monarchy

(title corrected because i was a tit and didn't spell check it - thanks jay for pointing it out.)

£0.61 just 61 new pence. when you put it like that then i am all for keeping the monarchy.
what’s this you are thinking has pinko pat given up the class war. hell no. if there is one thing i admire america for it is because they are a republic and they kicked the monarchy out (though there could be a strong argument that there are a number of political “royal” families who now inhabit american politics). (other things i like about america – its basketball, the fact the best comic books come from there and of course the wwe….)

but let’s look at that 61 pence – with that i can almost get a copy of the independent, i can get a can of coke from my local newsagent and get some change (however if i was try to buy it from wh smiths i would be paying extra – obviously they have no idea how to buy in bulk so that they can sell cheap. what you think that they use their buying power to get a really good deal and then rather than passing that on to the consumers they actually bump the price up to get extra profit. gotta love how capitalism works – adam smith he got it right (blimey second time i have mentioned mr smith recently). perhaps such cavalier attitude is why smith’s has gone through some financial difficulties recently; perhaps i should put them in touch with my newsagent…)
pat pat pat – stick to your point ya hairy lummox!
so with that 61p i can pay for about a third of my medium latte with an extra shot, i am a tenth of the way to buying a paperback….
what i am saying is 61p isn’t much. even if you gather all the 61ps that are available in the country it only comes to £36 million pound (yeah ok it’s a relative only – to me it’s a very big amount but in terms of the country’s gross domestic product it’s not much at all).
according to a recent report the monarchy costs us £36 million pound a year, all things considered not that much.
sure that £36 million (all those 61 pences) could be given to charity, but it could be argued that the work the royal family does with various charities around the place is probably worth the £36 million.
besides the £36 million pales into insignificance when compared with the amounts of monies being withheld from the national treasury buy the various tax avoidance, evasion and haven schemes that many (oh ok all of) the rich subscribe to. according to a recent report “the world's richest individuals have placed $11.5 trillion of assets in offshore havens, mainly as a tax avoidance measure.” that’s something like $255 billion that each exchequer is losing. what’s worse this amount is only based on rich individuals and does not take into account what is in tax havens that belong to multinational companies.
(of course the fact that some of the people who are involved in such avoidance will use their positions to make sure that the poor on social security benefits are vilified a being scroungers – yeah i am talking about you mr. murdoch and you the barclay brothers. but then as the old song says “it’s the rich wot gets the pleasure and the poor wot gets the blame.”
other very rich individuals who evade taxes are philip green, lakshmi mittal (according to forbes he is worth $25 billion), hans rausing ($7.7 billion) and philip green ($1.4 billion).
here for the story http://observer.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,,1446120,00.html
use forbes http://www.forbes.com/ to get the worth of the individuals.

so before we worry about the £36 million we throw at the royal family i think we owe it to ourselves to insist that tax evaders are brought to book first.

but aside from this there has to be another reason for the keeping the royal family, surely you have another reason pat, i can hear you mumble under your breath. yes i do i have several.

1] there is the bog standard one – it is tradition. call me a small c conservative, but i have come to the conclusion that the monarchy is a tradition we need to keep. it grants us a pomp and circumstance unavailable elsewhere.
2] there is the practical reason – a royal family prevents us from having the nonsense of a political first family, or the dubious pleasure of having an “elected” head of state.
(and while i may have had a pop at the political dynasties of american politics it is not like we don’t have our own “problem” over here of something similar talking place – they may not all go into politics but some of these families (lawsons, rifkinds) have members of their families in politics and in the media…
3] the entertainment factor. which comes in two parts: there is the moment when someone like prince charles says something that needs to be said but no one else does say it (his comment about some people expecting something for nothing – was recontextualised as being a longing for the return of a rigid class structure, when what he appeared to be saying was just because you say you can do something, just because you say you want to do something doesn’t mean you can.
the second strand of the entertainment side of it all is the soap opera of the royal family itself (better than the osbournes, better than big brother). who hasn’t thrilled to revelations that prince charles has someone to squeeze out his toothpaste? the hijacks of the two princes, the foot in mouth syndrome that infects prince philip, the oddness that is edward… it is never ending.
4] they sell papers – where would so many of the tabloids be without being able to use the royals in one way or another to shift copies?
5] who else would the sun’s pretend bombers stalk? chances are it would be ordinary folk.
6] where else would fathers for justice go and protest while dressed as batman (well actually anywhere that was high, inconvenient and dangerous).
7] they remind us why we hate class privilege. geez they have all the advantages that money and status can confer and william is the first one to get a 2:1 degree. (in all honesty i can’t really hate the monarchy it’s not their fault they were born into, but those upper middle class bertie types out there – oh i can work up a nice ire over them i can tell you, and that includes the bertie i have to occasionally deal with at work).

essentially in my eyes the royal family has become a nice tourist attraction and as such needs to be maintained and they are worth my £0.61 to make sure they keep going. besides all the anger i know i should have for them is displaced by the dislike (and distrust) of those who go out of their way to avoid taxes..

(the soundtrack to this rant was the moody blues anthology disc 1)