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Wednesday 17 November 2010

You could not make it up

The BBC is carrying reports from whingers who want the Royal Family to pay for the cost of their own wedding, or in other words, the BBC news editors are voicing their own opinions by reporting the view of proxies.

Let's get this straight:  the BBC who sent more staff to the Beijing Olympics than the UK sent athletes, who sent 17 staff to cover 33 miners coming out of a mine in Chile, who send more staff to cover major diplomatic meetings that the country sends delegates, is telling the Royal Family to go easy on the public purse.

Facts:

The Royal Family costs the tax payer £36 million a year (but in return the country gets to enjoy the benefits of the Crown Estates which generate far more than £36 million a year for the Exchequer).  For that we get an independent head of state, a figurehead for the armed forces and a substantial stream of tourist revenue.

The BBC costs license payers £3,600 million a year.  For that we get glitzy ballroom dancing on Saturday night, innumerable house/life swap/antique/cooking/chat shows, ubiquitous unfunny comedians in lieu of scriptwriters and darts and snooker as a poor substitute for sport.

At least a Royal Wedding would give us something different on TV.

4 comments:

Demetrius said...

Its a question of definition. The BBC would argue that their use of staff is an "investment" to promote GDP growth. However, the Royal Family is low growth consumption activity. Personally, however, I would be delighted to have Prince Philip reading the news.

Not a sheep said...

The Civil List figure is just one side of an equation, the BBC as usual chose to ignore the other side.

The other side is that in 1760 it was decided that the entire cost of the Civil List should be paid by Parliament in return for the monarch surrendering his hereditary revenues from the Crown Estate to Parliament for the duration of George III's reign. This agreement with some alterations is still in place today.

So how much is the The Crown Estate worth to the UK taxpayer? The last figures I saw was around £190 million a year.

Alex said...

"Demetrius said...

Its a question of definition. The BBC would argue that their use of staff is an "investment" to promote GDP growth."

They would, as would and Labour government. The trouble is, nobody asks them to do so, and for good reason, because like the Labour paryt "investment", this is a strange sort of "investment" where the investor never sees a return.

Alex said...

"Not a sheep said...
So how much is the The Crown Estate worth to the UK taxpayer? The last figures I saw was around £190 million a year."

No idea, although I think you have thr right order of magnitude. The Crown Estates is basically a lot of land, so apart from the income, there is also the capital appreciation which is largely tied to inflation/economic growth and doesn't show up in the revenue numbers. But howver you look at it, it is far more than the Civil List and any other royal costs that you could find.