Queen of England: Biggest Welfare Mother in History

[Ruinel]

A recent PM from another Mooter, has sparked me to do a little research.

The Brittish royal family:
Elizabeth II and her husband Phillip (an apparent foreigner) head the famliy. Their offspring...

• Charles (his offspring: William and Henry)
• Andrew (his offspring: Beatrice and Eugenie)
• Edward (his wife: Sophie. His offspring: Louise)

In the UK, the total budget for welfare was £100 billion, of which only a small portion goes to the citizens for support*. 24% of the total budget goes to unemployment, 42% of that budget goes to pensioners who have worked all their lives and are now in their golden years. (* I read on one site that a mere 5% of that £100 billion actually goes directly to the needy, the rest is absorbed in administrative costs.)

The total cost to the tax paying UK citizens for royal family welfare was...£4.7m. This is for only one welfare family in the UK.

None of them seem to have any real job, though some have joined the service for a short stint and do some charity work, occasionally. But as far as actually being self supporting, it seems that none of them care to do so, except Edward and his wife, Sophie.

Edward seems to be the only redeemable working member of this welfare family (but otherwise socially inept, see comment below). He and his wife actually owned their own business (a TV production company), even though it went belly up, and partially supported themselves. Ed's mom stepped in to help bail his company out, but the £250,000 wasn't enough. (Hmmm, I wonder if any other welfare mom's in the UK could have afforded a bill like that? )

For some reason, this family feels they deserve to ride on the backs of hard working UK citizens. Edward and his wife once walked 500 yards from Buckingham Palace to St. James Place for lunch. when he got there, he explained that they had traveled by foot "to give pleasure to the people." I'm sure everyone was utterly thrilled.

But surely the UK tax paying citizens are getting their money's worth. Or are they?
Royal family duties:

• attending sporting events (such as a rugby game that included an £11,467 helicopter ride that was charged to the civil list)
• traveling in high style to other countries to make a presence (such as traveling to China to encourage trade... wtf?)

One might argue that any family on welfare is sort of "on vacation", since many who are unemployed do not go to work every day. However, the royal family takes vacation every year from mid-December to February 6th. Their "work" week ends religiously before 3pm, when queen Liz takes off for the country estate, and begins after lunch on Monday. Must be nice.

We've heard of "generational welfare" families, where a woman with kids is on welfare like her mother before her and so on. Well, the royal family has been on the dole for generations before. Seems not a one felt compelled to make anything of themselves other than jet-setting mootchers.

Being a US citizen, I'm quite grateful to those American colonialists who stood up to England and kicked them out. I'm also grateful that not one penny goes to this family of freeloaders. The more I know, the worse an impression they leave on me.

However, I'd like to remind the Canadians that they're paying taxes to support this one welfare family across the water. Perhaps you should take up arms like we did.

Just wondering what other people's impressions are of this.

[sun-star]

Why do you care?

EDIT: Also there's a thread on this already: The monarchy

[Sister Golden Hair]

Closing.