The monarchy

Fries. Wedges. Crisps? wrote:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-38025513

Buckingham Palace to get £369m refurbishment

Undemocratic
Unelected
Needless expenses
Lack of Sovereignty
Need to take back control
Rich Elites

Oh wait that's the EU, I like the Queen because she doesn't talk much. Hey look Netflix has a show about how great she is!

Fries. Wedges. Crisps? wrote:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-38025513

Buckingham Palace to get £369m refurbishment

To be fair this is to spread over 10 years and a large part of that will be the labour costs and this project will create a fair few really good apprenticeships.
Considering how many people visit the UK and then go and see this building I'd say keeping it in good order is a decent use of money.

Peter Crisp wrote:

Fries. Wedges. Crisps? wrote:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-38025513

Buckingham Palace to get £369m refurbishment

To be fair this is to spread over 10 years and a large part of that will be the labour costs and this project will create a fair few really good apprenticeships.
Considering how many people visit the UK and then go and see this building I'd say keeping it in good order is a decent use of money.

Exactly, and considering the money that is wasted on other stuff 369m isn't all that much, hell we will have that make in just over a week after we leave the EU.

Peter Crisp wrote:Considering how many people visit the UK and then go and see this building I'd say keeping it in good order is a decent use of money.

And I'd say scrapping the monarchy and letting those people actually go inside that building would be altogether more profitable and beneficial for the public purse.

Peter Crisp wrote:...Considering how many people visit the UK and then go and see this building I'd say keeping it in good order is a decent use of money.

Spot-on, Peter. I don't love the monarchy but in terms of cost / benefit to the country it's a great deal. If the monarchy were eliminated then we'd soon have a "presidential office" or similar role / structure that would evolve and cost far more cash - and no tourists would be interested in it.

Fries. Wedges. Crisps? wrote:

Peter Crisp wrote:Considering how many people visit the UK and then go and see this building I'd say keeping it in good order is a decent use of money.

And I'd say scrapping the monarchy and letting those people actually go inside that building would be altogether more profitable and beneficial for the public purse.

I doubt it. It would last for a few years sure, but the Monachy is so popular because it is there NOW not a thing from the past. People come over because they are our Royal family its a real life right now thing.

Errkal wrote:

Fries. Wedges. Crisps? wrote:

Peter Crisp wrote:Considering how many people visit the UK and then go and see this building I'd say keeping it in good order is a decent use of money.

And I'd say scrapping the monarchy and letting those people actually go inside that building would be altogether more profitable and beneficial for the public purse.

I doubt it. It would last for a few years sure, but the Monachy is so popular because it is there NOW not a thing from the past. People come over because they are our Royal family its a real life right now thing.

I've heard that argument before but loads of people still go to Versailles.

Errkal wrote:the Monachy is so popular because it is there NOW not a thing from the past. People come over because they are our Royal family its a real life right now thing.

jawafour wrote:I don't love the monarchy but in terms of cost / benefit to the country it's a great deal.

I can't agree with you here, gents.

Republic.org wrote:"It's good for tourism"
This claim is untrue and irrelevant. Even VisitBritain, our national tourist agency, can't find any evidence for it.

Chester Zoo, Stonehenge and the Roman Baths are all more successful tourist attractions than Windsor Castle, which is the only occupied royal residence to attract visitors in large numbers. If Windsor Castle was included in the Association of Leading Visitor Attractions (ALVA) list of top attractions it would come in at number 24.

Research shows that tourists come here for our world class museums, beautiful scenery, fantastic shopping and captivating history - not because they might catch a glimpse of Prince Andrew. In a republic, royal properties such as Buckingham Palace would be open all year round, so visitors that do want to explore our royal heritage would have even more opportunity to do so.

But, even if the claim were true, do we really want the whims of visiting tourists to determine what kind of political system we have?

Royal residence admission numbers can be found in the Royal Collection Trust's annual reports

https://republic.org.uk/what-we-want/mo ... od-tourism

Not worth it for £334 million a year.

Fries. Wedges. Crisps? wrote:

Peter Crisp wrote:Considering how many people visit the UK and then go and see this building I'd say keeping it in good order is a decent use of money.

And I'd say scrapping the monarchy and letting those people actually go inside that building would be altogether more profitable and beneficial for the public purse.

You can go inside.

Fries. Wedges. Crisps? wrote:

Errkal wrote:the Monachy is so popular because it is there NOW not a thing from the past. People come over because they are our Royal family its a real life right now thing.

jawafour wrote:I don't love the monarchy but in terms of cost / benefit to the country it's a great deal.

I can't agree with you here, gents.

Republic.org wrote:"It's good for tourism"
This claim is untrue and irrelevant. Even VisitBritain, our national tourist agency, can't find any evidence for it.

Chester Zoo, Stonehenge and the Roman Baths are all more successful tourist attractions than Windsor Castle, which is the only occupied royal residence to attract visitors in large numbers. If Windsor Castle was included in the Association of Leading Visitor Attractions (ALVA) list of top attractions it would come in at number 24.

Research shows that tourists come here for our world class museums, beautiful scenery, fantastic shopping and captivating history - not because they might catch a glimpse of Prince Andrew. In a republic, royal properties such as Buckingham Palace would be open all year round, so visitors that do want to explore our royal heritage would have even more opportunity to do so.

But, even if the claim were true, do we really want the whims of visiting tourists to determine what kind of political system we have?

Royal residence admission numbers can be found in the Royal Collection Trust's annual reports

https://republic.org.uk/what-we-want/mo ... od-tourism

Not worth it for £334 million a year.

So you constantly berated Cal for quoting Breitbart, yet you quote the definitely unbiased 'Republic.org' with a straight face?

Snowcannon wrote:So you constantly berated Cal for quoting Breitbart, yet you quote the definitely unbiased 'Republic.org' with a straight face?

Well, if you really want to go there... Breitbart claims to be a news site, whereas Republic is pretty open about its intentions. That's not to mean its research / sources are worthless, though! I even included the links they'd put into those quoted articles - you'll see that they link to organisations with no political inclination, and even organisations that would oppose a group like Republic (like the Royal Collection Trust!)

It frustrates me to hear people spout this nonsense that the royal family somehow provide a lucrative, steady stream of income for our country. It's a myth, something that has never been proven. The statistics all point towards the opposite - that we're spending a ludicrous amount of money to maintain preposterous ceremonies, elaborate residences and undeserved notions of worth and priority. The whole thing is basically a costly deference model - it maintains a status quo of definite wealth and class. It's pointless to even debate the notions of equality or class mobility in Britain in 2016 while every citizen still pays to allow a single family an unjustifiable standard of living. Look at something like the Queen's Speech ceremony, and then tell me that the cost of that kind of pomp and circumstance is somehow worthwhile when we have anti-homeless spikes, welfare cuts, and austerity. "We're all in this together", I don't think.

If you have evidence that the royals' continued existence makes our nation more economically sound, then please, go ahead and present it! But to my mind, the default position - that "they're good for tourism / the economy" - is a lie, perpetuated by an infatuated media determined to maintain the level of deference by a royal-obsessed public, fully aware that interest in one particular genetic sequence guarantees sales of rags like the Express, at the same time constantly preserving the established class hierarchy that exists within our society. It's fundamentally, morally wrong. And let's not turn The Cal Card into our own unique GRcade version of Godwin's Law.

I'd love to have an elected president, but given the general fuckwittery of over 50% of the voting public, I think it's best we stick with the monarchy for the time being.

I would definitely vote for the Queen

OrangeRakoon wrote:I would definitely vote for the Queen

You're a monster.

Also on the cost/benefit of the monarchy it's almost impossible to quantify. How do you judge the amount of tourism to the UK that is because of the monarchy, and how do you judge how much we would lose if it were to be abolished?

What is true to say is that there is a common misconception that the monarchy is of net economic benefit to the UK, thanks to both hidden costs and the unverifiable estimates of profit.

Using it to argue either way is silly because both sides end up quoting non-facts and saying "no /you're/ wrong!"

Yeah, I think I have had the whole "tourism" argument before.

It's hard to quantify exactly what having a current royal family does for tourist related income. If it counts the Crown's lands, for example, I think technically Ascot comes under that. Does that counted in figures.

And what about ones like the Tower of London? Again, I think technically belongs to the Crown Estate. Do the people visiting that do so because of the current monarch? Even places like Buckingham Palace, would still draw people in, due to being iconic in its own right.

I'm not even sure how much revenue some of the "active" royal places provide. Buckingham Palace, for example, could *arguably* be more profitable to the country if you turfed the Queen out and opened it to those tourists all year round.

You'd be supposing that, if we abolished the monarchy, all the Crown's estates would go to the Windsor family. Seeing as they technically own the coast of the British Isles, I'm not sure that would be feasible. We wouldn't just lose any income from these places outright, who knows what would happen if things changed so drastically.

Besides, it's such a brain-dead argument. You should decide whether you want a monarchy in its own right, not because of the vague notion that it might be somewhat profitable somewhere down the line.

At a time when inequality is arguably as high as it has been in a fewer generations, you wouldnt make an argument for such inequality as a product of birth purely because it brings the country some cash.

I'm more than happy that my taxes are going towards it.

Tax payers money gets spent on far more pointless things than refurbishing royal residences .

For example, Sheffield city council having trees pruned a week before cutting them down.

Seen as how happy some people are made by royal event and things I think it is a good thing they are there and we invest at least a little in it all. There is very little good at the moment and if there is something that brings people together than I think that's good.

Denster wrote:I'm more than happy that my taxes are going towards it.

Your taxes are going to one of the world's wealthiest land owners. Someone already with immense riches and privilege, who already takes 15% of revenue earned by the Crown Estate. Technically Queen Elizabeth also owns 1/6 of the Earth's surface too. Not sure why any repairs should come out of the public pocket.

At a time when we see cuts to the disabled and to others at the lowest end of the spectrum, why should it come out of the public's pockets?

It's presumably well within the Royal family's means to have these repairs come from their own accounts. So why shouldn't it? Why shouldn't it come out of that 15% which was designated as their income? And we're talking 15% of a vast sum here.

Just seems odd to me that you're so happy to pay this, when many other people get so annoyed and outraged and having to pay for some of society's weakest, most vulnerable people.

A lot of people rally against the welfare state, but here we have welfare being given to arguably Britain's most privileged family. And no other family already owes so much to Britain as they do. The country has literally given them all they have, all through the crown.