We could privatise them

Excellent, so the royal family actually cost us minus 26 million pounds.

Any comment on your spanish example and his hiding of his budget and being the least transparent royal family in europe?

End of discussion from my POV!

Kiz kiz: i cant comment on the "least transparant" monarchy being Spain without reading up except to say that at less than 9 m euros it is what i said: cheap! I think the reason may be that that is what they get, they have to fulfill all their duties out of that amount, buy their clothes, their food, pay to live.

Do they do state visits? yes, do they have pomp and ceremony and various soldiers and horses doing stuff? yes! Do they have a palace and other houses? yes .......................

So why cant we pay ours that amount?

From the link i posted, they get their 9 compared to our monarchy's 38.
Now, because our monarchy is transparent, we know that the true figure is 200
The spanish monarchy is a complete unknown, but the belgian professor who compiled the study specifically mentioned policing (of which 100 million is spent in uk) as one of the many areas where they get money from hidden and unaccountable budgets that are not included in the 9 million
They may well be cheaper than our monarchy, but they get far more money than the declared figure, so we'll never know for sure

"Tourist attractions linked to Britain's royal family generate over 500 million pounds (600 million euros, 780 million dollars) a year in spending by overseas tourists, officials said Thursday.

The Tower of London was the most popular royal attraction with 2.39 million visitors last year, followed by the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, southeast London on 2.38 million and the Victoria and Albert Museum, also in the capital, on 2.27 million.

Buckingham Palace, which only opens for two months a year every summer, received 402,000 visitors.

Russian tourists were most likely to visit an attraction linked to the royal family, with 83 percent saying they intended to do so, according to tourism promotion body VisitBritain."

From the independent

My point is that none of those things require a royal family or a huge civil list.

As I have said, without response, there are gazillions who go to Versaille in Paris ..............

Groomy's moderate manifesto would be to keep them, pay them only what is necessary, and make sure all takings from all royal income goes back into the public purse. Vote for me.

There are gazillions of people who are a net benefit to this country. Shall we all give them some money too?

You mean like Olympic hopefuls, research scientists, doctors and nurses? - We do.....

The point is that the royals are a nett benefit BECAUSE we spend money on them

If she ever comes to visit Hull I'll think more of her But I honesly think that the Royal Family are a great asset to the Country, rather her than a pompous President Blair.

No they are not!

There is no correlation! As per the post above money comes from visits to buildings! It is the history that people come to see. Just as they do in France.

The point is we could spend a fraction of what we do and still make the same money.

We could alter things so that the money goes to the public purse.

Much much more in the casse of Buckingham Palace as if this were fully opened up then there would be really big influx of tourists.

Just curious, but what would you have as the alternative that would be so much cheaper?
A president obviously if not a royal.
Where would they live?
got any figures for the cost of presidents etc?
How do you make up for the 226 million that the crown estate would keep instead of handing over in return for an annual payment?

I do think Groomyd is right in that the Civil List is far too long and there are too many hangers on.

I also think the Crown rakes in too much income - they are set to rake it in from offshore windfarms too.

That being said, I wouldn't want a republic whilst we have a decent monarch at the helm. Hopefully William and Kate will serve the country well after Lizzie calls it a day. As has also been said, the royal family and the whole heritage is a nice little tourist earner.

We did overthrow the monarchy once but people ended up sitting on spikes in puritannical misery That didn't last long.

In the current wave of austerity, savings can be made here and there by trimming the civil list and perhaps the royals should give something back to the people (a day off is a nice start) rather than the othe way around (a new yacht).

You have forgotten about Chuck

Just give him a monstrous carbuncle to talk to.....

...oh I forgot, he's already got Camilla