Is The Royal Family Good Value For Money?

We want to know if the Royal Family offers excellent value for money after the King disclosed the amount of personal tax he paid last year.

One person said that they were past their sell-by date.

I’m personally not a royalist, but I believe that as long as they pay their taxes, we should really care what they do. After all, they do bring in a lot of revenue, one might say, but nowhere near as much as people claim, and the numbers are frequently significantly inflated. The truth is more mixed and more interesting, once you strip away the PR spin.

Although the Royal Family is long out of date, it is still a traditional way of life. We must keep in mind that they are just people like the rest of us. If the media stopped treating the Royal Family as clothes horses and spent a little more time reporting on the successes of their endeavours, the general public would have a better understanding of their value.

Most tourists come to see our castles, cathedrals, museums, et cetera. None of them even gets to see a Royal, and buying souvenirs with their photos on them is minimal.

We would still get millions of tourists to visit because of our British history. We still have the palaces and castles for people to visit, we still have the crown jewels, and we have so many assets that people visit for, so why do we need a Royal Family at all? Well, the simple answer is, we don’t need a Royal Family in any functional, constitutional sense. The UK can run quite well without one, as dozens of stable democracies do.

Today, I am asking anyone about what is worth spending money on, which will only open up another can of worms. It’s like asking if you’re getting value for money at the supermarket, a West End show, or, if you had £20 or £30k to spend, would you splurge it on a holiday, buy a car, give it all to the HMRC or buy a really useful 2nd hand tractor.

We’re all different, but amongst all of your personal choices and issues, where, precisely, does a King and Royalty fit in, who rule nothing, cost a fortune and show that governments rule the roost as the country falls apart? A king or a costly wet paper bag should be the poll.

But some people have said that the Royal Family should be abolished, and that we should get rid of this outdated nonsense, and some want an elected representative who can be voted out if they do not come up to scratch, and that these pickpockets have had it far too easy for far too long. The monarchy died with the passing of Elizabeth II.

I don’t believe that tourists are attracted to the UK because of the Royal Family, particularly now that Charles is King. They are seduced by the trappings of royalty, Buckingham Palace, Windsor Castle, Beefeaters at the Tower of London, and Trooping the Colour, et cetera, the same as tourists are attracted to Paris by Versailles.

What exactly is the draw, anyway? It’s not any different from an artist or singer, but when it comes to royalty, we have been brainwashed by their “Royalness” and persuaded of their superiority, titles, pomp and ceremony, et cetera. The distinction is that musicians and artists genuinely earn a living.

A poll of foreign tourists to the UK was conducted years ago: “Did the Royal Family influence your decision to visit the UK?” Only 2 per cent said yes.