Text 13914, 82 rader
Skriven 2005-10-01 08:52:42 av Roy Witt (1:1/22)
  Kommentar till text 13814 av Joe Delahaye (1:249/303)
Ärende: looters in NO
=====================
30 Sep 05 21:17, Joe Delahaye wrote to Roy Witt:


 >>  JD> The problem with your thoughts are that nobody pays anything to
 >>  JD> the commonwealth.
 >>
 >> Oh, I didn't know that she had a place of her own to live in and the
 >> means to travel without a handout..

 JD> What does that have to do with any country paying dues to the British
 JD> Commonwealth.?

Didn't you know? The 'commonwealth' belongs to the crown.

 JD>   To answer your question, yes, she does on both counts. She is
 JD> independently wealthy,

Due to the 'commonwealth'...

Another issue is how the United Kingdom pays for its Royal Family. The
personal wealth of Queen Elizabeth II and her immediate family is not
known but is thought to be very great. She also receives several million
pounds annually from the government in a payment known as the Civil List,
intended to pay for her expenses as head of state. Other members of the
family also receive payments .

Apart from the Civil List payments, a further 80 per cent of the
monarchy's annual expenses are paid directly by the state. This includes
the upkeep of most of the Royal palaces, the Royal train, a Royal flight
of aircraft, and the Royal Yacht HMS Britannia. These items cost tens of
millions of pounds a year. The high level of security and protection for
the Royal Family adds several million pounds more to the bill.

Some politicians saw the Civil List and the other payments as an
unnecessary burden, made worse by the fact that the queen was not a
taxpayer. In 1992, however, the queen volunteered to pay income tax from
1993. At the same time she agreed to reductions in the Civil List.

 JD> and, owns several of the castles she calls home.

I'm not so sure about that and there's no mention of ownership, just hat
she 'has'...

Royal houses. The queen has seven royal residences. Six of them are in or
near London: Buckingham Palace, St James's Palace, Kensington Palace, Kew
Palace, Hampton Court, and Windsor Castle. The seventh, the Palace of
Holyroodhouse, is in Edinburgh. She uses only three of these residences
regularly--Buckingham Palace, Windsor Castle, and Holyroodhouse. The queen
also has two private residences where she and her family like to spend
their holidays. They are Sandringham House in Norfolk, and Balmoral Castle
in Grampian Region, Scotland.

 JD>   I dont know if Windsor Castle is one of them though.

I think they belong to the 'royal family', not just the queen. Even so,
the people pay the tab on their upkeep.

 >>  JD>   As well, she is indeed the head of the government. Just not the
 >>  JD> one with the power to do things.
 >>
 >> You mean she's the 'figure' head of the government. Kings and Queens
 >> of parlamentary governed countries no longer decree the law of the
 >> realm...
 >>
 >>

 JD> No, she is titular head of Britain, and of the Commonwealth
 JD> countries. As I said, she has limited power, but she does have some,
 JD> as do her representatives in the various countries.

The United Kingdom is a constitutional monarchy. It is a country with an
unwritten constitution (set of laws) in which the monarch, or sovereign,
is head of state, although not of the government.

However, she does seem to have a power similar to the US President, that
of passing or vetoing legislation from parliament.


Roy

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