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PeonForHer -> RE: Young Man and Woman to Get Married - UK Rejoices! (11/18/2010 11:24:22 AM)
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ORIGINAL: allthatjaz
Aha.. I didn't know you had started another post here about it!
I'll bring my other posts here... I would also like to add that the Daily Express are talking bullshit. The royal accounts, which include revenue are available to download on PDF's for anyone who wants them
The Daily Express has always been a staunchly pro-royal newspaper. If it were to have any bias, it would be to underestimate the costs of the royals. Thus the figure I, and the Express, mention doesn't factor the 'opportunity costs' of their assets. These are the amounts of money that may be earned were the royals not to own them. How much, do you think, could be charged for renting Bucking Palace for a year? And then there's Windsor, Hampton Court, Kensington Palace, Balmoral . . . .
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1) Tourist revenues are huge and are going up an average of 11% a year. Last year alone, £500,000000 was spent by overseas visitors on attractions associated with the royal family.
Could you quote your source for that half a billion?
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I understand that London does have tourism markets outside of the royal family, but they are probably the main thing that attracts tourists to Britain..
Seriously, do you really believe this? What is the basis for that belief?
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As for being a waste of time, what’s the alternative? More politicians’? Politicians’ cost us a lot more, for much less in return.
Oh I don't know. Churchill helped massively to save this country from an invasion, while Edward and Wallace Simpson was selling us out to the Nazis. See the other thread and my other post. Really, though, it's meaningless to say the royal family give us so much and politicians so little. All you're saying here is that you like royalty but not politicians.
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2) The French are in the lead but they don't get the big spenders from Japan like we do. We may not have open palaces but we do have the pomp and ceremony and although I personally find that yawn worthy, that's what the Japanese come here to see and right now, we need their yen.
Do you have figures for Japanese tourists and their attraction to our royals, specifically? It's unlikely to be more than a tiny proportion of the total figures that are relevant.
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The royal family pay their own debts, unlike our government.
See above. This sort of statement is meaningless beyond your expressing a fondness for the royals but not for politicians. Are you really claiming that the Queen Mother - who had 83 full-time staff and spent so many millions that even the arch-Tory, Norman Lamont, criticised her for far exceeding the civil list and was, to boot, a Nazi sympathiser when the rest of the country was fighting them - was value for money?
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3) Money paid to the queen comes from the crown estate, which she owns as a hereditary sovereign. The crown lands are managed by the government and earns a revenue of billions of pounds a year. This money goes back to the civil list and a portion of it is paid directly to the queen as a wage. The surplus goes to the treasury.
True, but the crown need not own it. There's nothing 'natural' and 'self-evidently right' about the Crown owning it. To say that it's the Crown's by right because the Queen's ancestors fought for it is ludicrous because it invites the obvious retort, 'OK, it's fine for us to fight again for it now, then'. As mentioned above and elsewhere, it'd be a lot more profitable in public hands.
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4) etc
- Answered here .
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