Abolish the Monarchy

A recent palace announcement to the effect that Prince William is now a “global statesman” has been received, for example, with the same eager interest as his self-appointment as a homelessness expert, his decision to grow a beard and, a few days ago, his domestic hints: do remember to turn the palace lights out before you leave for another one down the road. Even a professionally made but excruciating video of sunkissed royals romping inspirationally in meadows was accepted, pretty much uncritically, as the new Windsor normal, and maybe it is.

That said, new revelations about King Charles and his heir’s enormous untaxed wealth suggest that the palace might not want to get too confident about the current non-judgmental state of affairs.

Not now that Channel 4’s Dispatches, the Sunday Times and the Mirror have between them, after an impressive investigation, disclosed what the royal family had until last week successfully concealed: that “the firm”, previously understood as self-deprecatory royal slang for their collective labour, is an entirely accurate term for a family company that transacts business for profit. In the case of the duchies of Lancaster and Cornwall, the lands awarded to the king and his heir, the profits (on top of the sovereign grant) amounted last year to £27.4m for Charles and, for William, £23.6m.

While it’s known that royal duchies are exempt from tax on corporate profits (the royals have begun paying income tax voluntarily), the investigation shows that these include rents extracted from the armed forces, the NHS, prisons and even charities that have Charles or William as patrons. Ex-military William, in uniform at all ceremonial events, is reportedly a “hands-on” duchy owner, so presumably knows that it charges the Ministry of Defence for training on Dartmoor. And for mooring boats at a royal naval college.

A letter to the Daily Telegraph from a retired rear admiral confirms that the distaste provoked by these revelations is not confined to republicans. Charles is commander in chief. “The sums might be relatively small,” the rear admiral wrote, “but the optics are dreadful.”

To comprehend, after these reports, the scale and purpose of the duchies of Lancaster and Cornwall is to appreciate the royal family, afresh, as essentially a massive property company whose corporate social responsibility (CSR) department, better known as the royal family, must be the envy of less competitive enterprises.

While the firm’s CSR professionals – Charles, William and their more appealing dependants – deliver a range of brand-enhancing projects involving toddlers, reading, candlelit carols, mental health, less prominent colleagues quietly get on with amassing and raising rents, selling mining licences, collecting assets from the dead but intestate, renting out homes (including substandard ones) and monetising everything from a beach to a scout hut. William might be a limited statesman; as a property magnate in a pre-owned jacket, he has achieved what still eludes, say, James Dyson: delivering moral lectures without instant, retaliatory insults about his business practices.

An Aboriginal man, Wayne 'Coco' Wharton, was arrested near the Sydney Opera House after protesting about the King and Queen's visit to Australia, The Guardian said.

Mr Wharton, who was trying to serve a notice for the King's arrest to the sovereign, shouted to the crowd, calling Charles a "king of thieves and a king of liars".

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It came after Senator Lidia Thorpe shouted "you are not our king" following his address to the Australian parliament on Monday.

Ms Thorpe accused the King of "genocide" against Australia's First Nations, shouting: "This is not your land. You are not my King."

Ms Thorpe, who wore a possum skin coat and carried a traditional message stick, added: "Give us our land back. Give us what you stole from us. Our bones, our skulls, our babies, our people. You destroyed our land."

Greeting Charles in Sydney, Elder Allan Murray from the Metropolitan Local Aboriginal Land Council, appeared to reference Senator Thorpe's remarks.

"Welcome to the country. We've got stories to tell, and I think you witnessed that story yesterday in Canberra, but the story is unwavering and we've got a long way to achieve what we want to achieve and that's our own sovereignty," he said. "But welcome to Gadigal land."

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/18622211

King Charles III had no idea what cling film was and “shrieked” the first time he saw it, an author has claimed in an unauthorised biography which detailed a selection of interesting stories about our new monarch.

Author Tom Bower said he interviewed over 120 people for his biography of Charles, entitled ‘Rebel Prince’.

The book delves into Charles’s struggles to overcome unpopularity, and includes some pretty unexpected tales along the way.

Explaining how the royal reportedly had his first encounter with cling film, Bower wrote: “He walked into the dining room and shrieked. Fearing the worst, Camilla dashed in after him. ‘What’s this?’ asked her husband, pointing at the food.

“’It’s cling film, darling,’ she replied.”

The bearskin caps worn by soldiers outside Buckingham Palace now cost more than £2,000 each, figures from the Ministry of Defence (MoD) show.

The cost of the ceremonial caps, made from the fur of black bears, soared by 30% in a year, according to figures revealed in response to a Freedom of Information request from animal welfare campaigners.

The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (Peta) group are against using real fur in principle, but they say it is also now a financial as well as an ethical issue, with £1m spent on fur caps in recent years.

The MoD said: “We are open to exploring faux fur alternatives if they pass the necessary requirements."

However, the ministry spokesman said a fake fur version would have to satisfy "safety and durability considerations" and that "no alternative has met all those criteria to date".

The sharp increase in price is explained by the MoD as the result of a change in the "contractual arrangements" for the caps, which are all made from the fur of bears hunted in Canada.

The cost of the caps worn by the King's Guard rose from £1,560 each in 2022 to £2,040 in 2023.

Elisa Allen, of Peta, called on the MoD to "stop wasting taxpayer pounds on caps made from slaughtered wildlife, and switch to faux fur today".

The distinctive tall caps are worn on ceremonial events such as Trooping the Colour, and the figures from the MoD show that 24 new caps were bought in 2023 and 13 in 2022. Over the past decade the amount spent on replacement caps has been more than £1m.

Protesters have covered a portrait of the King with the face of the animated character Wallace from Wallace and Gromit.

Animal Rising shared a video of campaigners pasting Wallace’s head over Charles’s and adding a speech bubble on top of the red-hued painting by Jonathan Yeo.

The speech bubble read in capitals: “No cheese, Gromit. Look at all this cruelty on RSPCA farms!”

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The demonstration was aimed at highlighting the group’s “damning investigation” into 45 RSPCA “assured” farms, the group said.

It added that the protest was a “comic redecoration” and said the posters were affixed using water sprayed on to the back, so they could be easily removed.

It is understood the painting is behind Perspex and so no damage has occurred.

The group said the “lighthearted action played on the King’s love of Wallace and Gromit”.

The Queen once revealed that inventor Wallace and his dog Gromit – the stop-motion animation stars of hit Aardman films including The Wrong Trousers and A Grand Day Out – were her husband’s “favourite people in the world”.

“I got thrown a last-minute invite to a tech billionaire’s party,” she wrote in an excerpt from her book, which was released on April 2. “The guy who invited me, who’s like fifteenth or twentieth in line to the British throne, had said to my male friend, ‘We need more girls.'”

The soiree, Rebel claimed, was medieval-themed. Therefore, she chose a “buxom damsel outfit complete with cone hat” to wear to the event.

“The party was insane,” the Pitch Perfect franchise star alleged. “Men were jousting on horses in a field, girls dressed as mermaids were in the pool … The property was massive, and because it was quite a drive, people had been assigned rooms to sleep there overnight.”

While describing the night as “a vibe,” Rebel revealed the event was held at a ranch outside of Los Angeles, complete with a fireworks display for guests and “candy” being given out. However, Rebel discovered that the sweet treats were actually the drug molly.

“I watch the British royal flounder around whilst I continuously hike up my boobs,” she continued in the book. “There’s a huge private fireworks display, and then, all of a sudden, it’s 2 a.m,, and a guy comes out with a large tray piled with what looks like a ton of candy. I turned to the screenwriter I’ve been talking with, confused. He says, ‘Oh, it’s for the orgy… the orgies normally start at these things about this time.’”

Upon finding out what she was in for, Rebel added that the “we need more girls” statement from “the Windsor” made sense.

“Now the comment by the Windsor about needing more girls started to make a lot more sense,” she added. “They weren’t talking about a boy-girl ratio, like it was a year-eight disco. They were talking about an ORGY!”

As for what Rebel did, she concluded, “Needless to say, I hike up my damsel dress and run out of there as fast as I can.”

Original article title: Courtier demanded assurance king could not be prosecuted under new Welsh law

A Buckingham Palace official phoned the Welsh government to secure the assurance under an archaic custom that requires UK parliaments to obtain the consent of the monarch to draft bills before they can be implemented.

According to Buckingham Palace, the royal household rang the Welsh government to ensure that “as a matter of legal correctness” the monarch could not be prosecuted under the act.

The monarchy has been given personal immunity from swathes of British law, ranging from animal welfare to workers’ rights.

More than 30 laws stipulate, for example, that police are barred from entering the privately owned Balmoral and Sandringham estates without the king’s permission to investigate possible crimes, including wildlife offences and environmental pollution. No other private landowner in the country is given such legal immunity.

A Welsh government spokesperson said: “The immunity of the monarch from prosecution is a long-established principle.” They declined to comment further.

It was meant to be a wholesome image to celebrate Mother’s Day in the UK, but a photo of Kate Middleton and her children has ended in controversy for the Prince and Princess of Wales.

Four major news agencies — Associated Press, Getty Images, Reuters, and AFP — have pulled the photo from their libraries amid concerns it was manipulated by Kensington Palace.

AP issued a “kill notification” for clients, telling those who use its service that on “closer inspection it appears that the source has manipulated the image.” Reuters said it was deleting the picture after a post-publication review.

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The Prince and Princess of Wales released the photo on Sunday, wishing followers a happy Mother’s Day. The image was purportedly taken by Prince William this year.

Royal commentators initially said the image would combat weeks of fevered speculation about Middleton’s health after she disappeared from public life following abdominal surgery in January.

But the image has further fueled conspiracies after eagle-eyed social media users spotted defects in the photo that suggested it had been altered.

Chris Ship, ITV News’ royal editor, said there were “serious questions” for Kensington Palace after it appeared that elements of the image, including Princess Charlotte’s sleeve, were doctored.

King Charles’s appointment of a pro-homeopathy head of the royal medical household has been described as worrying and inappropriate by academics and campaigners.

Dr Michael Dixon, who has championed faith healing and herbalism in his work as a GP, has quietly held the senior position for the last year, the Sunday Times reported.

While Dixon, 71, is head of the royal medical household, for the first time the role is not combined with being the monarch’s physician. Duties include having overall responsibility for the health of the king and the wider royal family – and even representing them in talks with government.

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He once invited a Christian healer to his surgery to treat chronically ill patients and experimented with prescribing an African shrub called devil’s claw for shoulder pain, as well as horny goat weed for impotence, the Sunday Times reported.

Edzard Ernst, emeritus professor at the University of Exeter, whose work has debunked alternative medicine, said: “Anyone who promotes homeopathy is undermining evidence-based medicine and rational thinking. The former weakens the NHS, the latter will cause harm to society.

“We and others have shown that homeopathy is not an effective therapy, which has today become the accepted consensus. To me, this means its only legitimate place is in the history books of medicine.”

A royal author has said an investigation is under way into how the Dutch version of his new book named two senior members of the British royal family alleged to have discussed the skin colour of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s unborn son.

In an edition that has now been withdrawn from bookshelves, King Charles and the Princess of Wales were named as taking part in conversations about Prince Archie before his birth, according to allegations in the book that have been broadcast on TV programmes in the UK and the Netherlands.

The book claims conversations about Archie related to how it opened up discussions about whether there was “unconscious bias” in the royal family.

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Scobie said: “Firstly, I have never used the racist word in this subject. Even the book makes it very clear we are talking about unconscious bias here.

“We’re talking about a conversation that was raised about the colour of Archie’s skin, that they called “concerns”. For me it was important to get to the bottom of that; why was it not covered ever again, why did the Sussexes never talk about it, what happened behind the scenes? The palace said it was being dealt with privately. Was it?”

Financial assets known as bona vacantia, owned by people who died without a will or known next of kin, are collected by the duchy. Over the last 10 years, it has collected more than £60m in the funds. It has long claimed that, after deducting costs, bona vacantia revenues are donated to charities.

However, only a small percentage of these revenues is being given to charity. Internal duchy documents seen by the Guardian reveal how funds are secretly being used to finance the renovation of properties that are owned by the king and rented out for profit.

Among 18 to 24-year-olds, only 30% say the monarchy is "good for Britain", compared with 77% among the over-65s.

The survey of more than 2,000 adults in Britain comes as the first anniversary approaches of the death of Queen Elizabeth II.

The pollsters found that overall, 62% want to keep the monarchy.

But they report a "remarkable difference between generations", with younger people much less supportive on remaining a monarchy and more sceptical about the Royal Family representing good value for money.

For King Charles, as he approaches his first year on the throne, 59% of people thought he was "personally doing a good job".

The pollsters say there has been a broadly consistent picture of "overall positivity towards the monarchy", but there is also a sizeable and rising minority who are opposed.