The shit in Spain falls mainly in the fan

[Syt]

Yeah, I think it's a fairly common Head of State tradition. Over here even regional presidents get in on the action. 

Yes, the Austrian and German presidents do Christmas addresses. In Germany, the chancellor does an address at New Year's Eve.

[Zanza]

You think the German president costs more than 67 million pounds? 

The office of the German president has a budget of about 44 million Euro, the biggest chunk of which are the costs of about 209 staff members and pensions for former staff members. But it also includes the president giving to charity, upkeep for buildings, vehicles, IT,  holding conferences or other public events, the presidents trips abroad, paying for some scientific studies etc.

It's 50 cents per person in Germany or a Euro per taxpayer, about 0.01% of the overall federal budget. I guess we can afford that.

PS: A cursory glance at Google results suggests that the British Royal Households have way more staff (2 to 5 times as much are numbers I found), but they seem to be poorly paid. That would still suggest higher total spending.

[Richard Hakluyt]

The Crown still owns vast estates and makes substantial profits of c. £350m each year; 25% of these profits go to the reigning monarch :

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crown_Estate

The palaces and houses may belong to either the state or the Queen in her personal capacity. So Buckingham palace is state-owned and railing against the maintenance being paid by the state is pointless. I don't think the Queen even likes the place; she always seems to go to Windsor, Balmoral or Sandringham when she can. She personally owns Balmoral and Sandringham.

With the staff it must get very confusing. At one extreme it would seem fair that she pay the wages of the gamekeeper at Balmoral; at the other no way should she have to pay the wages of the coachmen when she is obliged to travel in that ghastly coach-thing.

Of course Canada, Australia etc have a real bargain - a free head of state 

[Valmy]

I mean I saw this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhyYgnhhKFw by CGP Grey and it kind of sounded like the UK doesn't get a bad deal at all with the monarchy. And, if what was said inside was true, getting rid of the monarchy would be crazy complicated with all that quasi public property with all those weird bargains the monarchy struck. So I kind of understood the powerful momentum keeping the institution going.

But it is not like I went back and fact checked everything.

[Richard Hakluyt]

I think the monarchy will go the next time we have a truly ghastly monarch; but both Charles and Willian seem fine........unless Charles oversteps the mark I suppose 

It may be a strawman but the anti-monarchists always seem to stress that the monarchy is old-fashioned, this is not a very strong argument in the UK  , I think they should go for the exciting benefits that having a colourless bureaucrat as head of state would bring 

[Sheilbh]

The Crown still owns vast estates and makes substantial profits of c. £350m each year; 25% of these profits go to the reigning monarch

Plus the £20 million private profit from the Duchy of Lancaster

With the staff it must get very confusing. At one extreme it would seem fair that she pay the wages of the gamekeeper at Balmoral; at the other no way should she have to pay the wages of the coachmen when she is obliged to travel in that ghastly coach-thing.

Of course Canada, Australia etc have a real bargain - a free head of state 

Yeah - also even a sort of ceremonial President in Germany or Ireland or Italy is, to some extent, still a political figure who will have at least some highly paid advisors. The Queen is an ornament who will have lots of low-paid, live-in servants to maintain her Ruritanian existence.

I'm not sure how much of that came back in Spain where you restored a monarchy pretty recently?

I mean I saw this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhyYgnhhKFw by CGP Grey and it kind of sounded like the UK doesn't get a bad deal at all with the monarchy. And, if what was said inside was true, getting rid of the monarchy would be crazy complicated with all that quasi public property with all those weird bargains the monarchy struck. So I kind of understood the powerful momentum keeping the institution going.

I don't think that has much to do with it. Also that video is a little weird because it sort of accepts the ownership of land by monarchs and deals with them as legitimate. It's not like most countries that have got rid of monarchies have had to raise taxes to deal with lost income from royal estates - they expropriate the land and exile the royals (at best).

And the name would obviously not be the United Republic of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. It would just be the Commonwealth of Great Britain and Northern Ireland

I think the monarchy will go the next time we have a truly ghastly monarch; but both Charles and Willian seem fine........unless Charles oversteps the mark I suppose 

It may be a strawman but the anti-monarchists always seem to stress that the monarchy is old-fashioned, this is not a very strong argument in the UK  , I think they should go for the exciting benefits that having a colourless bureaucrat as head of state would bring 

Agreed - the monarchy's not going anywhere and Republicanism is an extremely niche taste. I do always love Republic's attempts to be relevant

As you say it'll probably go next time there's an awful monarch but I don't see that happening for the next 60 years or so.

[Valmy]

It's not like most countries that have got rid of monarchies have had to raise taxes to deal with lost income from royal estates - they expropriate the land and exile the royals (at best).

Yeah ok. Unless the UK Monarchy is going to be toppled by a revolution I think that would be a very difficult thing to accomplish. Just legally confiscate somebody's property? For what? The crime of being unpopular? I think that, constitutionally and legally, is much more complicated a process then you are acting like it is. We are talking about centuries of legal precedence here in a common law country. And not just any common law country but Britain which earnestly loves every law that predates the printing press.

You are a lawyer, surely that should be obvious, yes?

I mean, again, unless you do it by storming the palace and shooting them all by firing squad, then it would be pretty straight forward.

[Zanza]

getting rid of the monarchy would be crazy complicated with all that quasi public property with all those weird bargains the monarchy struck. So I kind of understood the powerful momentum keeping the institution going.

The British government is committed to rip up a considerable part of the socio-economic legal framework including 40 regulatory agencies, security partnerships and second biggest trading relationship on the planet without any discernable plan other than "sovereignty". So "crazy complicated" does not seem to deter them.

[celedhring]

Regarding the royal estates... The Spanish Republic seized all the estates of the Spanish crown. Franco, who created a kingdom without a king, never restored them (since he rather enjoyed them himself, instead), nor did the democracy. Of course, as a result we eventually got a crooked king that decided he needed to engage in shady dealings in order to fund a more extravagant lifestyle than the one the state budget could afford him 

So the moral of the story seems to be don't stiff your monarch or otherwise get rid of him/her 

[celedhring]

Of course Canada, Australia etc have a real bargain - a free head of state 

Does Queen Liz perform many stately duties for the Commonwealth realms? Doesn't seem she would be able to. 

Also, for the Canadians... do people there in general care much for the Queen? I've always thought it's a weird arrangement, although I would presume nobody cares that much.

[Valmy]

She has her "hand picked" Governor Generals to act in her place.

As for how popular Liz II herself is (which name I find odd since, to the best of my knowledge, Liz I was never Queen of Canada) well I know Viper is a big fan.

[Sheilbh]

Yeah ok. Unless the UK Monarchy is going to be toppled by a revolution I think that would be a very difficult thing to accomplish. Just legally confiscate somebody's property? For what? The crime of being unpopular? I think that, constitutionally and legally, is much more complicated a process then you are acting like it is.

I don't see why - there is a very big difference between property held by the Crown which is a public office and property held by the Queen as an individual. If it's property held by the Crown that's basically the UK state not the royal family personally. It's no more her land than the White House belongs to the President. Or it's no more her land personally than the royal prerogatives are her powers personally - they are part of the office/state of the UK.

The Crown Estate includes assets that are unowned (normally because of intestacy or not being able to identify people who should inherit the property), in the UK generally that goes to the Crown (as does all unregistered land - largely huge chunks of moors in the Highlands or Yorkshire).

I can see an argument that they should be allowed to keep property that they hold personally (for example Balmoral Estate or Sandringham Estate, or Prince Charles' country palace). They'd still be billionaires owning vast swathes of land.

We are talking about centuries of legal precedence here in a common law country. And not just any common law country but Britain which earnestly loves every law that predates the printing press.

You are a lawyer, surely that should be obvious, yes?

I mean, again, unless you do it by storming the palace and shooting them all by firing squad, then it would be pretty straight forward.

You're describing the US

In all seriousness old-school legalese style drafting is seen as a US lawyer thing here, the preference, encouraged by the courts, is for more plain drafting and a focs on the substance of what you're trying to achieve. There is still some unavoidable legalese boilerplate where there may be some legalist formal requirements but the courts generally try and limit that and don't like if you have to use a certain form of words to achieve something.

I'm a solicitor so I deal with ever day law - I'm not an inventive barrister/litigator trying to think of any possible precedent in a case. But sort of the point of common law isn't that you refer to loads of ancient cases but that you have loads of modern ones, as principles get re-stated or expanded upon. Public/administrative law only really developed in the UK in the second half of the 20th century. I don't know about criminal but with contracts I can't think of any big issue where I'd be reaching back before the 20th century to confirm a point. I think most land law is post 1925 reforms. It might be more common in big constitutional cases (like prorogation) but that's not because we love the old timey law, it's because there are fewer of those cases so you have to go back through all the records.

But obviously getting rid of the monarchy would be a constitutional moment and probably require codifying a constitution.

[Josquius]

You think the queen costs 67 million pounds?

https://www.statista.com/chart/18569/total-cost-of-the-uks-royal-family-by-year/

Even a second long glance at that chart should tell you something is wrong with that number.

[celedhring]

She has her "hand picked" Governor Generals to act in her place.

As for how popular Liz II herself is (which name I find odd since, to the best of my knowledge, Liz I was never Queen of Canada) well I know Viper is a big fan.

One of my pet peeves with the Spanish monarchy is that their numerals are counted using the list of the Kings of Castille, instead of reseting the count when Spain was founded*

*Nobody can really agree on when that happened, which is one of the reasons of the artifact.

[celedhring]

As you see I'm trying to steer back the discussion towards Spanish matters, this being the Spain thread and not yet another thing the British stole from us.