• XIIIesq@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    The royal family costs the UK tax payer 77p per year, most people aren’t outraged by that.

    It can be argued that they attract a considerable amount of tourism, people that travel to the UK to see the Tower of London, the King’s guards, Buckingham palace and all the rest of it. There is also the “soft power”, people around the world are for some reason obsessed with the UK’s royal family and it does help with influence whether you’d argue that is for better or worse.

    I understand that the obscene wealth they hold during a cost of living crisis is an image problem to say the least and I don’t defend that. Such obscene wealth is awful no matter who you are and according to the times rich list, there are at least 257 residents in the UK that are more wealthy than the Royals, some of them considerably so.

    For the record, I’m not for or against the UK monarchy, I’m somewhere in-between and see validity in both sides of the argument.

    • 01011
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      1 month ago

      Just as many people visit Paris as London. France is a republic. People go to see the buildings and stolen artifacts.

    • Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      The royal family costs the UK tax payer 77p per year

      If you believe that, I have a palace in Buckinghamshire to sell you 🙄

      most people aren’t outraged by that.

      Because it’s utter horse shit.

      It can be argued that (repeats the same tired arguments that everyone’s heard a billion times before)

      Yes, it can, but it shouldn’t. None of that justifies wasting billions of pounds on the royal family and letting them own most of the country tax free while enforcing austerity politics on an increasingly impoverished population with a deepening housing crisis.

      It’s a grotesque waste of desperately needed resources and land.

      For the record, I’m not for or against the UK monarchy

      Yeah, I can tell by how you spent your first sentence making up an outrageous lie about how much of a financier drain on society they are, your second paragraph repeating all the usual pro- monarchy clichés, and the third disowning the second.

      Thanks for wasting my time and that of anyone else reading it with your wishy-washy nonsense.

          • jerkface@lemmy.ca
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            1 month ago

            So, a bit more than one pound, instead of a bit less. *shrug* Not sure the difference was worth your abusive rhetoric.

            Fair play, mod. I have a personality disorder and some of my dark humour/coping came though. I feel for people like VH who, like myself, have enormous difficulty dealing with people.

            • Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world
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              1 month ago

              First of all, that “bit more than one pound” is completely ignoring all the wealth they already own, including all of the precious baubles totaling hundreds of millions of pounds and land holdings covering a sixth of the surface of planet earth!

              Second, please can it with the concern trolling.

              • jerkface@lemmy.ca
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                1 month ago

                Of course it ignores that, that was not the subject of discussion. You’ve just moved the goal post. I’m sure that was unintentional. Perhaps review the thread.

                You’re not the boss of me. And in no moral position to criticize.