Royal row between King Charles and Earl Spencer 3

[Viviennemary]

A new thread and book not even published till Tuesday. I checked on Amazon and its only 12th on the non fiction bestseller list. Doesn't show Earl Spencer in a very good light imho.

I mean - they called her a liar. They brazenly used the weight of a British State institution to protect their son/brother from accountability.

So did they kill her? Of course not.

Did they exert extraordinary levels of pressure on a young woman to avoid culpability? Yes! Could that have had a massive impact on her life and mental health? Most definitely.

We know the impact of press assaults - enough victims have spoken about it. In the case of VR it went on for years.

I'm pretty sure if the Spencer Family insisted, they could have organised the entire funeral.

You are pretty sure about that are you? Please, do expand. The family say the opposite. But let's hear you out.

Diana was divorced and no longer a member of the Royal Family, are you seriously saying had her Mother, sisters and brother insisted they wanted to organise her funeral, her ex husband's family would have refused?

This is utterly bizarre.

I've had a look at actual figures for the sovereign grant, which google tells me is based on a percentage of net revenue from the Crown estate (currently over 1 billion) paid into the Treasury, and I asked AI (don't judge) for a percentage breakdown.

And I quote

the percentage of Crown Estate profits used to benchmark the grant has shifted based on palace funding needs and wind farm windfalls:

📈 The Actual Percentage Framework

• 12% (Current Rate): The percentage was cut from 25% to 12%. This reduction happened because a massive surge in Crown Estate profits from offshore wind farm leases would have otherwise given the monarchy an inappropriately massive payout.
• 20.5% (Upcoming Rate): The Royal Trustees announced that starting in 2027/28, the calculation will be reset to 20.5%. This change is designed to support a core funding level of £99.9 million for the five years following the completion of the Buckingham Palace renovations.
• Historical Rates: The grant originally launched at 15% in 2012 before being temporarily increased to 25% in 2017 to cover the extensive Buckingham Palace reservicing programme.

Unquote

So the treasury retains ATM 88% of the Crown estate profits. That seems like a pretty good deal to me.

But the polls are an objective fact and can't be denied.

Polls are always flawed. For years, Virginia Roberts "lost" in the polls, Prince Andrew, or ex Prince Andrew, won, the palace won that battle, the Queen won that battle etc.

But polls are only an indication of who has the most money to spend on PR and bots in the moment, and the willingness to use it. When the dust settles and people have time to think, opinions usually change.

Polls may be flawed.

The results are still objective facts.

That's a very convoluted way of trying to make something that isn't accurate sound accurate. If you want to put it in such a tangential way, without the Crown there wouldn't be a Crown Estate. If the royal family were abolished, the value of what is now the Crown Estate would drop significantly and therefore so would the amount that the Estate pays into the Treasury.

Are you like this about every item in the Treasury budget? I'm sure there is lots more in there that is genuinely wasteful. Inflation and surging borrowing costs are what have a real impact on public spending. Do you get as outraged about all that?

I mean - I could go along with you, an anonymous person on a forum and suppose that, as Diana was divorced, her Mother, sisters and brother could have insisted they wanted to organise her funeral and, of course, her ex husband, the institutions around the royal family along with the royal family itself, would have been gracious enough to have allowed that.

Or, I could listen to the brother, and most almost every other commentator over the years (political, social, media), who say that the royal institution and the royal family took over and they had to row in with it.

The family (Spencers) pushed back on quite a few things. Some they lost, like the children walking behind the coffin and others they won like the editors of tabloids not coming.

that's been around for a while - Fawctt was his name and even Diana mentioned it

That;s been around for a while now- Fawcett was his name and even Diana mentioned tis story

Or you could look at the facts, which are that there was a ceremonial funeral, based on Operation Tay Bridge, and a committee set up in Downing Street to organise it, with contributors from government, the Royal Household and the Spencer family.

Yeah maybe George 3rd shouldn't have done that deal in 1760, it would have stopped all these sorts of arguments!

I so agree with your post.

When they put out that statement which was more or less calling her a liar, I just found it very very sad and I did think at the time, poor woman, what sort of effect is this going to have on her. The British Monarchy telling the world she's a liar.
And we know what effect it did have on her, now

How exactly dis they "shut her up"? Did he say? The account seems to be that she was contacted and asked to not say anything. After which she seems to have gone quiet as a source.

She might be doing it as a courtesy to a firmer friend, or because she didn't want the publicity or thought twice about what her cirrespondence actually said. I doubt the RF has the power to shut someone up. Otherwise H, Lownie, CS et al would really have to watch out

Wow so the palace shut up a woman who could corroborate what the king said.
Every day the evidence stacks up more and more that he did say it.

Please don't ever sit on a jury if you regard absence of someone saying anything at all as evidence that the palace shut her up and that that proves anything at all.

Am laughing at the train of thought of some on here

"The people believe Spencer"

Umm, well the polls on MN suggest they don't believe Spencer

"I don't do polls, including trashy polls responded to by trashy people and hosted by trashy newspapers. Anyway, I know the people believe Spencer because the comments I read on instagram tell me so"

It’s all poll dancing to me 🤪

Spencer has aplogised to Piers Morgan

The shame!

Not the most gracious apology ever ...

I was right - except for the obvious part where I was wrong.

As a historian he should know better than to make assumptions and write them in books he claims are historically accurate

Will his next apology be about his dad 'when he was an equerry'?

Oh Spencer, what a fool you've made of yourself. So excited to dish the dirt but not quite getting the tales right. What an amateur. I wonder if Harold was proof reader?

Oh that is funny. No donation then?

Quite. I’m not sure this does much to restore the book’s credibility. It’s pretty grudging as well to say he “assumed” it was Morgan. Why would he assume that without checking the facts? Just because Morgan is a slimy git doesn’t mean it automatically had to be him in charge

I bet Morgan will still pursue some kind of financial recompense.

Wonder if Spencer realises that his credibility is now most deffo zero. Obviously thr rf won't refute his tall stories one by one but as Morgan has been proven correct it kind of throws a massive yeah right over the whole sorry blabfest