New series on the royals with Dimbleby

[MeNotMyselfAndI]

Anyone watching? Just watched Ep 2 on royal finances - it’s unbelievable. Greedy greedy fuckers! 🤬

The royal family only really works if you believe that specific family are better than everyone else. It worked fine years ago when people did accept that the royal family had been chosen by god.

As we’ve become more secular and a lot more people have greater critical thinking skills, the royal family just doesn’t work. We can’t be pro democracy and strove for equality and equal opportunities for everyone whilst being in favour of hereditary titles.

The documentaries and headlines about them over the years have shown they aren’t better than any of us, and actually they’ve behaved appallingly over the years. And yet we still pay them to represent us.

It would be a massive ball ache to sort out the dismantling of the royal family and then sorting out an elected alternative. I think it will happen eventually, in the not too distant future. I doubt George’s future child will become King or Queen.

I believe that a constitutional monarchy still works, even if you don't have a divine right of kings, it has worked that way for centuries after all. I want an apolitical Head of State, born or elected, as long a any new model is well thought out rather than made up as we go along (Brexit I'm looking at you).

What I think needs to go is the deference in the political sphere that refuses to ask questions or suggest reforms. It's a 1950s model that lasted way beyond the point where society went along with it largely because of the late Queen's long reign.

I think it would work on the basis that it's the monarch, their spouse, their children until the eldest marries and has children, then it's just the heir and their children. With differences if the heir remains childless.

And also if they had one state sponsered home, and one London based home. The rest are opened to the public like any other stately home. Their own properties they can see to themselves.

And the monarch goes about to various places showing their face in exchange for the fine living we provide to them.

If they don't want this, and it's clear William doesn't want to have to trek about doing the work his predecessors did, then it's not going to work out, and an alternative needs to happen.

The problem is - they are not apolitical.

They are very, very political.

The weekly meetings between the PM and King/Queen should stop.

Why should they have access to so much information before democratic process? They can then manipulate "democratic" process for their own gain.

That leads me to question if they profiteer from the information handed over in the meetings?

"Insider trading" type of behavior - making financial decisions re stocks and bonds before a government initiatives, ditto re land, developments, tax and so on.

They are extremely shady, and very expensive.

I am sure we don't know a quarter of it never mind the half of it!

The monarch has a political position, by apolitical I meant they don't get involved in party politics.

You seem to be assuming that if we removed the monarchy shadiness would stop. I really doubt that.

I agree that shadiness wouldn’t necessarily stop but with an elected head of state we would have systems in place to prevent corruption, more control over the type of person we wanted in position, they would have to be more accountable and transparent over finances by law, we could distinguish between public and private wealth, they couldn’t pay people off with vast wealth and exercise significant influence financially (unless we voted in a billionaire), the tax payers’ coin would not be supporting an extended family and so many vast estates, and most importantly, if found to be unworthy of the role, we could vote them out!

That could happen but we would need to make sure there were cast iron checks and balances to avoid the situation they have in the US where what were thought to be robust systems have turned out to be gentleman's agreements that don't work if the President isn't a gentleman.

I think we also need to acknowledge that people with power don't give it up lightly and the sort of root and branch change that would be needed to remove the monarchy will threaten the hidden powerful people as well, which is why i don't see political will for the change. I am not saying that the Royal family are perfect, just that i doubt very much that the King or William are the most corrupt people in our current system.

The Irish seem to manage just fine.

That doesn't really address any of my points though.

I agree with this. I would prefer an apolitical HoS, like they have in Ireland, and if we are going to have that, then we may as well keep an hereditary HoS. The problem happens when they are not scrutinised in any way We arguably need one person to be a Ceremonial HoS, we need some grandness for 'soft power' and cherry on the cake reasons. We do not need to give them the right to exempt themselves from laws, and we do not need to enable them to hoard wealth and have the entire establishment covering up and enabling them to do so when there is no right to redress for any of us.
If I had the chance to chuck the whole thing in the bin and start again, I would say- Ceremonial HoS doing what a ceremonial HoS does- advise etc - May as well be The Windsors- their spouse, heir and their spouse doing charity work in the same vein as the First Lady /Man etc does- the rest of them have no Royal titles- no Prince/Princess HRH etc-the equivalent of Zara and Peter Phillips- they don't do any Royal work and they have to get a job. If the HoS wants his kids on the balcony / at garden parties, banquets etc just invite them. Monarch and Heir have 2 homes each paid for by the State- One official residence and one country residence for eg- Buck House used as Office space and banquets/National events etc- No funds for anything else unless they want to pay for it themselves out of inheritances, investments etc that are taxed. Duchies rolled into the Crown Estates (they can have more money then but it has to be openly accounted for) Royal Collection not in their hands- if they want to borrow some art to decorate their homes they can ask. State property /art works etc used for State benefit- Displayed in museums etc, Buck House for State visits etc open up the Palaces more and for longer so people can see these things. No exemptions from Laws- If there is a reason for them to have exemptions they have to be put to Parliament with reasons and debated openly. Change the National Anthem to something that celebrates the nation, not one person. When The King is anointed they have to swear allegiance to us, we do not have to swear allegiance to them.
But someone else needs to do it- Parliament preferably. Waiting for the Monarchy to change anything is futile. Charles wont do anything, and William will do even less. Too many people have a vested interest in keeping things as they are, including their staff/courtiers/advisors etc.
I don't know why anyone thinks William will reform the Monarchy. All evidence points to him being lazy, greedy, intellectually incurious, entitled and reliant on PR to cover up his lack of effort. I think it will be his undoing though, and I think as a result, the last Monarch has already been born.

Sorry, I don’t mean to pounce on your posts specifically MrsLeonFarrell

But I genuinely feel there is a fair bit of corruption in KC3’s court. Not everything he does is bad by any means, but whenever something does come to light (the Fawcett the fence debacle, the cash for honours/citizenship debacle and alleged bullying allegations in the royal household, the Fortnum & Mason carrier bags of cash etc) it never seems pretty!

Also, he seems very fixated on wealth accumulation. I like his focus on the environment, biodiversity, traditional farming methods, diversity of faiths, his post-Brexit reparation visits to EU countries, but the money side of it all is very shady. And is in danger of undermining the credibility of the rest.

Who knows, he may surprise us all yet and leave his entire fortune to the Woodland Trust! However, I think many, many people, myself included, were very disappointed when it became clear that his interpretation of “slimming down” did not involve financial assets. Indeed he profited substantially from his accession to the throne.

Your first point centred on a US system, which is irrelevant as we have a prime minister, and Ireland has similar. So any president would be more like Ireland's than the US's.

I agree with your second point about the monarchy and their enablers not wanting to give up power.

I would prefer an apolitical HoS, like they have in Ireland, and if we are going to have that, then we may as well keep an hereditary HoS.

I would rather a mature adult chose to run for head of state, rather than a child be trained for it. It's abusive to put someone in the situation where they have to be monarch because of an accident of birth.

That is also true, but we as a country seem unlikely to be able to cope without a Monarchy. The Royals willingly do this to their children. It will be no different for the Wales children.

This is why the focus should be on consistently applying the tax rules rather than the renting of property.

They are a commercial interest when it comes to them collecting the cash but not when it comes to them paying tax on their earnings. Which is it?

Whichever they want it to be at any given time, @RainbowBagels, and unless parliament choose to change things that's how it will stay

Don't worry I don't feel jumped on. I would think there is definitely corruption in Charles' court. There is always corruption around power. I was not suggesting that there wasn't corruption, but rather that I'm not sure the corruption is from Charles or William. It might be of course but I'd bet it's a little further down the ladder (as i typed that i realised that we know at least one rung, the Andrew one, is corrupt!).

I'm not so sure I would assume that our system would be like Ireland's. If we are aiming for that there are an awful lot of appointments and legal details that would need to find a new person to sign off on them.

I will be interested to see the options presented if anyone ever gets their act together to create a coherent, thorough and persuasive campaign.

Why do you use the US as your example? A country we wouldn't be like because we have a PM and a separate HoS.

At least make the comparisons with countries with similar set ups to the UK.

I was using the USa an example of a system that assumed their checks and balances worked, until they were tested and proven to be useless. If we replace the monarchy then we need to make sure leaders are genuinely accountable and removable, otherwise it's just window dressing. I don't think any other system is really useful as a template in terms of how we could do this because the monarchy is a thousand years of history, law, precedent etc all intertwined some dating back to the glorious revolution, some put in a few years ago. It's not as easy as saying, let's copy Ireland or France or the US or whatever. We need a unique answer for a unique situation.

The fish rots from the head. Either they are ignorant of what goes on, in which case, they need to keep a closer eye, or they deliberately turn a blind eye because it means they have iron clad loyalty to do whatever they want or they are complicit. In any of those scenarios they are responsible. If they cant control hundreds of staff over several palaces then don't have hundreds of staff over several houses.

I agree they need to keep a closer eye and Charles in particular seems to be good at trusting the wrong people.

For me a new system has to hit the four Cs -

Constitution - the official government work, inc diplomacy, abroad and state visits at home.

Conservation - stewards of the Crown lands and assets

Celebration - the ‘happiness business’ of highlighting and rewarding British people, culture and life

Comfort - having a leader speak to and for the nation for domestic tragedy and to those of allies.

Love those

But they will say they do those? Royalists will say they do those for sure.

It's how much money needs to swill around the Monarchy to enable them to achieve the four C's (good list by the way!)