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Another pay rise for the Saxe-Coburg-Gotha-von Battenbergs

"Ooh look, everyone, it's raining taxpayer money again. Isn't one lucky?"

"Ooh look, everyone, it's raining taxpayer money again. Isn't one lucky?"

The Royal Family is to be exempt from any cuts in public spending next year when its civil list funding is settled for the next 10 years, says The Guardian.

MPs will be powerless to reduce the £7.9m a year paid under the civil list because of an obscure deal struck between Buckingham Palace and the Treasury in 1972 when the current legislation governing royal finances was drawn up.  (Under the Tories, by any chance?  Oh yes – it was that old tosser, Edward Heath.)

Palace officials made clear earlier this summer that they are actually seeking a rise in the annual civil list payment to cover “increased costs” despite the fact that they currently have a £21m surplus in the reserves on the civil list account. Wonder what the interest is on that, ma’am…?

What a bunch of spongers.

Time to make them all redundant like a large number of us seem to be at the moment.

We hope they’ll have the good sense to go  before they’re pushed,  Oliver Cromwell-style.

We don’t need them and the morally disgusting values they represent.



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Is our ridiculous monarchy needed any longer?

This week's New Statesman feature

The British Citizen thinks not.

See our own views here.  And from just some of the comments below we’re not alone, so why on earth don’t we do something about it?

Here are the thoughts from a wide range of people:  writers, broadcasters, journalists, musicians, politicians, philosophers and others, taken from the current issue of the New Statesman:

Will Self, novelist
“Despite people’s general willingness to accept the monarchy uncritically – as a species of constitutional wallpaper, the alleged undercoat of our tolerant settlement – the fact remains that it lies at the very apex of a pyramid of hierarchy, one that is mostly comprised of people who have unearned wealth, undemocratic power, undeserved prestige – or all three. Anyone who accepts an honour from the British government, or an invitation to tea at Buck House; anyone who shows deference to the monarchy, or even subscribes to an institution with royal patrons, partakes of this mass delusion: that the only way a modern democracy can be governed is by profoundly anti-democratic means; that the only way to treat citizens is as subjects. In my view, the British people will only come of political age with the abolition of the monarchy.”

Read more of Is our ridiculous monarchy needed any longer? »»

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