What do you expect from our Royal Family

[Spectre8]

There were alot of good discussions and comments on my previous thread re. William missing the VJ day around the role and expectations of the Royal Family. I didn't want it to be a bashing thread to make personal attacks at William or Kate but well some comments were still made.

So its made me think there is still a very worthwhile discussion to be had about the future of the RF and their role. So lets try to keep it about that and not specifically about the person in that current role.

For me, if the next King wants a more private life, that his service and duty is not about the number of engagements he or the working royals do then its needs to be really articulated what their purpose is and 100% transparency of the sovereign grant, even a reduction of it since some of the money goes towards covering the cost of these engagments. I'd also like to see some of assets returned to us so we can monetise them to pay for their upkeep.

Wasn't it Camilla on a yacht with family and friends? But I doubt this suits the Daily Fail narrative.

https://www.townandcountrymag.com/society/tradition/a65665046/queen-camilla-superyacht-family-vacation-august-2025/

Link to Camilla's holiday on "$40 million yacht"
https://www.townandcountrymag.com/society/tradition/a65665046/queen-camilla-superyacht-family-vacation-august-2025/

More than two Royal families can have been on yacht holidays, it's not exclusive to just one !

So it’s your personal opinion that soft diplomacy is valuable. Why are you stating it as fact, then?

Agree. The Royals are all about optics. It doesn't matter how many people in Wales speak Welsh. He has more time and resources than anyone else, the Welsh have for centuries had an English Prince of Wales imposed on them whether they like it or not and there is a huge push to preserve the Welsh language in Wales. He could have made the gesture and learnt at least basic Welsh like his father. He knew he was going to be Prince of Wales yet acts like it was just sprung on him when his grandmother died and he had to hurredly download Duolingo! It just comes across as lazy and thoughtless.

I would like to see a much reduced, more normal monarchy like other European nations have at a significantly smaller cost to the country. The excesses of the Windsors and the dubious places they extract income (hospital carparks, RNLI stations and launch-pads) are an abomination. Personally, I am a republican and would like to see them all gone, but I know that people generally like the RF so a more modest one is a good compromise. And please, only reply but they bring in so much through tourism if you personally have visited another country (or even London for that matter) specifically to see their royal family and for no other reason.

Or been to the Tower of London or any of the other empty castles around the UK!

I did visit the Tower of London and Hampton Court when I visited the UK. They were tops on my list. I skipped the jewelry in the Tower since the line was so long and I was more interested in the building and raven watching.

Snap!

Sparkly bits of rock don’t do anything for me but architecture and ornithology do.

Haven't been to Hampton Court but loved the Tower - architecture, birds, and jewels! So much history 😍

This is an interesting article with letters from 3 members of the public on what the Royal Family could do in the future

It is encouraging to think that there are people out there like me mulling this over

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/aug/28/heres-what-a-modern-uk-monarchy-could-look-like

Yes to Buckingham Palace housing the dilapidated Houses of Parliament. I'm sure there's room given BP has 780 rooms...

Fine turn over the hospital carparks etc to the government and watch the costs skyrocket

No-one goes to ANY country for one thing and one thing only

I think Parliament should move to Birmingham. I’m serious.

If being an MP meant being in Brum (no disrespect - I like Brum) and not swanning around Westminster you’d get MOs who were in the job for the right reasons. It would help decentralise things - the PM could move too - and boost up that great city. No problem being away from Whitehall in these electronic times.

And I’m sorry to disappoint but Buck House has got similar issues to the Houses of Parliament in terms of dilapidation.

Mrs Leon - apols - I thought I’d quoted Jumping!

Hampton Court is fab! Really atmospheric.

But I can’t think of it without remembering Carry on Henry with Sid James as H8. The dialogue goes like this (Terry Scott is Cardinal Wolsey):

Sid James: We must hasten to Court!

Wolsey: Hampton Court?

Sid James: No, I always walk like this!

(Cockney rhyming slang required)

And I’m sorry to disappoint but Buck House has got similar issues to the Houses of Parliament in terms of dilapidation.

I jolly well hope not given it has had £369million spent on it!

This article is a corker! It lists the 10 questions I would like answered. And goes into Erskine May and the fact no one can question anything!

What a bizarre country we live in....

www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/world/monarchy/70935/the-10-questions-mps-should-ask-about-the-royal-familyif-they-were-allowed

Excellent article. Thanks for posting.

Usual lack of pushback from the bling and circus fanciers.

SNAFU 😜

I can't read the link. Can you summarise?

The Times is serialising the new Valentine Low book at the moment and on Saturday one of the extracts was about how the Sovereign Grant calculation was made. Apparently just before it was approved by Parliament they realised that it wasn't the best idea, mostly because if profits kept going up so did the grant and it could never go down. They tried to change it but the palace wouldn't because it had already been approved by the Queen, no evidence that they actually asked her about it!

What was quite clear was that the government of the day was not going to argue back. I suspect these days that harmful deference no longer exists and hopefully there can be some movement on making finances clearer. It will take time though because in a country ruled by precedent everything is labyrinthine.

Hilariously this was offered, and the MPs said no…

https://archive.ph/FOJXj

I have archived it for you so you will be able to read it now

Thanks. A pity he mixed up who benefits from the Duchies of Lancaster and Cornwall.

There is definitely work to be done in the area of Royal finances but this sort of article doesn't really advance a serious case. Maybe the problem is that, as here, discussion is vague and mixes up what is owned personally and what is owned by the crown estate. Maybe it's that it tries to be too wide ranging, from whether William will live in Windsor to what Beatrice is doing in the Middle East, with a digression into the Dukes of Kent and Gloucester that came across as mean spirited.

As far as I can tell from that article MPs are allowed to mention the Royal family if it is substantive, some of those points are, some aren't. Financial investigations need to be focused and clear to make any headway.

I think they've sort of got around that issue by how they manage the SG and any money left at the end of the year.

The money isn't just handed over in a lump sum to the monarch to do what they want - and therefore personally pocket any money 'left over'.

There is government oversight of the accounts and money is spent on specific items - building upkeep, official travel, wages of staff in official state roles (so for example all the staff you see managing a state event like a banquet would be paid via the SG but nannies, valets, gardeners at the privately owned properties would not)

At the end of the year if any money left over is not spent, it gets put into an 'overflow' account (can't remember the official name of that)

Now - if the overflow account reaches a certain limit consistently, there is provision to reduce the percentage of the SG that the monarch receives.

That's good to know. In an ideal world all this would be much more straightforward but that's not what happens when things have evolved over time.