Let us make this very clear, I am a true republican. I do not agree with the expression, “our own dear queen”. This article is going to give you a very different viewpoint of our monarchy.
Statements made to me by monarchists are for example, The Queen brings a lot of tourists. Well actually, Hampton Court is always packed with tourists and I do believe that Henry the 8th is dead.
Another pro-royalty comment is they are always the centre of attention and it is hard to do. There is some truth in this because every second of every day the media are watching. Newspapers employ lip readers, body language experts and supposedly close friends to give us all the inner feelings of each member of the family. Every expression is watched and measured. If you do not mind being watched in that way, then you too could be a member of the royal family.
The Royal Family does cost us money. The queen alone costs us £7.9 million a year from the civil list. She is also paid a salary of £76 million a year. She owns Balmoral and Sandringham but the rest belongs to the State. In 1993 she was forced to open up Buckingham Palace to the people and then it was £8 per ticket which was a lot of money in those days .Now people have to pay £30 to go in. All those paintings etc there belong to the state.
In 1969, a 90 minute documentary covering a year in the life of the Queen, was broadcast on the BBC. Later the queen had it banned and it has not been shown on British Television since 1977. I saw the film at that time. I was 22 years old. They tried to show
how normal the Queen was. That was the film that made me a republican. I watched how a lady-in-waiting , who works for free, helps the queen dress every day. I watched as a massive collection of jewellery was placed before her and she picked up a necklace of extraordinary value, turned to her lady-in-waiting and asked her,” Have I ever worn this before?” She did not even think about what she was actually saying. Her so-called subjects were struggling to survive and she could not remember a fantastic piece of jewellery.
All women members of the Royal family have so much money , they can choose fashion designers to design their clothes. If Kate Middleton wears the same dress twice, people think how wonderful she is because she understands how difficult life is. That young woman has never done a proper day’s work in her life. Her only claim to fame is that she is beautiful, slim and charming. Actually, she is very thin and I do wonder if she has an eating disorder like Princess Diana.
Let us define the meaning of work:
An activity involving mental or physical effort done to achieve a purpose or result.
Their idea of work is to be the host or hostess with the mostest, as the song goes. They have never had to cook a meal or worry where the next meal is coming from. They do not have to worry about holding down two jobs to pay the heating bills. They have nannies to bring up the children.
These are examples of what they do as work:
Presenting medals and knighting people
- They present awards
- They chair lots of charities and arrive from time to time to talk to the volunteers.
- They go to charity lunches
- Review the annual Sovereign’s Parade at Sandhurst
- Foreign Tours – free travel and talk to people who then feel honoured
- Military Ceremonies
- Attending Youth Days
- Attending dinners as guests of honour
- Meeting grateful actors
- Free front row seats or boxes for sporting events, shows
- Hold Royal garden parties which they do not organise
In their personal lives, they have very expensive hobbies like race horses and magnificent stables.
- They have fabulous jewellery
- Their clothing is high fashion
- They have access to private planes, helicopters etc., magnificent cars
- They never cook, clean or dress themselves.
- The queen has a palace as a care home. She has 24 hour care of a standard we can only dream of in our lives.
- She has a doctor on call so she never has to worry about trying to get hold of a GP.
- They have no idea about how we have to live every day of our lives.
- They go to exclusive schools and have free fabulous housing.
Let us look at a well-known so-called hard-working royal, Princess Anne.
She was asked about retirement:
“I don’t think that retirement is quite the same for me. Most people would say we’re very lucky not to be in that situation because you wouldn’t want to stop.”
Of course they don’t want to stop. They know they are lucky but they take it for-granted. They who were brought up in the system are used to it and enjoy it. Kate Middleton learned quickly and loves the attention. Meghan Markle could not handle it and has been demonised ever since because she and Prince Harry walked away.
We need to look at the Royal Family and the Queen in a different way. A friend of mine was asked to be the chiropodist for Prince Philip. He went to the office to get paid and was told, oh, no you don’t get paid as it is a privilege to work for the Royal family. He informed them that if he doesn’t get paid , he would not return. He got paid.
I taught youngsters on the Youth Opportunities Programme, many years ago and the idea was that they would get work placements and hopefully get a job afterwards, if they did well on this placement. The employers did not have to pay anything for that year but we wanted them to take the youngster on at the end of the year if the young person worked well. The Queen’s stables took a youngster on for free every year but never employed a single young person.
Finally, people often say, well what would we have instead? We could easily have a ceremonial role which a person could be elected to for a period of time. It would be very much cheaper and our palaces could become proper tourist places returned to the people.
