The Royal Family has done all in its power to protect and defend a man suspected of child sex offences with close links to a convicted paedophile but did nothing to defend a woman from racism and bullying. There is nothing honourable about the Monarchy. It is a blight on the notion of a fair and equal society, and it should be abolished immediately or at the latest the day after the Queen passes away.
The contrived walkout had the authenticity of a two-bob note. Dodgy Piers Morgan with form for making things up and condoning illegal phone tapping while a tabloid editor stormed out of the Good Morning Britain ITV studio in London last week like a spoiled child bully who had been confronted by an adult and made to confront his atrocious behaviour. For months Morgan conducted a one-man mission of slurs, abuse and malicious criticism of Meghan Markle but when a man dared to call out his bullying and racism pitiful Piers stomped off in a silly strop having already arranged his next job with the right-wing crazies at GB News no doubt.
Mendacious Morgan has effectively stalked Meghan Markle for years but he used to smother her with lavish praise before her decision to entirely blank him burst his over-inflated ego and led to an embarrassing series of back-tracks on his earlier opinions. He joined in the gutter press sport of racist and nasty stories and comments directed against Markle and the Royal Family did nothing to defend her with the Oprah interview revealing that racism is at the heart of the Royal Household and that racism was the prime reason Harry and Meghan decided to move to America.
I am not an objective observer in this Royal bun fight. I despise the Monarchy and everything it represents. Inherited privileges, outrageous rights to land, castles, and Stately Homes and the continued heritage of divine rights to rule and be obeyed. While the Monarchy exists, it is impossible to build a truly modern democracy committed to fairness and equality. The institution itself is what I find offensive. The idea that a person’s birthright entitles them to such wealth, privilege and power turns my stomach. I don’t advocate we chop off heads to end the Monarchy, but I do advocate the abolition of the institution and the release of the vast lands, estates, castles and other properties for public good, not continued private enrichment.
Royal Family Offensive Institutionally and Personally
However, many of the individual Royals are also personally offensive. From past Nazi links and pictures of Nazi salutes to Prince Phillip and his incessant racist remarks, many of the Royals epitomise the futility of expensive private education as it often produces ignorant, arrogant, and snooty oafs who merit hearty chastisement, not respect. The case of Prince Andrew is a perfect illustration of the obnoxious effect of a privileged upbringing.
Queen Regularly Interferes in Laws to Protect Her Wealth and Power
The notion that the Royal Family is some benign old symbol of British stiff upper lip stability without any real political power should be scorched forever by the revelations by the Guardian newspaper in a series of articles last month which exposed the Queen’s consent to legislative proposals from the Westminster Parliament is not a straightforward formal process but in fact a device which has allowed the Queen to intervene regularly in the formative stages of new laws to ensure her and her family’s personal and wealth interests are always protected.
We know the Queen is one of the richest people on the planet but the reason we don’t know just exactly how much she is worth is because she personally intervened in proposed legislation designed to make wealth and its sources more transparent to secure a personal exemption from such transparency. That is not the action of a benign and harmless institution - it is evidence of the profoundly undemocratic and unfair wielding of power without accountability.
When politicians bark incessantly about the need to control public spending and clamp down on the ‘scroungers’ in society they invariably target the poor, the vulnerable and the voiceless. Yet the biggest ‘scroungers’ are actually the Royal Family and their army of hangers-on who live off public subsidies and incomes generated from land and properties that should be in public hands. The Royal enthusiasts would have us believe the public cost of the Royal Family is £82.4 million this year but closer scrutiny of the actual costs to the public purse of pampering and protecting the Royals while foregoing the large income their landed estates generate for them instead of us, reveals the real cost to the public purse is closer to £350 million a year.
We Can Afford Higher Wages for Nurses but Not to Subsidise the Royals
The real cost of a 5% wage increase for England’s one million nurses, midwives, health professionals and NHS support staff would only be £330 million according to London Economics consultancy whose detailed economic analysis and report revealed 81% of the cost of a 5% or 10% pay rise would be recovered by the government. Those workers deserve 15% not 5% but it is time we informed society that subsidising the Royal Family costs more each year than a 5% wage rise for one million essential NHS workers. We can afford to increase the wages of NHS workers, but we can’t afford the Royal Family.
The Royal Family represents an unacceptable drain on valuable public funds and whenever a toffee-nosed Tory asks how we can afford to pay nurses, care workers and other public sector workers more, we should say: by scrapping the Royal Family to begin with. Almost a decade ago the lack of integrity at the heart of the Royals was exposed when it was discovered they tried to syphon off public money ear-marked to help low-income families pay rising fuel bills to pay for heating Buckingham Palace instead. Think about the mindset of these people who thought it appropriate to divert money for those struggling to heat their cold and draughty council homes to allow Buckingham Palace to be heated with less cost to the Queen instead. What a loathsome bunch of people they are.
There is no Royal Family or Monarchy in my vision of an independent Scotland. I believe in a modern, democratic, transparent, and accountable republic. That’s why I have signed the online petition to abolish the Monarchy and I invite you to join me.