“James made the apparently crucial mistake of placing his arm around the Duchess when they posed for photos after his Cleveland Cavaliers, thus breaking royal protocol, which prohibits anyone from touching or kissing members of the royal family.”
What silliness. Commoners are not supposed to touch royals. A crock of shit.
IMO, we they are the quintessential welfare recipients. They rely 100% on the government to pay for all of their expenses (tens of millions per year) and they pay no income taxes, despite having worldwide holdings. Since his parents have lived their entire lives on public welfare, I guess he is a ‘welfare baby’.
They rely 100% on the government to pay for all of their expenses (tens of millions per year) and they pay no income taxes, despite having worldwide holdings. Since his parents have lived their entire lives on public welfare, I guess he is a ‘welfare baby’.
Umm, no. The monarchy is currently (and has been for a while) self funded, tax payers do not fund the royal family.
ETA - not quite as black and white as I wrote, but they get most of their income from their holdings and pay taxes. They do get some public funding for their official duties.
“James made the apparently crucial mistake of placing his arm around the Duchess when they posed for photos after his Cleveland Cavaliers, thus breaking royal protocol, which prohibits anyone from touching or kissing members of the royal family.”
What silliness. Commoners are not supposed to touch royals. A crock of shit.
IMO, we they are the quintessential welfare recipients. They rely 100% on the government to pay for all of their expenses (tens of millions per year) and they pay no income taxes, despite having worldwide holdings. Since his parents have lived their entire lives on public welfare, I guess he is a ‘welfare baby’.
You wouldn’t mind if I talked loudly or didn’t remove my hat during your national anthem, would you? Or would it be a big deal if a soldier didn’t salute your president?
I actually do believe it’s a silly rule. However, every country has silly rules and traditions that mean nothing to others. At least try to be respectful of others.
true, but the royals aren’t exactly sitting around eating biscuits and berating the servants. The Queen (88 years old) has over 300-400 visits and ceremonies per year. William works four days a week as a helicopter air ambulance pilot. Harry is a captain in the army, flies an Apache, has been to Afghanistan twice and says he will stay in the job until he draws his pension. Of course there’s a ceremonial aspect to all of this. The no-touching thing sounds silly, but we don’t let our flag touch the ground, which might seem like it’s overdoing it too.
Of course it’s silly, but then lots of aspects of diplomatic protocol etiquette are a bit silly. The whole point is to respect other people’s traditions (however ridiculous they are) without giving offence.
Re them being welfare recipients, so are all heads of state. If you were designing a state from scratch, you certainly wouldn’t come up with a hereditary head of state. However, our state wasn’t designed, it evolved, and our monarchy actually works pretty well. They’re politically neutral so ensure that state occasions don’t get divided along partisan lines. They perform a lot of the symbolic duties (opening stuff, meeting visiting heads of state, etc) which means that our elected politicians who actually have a job to do don’t have to. They have no real power so the fact that they’re not elected doesn’t really matter. All the history, the palaces, the royal weddings, etc are pretty good for tourism and our image abroad. And they’re relatively good value for money - they perform a huge number of public duties and get about £40m of funding a year which covers not just the queen but the rest of her family. By contrast, France spends about £90m on their president, and Obama costs the US well over $1bn. They also do pay tax via a slightly convoluted arrangement whereby they’re not officially required to but have voluntarily agreed to pay an equivalent amount.
I don’t quite see the point of slagging on them for being born with a silver spoon in their mouth. From that perspective really no different than any other kid born to wealthy parents.
true, but the royals aren’t exactly sitting around eating biscuits and berating the servants. The Queen (88 years old) has over 300-400 visits and ceremonies per year. William works four days a week as a helicopter air ambulance pilot. Harry is a captain in the army, flies an Apache, has been to Afghanistan twice and says he will stay in the job until he draws his pension. Of course there’s a ceremonial aspect to all of this. The no-touching thing sounds silly, but we don’t let our flag touch the ground, which might seem like it’s overdoing it too.
And of course we have the whole Pledge of Allegiance thing, which is just creepy in an Orwellian sense and seems more like something you’d expect to find in North Korea rather than a Western liberal democracy.
I’m sure this is a reflexive, go to pose for LeBron that he has done thousands and thousands of times for pictures. If this were important to Katie and Williams handlers for public consumption back home ( I’m betting personally they couldn’t care less ) then it was incumbent upon them to let LeBron know ahead of time. Any breach in protocol was their fault unless he was told and willfully ignored the request which I highly doubt.
We have a President who bows to seemingly every other world leader, which is a break of protocol as I understand it, so why wouldn’t our citizenry also break protocol. Just following Obama’s lead.
I am going to use this opportunity to big up my manager who met her in Yellowknife. He happened to be in Yellowknife when the royals were visiting and his wife insisted that they go see them. So like any good husband he went with her and was recording the couple as they got out of their limo. Kate then walked right to my manager and extended her hand. I think he nearly jizzed in his pants.
Apparently she is even hotter in person than she is on TV.
I watched his video he made of this, it was pretty amusing as he scrambled to put the phone down and shake her hand.
You wouldn’t mind if I talked loudly or didn’t remove my hat during your national anthem, would you? Or would it be a big deal if a soldier didn’t salute your president?
I actually do believe it’s a silly rule. However, every country has silly rules and traditions that mean nothing to others. At least try to be respectful of others.
Well said.
This has been something that the current Royal Family has been progressively relaxing slowly over time. I note that the Queen now shakes hands with people - something that in the past, previous British Royals would not do.
I’ve shaken Prince Phillips hand (although not a blood Royal) - at an event I was at years ago. He extended his hand to me and I shook it!
I’m sure this is a reflexive, go to pose for LeBron that he has done thousands and thousands of times for pictures. If this were important to Katie and Williams handlers for public consumption back home (** I’m betting personally they couldn’t care less** ) then it was incumbent upon them to let LeBron know ahead of time. Any breach in protocol was their fault unless he was told and willfully ignored the request which I highly doubt.
I’ve read reports where they weren’t bothered. It’s the “Royal Watchers” population who is now up in arms.
