at 89 can keep up with all his engagements, likewise the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester, Princess Anne are all in their mid 70's - I don't think any one person from the existing working royals could fit in the number of official engagements that she does. That said Beatrice and Eugenie have made appearances recently, maybe they will end up unofficial part time not technically working Royals.

I think the slimming down that people seemed to be expecting wasn't remotely the slimming down that Charles was intending.

I think he meant his siblings children. The slimming to me was a signal that, at the time it first came up the future, children of his siblings weren't going to be working royals.

In the early 80s when it first came up there were a lot of working royals, as well as several future expected spouses. QEII, Philip, QEQM, Margaret, Charles & his spouse, Andrew & his spouse, Edward & his spouse, Anne, Princess Alexandra, Princess Alice, the Duke & Duchess of Gloucester, and the Duke & Duchess of Kent.

I think he was making clear that whilst his children and their spouses were expected to be working royals, his siblings children were not. Also making clear that whilst his great uncles the Dukes of Kent and Gloucester had been followed as working royals by their sons, their sons would not in turn follow them.

They would have been envisioning that atm the working royals would be - Charles, his wife, Andrew & his wife, Edward & his wife, Anne, plus Charles children and their spouses. So 11 full time working royals, with the cousins doing some part time things.

They wouldn't have expected to have only Charles, Camilla, William, Kate, Edward Sophie and Anne, plus the cousins.

and there could be even less in five years time - without wishing ill on any of them Charles, Camilla, Anne and the cousins will be 80+, the Duke of Kent 95 even if they all have good health it doesn't seem unreasonable to me to expect younger members of the family to take on more engagements and charity work and for older members to do less, I think its nice that Beatrice and Eugenie have quietly stepped in on a couple of occasions this year to cover engagements that usually Kate would have done. And if I ever have the honour to meet a member of the royal family on an official occasion I think it would be nice to meet one of the younger ones.

Whereas with the age gap with QEII's younger children they would have been expecting to have Andrew and Edward, plus their wives, to bridge the gap between Charles' reign and William's.

William, Kate, Harry, Meghan, Andrew, his wife, Edward and Sophie would have been enough full timers with the rest slowing down and that would have covered the time until William's children were adults nicely for them.

Andrew having no wife would have left them one down. There's no way they ever would have contemplated being four down.

If they don't massively cut the number of engagements then William's children will have to start their royal roles relatively young, like Anne did, rather than having lots of time like William and Harry did.

I have no issue with them cutting engagements to suit the available cloth.

I do have an issue with the never to be decreased Sovereign Grant increasingly lining the pockets of a king saddled with an ever diminishing supporting cast.

It actually can be decreased - what happens at the moment is any money not used at the end of the year goes into a ‘surplus’ fund - this and the accounting of what has been used each year by the Sovereign Grant is overseen by a government department.

If the surplus account (which is designed to be a top up for years where something unexpected comes up - like a major emergency building repair etc) goes over a certain amount indicating that the current grant is regularly in excess of what is needed then the government committee can decide to reduce the Sovereign grant amount.

Unlike the civil list which simply paid a wage to those considered ‘working royals’, the SG is more like an expense account - if Anne is doing an engagement then she gets her travel expenses and needs for that engagement met and based on what was spent. So fewer engagements means less money spent.

What I’d like to see is the accounting breakdown released for the SG in detail so it’s clear what proportion goes to Crown building and estate management and what proportion goes on staffing and what proportion goes on engagements.

Okay - well they apparently do now do a detailed breakdown:

https://www.royal.uk/sites/default/files/documents/2024-07/Sovereign%20Grant%20Report%202023-24.pdf

And here's the official wording re the reserve fund and the grant from the Treasury website:

If the whole of the Sovereign Grant is not spent in a given year, the surplus is paid into a Reserve Fund, controlled by the Royal Trustees. The amount that may accumulate in the Reserve Fund is limited in line with the provisions set out in the Sovereign Grant Act 2011. This gives the Royal Trustees the power to set a lower level of Sovereign Grant than the formula would otherwise generate.

The Keeper of the Privy Purse as Accounting Officer for the Sovereign Grant, is accountable to HM Treasury and Parliament. The Sovereign Grant business accounts are audited by the National Audit Office (NAO) and laid before Parliament. The NAO may also undertake value for money reviews to scrutinise its use of public funds. The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) may in turn investigate these further.

And it looks like they did reduce the grant in 2024

The percentage used for calculating the Sovereign Grant is reviewed periodically. The first review took place in 2016 and assessed whether the 15% proportion value was appropriate. The Royal Trustees recommended an increase in the percentage to 25% from 2017-18 to fund a ten-year reservicing works at Buckingham Palace and the Monarch’s official duties.
The second percentage review has concluded and the Royal Trustees Report published in July 2023 recommends that the percentage rate be reduced to 12%. A statutory instrument giving effect to this rate will be laid in Parliament in due course. The change of percentage will come into effect from April 2024.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/sovereign-grant-act-2011-guidance/sovereign-grant-act-2011-guidance