Private Eye on William

[ItsTheSeasonOfTheStick]

I found this quite entertaining

The three properties you mention aren't in the family's hands.

Love ❤️ it! 🤣😂🤣

I think they know that Charles cant/wont do what needs to be done with regards to Andrew, so this is how they are trying to head off the bad press at the moment. The RF are great at deflecting attention - so now it is all about W fixing everything. But he himself has said he is not going to do anything radical.

Game birds are bred for shooting

They most certainly do breed them. That’s how they create shoots.

I know. I literally said that earlier.

I really wish posters would just do the tiniest bit of research before posting.

Haven't had a chance to RTFT but not only are the birds bred for 'sport, the moors they live on are damaged to artficially create their living conditions.

Royal eco champs, my arse

Ok they are owned by ‘The Crown’ and lived in by the Royal Family rent free as grace and favour residences. So as good as ownership yes and still not available to the state to do as they wish.

Do the Royal Family need all these palaces and why should they have them if they are not going to work as much.

The cap doffing and the belief that the Royals are entitled to this incredible largesse is truly incredible

Just to point out there are professional firms available who will undertake this work humanely.

Literally no need for any royal to stride round the moors blasting away.

I have always said ending their involvement in blood sports would be such a huge and easy PR win but here they are as out of touch as ever🙄

Ah. I thought you must have misunderstood because you were pointing out that deer need to be culled in reply to my post saying that deer need to be culled.

Yes. That’s why I said I didn’t think it should be done for fun.

I agree.
Just adding a bit more context.

Quite agree -its like the people who were on a thread a while ago chuntering about the Highgrove gardens being a charity, not owned by the King. Without seeming to have any idea why it may have been set up that way, and that it was actually quite beneficial to do this.

The whole Crown Estate business is another way that the RF maximizes their income and protects their assets at all costs. Its actually brilliant PR to dress it up as benefiting the nation.

I get that not all profits from the Crown Estate go to the King but a good chunk does and surely there needs to be more transparency on how it’s spent.

William can’t have it both ways - less work, more privacy and same money

They have plenty of power over how they behave and over their own family. They put pressure on governments to change legislation, they close ranks to cover up bad behaviour by family members instead of dealing with it until they are forced. They decide whether or not they are going to pay taxes and at what rate yet of course they are also forced, somehow to charge market rate for their properties, so they have managed to negotiate terms that are extremely favourable to them but detrimental to everyone else, on private property that has such deliberately complex rules but comes down to 'we are a private company when it comes to our income but not when it comes to paying corporation tax, declaring tax returns or accounts or any form of Capital Gains tax'. We need a far stronger and less subservient Parliament to put them in their place and pressure needs to be put on Parliament to act on our behalf not the RF but there seems to be no mechanism to do that, and it shows up our democracy as a farce in this case among others.

You should read Norman Baker's book, And What Do You Do.

That'll show you how corrupt and self serving they are. The government are so subservient to question them, it's laughable.

Prepare to be very annoyed if you do read it.

The profits from the Crown Estate go to the Treasury.

Currently 12% of those profits then provide the Sovereign Grant. This is reviewed every 5 years, and again at the start of each new reign, so may well be different when William starts.

The Sovereign Grant is used for official duties and upkeep of the palaces and staff. It was reduced from 25% to 12% in 2023. Parliament can approve a reduction without debate but must debate any increase.

The Keeper of the Privy Purse (Treasurer for the Grant) is responsible to the Treasury and Parliament.
Since the Sovereign Grant Act of 2011 the SG has had the same scrutiny via the National Audit Office as any other government department. This report is published with the SG annual report each year (a public document).

The Sovereign Grant is used for official duties and upkeep of the palaces and staff. It was reduced from 25% to 12% in 2023. Parliament can approve a reduction without debate but must debate any increase.

From the BBC website, May 2025.

The article does state that funding to building works does alter whether the grant goes up or down and that it will go down again in 2027 because the massive building works on BP will be completed. But overall, since it was introduced in 2012 the amount of the grant has more than tripled, and the amount they actually get this year has increased massively thanks to selling leases on wind farms (which they get because they "own" the coast).

Dont know about you, but I think when spending on education has gone down in real terms by 11%, giving more money to extremely wealthy people is bonkers.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/crld11w9538o

The primary reason that the Sovereign Grant amount has increased significantly for 25/26 is that the Crown Estate profits have increased considerably. 88% of those profits have been retained by the Treasury.

The SG is for official duties and upkeep of royal palaces (not as 'more money to extremely wealthy people').

Useful link
Parliamentary research briefing: Finances of the Monarchy

The latter hopefully!

No, some of it is for this. But not all. The amount going to palace upkeep fluctuates. But to say the RF gets nothing from the grant is not true.

The Parliamentary briefing paper I have linked explains exactly what the Sovereign Grant is for. It makes it entirely clear that the SG is for official duties. It also discusses the other sources of finance for the monarchy.

The SG annual report referenced upthread is also a public document which is easily accessed and can be read by anyone who wishes.

Having read the report, the commentary that is in there is interesting in itself - and brings up the points that have been raised in this thread. There's quite a bit of criticism of the Sovereign Grant.

I'm also pretty sure the monarchy has pretty decent accountants who can assess money as being "official duties". If they didn't do this they wouldn't be worthy of employment, as it's exactly what all large businesses do.

One comment from The Times being:
So generous have the Crown Estate’s payouts been in recent years that the
proportion paid to the royal household had to be reduced following a review,
from 25 to 12 per cent, in 2023. This year’s bumper profits indicate that when
the sovereign grant’s formula comes up for review next year moderation
should again be called for. The cause, as it was two years ago, is the vast and
unexpected profits being generated by leasing the UK’s coastline to offshore
wind farm developers.

And from page 18 of the report, some criticism of the linking of Crown Estate profits with the Sovereign Grant.

One partial critic was the former Cabinet Secretary, Lord Turnbull, who
described the link between the Crown Estate and Grant as “pretty artificial”
as there was “no relationship between the net income of the Crown Estate
and the funding of the monarchy, and there has not been since 1760”. Rather
the Crown Estate surplus was being used as an “index” to “uprate” the Grant.
He added that the revenues of a property company seemed “an odd
benchmark to determine the appropriate level of funding for the monarchy”.

Lord Turnbull said it would have been better to use some index of inflation, pretty much as we have done for decades with the BBC licence. We would thereby avoid perpetuating or even entrenching the confusion between the Crown Estate and the Crown itself. It all looks like someone being a bit too clever by half.

The Financial Times also criticised the Grant in an editorial entitled “Casino
Royale”. This argued that the arrangement resembled generous
performance-related pay plans agreed by corporate boards: “[W]hen the
Crown Estate does well, royals win; when it does not, taxpayers lose [...] The
perverse incentives in this system are nothing short of frightening.”

There's more, it's an interesting read!
https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CBP-9807/CBP-9807.pdf

Another bit from the briefing paper:

The link between the Crown Estate’s profits and the Sovereign Grant was also
questioned during the Lords’ second reading of the Crown Estate Bill 2024-25
in September 2024. Earl Russell called the “process of calculating” the Grant
“a continued hostage to fortune” and wondered “whether it might be worth
considering some alternative process”.

Lord Turnbull called it “a too-clever-by-half ruse by the Chancellor of the time” (George Osborne) to “pull the wool over the eyes of Parliament and the public by implying that the monarchy was meeting its own operating costs from its own resources rather than drawing on taxpayer funds from the Exchequer”. He suggested:

It would be much more honest to make a clear separation between the two
and settle the sovereign grant at whatever level is required, not on whatever
net revenues the Crown Estate adventitiously manages to generate.