Can anyone please tell me....

[Ihateboris]

What they actually do for us, the British tax payer? If anyone comes along and says they bring in more than they cost, kindly provide a current legitimate source..not a quote from ChatGpt.

I actually said I don't know whether charities get better funding with royal patronage. What I did say is that I think it will increasingly become less attractive to sponsors as the years progress.

Yes but this is not actually a public building! , it’s Buckingham palace , the base for the king or queen of the U.K. , what did you expect a tour of the toilet the late queen used ? , for people to be able to riffle through private rooms? 🤷‍♀️

Who the hell wants or has the time to visit all 775 rooms at BP, even at the Palace of Versailles you can only visit 50 rooms out of 2300.

petty little bean-counting republican mentality

That makes a change from the boring cliches.

Very strange. You are stating you DON'T know something yet you go on to surmise based on that lack of knowledge. 🤷‍♀️

The Trump state visit was held as Windsor because Buckingham palace is under renovation. Yes members of the family and staff live at Buckingham palace but they aren’t currently as, again, it’s under renovation.

and yet these entitled people get everything paid for.

The trouble with statements like this, if people do want to have a serious discussion rather than just a rant, is that others who know a bit more about the subject are unlikely to take their argument seriously.

Why is soft power relegated to the purview of a constitutional monarch?

President of Ireland (2011-2025), Michael D. Higgins' (recently retired) during his time in elected office:

**strengthened diplomatic relations with uk
by making the first state visit to the United Kingdom and was a strong advocate in international forums, addressing global hunger and poverty,

**championed the arts and culture
by reinvigorating the Irish film industry and establishing TG4, the first Irish language TV station, establishing the Heritage Council and a network of local arts venues,

**promoted social justice and equality
by speaking up for marginalised communities, promoting unity, and condemning the current housing crisis,

** revitalised the canal network.

That’s a pretty impressive list of achievements! And he managed it on a wage of just over €330,000 a year.

So yeah, if wanting value for money from our Head of State, including financial accountability and transparency, no murky complex arrangements over public wealth and massive private wealth, amounts to “petty bean counting” then I am more than happy to hold my hand up to that.

Adding that to my Observer’s Book of Insults. It’s currently my favorite.

No, it isn't strange at all. I proposed a hypothesis, or supposition, that the RF's popularity will wane with forth coming generations. If you are struggling to understand this concept the OED will furnish you with the definitions of both hypothesis and supposition. Interestingly you yourself use the word "surmise" which perfectly sums up my comment. The future status of the Royal Family is impossible to predict with accuracy (as indeed is everything in life) because empirical evidence cannot be applied to the future. And that is why people (including politicians and stockbrokers amongst many others) use hypotheses and suppositions based on current factors and trends along with a certain amount of anecdotal evidence. I must say, you are an extremely unusual person if you have never once surmised the outcome of a particular situation or event. Perhaps you're lacking in imagination or independent thought.

Indeed. By logic UK would get more money from tourism without the royal family. The only time it really gets big money through tourism it's when there's a royal wedding from a child of a monarch, it will be, if we are lucky, in one decade if George marries - and if he marries in his early 20's, which is unlikely, even though not impossible.

I think what they bring, in theory, is national identity as it's the most famous monarchy in the world. The queen, despite not being perfect, did a good job. I can't say the same about Charles and Camilla, and Catherine and William. No one goes to UK to visit them, they aren't sympathetic or inspire respect or awe to outsiders. Though the pomp, events, holydays can have an effect to people in UK. George will need to marry someone really interesting and charismatic and be a great king to keep it going, honestly, if it still exists until there.

The President of Ireland has a separate budget for expenses quite apart from their wage though. You don’t mention the size of that (it’s much higher). You also didn’t mention that the office of the president is not subject to the same level of public scrutiny in their spending as other government departments. Journalists have frequently been brushed off when asking about broad catch-all categories of spending.

You also didn’t mention any security costs, despite the President receiving the highest level available (the President-elect also has security). They also get a large annual top-up pension, which will be in addition to all other pension entitlements they have accrued in their working career.

So your value for money conclusion there is fairly skewed.

Also, “soft power” and its opposite “hard power” are both terms that relate to a country’s ability to influence international political relations. Not internal affairs. So only the first on the list quoted in my post above can be counted as soft power.

It’s an interesting example though. You refer to Michael Higgins’ state visit to the UK in 2014. That was in fact a return visit - Queen Elizabeth II made the first visit of a British monarch to Ireland in 100 years in 2011. The latter prompted massive international coverage.

We can go back and forth arguing about comparative expense budgets, size of remit and security costs but as I am sure you already know, the Irish Presidency costs approximately £4 million per year, significantly less than the British royal family's total annual expenditure, which is estimated to be around £345 million or more, including the Sovereign Grant and security costs!

https://www.republic.org.uk/halfbillionroyals

So let’s focus on specific differences such as the huge cost of the Royal Family maintaining
numerous palaces and the private ceremonies, such as weddings, that the British public help to subsidise and are superfluous to a Presidency.

For examples, figures obtained through Freedom of Information requests show that the security alone for Catherine and William’s wedding was £6.35 million, which included £2.8 million for police overtime, and the Home Office provided a grant of £3.6 million to cover "additional costs".

You are using Republic’s figures (which are wholly fanciful, including things that are not costs simply to bump up its figures) as the basis of comparison with Irelands expenditure. That shows it’s not worth engaging with you further.

And the day that the Royal Family become completely open, honest and transparent about their finances is the day I will take monarchists seriously.

You are using Republic’s figures (which are wholly fanciful, including things that are not costs simply to bump up its figures) as the basis of comparison with Irelands expenditure

If you have independent figures for comparison I'd be interested to see them.

Completely agree - Royals make their finances opaque - surely we should all be asking why? My take on it is they are very successful hustlers. They’ve got a very sweet deal going on and definitely they don’t want anyone scrutinising their finances too much. This must have been a factor in why Charles acted to remove Andrew’s titles - it was all getting a bit too close for comfort.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/apr/26/prince-andrew-held-investments-in-shell-company-set-up-to-keep-holdings-secret

There we have TLQ lobbying to have a draft law amended to prevent her being embarrassed by her family's wealth....

I've read that article before, it's shocking. 30 years a shell company operated specifically to hide the Royals wealth from the general masses. They work effing hard at it. If only they worked so hard doing what they should be doing. They should be working their arses off, not endless luxury holidays and time off for months
Yet all we hear is Royalists banging on about not minding £3 a year for the Royals, we could have President Trump and how fabulous Kate looked in a green dress!

Yes quite. None of them could have cared less about Andrew until people started questioning why Parliament was not scrutinising all their finances then suddenly something that was super difficult to do became super easy.

They keep us from having President Boris Johnson

and for that I am deeply thankful

There are many alternatives to Boris Johnson.

@Lunde
Are you thankful that they shielded Andrew until they had no choice but to deal with him?

No

But which system do you prefer? US? Trump? France?

Liklihood is it will be a populist Johnson/Farage