Wasn't that meant to be the name of Michael Jackson's comeback tour?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... story.html
Link is from 2010

"This year the budget was frozen at the 2009 level of €8.9 million (£7.43), a figure well below that of Britain's Royal family cost the taxpayer a total of £38.2 million last financial year."

However...

"Spain is one of the least transparent of all the monarchies when it comes to spending," explained Herman Matthijs, professor at Belgium's VUB (Vrije Universiteit Brussels), who carried out an exhaustive study of the expenditures of Europe's royal households.

"The annual budget given to the King Juan Carlos is for him to spend and distribute to the members of his family as he sees fit. State visits, royal protection and the upkeep of royal palaces all come from budgets hidden within other departments," he said."

COMPARATIVE ANNUAL BUDGETS:

Britain €48.6m (£40.6m)

Netherlands €39.6m (£33.1m)

Norway €28m (£23.4m)

Belgium €13.7m euros (£11.5m)

Denmark €12.6m euros (£10.5m)

Sweden €12.2m euros (£10.2m)

Spain €8.9m euros (£7.43m)

Luxembourg €8.7m euros (£7.2m)

It's not for Groomy to produce figures showing the Royals are not worth it, it's for their supporters to produce figures showing they are. Why should we contribute to the pockets of rich people on a flimsy assumption they make money?

Even if they do, we should get a vote on whether we should continue to give; no-one else gets free public money in perpetuity without a say so just becasuse they reckon they benefit the country. I think we can be proud of Stephen Fry, Richard Branson, Ben Goldacre and Goldie from Blue Peter, but I didn't much feel like giving them my money even though they probably made the country a net profit.

It all pales into insignificance though when you look at the wealth of the royal family as opposed to the income - they are rich beyond comprehension, all from our money. We should stop giving and be given back what has been taken from us.

Hancock, have you actually read this thread, or just the first post?

What? His post asks all the questions anyone would ask!

If we got rid of the royal family then I can't see why there would be much of a reduction in tourism.

People would still go to the Tower of London, Buckingham Palace etc etc just as they do places like Versaile

Why is that such tough thing to grasp?

Secondly it is clear that the costs,much of it obscene as my list above shows,could clearly be greatly reduced.

So even if you are a royalist you must be able to see that we could save a he'll of a lot without losing any of the figurehead roles that the queen fulfills.

Gove reminds everyone how pointless the Queen is
16-01-12

MICHAEL Gove today called for everyone to get annoyed about the Queen's unrelenting pointlessness.

'Give me a eff boat, you scumbags'

The education secretary raised the prospect of buying the Queen a giant boat, reminding the country that it really needs to do something about this nonsense.

In a letter to the department of yachts, Gove said: "In the midst of recession there is always a risk that people focus too much on their own lives and forget how much money the Royal family has accumulated over the years for doing absolutely nothing.

"Perhaps the commissioning of a £60m boat would bring this situation into sharp relief as well as commemorating the Queen's remarkable achievement of breathing in and out since 1952."

But defenders of the monarchy attacked Gove, with some calling for him to be tried for treason and then hung in front of some tourists at the Tower of London.

Denys Finch-Hatton, editor of Mike's Peerage, said: "Gove is nothing but a grubby communist agitator, getting people all worked up with his fancy letters.

"Meanwhile the Queen has shaken more hands than the combined number of hot dinners consumed by all the people who will build her new boat.

"And in between sitting on chairs, she even found time to provide the nation with three leeches and a horse botherer. I think we should build her a space ship."

Bill McKay, professor of jubilee gift theory at Roehampton University said: "If the question is 'what do you give the woman who has everything except a boat?', the answer is not 'a boat'.

"If you're in a good mood then maybe it's 'a nice pen' and if you're in a bad mood then it's 'a copy of Das Kapital and 48 hours to leave the country'."
 

Have to agree with much of the above - the queen deserves support but not the rest of the Royle Family. Only problem is if we got rid of many of them frigging politicians would move into the royal houses and probably spend even more of our money.
I would probably just give the queen a day out at her majesty's pleasure

Another complete U-turn by Dave?!

Monday:
David Cameron believed it would be inappropriate to spend public money on a yacht, the prime minister's official spokesman said.
"Clearly there is a difficult economic situation, there are scarce resources, and therefore we don't think it would be an appropriate use of public money at the present time," he said.

Tuesday:
David Cameron has swung behind plans for a new, privately funded royal yacht that will double up as a university of the seas, and provide accommodation for royalty in the ship's stern.
Cameron has endorsed the idea after lobbying from the higher education minister David Willetts and the education secretary Michael Gove. The idea, at one point described by Gove as a gift from the nation to the Queen on her diamond jubilee, also has the backing of the Prince of Wales and Princess Anne, according to letters sent to the prime minister by Willetts.
Downing Street sources said the prime minister regarded the idea as excellent, and discussions have been held with Portsmouth city council for the yacht to be berthed in the south coast port.

I hope my highlighting explains why it isn't a u-turn (and why nobody, even on Planet Groomy, can really complain about it).

Listening to R5 this morning, there was a bloke on explaining the proposals (Groomyd, you'll love this - it is £100m he wants, 80 for the boat and 20 for the legacy). The plans are for it to be some sort of college where youngsters do some sailing and also learn towards NVQs etc. With some posh rooms at one end for the Queen and co when they want to use it.

He did stress it was to be raised from private sources, though IMO he is living in cloud cuckoo land if he thinks he'll get that much.

There are still a lot of rich people without honours (see a fair few posts up).

She is getting on a bit now, and won't get much use of it; and the idea of her having a few posh rooms in the stern, while a bunch of students get pissed and stoned at the front seems more than a tad surreal.

Given that Gove claimed he was misquoted initially, with the initial suggestion being Private Funds, why was Cameron going on about Public funding?

And I’m guilty of just reading the headlines!
Thanks for the correction.

At Kate & Wills wedding there were 400 camera crews from just about every nation on earth looking on. A lot of these were Nations who did away with their Monarchy and replaced them with Presidents, and a much larger enterage and who would have their Monarchy back at the drop of a tiara.

Having lived many years in Germany I know how much they respect our Royal Family (for obvious reasons ). Let's also not forget their Patronages, what Diana did in the fight against land mines was worth more than a thousand peace envoys.

Oh yes, before I forget. As a Jubilee present I would give her back Prussia.

Well Saxe Coburg and Gotha - not sure if they were Prussian, which was a bit further East?

Can't we just start with getting Calais back and work east from there?

That was a different lot, I think. After the Norman invasion thang we were fighting over Normandy\Brittany for a fair few hundred years. Don't forget we went Dutch as well

I'm not even sure who the last English monarch was

http://able2know.org/topic/135664-1

The wonder of google......... It appears there wasn't one

If you read on down that thread you'll see that nobody is truly British as nobody lived here during the ice age (c.15k years ago)

"DNA studies show that 83% of the Welsh are decended from people who have been here for at least 9,000 years. The Cornish 79%, the Scottish around 70%. With the ancestors coming from the area of NorthSpain/Southern France, that is the the Basque country. Something like 68% of people in England are related to ancestors that have been here for 6,000 to 7,000 years. They came from another direction originating from the area of the Ukraine/Balkans via the lands now known as German/Denmark. "

Would that include Prussia? Should we walk back that far to reclaim our homeland?

And those people came from East and South East of the Med, assuming there was a single source for humans...

I think Pa's Prussian point was the Saxe-Coburg and Gotha one. (Gotha has been forgotten, maybe due to it sharing its name with a German WWI bomber.)

Oh Diana if only you were still alive today!

You posed so beautifully with those nasty mine things and got such wonderful personal publicity.

I'm equally cynical of that woman but cannot dispute the great amount of good she did. Just as Jade Goody is 'credited' with promoting cervical cancer smear test uptake despite doing virtually nothing (intentionally).

Royalty sells papers - which leads to landmines being a bigger issue and Japanese yen being converted into pound notes to spend on hideous tea towels.

I know that lots of folks aren't buying the incalculable value of the monarchy but anyone who watches US TV will be able to confirm that they love a bit of it, especially it would seem kids TV. It's a big thing and yes Buck Palace would still exist but it's the notion of a royal family that gives it that je ne sais quoi.

(I don't think she deserves a boat though)

But that is no reason to give them loads of cash each year. Is it?

The fact that it upsets Groomy so much is a good enough reason

I expected groomy to completely ignore anythingi post as it doesnot agree with his opinion, but i thought you would read it blah

No, not at all but it is a reason to have them which is the larger question. I can be a royalist in practical terms but that doesn't mean I think they should have free reign (geddit) to spend what they want.

Yes. Some things cost money and maintaining that "je ne sais quoi" - as well as Surprised's point of course. They don't get huge amounts in 'wages' anyway.

I'm sure there are dozens of ways of cutting costs and they have been quite effective in recent years (somebody posted numbers earlier) and could go further by chopping off entitlements to distant royals who do nowt.

And I replied to it, having posted the link to the Official Civil List document.

I could do with 1p per year per person\taxpayer in the UK

As if they would disappear back to Germany if we stopped paying them - they are seriously rich, and do not need\deserve any more money.

Re: point 1 - huh? Re: point 2 - isn't that as vague as the argument for them?

No i read it and respect it.

However as i have pointed out firstly the Crown Estate would still make that £226m (maybe a lot more if it were managed better and for example ALL of Buckingham Palace were open to visitors) without a Royal Familly (citing the example of Versaille etc) and secondly it is NOT £35m it is considerably more as my link posted above shows. Yes its a republican website but it lists actual expenditure on things like holidays and yachts and so on and says the cost is £200m plus!

Trying to get a vague idea of foreign tourism expenditure I found this (latest month I could find)

http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/publications/ ... A77-250719

Opening the spreadsheet indicates £17.8bn spent by overseas tourists.

(Groomyd's figure of) £200m is therefore around 1% of that.

I find it hard to argue that the 'royal effect' doesn't increase foreign tourism by 1%. Therefore they provide VFM.