Poll: Do you like the British Royal Family?

fish iron4

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Dec 6, 2010
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I support the royal family mainly due to how many people don't realise is yes they do live of taxpayers money (which is like 50p per person a year) but they provide a profit to the country by giving it £20 million a year from rent on royal lands as well as providing an estimated £200 million through tourists, its because of this your taxes are actually 60-70p cheaper a year, not 50p more expensive.

(This info is from sources I found a long time ago so this is from memory and most likely not completely accurate, but its the same general idea).

EDIT: Several people have already posted the video explaining the info above so you can probably just ignore my post and go watch that.
 

Legion

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Oct 2, 2008
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I dislike the concept of Monarchy in the current day and age (it worked in the past in some cases, but not now we have a separate government). They are extremely wealthy but the taxpayer still funds them for the most part, and they the authority that they do have is mostly symbolic or simply outdated and unnecessary.

As people they seem pretty nice, and I have respect for Prince William and Harry for being very down to earth people despite the non-stop adoration and not really living "normal" lives. They do a hell of a lot more good for the country than our worthless government at least.

So both really. I dislike the position that they hold but I like them as people.
 

Tynian

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Feb 4, 2008
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I personally like them. Elizabeth inherited a strong 'rule for the people, not over the people' from her father, King George, and this ethic shows in every one of her offspring and grandchildren. Charles does a lot for the working farmers of the United Kingdom, he owns and runs his own farms, generates his own profits and thus reduces his 'load' on the taxpayers. William and Harry are both 'working' Princes, serving in the armed forces, enormously respected by the soldiers too. William works as a Search and rescue helicopter pilot (actually drawing a salary too), again, reducing his cost to the UK Taxpayer. They all, as a group, devote a lot of time to the citizens they rule over. The Queen has still rejected a few laws the government wanted to pass as she didn't deem them fit for 'her people'.

Do I think they could do more to reduce their cost to the taxpayer? Maybe.

Do they draw a lot of tourists? Hell yes.
 

Single Shot

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SquidSponge said:
MorphingDragon said:
[snip]
Do you even know how the Monarchy works in modern UK?
Even though they have very little in the way of official powers, as that video (accurately) states, they still have influence. Why should they be treated any differently to other citizens? Equality is supposed to be an ideal to which this country aspires. Bleh, forget I said anything, this guy said pretty much everything I wanted to, but did so more concisely since he didn't get carried away like I did:

Olliesama said:
Unnecessary and at this point are nothing but celebrities. It's stupid how highly we value these people for nothing, seriously. We worship them for being born into a life of privilege.
British and no.
Well put sir.

Fraser Greenfield said:
[snip]
I can't speak for Great Britain, but here in Australia, the Crown's power to jump start a Royal Commission has been a godsend in fighting corruption and bureaucratic complacency. That and the Queen's veiled threats of dissolving parliament and sacking the PM; are very own 'Sword of Damocles' if you will, has proven instrumental in fighting corruption and preventing it from seeping into parliament in full form.

That and the idea that we could have a 'president' Gillard or similar character in the future with no higher executive power to answer to scares the shit out of me.

So if anything, I think highly of the monarchy. Not in the celebrity fashion, but rather as an institution of safeguarding the welfare of the populi.
But what gives the Queen (of England) the right to decide what's best for a supposedly democratic nation? If you have issues with corruption etc. then you need to excise it - not rely on an autocratic outside agency to save you. Depending on the Queen to do this might achieve the right end, but it's a poor means. Better to repair the system if it is truly broken.


Unrelated to last subject, to those who are so ready to applaud the "true cost of the royal family" video, it might be worth watching this:
Okay. this is going to be a long one, but that video me laugh so I feel I need to correct it.

The following is corrected in chronological order of the video.

TEXT WALL ENGAGED:

Firstly. Britain had already had a civil war by the time of King George III and the land in question was given to him as part of the deal that ended the war and installed what would slowly become our democratic system. So that video is false, the land is legitimately and legally owned by the Royal family.

Yes. The deal didn't include all the land, but the income figures also don't include all land, just what was included. And yes it did include the £200mil of debt, but the profit made on the land has long paid that off.

The no tax thing. They're the royal family. They've never paid any tax and that's not going to change. They fact remains that they provide more income than expenditure.


Ah. The equasion.
Let's list what's wrong with it.
Side-note: what's all the crap about Darwin? It nicely shows the extremity of the vid-makers view.

1) He assumes they'd pay the full tax rate when nobody with that much money pay's the full tax rate. The UK government would see maybe 2% of that as the cash was routed through offshore banks and tax loopholes the same as large companies. Plus ?That we pay so the royal falimy don't have too? What? No. even if they did pay tax it wouldn't effect the average citizens tax-bill because it would be seen as more state income rather than a reason to reduce other taxes
2) He's counted 'land-use inefficiency' as a cost when it's already represented in the land revenue figure. Somebody can't do math.
3) The debt, yes. That's a legitimate problem. But a tiny amount compared to the other cost's and incomes involved.

Let's really compare now.

Winsor Castle:
Has Royalty.
Visitor limited by numbers due to security.

Palace of versailles:
No limits on visitors.
Focus of a lot of tourism advertisement.


Buckingham Palace:
Has Royalty
Has limits on numbers due to security.

The louvre:
Has a WORLD FAMOUS art exhibition.

Football? Huh? Football does bring in tourist cash yes, but to suggest that bring's in as much/more tourism when most international tourists visit only London. And to suggest that the tax payer doesn't support football would be stupid too. The cost of police security on all matches is staggering and most games do not attract an international crowd.

And now we get to the real problem. I'll break this down bit biy bit.
1) Personal attack.
2) Deletion of first video's ending.
3) ?Seperating church and state, Church makes decisions?
Yeah, tell me how that worked for them blocking gay marriage or pushes for gender and racial equality in church ministers recently.
4) comparison to Iran
Yeah, tell me exactly how we're like Iran while the Royal family has no real power or allegiance.
5) The halted investment
Okay. But a lot of local people also fought that, I could equally argue he was doing what the people wanted. The issue of that development is controversial to be used here either way. And ?provide extra housing? it was a development of multi-million pound homes. Who would it provide for exactly? The people who would have bought a second home in the city to shorten their commute from the county homes they already have most likely?
6) ?All men are created equal?
As a young white male I can confirm this is not true. The government says I?m better than everyone else and can't remind them of it too much or face jail.
7) The right of any Briton to aspire to become the head of state.?
And when exactly was the last PM to come from a normal, working-class home? That dream is already over.

And that's me done.

TL;DR

Yeah. I'm British and I like the Monarchy.
 

DerangedHobo

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Jan 11, 2012
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Lol nope. I don't see why we're supporting this archaic crap, regardless of how much money they may bring into the country we're supposedly civilized and modern yet we still have kings and queens and princes that are supposedly better than us because they come from a royal bloodline? They just sit in their castles and look pretty for tourists? If you're going to call yourself a progressive modern country you can't have a monarchy, it's stupid.
 

hawkeye52

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Jul 17, 2009
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Quaxar said:
hawkeye52 said:
Quaxar said:
Johnny Novgorod said:
Nah, fucking leeches living off taxpayers. Can't believe the Brits are still putting up with them.
Yeah, how dare they generate four times their cost in land revenue for the UK (not even counting any tourism) and thus actually lowering the taxes for British citizens!

OT: I'm personally pretty indifferent but I like the idea of some sort of national mascot that's not a silly flag or fantastic creature.
You mean all that land that is practically the British governments under agreement after we fought a civil war against them because they were being pricks. If the nation just nationalised it as well we would see all of that revenue anyway. In fact even more so because we would develop it into something useful instead of being Prince Charlse's private hunting grounds.
No, I mean all the land that, while being publicly useable, is legally still Crown asset and thus private property of the Royal family.
Why don't we just take their land indeed? In fact, why don't we just take any kind of land that has a use? Guernsey has had it much too easy, relying on the UK for military protection but being an independent tax haven for rich people!

Oh, I know why we don't. Because this isn't a bloody dictatorship.

hawkeye52 said:
On tourism. This has always been so silly of a subject to talk about purely because no one visits the UK purely just to see the royal family. Also, again, we could set up a museum in their favour at Buckingham palace and actually allow people to go in and explore to their fullest. London is still an awesome place to visit even after taking away the Royals and if people based their sole criteria on which city to visit based on whether they had a royal family or not then no one would visit Paris, Berlin, Milan, Venice or in fact most other EU cities that are extremely popular tourist destinations.
It's a silly subject because it's hard to estimate in any case. Still, the royal wedding clearly brought a huge amount of tourist money specifically by being a royal event. Surely David Cameron's wedding wouldn't have brought a single extra person or quid to the city.
As you have said they practically handed it over for use by the government. The royal family technically rents it from us meaning that the government would become legal holders of that state. Guernsey is a separate matter just because of the fact that they are a protectorate and not really a subject. Same as Gibralter or the Falkland Islands. We could close down that tax haven incredibly easily by reinventing our tax laws from the ground up.

The royal wedding managed to bring in a load of money for the large private businesses such as tesco. However we don't see that money because Tesco tax dodges/evasion in Guernsey etc. Although this isn't a problem of the royal family per se but there is no reason why the government can't produce an event of similar status without the need to wait for the royal family to pop one out or have a shiny object quite literally worth it's weight in gold placed on their head.
 

Gromril

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Elementary - Dear Watson said:
Mmmmm... A thread full of ignorance and tabloid spread hate... Gotta love the internet nowadays!
Tabloid spread hate? Name one damned paper in the united kindgdom (where I live) of note that has something other than gushing awe to say about the royals and I might bother reading the rest of your post.

Me? I apreciate that they make more money than they cost, but im of this crazy belief that money isnt everything. The Idea that any institution whose sole purpose is to PR spin the impresion that they have one iota of influence of my life exists, that I NEED them, irritates me.
 

Quaxar

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hawkeye52 said:
As you have said they practically handed it over for use by the government. The royal family technically rents it from us meaning that the government would become legal holders of that state.
The other way around, mate. The Crown Estate is still technically property of the Crown and is inherited with the throne, George III only surrendered the land's revenue in exchange for the responsibility of national and personal debt, not having to cover the cost of the gouvernment and a fixed rate financial return (Civil List), or, since 2012, for a percentage cut.
Which I personally would have been against since they already have the Duchies of Cornwall and Lancaster but meh.

hawkeye52 said:
Guernsey is a separate matter just because of the fact that they are a protectorate and not really a subject. Same as Gibralter or the Falkland Islands. We could close down that tax haven incredibly easily by reinventing our tax laws from the ground up.
Why is Guernsey different? It's got special status as a Crown dependency, distanced enough from the UK to have their own thing going on but still leeching on the UK for citizenship, political representation and defense.
And completely reinveiting the UK's tax laws seems like the least easy way to handle tax avoidance.

hawkeye52 said:
The royal wedding managed to bring in a load of money for the large private businesses such as tesco. However we don't see that money because Tesco tax dodges/evasion in Guernsey etc. Although this isn't a problem of the royal family per se but there is no reason why the government can't produce an event of similar status without the need to wait for the royal family to pop one out or have a shiny object quite literally worth it's weight in gold placed on their head.
It's tax avoidance. Tax evasion is illegal and a different thing.
Anyway, I'm simply going to disagree here just because state events are much scarcer and mostly for memorial reasons. A live figurehead is much more relateable.
 
Feb 24, 2011
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I hate every royal family that still gets tons of money even though their country is a democracy, not a monarchy.
We're already in an economic crisis and we're giving these leeches taxpayer money?
Fuck. Them.
 

iNsaneMilesy

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Dec 10, 2008
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Pretty much every European country has a royal family whether you know about them or not and they ALL leech off the taxpayer.
 

hawkeye52

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Quaxar said:
hawkeye52 said:
As you have said they practically handed it over for use by the government. The royal family technically rents it from us meaning that the government would become legal holders of that state.
The other way around, mate. The Crown Estate is still technically property of the Crown and is inherited with the throne, George III only surrendered the land's revenue in exchange for the responsibility of national and personal debt, not having to cover the cost of the gouvernment and a fixed rate financial return (Civil List), or, since 2012, for a percentage cut.
Which I personally would have been against since they already have the Duchies of Cornwall and Lancaster but meh.

hawkeye52 said:
Guernsey is a separate matter just because of the fact that they are a protectorate and not really a subject. Same as Gibralter or the Falkland Islands. We could close down that tax haven incredibly easily by reinventing our tax laws from the ground up.
Why is Guernsey different? It's got special status as a Crown dependency, distanced enough from the UK to have their own thing going on but still leeching on the UK for citizenship, political representation and defense.
And completely reinveiting the UK's tax laws seems like the least easy way to handle tax avoidance.

hawkeye52 said:
The royal wedding managed to bring in a load of money for the large private businesses such as tesco. However we don't see that money because Tesco tax dodges/evasion in Guernsey etc. Although this isn't a problem of the royal family per se but there is no reason why the government can't produce an event of similar status without the need to wait for the royal family to pop one out or have a shiny object quite literally worth it's weight in gold placed on their head.
It's tax avoidance. Tax evasion is illegal and a different thing.
Anyway, I'm simply going to disagree here just because state events are much scarcer and mostly for memorial reasons. A live figurehead is much more relateable.
Ah right my bad on the first one then. I'll concede that.

From what I understand the tax system is a bit of a mess at the moment with many loop holes. We could create a patch to cover it up but I would rather a government make it a main policy to create a new one for the modern day and that is capable of dealing with foreign corporations siphoning money out of the UK (see Google, Starbucks etc) rather then creating class divides in this country by blaming the poor and immigrants for all our woes and set about dicking on them with the media's approval.

The UK government could try making larger international events or encourage organisations to host them here. Like for example Glastonbury Music festival which is known to be one of the better music festivals in Europe. The government seems to be stuck in a haze of reactionary events as opposed to trying to proactively fix problems. The Olympics was a perfect example of this. One of the main arguments for the Olympics (which was handled by Jeremy Hunt pretty badly imo) was that they will be restoring areas of London. This in itself I am not against. We should do it more but why did we have to wait for an excuse to do it. Why couldn't the British government have done it before hand. This is more of an aside and a gripe I have with Britain then something that is on topic though
 

voltair27

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Apr 9, 2012
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Not from the UK and have no real feelings one way or another. However, the thing that pisses me off is how much media coverage is given to everything they do. I mean seriously, there's hundreds of more important things we should be paying attention to.
 

Saladfork

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Jul 3, 2011
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Canadian here, and long live the queen, I say.

I think there's a lot to be said for both an unelected party with some measure of power over the government (not a lot, mind you, perhaps just enough to inform the house of commons when they're being dumb and to go back and try again) as well as a sort of cultural figurehead in general.

Also, for anyone complaining about the cost of the royal family, the queen has an agreement with parliament dating back to King George III wherein parliament is granted use of the royal hereditary lands (which I believe parliament makes about 200 million pounds off of annually) in exchange for being paid somewhere around 40 million pounds per year. Even without getting into whether they help the tourism industry at all, they already make more money for the country than they get.

All that said, though, I really couldn't care less about their personal lives, nor about any of the family who are not going to be the next king. My contempt for the media only grows when I learn about peoplecamped outside their hospital for days or stalking them in the streets. It's as if they've learned nothing from Diana.
 

SerBrittanicus

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Jul 22, 2013
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I am British and of course I like them. They do much more for the country than any politician and actually look out for our best interests unlike people like David Cameron or David Milliband - quite frankly I think it would be better for us if they had more power not less. And for those of you saying tax payers money goes to them I don't know what country/century you are living in, but in the UK not a single penny of taxpayer money goes to the royal family.

I don't particularly care about the birth of this baby though considering it will be 70 years or so until he actually becomes King depending on how long William lives. However the US seems to love this kind of thing, so more money for us from them I suppose.
 

Roofstone

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Royalty in a democracy is just stupid.. I don't mind any royal families in particular, but the concept is just...

They're garden gnomes. Really expensive garden gnomes.. For countries.
 

DisturbiaWolf13

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Apr 15, 2009
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I was actually talking about this yesterday in my local pub. I mentioned to a friend that I didn't see the necessity of royalty and how it's funny that the common hatred of those who leech off of taxpayers didn't seem to extend to them.

This was apparently the older gentleman at the next table's cue to turn around and start shouting at me "SHE'S AN EXAMPLE TO US ALL" (referring to the Queen) "I'M IN THE ARMED FORCES AND SHE'S MY BOSS" "IF YOU DON'T LIKE IT HERE GO SOMEWHERE ELSE". Not so much as a hello. Everyone at our table found this hilarious of course, I didn't realise just how fanatical some people were about the monarchy.
 

J Tyran

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Shadowstar38 said:
Are they that vital to the country?
Yes for the injection of cash into the economy, tourism is one aspect. Look at all those visitors from around the world over the last few days, hell just think about all the press. They are paying hotels and buying food etc, all that funnels money into business and from there it goes into business investments, peoples pockets and then into government taxes.

Another aspect is look at the massive revival of the pottery industry, its been in massive decline over the last decade (and further back too) but since Prince William married Kate in that huge Royal wedding they have been churning products out in huge amounts. Now they have been making ones to celebrate the child, this is short term but it allows them to set up supply and marketing chains they can exploit with their other products. Once customers around the world see the quality on offer and they can easily find and buy them the benefits are long term.
 
Jul 10, 2013
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Hell no. The news seems to go on and on about them, especially with the wedding and the baby. I do not. give. a. toss.
Prince Phillip however, is hilarious.
 

DisturbiaWolf13

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Apr 15, 2009
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J Tyran said:
look at the massive revival of the pottery industry
Oh now I know you're joking.

No increase in tourism is worth elevating these people above everyone else.

"Hey, you there. You and you're family can live in palaces so that people will come from all over to look at you in the palaces!"