To lead or to execute? Trump wouldn't be so bad if all he had to do was wave at people and be an arbitrary figure head for a few charities.
I take your point Page, but I just can't get worked up about it. Don't take my word for it, because I'm not interested enough to check, but I think I read that the civil list cost each taxpayer about 70p a year or something. I understand that you're talking about the principle, but I think that we have bigger fish to fry if we want to address global inequality.
FWIW I wouldn't want to be a royal either. Sure being ridiculously wealthy, and desired by every pretty woman who grew up watching Disney Princess films would be nice. That said, I doubt it's worth the invasion of privacy and it must be quite claustrophobic to not being able to do anything or go anywhere by yourself.
If we get rid of the Royals the alternative would surely be to create a Republic, the head of which could be a Donald Trump. I can't say I'm in favour of that. I Iike the fact that the head of state is apolitical.
As I said the cost thing is meaningless as whoever you pick, elect whatever it'll end up costing the same annually. A bulk of tax payer funds to royals is: Payroll of staff (just under 2/3rds) Travel/security Maintenance of Palaces (1/3rd) So what of this disappears if we tell them to jog on? Staff of some kind will be needed for a direct replacement or to support whoever takes over the roles and functions..... that's the entire families functions ...the Queen doesn't do them all herself but they are all diplomatically important.... even the smaller national ribbon cutting type etc... the support and admin staff, transport etc still needs paying for. Security will still be needed for whoever becomes our representative at which ever event or function. Unless we are scrapping these things but I'm not sure as hard working a volunteer that Bob from Doncaster is, he will gain the particular charity or organisation the press/public attention or resulting cash donations that the Queen or even a Harry does..... suppose there's always Bob Geldoff ... The Palaces ..... even if we tell the Queen she has to pay for maintenance of her own property (something she has actually taken over a lot of in recent years)... and she retires with her clan to Scotland.... Are we saying we will let the likes of Buckingham Palace rot?.... No, so we will pay for it's upkeep anyway.... As I said I'm notva royalistin principle but I've not heard a realistic alternative that will actually cost the tax payer less while carrying out all of the functions the family carries out. It's a state business/department that actually runs pretty cheap.
In terms of what it costs to 'run' the Royals, it's about £300m each year. The Sovereign Grant is given out in exchange for surrendering all the profits from the Crown Estate which funnily enough amounts to about £300m. Sir Alan Reid, the Keeper of the Privy Purse, said it costs 65p per person per annum in the UK to fund the Royal Family.
Given there's plenty of women going over this **** I think we should let them have their final while we have our final on the 26th. I mean..... they shouldn't complain about serving hand and foot on the 26th if we merely don't whine whenever this wedding thing is.
£300m could pay for a modest space program. Tens of thousands (or more) life saving operations. Signing Neymar to LFC Feed hundreds of thousands of starving people. It's not huge by national standards (and I know some costs couldn't be recouped)... But could be better spent.
I know this bit was a joke but thinking about it, you could make the same argument with all the other points you put in your comment.
yeah I know.. who'd have thought anyone really gave a crap or actually knew this bints name had a h in it. megen like... why is it meghen?
Tourist board say Royal family bring in 500m a year as an attraction. Interesting football analogy. 1.5-2 billion a year paid in PL wages to men for kicking a bag of air on some grass........ i mean who chooses to pay Sky or a football club hundreds of pounds a year instead of giving it to children's hospitals
