CHARLIE GETS GOLD...

For whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance: but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that he hath.

Must have been written specially for Charlie Windsor. 

They have found gold in them there mines in Kernow (Cornwall) of which,as we all know, Charlie is the duke.

And that has caused a bit of a disagreement in the royal family. 

Since 1568 permission has been required to remove gold from "Mines Royal", with the proceeds going to Crown Estates. But the Duchy of Cornwall, established as a form of income for the heir to the throne, has been around since 1337, and wanted to claim the gold for Charlie.

So, being as they are a close warm family firm they have decided to split the money 50-50. Charlie gets half and the crown estates get half. 

And the people of Kernow get nothing.

Great, isn't it? The broke UK finds gold and two of the richest people (who owe their wealth only to who they were born) split the divvy between them. 

UKOK?

THE DUBIOUS TAX AFFAIRS OF THE DUCHY OF CORNWALL

If you missed it, Dispatches has an interesting feature on the payment of tax and the Duchy of Cornwall.

Interestingly the programme must have been made before the revelation that Margaret Hodge's family company is perhaps not all it should be, when it comes to tax matters.

Hodge, however, does make a good point that although the Duke of Rothsay pays income tax, it is done so on a voluntary basis. The state has no powers to demand tax from him. No one, she indicates, should pay tax on 'a voluntary basis'. Quite right. There should be rules and they should apply to me and Charles Mountbatten equally... oh, and to Margaret Hodge.

The thrust of the programme is that the duchy pays neither corporation tax nor capital gains tax, and in not doing so has advantage over other commercial entities doing exactly the same thing; that because of this the estate makes a great deal more money than an equivalent that wasn't owned by a royal and that it is all rather 1913 rather than 2013 in its running. A side line in teh programme is that for all the Baron Renfew talks about green this and green that, some of his business affairs don't appear to reflect his stated concerns.

Time the thing was ended and the heir to the throne relied only on the £16 million he gets from the state to run his office.

THE REAL COSTS OF THE ROYALS TO BE CUT

We are often told that the cost of the royal family is a Civil List of around £45 million a year, and the royalist loyalist press work out that that is 67p per person per year, and gushingly implore us to rejoice at the value for money that we get.

But of course they never take into consideration the far larger added costs like the Duchy of Cornwall’s £16 million+ which could be used in Kernow for the benefits of the people, not the personal living expenses of Charles and Mrs Parker Bowles in addition to the grant in aid money that Charles and his “wife” get to perform their duties.

There is the expense of running and maintaining the Queen’s Flight, covered by the Ministry of War, ditto the royal train, charged to the Department of Transport, and the mother of them all, security.

For some reason, no one will tell us what the security costs are. Apparently it’s secret for reasons of security, as if terrorists could circumvent security if only they knew how much it cost.

The costs for this fall on the Home Office, the Metropolitan Police, the Foreign office and, of course, the local police forces all over the UK which have to mount massive security operations on every occasion when a member of the family is in their area.

I remember a few years ago that the Queen and Philip came to open a park in Dundee. I had never seen so many police in my life. I had no idea that there were so many. All over the park, everywhere as far as the eye could see, were uniformed police, and heaven only knows how many plain clothes officers were hidden in the crowd. The cost must have been enormous.

I remember too that many years ago, Alex Salmond criticised Charles and his then “partner”, Mrs Parker Bowles, for announcing that they were going to be at Crathie church on the Sunday of a weekend visit to Balmoral, only to change their minds at the last minute, meaning that a massive security operation, costing the Aberdeenshire police tens of thousands of pounds, had been mounted for nothing.

The overall cost of this must (spread across the country) be hundreds of millions of pounds a year.

There are massive costs of providing security for the Andrew sisters who contribute nothing to the life of the country. Fortunately this security has been a casualty of the policing cuts in England, and now it has been announced that Edward is to lose security on his 80+-roomed, £30 million mansion. He’s not happy about it, of course. His family will continue to enjoy security when they are in their royal apartments in London and elsewhere, and when on royal duties but not on their private home.

What always amazes about these people is that they seem to think that it is out of the question for them to pay for anything like this from their own pockets instead of sponging from the “hard pressed, hard working British Family”.

They are inordinately rich. Although they do now pay tax on their private incomes from farms on their estates and other enterprises, they do not pay inheritance tax and as such the fortunes that they have amassed over the years are left untouched. If they are so desperately afraid that someone will get in to their mansions, they should do what other people do and install a security system.

At their own expense.

Pics: DIY royal security. "Does one want some?"; Eddy and the snippy bitch will have to learn some self defence, or maybe just fork out for security themselves?