The views expressed in this article are the opinions of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect those of the Llanelli Standard.
For us, a working day is making sure the children are looked after, taken to expensive childcare and we have struggled off to work dealing with the boss and the workload. It doesn’t stop 5 days a week and only a few days of holiday a year.
Many of us are paid minimum wage and if we are really lucky we are paid the living wage. The implication of this is that we can’t live on a minimum wage. The Royals have servants, chefs, nannies etc. to carry out their so-called work. Their work is simply meet and greet and present famous prizes eg. Wimbledon but meanwhile they have been treated like honoured guests. BUT their life isn’t that simple because they have access to a great many things that we don’t.
We are told that the Queen is just a symbol and has no power. Why does the Prime Minister have to report to her once a week?
Now let us look at the law.
Dozens of UK laws state that the police are barred from entering any of the Queen’s private estates without her consent to investigate crimes ranging from wildlife offences to environmental pollution – a unique privilege not granted to any other private landowner in the UK. The natural environment and rural communities Act 2006 included amendments, one of which expresses the Queen’s personal immunity from prosecution for wildlife offences and allowed to stop wildlife inspectors from entering her private estates to investigate alleged crimes. Sandringham is known as a wildlife crime hotspot and they can do nothing about this. What is even more embarrassing is that the Queen is the patron for the RSPB. The Queen is always personally exempt from prosecution.
The Queen runs her family, called the Firm, with a rod of iron. If they do not follow her protocol, they can be snubbed or rejected. Princess Diana was treated very badly by the Queen, as was Meghan Markle. Kate Middleton is gorgeous, white and beautifully dressed and perfectly behaved. She does exactly what the Queen requires of her.
The Queen also has the right to alter legislation to benefit her private interests. So she and Prince Charles are given copies of draft laws in advance so they can examine whether the legislation affects their public powers or private assets such as his Duchy of Cornwall estate or the privately owned estate at Sandringham.
The Palace has said that “consent is always granted by the monarch where requested by government and this process does not change the nature of any such bill.”
But new documents have shown detailed evidence where Prince Charles applied pressure on elected ministers to make sure that he got an exemption to prevent his tenants from having the right to buy their own homes. His lobbying for this special exemption has left his tenants financially worse off. Charles, as the heir to the throne, is given a private income of £20 million out of the profits from the Duchy of Cornwall. His tenants have suffered severe financial hardship as a result of the prince’s special rights. Let us see – £20 million versus severe financial hardship? Hmm, what do we think about this? As a tenant said; “It was grossly unfair but I was not aware that the Prince would be able to stop the law being tidied up”.
Prince Charles is also very friendly with the Saudi royal family which still executes people who disagree with them and treats women as third class citizens. In 2015 , Prince Charles received 1 million euros in cash from the Saudis and then received another 2 million which Charles brought back in a suitcase in 500 euro notes. It was said that this was handed on to his favourite charities but a charity commissioner said that it was a totally inappropriate way of giving money. It did not go through the proper channels.
Now let us look at the Scottish Parliament. The Queen has the right to give her approval to draft bills that affect her personal property and public powers. Proposed laws in the past have definitely been changed to gain the Monarch’s approval. She constantly vets the Scottish bills to ensure that she is protected. As she owns Balmoral, this is important to her. An exemption we know of is about the initiative to cut CO2 emissions to help with climate change. Due to this exemption,the Queen is the only private landowner in Scotland who was not required to ease the construction of pipelines to heat buildings using renewable energy.
She has the power in the UK as a whole to be asked for her consent for bills that affect her personally. It gives her the power to have laws passed for her benefit alone. Because of the secrecy involved, we have no idea what she is doing and what she is changing.
Environmentalists have been trying to get the Queen to rewild her land to help with climate change. She actively refuses to do this.
We need to take a look at other royal families in Europe. They all live normal lives. Our Royal family is dripping with money and behaving in a hugely inappropriate way to protect themselves even though they can see that the people in our country are suffering and living in poverty.
