Monarchy or Republic?

[somerset]

I HAV'ENT READ THIS YET BUT IT SEEMS TO PROVIDE A GOOD SYNOPSIS OF THE QUEEN TAXES.

lc

Queen Elizabeth II
The secrets of the Queen's finances are published
The Queen saved £20 million on inheritance tax after the death of the Queen Mother due to a secret deal with the British Treasury (finance ministry). In 2002 it was revealed that there are other secret deals between Queen Elizabeth and the Treasury.

The civil list (government payments to Buckingham Palace and the royal family) now costs the British taxpayer about £8.1 million each year. Total published payments to the head of state are about £35 million. This figure includes payments for items such as property maintenance and travel.

The civil list is now only paid to two individual members of the royal family, the Queen and Prince Philip - although see below. The £643,000 annual allowance to the Queen Mother ceased on her death in March 2002. Prince Philip receives about £359,000.

In 1993 it was announced that only the Queen, Prince Philip and the Queen Mother would receive civil list payments in the future. At the same time it was also announced then that other members of the royal family stopped benefiting from the civil list. The Queen also agreed to pay taxes on income and capital gains from 1993.

However, rather than abolishing the civil list payments to the other royals, taxpayer handouts to them continued and the Queen curiously paid an equivalent sum back to the Treasury.

This was said at the time to be a technical arrangement to cover administrative and legal difficulties of stopping the payments. But the Queen, it has now become clear, can set off the money she pays back to the Treasury against her own tax bill. In this way, the Queen saves income tax at the rate of 40% on payments of £249,000 to Prince Andrew; £141,000 to Prince Edward; £228,000 to Princess Anne; and £636,000 in total to the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester, the Duke and Duchess of Kent, and Princess Alexandra. Another £87,000 is paid by the taxpayer to Princess Alice, now over 100 years old and sister-in-law of the Queen Mother. It is then reimbursed to the Treasury by the Queen. The Queen is therefore likely to be saving £536,000 a year in income tax.

The savings may go up if, as seems likely, payments to the Prince Edward rise in the future to compensate Edward and his wife Sophie for abandoning their careers.

The total civil list payment in 2002 was £7.9 million. This is to cover other expenses of Buckingham Palace and the royal family. Internal Treasury files, released to the public record office in 2002 also disclosed details of a deal that ensured that MPs are not allowed to reduce the civil list - despite the fact that £35 million had not been spent.

According to the files, this agreement was specifically introduced to avoid "unduly exposing individual members of the royal family to too much embarrassment".

The papers also reveal that the government once upset the Queen by secretly vetoing a 100% "pay increase" for the Queen Mother. Edward Heath's cabinet in 1971 rejected a proposal from the palace for a pay rise for the Queen Mother that would have doubled her civil list payment from £70,000 to £140,000, saying it "might well lead to embarrassing criticism of the royal family".

Senior ministers said the amount had to be kept under the £100,000 figure and suggested £90,000 instead.

The papers record that when the Queen was told, "she reluctantly accepted the proposal but had pressed strongly for £95,000 instead of £90,000 on the grounds that it was important to maintain a substantial differential between the Queen Mother and the other royals.


Prince William
The British royal family
The Internet Forum

To put this in context, you would need a balancing document written by someone who supports the Monarchy (this one smacks of Private Eye), then once both have been read, take the middle point between the two and you are probably near the truth.

 

[beorhthelm]

London Calling, you really should read what you posted. Its all "secret deals" and interesting maths. for example, the civil list is 7.3m but only two reciepients who total a little over a million. So who does the rest go to? Lots about the Queen saving on her tax bill too Saving 40% by making payments to OTHER TAXPAYERS. And the grand total of this creative accountancy? £536,000.

Queen saved £20million in inheritance tax eh? that means the QM must have been worth around £50million. But Liz is supposed to have been the richest woman in the UK, but she only reckoned to be worth around £20million (funny how that same figure crops up isnt). Now £20m isnt to be sniff at, but puts you way way down the rich list. Lottery rollover win? Successful publisher? How do we know what the hell either of them are worth anyway, like you and me their bank records are secret, the way it should be. Back to the inheritance, why should she pay a penny anyway? if you pass on your estate to your children 7years before your death, they dont pay a penny in Inheritence tax. So why should the Royal family be any different, and its not like the Queen Mum was cut down in her prime was it, bit of time to have though and prepared for these things.

And someone always has to bring up the "Royal Wealth is stolen from the people over the centuries" line. Yes. Hundreds of years ago. Get over it. And if it wasnt for the landed genty setting in place a legal frame work to govern the ownership of this land, you would be able to buy your own place either. Land ownership is a fundemental tenent ('cuse pun) of culture and society, and really is a whole other matter.

Look, im all for a debate on the question of a Monarcy, but stop making it a financial issue as its all a load of crap (that goes for both sides).

 

[Yorkie]

Yorkie, i find this sentence incredible. Who would the Queen be to complain about lack of luxuries?

I'd bet many of us here on NSC would not swap our lives for the Queens- we wouldnt want the intrusion, the lack (paradoxically, considering she is the Monarch) of being able to make your own decisions, being soo divorced from everyday life and, perhaps, reality?

But i aint gonna feel sorry for her; first and foremost she knows no different anyway. Thats the only life she's ever known, and it involves huge beautiful houses and palaces, expensive food and drink, any clothes or, feck it, posessions she could ever want.

Meanwhile we retire after 40-50 years of back breaking labour. Yeah, what a luxury

Back breaking labour? What on earth do you do for a living?
I sit on an office chair at a desk all day. Ok I have to do it to live but it's hardly back breaking.

I am talking about having to talk to people you don't know, be polite, shake hundreds of hands, make speeches written by someone else (whether you agree with them or not) have to be in specific places at specific dates every single year and not have the freedom to choose what you do and when you do it.
This will carry on until she is too infirm to do it or dies.
The Queen Mum was still carrying out public duties even in her 90's.
I do accept the Queen could say no, but her nature (I am talking about this particular monarch) is that public duty comes above everything else.


Just as a comparison, when the terrorists hit New York and Washington what was the American response? Get the President into a plane and hide him from danger. Wherever he goes there are CIA goons surrounding him and outirders where ever his car goes

The King and Queen stayed in London throughout the Second World War despite the Blitz. The Queen has had her Uncle assassinated and Princess Anne was attacked in her car, as well as the Queen having some nutter fire an air rifle nearby when Trooping the Colour.
The Queen still won't have any form of bodyguard although officers and soldiers around her are armed (but very discreetly) and still mixes with the crowd.

 

[Brovion]

...
Look, im all for a debate on the question of a Monarcy, but stop making it a financial issue as its all a load of crap (that goes for both sides).

Correct. It's not about the tourists or the money. I don't care whether the Royal Family cost the country 10 mil. a year or make us 10 mil. It also doesn't matter whether you think a life of cocooned priviledge (with the downside that you can't retire) is better or worse than those of us with non-Royal jobs (I don't expect or want to retire. My Dad is 80 next March and still works part-time).

It's just the principle of the thing. Either you think that our current constitutional shambles (with an unelected Head of State and an unelected second chamber for starters) is fine or you want to see it reformed.

PS - Don't get me started on Blair's reform of the Lords. I think I prefer the Hereditary Peers to the proposed system. Still at least we've advanced from 11th century feudalism to 17th century political patronage so I suppose it's progress of a sort.

 

[London Calling]

The above article was meant to be illuminating if it has failed so be it.

Of course the Royals should be treated the same as everyone else. But the fact is they are not. To me money is an issue for that reason alone. If the royals do have to stay, I want them to be like the Royals of Spain, Denmark etc.

The Royals have not given me power to own land etc far from it. That has been Parliament and democracy.

Because land ownership makes people so powerful in the UK I am aggrieved.

What is it. About 10% of the most wealthy own 60-90% of the wealth in the uK. Is that right? To me the Privaleges, power possesed by the Royals, her cronies and the Aristocracy is not appropriate for a 21st Century Britain.

LC

 

[Happy Seagull]

I reckon the whole royal family should be hung, drawn and quartered

 

[beorhthelm]

The Royals have not given me power to own land etc far from it. That has been Parliament and democracy.

Because land ownership makes people so powerful in the UK I am aggrieved.

thats staggering niave: land ownership predates Royalty by some time and Democracy by thousands of years. Its the powerfull leaders of communities that became the first aristocrates, forming the early law to protect their interests. Wasnt it at Lewes where the power of the Barons as being independant to the Monarch was settled? Your questioning the foundation of western society, not Monarchy, when your aggrieved by land ownership. The alternative is not Democracy, where *anyone* can own land, but Communism where the state (and by extension the head of the party...) owns everything.

As for the wealth of this country, most is ultimatly held by pension funds, which are owned by those who contribute to them...

 

[London Calling]

I have no problem in being proving wrong, however, as far as I am aware, under pre Norman Britain there was not whole scale land ownership. There was obviously very powerful famalies aka Harold. But generally people farmed what they needed. There was general freedom.


The normans basically took control of all land, with William dividing it amongst his barons. In many places genocide took place with populations in Sussex, Norwich, Exeter slaughtered.

"English" or the native tongues was banned and the majority of the population were enslaved "serfs" or "vagrants". Over the next few generations, these peasants often starved and were forced to make a living scavenging in Forests.

Mmmmmmmprobably leading to stories of local Robin Hoods.

Resulting out of the British Civil war groups such as the Levellers demanded land ownership, Cromwell (An Aristocrat) crushed them, wiping out the Levellers leadership. He then went on to steal the majority of Irish land from the Irish people. So in 1640's there was still no universal land ownership.

I am a bit hazy here but wasn't the Battle of Lewes a part of the Civil War?


Around the !8th Century parliament introduced a piece of legislation that basically meant that if you had no proof of ownership , you were kicked off the land by your local Baron, Mayor etc. I know its a famous bit of legislation but I can't remember it.

THis led to the mass emigration to British cities and emigration to America.


So I don't think I am being nieved. If you compare this to aims and actions of the French Revolution in 1789 and obviosly the Russian 1917, Georgian 1919 etc.


Out of the European nations we have the greatest differences between wealth and poverty. We are one of the few countries never to have a full over throw of power. I admit as the case of the Bolsheviks, Nazi's and Mussolini this might not be such a great thing. However the UK in the 21st Century has a land ownership that is still not that great deal different from the Norman times. It is stunning how much of our land and property ownership can be traced back to a few Norman families.


I accept the point about Pension Funds but they are not really owned by you or me.

I have made a point of choosing Friends Provident for its ethical policies and its being set up by Quakers.


LC

 

[beorhthelm]

The concept of land ownership was around well before the Normans, often decided by he who had the Biggest Stick. The Church (somewhat ironically) administered who owned what, mainly as they owned an awful lot of it.

The Normans inherited a country where every inch of land was already under the control of one baron or another. The only difference was, having a very big sharp stick, William was able to bring all the Barons under one single control rather than a series of viking/saxon kingdoms.

Battle of Lewes was around mid 1200, and lead to the Magna Carta. The Barons basically culled some of the power of the Monarch so that they where less beholden and established a Parliament (though i believe the Parliament concept is actuall Viking).

In all those countries that have had Revolution, how is the land ownership different? its not, either you own the land and can prove documentry evidence, or the State does. The State doesnt go dishing out land to the population ad hoc, it keeps it until someone comes alongs and buys it off them. No different to here is it, there's nothing to stop you or i buying a house or plot of land, renting/selling it, buying another, rinsh and repeat until you are worth 10s of millions.

 

[London Calling]

The difference being that in other countries, one way or another, there has been a distribution of land. Britain was not known as a country stratified by class for nothing.

Upper Class= Land and major property owners.
Middle Class=Home owners.
Working class. f*** all.

The social and/or violent revolutions often went for the rich. THe French being particulary a great example of this.


Britain will never change now. Like Thatcherism or not 80% of households now own property. However, would Britain be a more equal society if some of the monopolies of land had been broken up.

Just read the stuff on the Battle of Lewes and Simon de Montford interesting stuff. The closest Britain came to a republic. Cheers.
LC

 

[Robot Chicken]

This ties in well with the Abolish the Monarchy thread!

 

[Barrel of Fun]

I has taken me almost 4 years to vote, but I have just made it 49 all.

 

[Leekbrookgull]

The Queen. Enough said.