The Boycott Warburtons campaign

In July 2013, standing in a Warburtons bakery in Wednesbury near Birmingham, the Chancellor George Osborne gave a positively Orwellian press conference about the so-called economic recovery.

The contents of George Osborne's speech are worthy of criticism, but I'll leave that to the economist Ha Joon Chang who expertly trashes Osborne's misleading propaganda in this article, and to the New Statesman magazine, who provide another five compelling reasons to reject Osborne's misleading "economic recovery" propaganda.

What I'm going to focus on is the ties between the Conservative party and Warburtons Ltd, where Osborne's speech was made.

In April 2010, in the build-up to the General Election, Warburtons Ltd gave the Conservative party a £25,000 donation. In the very same month, David Cameron launched the Tory election campaign in a Warburton's bakery, against a background of Warburtons products.

After three years of devastating ideological austerity, Warburtons once again allowed their facilities to be used as a backdrop for Tory party propaganda by allowing George Osborne to make his ludicrous "recovery" speech at their Wednesbury plant.

Perhaps Warburtons were under the impression that donating cash to the Tories and hosting Tory publicity stunts would somehow result in some positive publicity for their brand? I rather suspect the opposite is happening. There is now a growing Boycott Warburtons campaign on social media, meaning that they are likely to regret their close association with David Cameron and George Osborne, and their implicit support for the ideological austerity experiment which has impoverished so many of their own customers.

If you do intend to boycott Warburtons, one thing I would recommend is that instead of just boycotting their product range, you should send them a quick email to make them aware of your reasons for boycotting their products.

Here is their customer services email address:
customercare@warburtons.co.uk

Here is their customer feedback form:
Click here

An individually written email is always more effective than a copy n' paste job. However, if you are pressed for time or don't have the confidence to write your own, please feel free to copy n' paste the standard letter I have prepared below.

Here are a few tips on what to write if you decide to contact Warburtons with your concerns:

1. Remember to be polite. A rude email is unlikely to convince anyone of anything, other than to harden their stance against anything you say.

2. Tell them that you are a customer and that you will be boycotting their products until you are certain that they have publicly apologised for their involvement with the Conservative party and ideological austerity. 

3. Be concise. The recipient is almost certain to be a busy working person. Try not to exceed a few short paragraphs, anything longer and your message is likely to go unread.

4. Request a response. Ask that someone in authority replies to your concerns.

5. Follow up: If no response is forthcoming, forward the original email to them after a few days with a covering note explaining that you are awaiting a response.

=======================================================================

Dear sir/madam,

I am just writing to let you know that I am boycotting the Warburtons product range because of your support for the Conservative party.

The political party your company has chosen to support with a £25,000 donation in April 2010 (and with publicity stunts such as George Osborne's recent appearance at the Wednesbury bakery) have caused economic havoc. The average wage has fallen by 9% in real terms since they came to power, long-term unemployment has sky-rocketed, youth unemployment too. The UK has suffered two all time record trade deficits in the last 18 months, all of George Osborne's economic predictions have been spectacularly missed and we have been stripped of our AAA rating by two of the three credit ratings agencies. The poor and ordinary have been made to bear the weight of austerity (benefits cut in real terms, in-work benefits slashed, below inflation rises in the National Minimum Wage, bedroom tax. workfare, sanctions, public sector pay freezes, cuts in public services, attacks on legal aid, mass public sector redundancies and the appalling Atos WCA assessment regime) whilst the wealthy have been coddled (top rate income tax cut, repeated corporation tax cuts, bankers bonuses defended in the European parliament, £billions in corporate outsourcing contracts, new tax-loopholes, mass privatsation of public assets into private hands).

It is particularly appalling to see that Warburtons have allowed their premises in Wednesbury to be used in order to allow George Osborne to spin his Orwellian misrepresentations about how the UK economy is "recovering", when the reality is that his ideological austerity experiment has caused economic chaos and a great deal of suffering to millions (including your own customers).

Until a public apology is made about your support for the Conservative party and the ideological austerity agenda you have implicitly supported through your association with this party, I shall be avoiding your products entirely and advising my friends and associates to do likewise.

I would appreciate it if you would take the time to respond to the concerns raised in this letter and either confirm or deny that a public apology will be forthcoming.

Regards,

[Your name]

=======================================================================

Another Angry Voice is a not-for-profit page which generates absolutely no revenue from advertising and accepts no money from corporate or political interests. The only source of revenue for Another Angry Voice is the  PayPal  donations box (which can be found in the right hand column, fairly near the top of the page). If you could afford to make a donation to help keep this site going, it would be massively appreciated.

More articles from
ANOTHER ANGRY VOICE   

What do Tory donors get for their money?
             
Tory priorities: Serve the rich, smash the poor
           
David Cameron's debt reduction lie
                      
George Osborne's economic extremism
         
List of Workfare companies
                  
The economic case against tax-dodging
                  
The "no cuts" fallacy
                       
Why dissent is positive  
                             

Lazy Lord Coe and Tory NHS reforms

Sebastian Coe is a lazy lord. He has occupied a place in the House of Lords since the year 2000, and since then he has bothered to participate in just 136 out of 1,714 votes, which works out at a feeble 7.9%.

It is interesting to note that of the 11 votes he has bothered to participate in over the last 24 months, 4 have been in support of Tory NHS reforms.

As you should know, the Tory Health and Social Care Bill and the keystone SI257 amendment (which compels NHS commissioners to tender virtually all services to the private sector and to accept the lowest bid, irrespective of other considerations such as patient safety, quality of service or long-term continuity of service provision) have been designed to carve the NHS open in order to allow the private sector to cherry-pick the most lucrative services.

In October 2011 Coe voted with the government three times in order to help the hugely controversial Health and Social Care Bill pass through the upper house, including a vote against allowing a specialist health select committee to scrutinise the bill properly before it became law.

In April 2013 Coe voted against a motion to overturn the secretive anti-democratic SI257 amendment on the grounds that it went against assurances that were made in both houses of parliament that "NHS commissioners would be free to commission services in the way they consider in the best interests of NHS patients". So along with his fellow Tories, and all but one of the Lib Dem peers to vote, Sebastian Coe voted against NHS commissioners freedom to commission services in the best interests of patients.

One must wonder which interests Sebastian Coe places above the best interests of NHS patients?

Is there a possibility that it could be his own financial interests?

Well, according to the parliamentary register of members interests, Sebastian Coe has a number of financial interests in private health companies which could stand to profit enormously from the carving open of NHS services for the private sector to cherry-pick.

He is a director of a company called AMT Sybex, which already supplies the NHS with IT systems. As an established NHS supplier, one would expect AMT Sybex to be leading contenders to win more contracts, once NHS commissioners are compelled to tender virtually everything to the private sector.

Coe is listed as a "strategic advisor" to PruHealth, another private sector interest that stands to benefit enormously from the legislation their man helped to ease through the Lords. One of the elements of the Health and Social Care Bill that should be of particular benefit to private health insurance companies like PruHealth is the decision to allow NHS hospitals to provide up to 49% of their care to the private health sector, meaning that cash strapped hospitals will be incentivised to give priority access to NHS facilities to paying private health patients, ahead of NHS patients.

Yet another one of Coe's interests in the private health business can be found by looking into Chime Communications, the company that used to be his rights management company, of which he is chairman. One of Chime's subsidiaries is a health care consultancy and communication agency called Open Health, which helps clients in the "changing landscape of healthcare marketing". It would seem that this rapidly growing health consultancy would be able to benefit by picking up new business thanks to the huge changes to NHS healthcare provision eased through the House of Lords with the assistance of their own group chairman.

I'm not going to say what I think about the fact that a man that hardly ever turns up to vote in the House of Lords, suddenly turned up to vote four times on legislation which would have a dramatic effect on a sector in which he holds numerous financial interests. I'll leave it up to you to form your own opinions.

If you do oppose politicians voting on issues in which they have obvious conflicts of interest, could I suggest that you sign Mike Sivier's petition:

Ban MPs from voting on matters in which they have a financial interest

Another Angry Voice is a not-for-profit page which generates absolutely no revenue from advertising and accepts no money from corporate or political interests. The only source of revenue for Another Angry Voice is the  PayPal  donations box (which can be found in the right hand column, fairly near the top of the page). If you could afford to make a donation to help keep this site going, it would be massively appreciated.

More articles from
ANOTHER ANGRY VOICE   

The NHS is never safe in Tory hands
    
A minor amendment to privatise the NHS
          
David Cameron's debt reduction lie
                      
George Osborne's economic extremism 
                                                
The inefficient state fallacy
    
The "no cuts" fallacy
    
Why dissent is positive  
                             

A purely hypothetical conversation

Political leader:  We're going to need your help on this ...The plebs are just not buying into our plans to censor the Internet.

Dodgy PR strategist:  What do you mean?

Political leader:  They keep signing online petitions and writing whiny liberal blog posts every time we try to set up our firewall.

Dodgy PR strategist: [laughing] so you're saying you can't make the Internet less free because the Internet is too free, and you want me to come up with a solution for you?


Political leader: [laughing self consciously, in the manner of someone too stupid to know whether they've just been insulted or not] yes I suppose so ...

Dodgy PR strategist: Well what's your pitch?

Political leader: Pitch?

Dodgy PR strategist: [exasperated sigh] Oh, come on, didn't you used to work in PR?

Political leader: Yes, but maybe you colonials use different words?

Dodgy PR strategist: [scowls at having to listen to such a brazen bullshit excuse] Sales pitch, line, propaganda message ...

Political leader:  Errrrm ...

Dodgy PR strategist: Don't tell me you've just been telling them that you're going to censor the internet?

Political leader: Well ...

Dodgy PR strategist: That's what you've been doing isn't it?


Political leader: Well, pretty much yes. We said we need to censor it because of terrorism.

Dodgy PR strategist: No wonder they're not buying it! The terrorism card was only ever going to last a decade or so. You can't just use exactly the same propaganda techniques as your discredited predecessors!

Political leader: But it worked for him, look at all the wars he got to start and all the elections he won and all of his corporate kickbacks [voice whining with envy by the end].

Dodgy PR strategist: It worked for him, but it won't work for you... Times change, you've got to change with them.

Political leader: Who can we blame then? The trade unions?

Dodgy PR strategist: What have the trade unions got to do with the Internet?


Political leader: Well ... I don't know, I was just trying out ideas.

Dodgy PR strategist: Well don't! ... I'm trying to think.


Political leader: [begins tapping fingers tunelessly on arm of chair]

Dodgy PR strategist: [scowls]

Political leader: [stops tapping fingers]

Dodgy PR strategist: Perhaps you could use some kind of wedge strategy?


Political leader: [look of podgy faced childish petulance] Oooh, not wedge strategies again. They divide us as much as the opposition ... Don't you remember the EU referendum and gay marriage? The opposition are basically the same as us now, if you divide them you divide us too.

Dodgy PR strategist: [look of astonishment at unexpected display of political insight] You might be right! ... It's not the opposition we need to divide it's the public.


Political leader: But how do we divide the public on censorship? The polls say that apart from the our reactionary core vote, the public hate it.

Dodgy PR strategist: You need a moral Trojan horse.


Political leader: [confused look]

Dodgy PR strategist: Your trying to sell them something immoral right?

Political leader: I wouldn't say immoral.

Dodgy PR strategist: You wouldn't say that censorship is immoral?

Political leader: Well, not in as many words.

Dodgy PR strategist: [stares]

Political leader: Well, these leftie liberal anarchists want to bring down the state. They've got too much freedom to spread their insidious Trotskyite rhetoric. We need to safeguard society. We need to let the corporate media re-establish control ... If you think about it - to not silence these dangerous revolutionaries would be the immoral thing to do!

Dodgy PR strategist: OK, so you've developed a morality narrative to justify it to yourself, but how about the public? Do you think you'll ever convince them that censorship is the moral thing to do?

Political leader: Well... we could work on it ... If we repeat it often enough, surely that would work ... Look at the way we endlessly blamed the economic crisis on the opposition, the public lapped that one up.

Dodgy PR strategist: Look. The trick isn't to convince them that the thing they hate is actually morally virtuous, that could take years of repetition and you'll still have a huge battle with the opposition and leave yourself open to attack. You need to trick them into accepting it.

Political leader:  How?

Dodgy PR strategist: With a moral Trojan horse strategy.

Political leader: [exasperated look at being confronted with something he doesn't understand for a second time]

Dodgy PR strategist: You know what a moral panic is?

Political leader:  Oh yes, my neighbour is an expert at creating moral panics. She did a brilliant one on paedophiles once when she was a newspaper editor. It was so funny [chuckling], the reactionary plebs even burned down a paediatric practice!  

Dodgy PR strategist: That's actually a good idea!

Political leader: What, burning down a paediatric practice?

Dodgy PR strategist: No - a paedophilia moral panic.

Political leader: Why?

Dodgy PR strategist: Because you can use the moral Trojan horse

Political leader: [confused look]

Dodgy PR strategist: Look, you're trying to sell them something immoral that they hate, so you create a moral panic and offer them the thing they hate as a wonderful gift to resolve the moral panic.

Political leader: [still looking confused]

Dodgy PR strategist: You whip up a load of hysteria about child pornography, then you announce the roll-out of a nationwide child-porn filter for the Internet.

Political leader: But I don't want to censor child-porn, I want to censor lefties and bloody liberal whingers.

Dodgy PR strategist: [another look of exasperation] Look. This way you can make them accept state censorship. You roll out the child-porn blocker and anyone who opposes it can be smeared as a paedophile.

Political leader: That's genius!

Dodgy PR strategist:  [smug look] That's what you pay me for!

Political leader: [expression of doubt, turning to agitation] But, what about the bloody lefties?

Dodgy PR strategist: Wait, I've got a better idea. 

Political leader: What?

Dodgy PR strategist: Don't just use the firewall to block child pornography, use it to block all pornography.

Political leader:  I don't like the sound of that! People like pornography, that would be unpopular. We'd lose votes over it.

Dodgy PR strategist: You just need to get your narrative right. Tell them it's about protecting children. Tell them that the wonderful innocence of youth mustn't be despoiled. Tell them that children shouldn't be exposed to vile pornography.

Political leader: What, like rape porn?

Dodgy PR strategist: Exactly. Make out that the censorship programme is an effort to protect children, and then add rape porn and paedophilia into the mix.

Political leader: So that ...[waits expectantly]

Dodgy PR strategist: So that you can roll out your firewall and taint anyone who tries to oppose it as a rape porn apologist ... But don't call it a firewall or censorship or anything like that. Call it a porn blocker or a child protection measure.

Political leader: But I don't want to protect children, I want to silence political dissent. Look what happened in Egypt and Hungary. Look what is happening in Turkey right now. We mustn't allow that to happen here.

Dodgy PR strategist: You're missing the point.

Political leader: What point?

Dodgy PR strategist: That when you launch the pornography blocker, you're setting the precident that the government can automatically block citizen from accessing perfectly legal material. Plus by installing Internet filters you're putting the censorship infrastructure in place. Once it's all rolled out, you can easily change the parameters to block whatever you like.

Political leader: That's good, but I still don't want to block pornography, do you know how popular pornography is on the Internet?


Dodgy PR strategist: OK, then give them a loaded choice.

Political leader:  What do you mean?

Dodgy PR strategist: Tell the public that the porn blocker will be optional, but that if they want pornography they'll have to opt out.
 
Political leader: But won't loads of people opt out?

Dodgy PR strategist: Not if you load the choice properly.
 
Political leader:  What do you mean?

Dodgy PR strategist: You make opting out, or opposing the scheme look like a very bad choice.
 
Political leader: How?

Dodgy PR strategist:  Well, like I said, you can stop people from opposing the scheme by talking a lot about rape porn, paedophila, violence against women and the sexualisation of childhood, then anyone who opposes the scheme will be tainted by association. You oppose those things, then if the opposition oppose your censorship proposal, the average Joe will assume that they are opposing your censorship proposal because they approve of the nasty things you oppose.

Political leader: But what about people opting out?

Dodgy PR strategist: I was just getting to that... You need to make opting out look like a really bad option too.

Political leader: But how?

Dodgy PR strategist: Let me think, [mumbling under breath] pornography, pornography, pornography ...
  
Political leader: Can't we just make it a child-porn firewall? 

Dodgy PR strategist: You could, but my idea is better.

Political leader: Why?

Dodgy PR strategist: Because you're setting the precedent that the government can automatically block lawful material, which will come in very handy when it comes to blocking the leftie websites and protest groups that you're scared of. 

Political leader: I suppose so, but I still don't want to take people's porn away. They won't like that one bit.

Dodgy PR strategist: But you're not taking it away, you're giving them a loaded choice.

Political leader: Yes, but they'll opt out.

Dodgy PR strategist: Look, most people won't opt out. Women and people with kids won't opt out. You just need to figure out a way of deterring men from opting out.

Political leader: But how? 

Dodgy PR strategist: Lets think this through, what's bad about looking at pornography?

Political leader: I don't know?

Dodgy PR strategist: Have you ever had a bad experience with pornography?

Political leader: Not really.

Dodgy PR strategist: No me neither.

Political leader: Well there was that time my mother caught me with a copy of Mayfair. That was embarrassing!

Dodgy PR strategist: That's it!


Political leader: What is?

Dodgy PR strategist: Shame!

Political leader: What about it?


Dodgy PR strategist: People are ashamed when they're caught watching pornography. 

Political leader: And why is that important?

Dodgy PR strategist: Porn habits are usually personal things, people don't want everyone to know what they've been masturbating to.


Political leader: I suppose not, but how is that going to stop people from opting out of the firewall?

Dodgy PR strategist: You could make it absolutely clear that anyone who opts out of the firewall goes on a government database of pornography users. 

Political leader: Why?

Dodgy PR strategist: Because nobody would want to openly admit to the government that they use pornography.

Political leader: That's brilliant!

Dodgy PR strategist: No worries.

Political leader: What do you call this strategy again?

Dodgy PR strategist: The moral Trojan Horse.

Political leader: Thanks! We'll get working on a fueling a pornography moral panic. I know a few newspaper proprietors that will lend a hand, as long as I totally cripple the proposed press regulation measures for them.

Dodgy PR strategist: Yes, it's always a good idea to keep the press onside.

Political leader: I'll get our technical guys working on the firewall straight away. I wonder if the tech giants do a standard firewall package we could use?

Dodgy PR strategist: Of course they do! Where do you think China get their firewall technology from?

Political leader: Oh yes! This should be easy then.

Dodgy PR strategist: Yes, it should work out quite well, as long as you remember never to refer to it as censorship or as a firewall.

Political leader:  Fine. So "pornography filter" it is then...

Dodgy PR strategist: And don't forget to fortify the moral high ground by banging on about paedophilia and rape porn.

[Dodgy PR strategist's mobile phone rings]

Dodgy PR strategist: [exiting room] OK ... OK ... OK ... I think I should be able to get him to ditch that legislation for you ...

 Another Angry Voice  is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.

OR

Do the Royals make us richer?

 After posting an image relating to the royal birth on the Another Angry Voice Facebook page I was inundated with countless iterations of the same basic claim; that the Royal family bring in more money to the economy than the £38 million in annual subsidies the Queen receives from the taxpayer.

One of these royal sycophants laughably attempted to substantiate their claim with an absurdly pro-monarchist clip on Youtube, in which a £160 million a year "net benefit" to the UK economy was claimed. That's the figure I'm going to consider in this article.

Before I get around to discrediting this £160 million figure as the nonsense that it is, lets first assume for a while that it is true. £160 million may sound like a lot of cash, but in perspective it's a piddlingly small amount given the enormous assets at royal disposal and the size of the UK economy. To put this alleged "net contribution" into context:

• £160 million is just 1.2% of the Queen's estimated net worth.
• £160 million is just 0.01% of UK GDP (which was £1.54 trillion in 2012)
• £160 million is just 0.02% of UK government expenditure in 2012 (£682 billion)
• £160 million is just 0.007% of the total UK national debt (which stands at £2.33 trillion if financial sector bailouts are included, as they should be).

The Queen is by far the biggest landowner in the world with 6.6 billion acres to her name (the next biggest landowner in the world is King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia with 830 million acres, just 12% of the Queen's land portfolio). In the UK, the Crown Estates' 384,000 acre landholding is estimated to be worth at least £8-10 billion, whilst the Duchy of Cornwall (another separate estate which has been run since 1377 for the benefit of the heir to the throne) consists of 133,000 acres, now worth an estimated £1.5 billion. Aside from the Royal property portfolios, vast swathes of the UK are still owned by the descendants of the aristocratic classes that were gifted huge tracts of stolen land by the royal family over the centuries (but that's another story).

If all the royal estates are added together this gives the royal family the third biggest land holding in the entire country after the Forestry Commission and the Ministry of Defence. This property portfolio includes some of the most potentially valuable buildings in the entire country and even half of the UK coastal seabed (which comes in quite handy if the government decides to pay you heaps of cash to build a load of offshore windfarms there).

Does it not seem a little odd that the royalist crowd are trying to cheer a piddling net contribution of just 1/5,000th of current UK government expenditure, from what is undoubtedly the largest private landholding in the country? Is it not even remotely possible that the Crown Estate, the Duchy of Cornwall and the various other property assets in the royal portfolio could be put to much more efficient economic usage than they are currently? 

Another factor worthy of consideration before I get around to discrediting the claimed £160 million "net benefit" is that the only people who could possibly be convinced that a contribution of just 0.02% of government expenditure represents a good deal, are those that are fervorent supporters of the institution of monarchy. Other people that are capable of putting this supposed contribution into context and considering whether the maintenance of such anachronistic inequality have social costs that outweigh the claimed financial benefits, are less likely to consider this a good deal. Put simply, people that cite this kind of fabricated evidence are the kind of people that know the price of everything and the value of nothing. 

In order to generate their £160 million figure, the royal apologist likes to add income generated from tourism into the mix, however they carefully exclude the possibility that tourism revenues could actually be massively increased by opening up the royal palaces to tourism (making one of them the most uber-exclusive hotel in the entire world perhaps). The Palace of Versailles is the single most lucrative tourist attraction in France, it's hard to imagine that it would generate quite as much revenue if it were still a private monarchical residence.

Imagine if the Crown Estate were privatised; carved up and sold off to the private sector like so many of our (actually quite useful) public assets have been over the last three decades.

How much do you think might be raised through the sale of over half a million acres of land, all those castles and palaces, and all that treasure? If just 1% of it per year were privatised, that would raise far more than this imaginary net contribution of £160 million.

Another factor that the royal apologist neglects to include in their calculations is that the royal estates are not subject to inheritance tax (like the assets of most wealthy people are). Surely the vast amounts of inheritance tax that the royal family will avoid when the Queen dies should be subtracted from the pie-in-the-sky £160 million figure? The net worth of the Queen is estimated to be £13 billion, so the £5.2 billion in inheritance tax bill they will avoid (around £87 million a year for every single year of her reign to date) should surely be subtracted from this supposed royal "net contribution".

Another factor to consider is the secretive powers the royal family have to manipulate government legislation to their own advantage. The Guardian tried for years to reveal the truth about these anti-democratic interventions but their Freedom of Information requests into what kind of insidious influence the royal family have had over parliamentary legislation were quashed by the Tory Attorney General Dominic Grieve using a rarely used power of veto and the absurd justification that the contents must remain secret because they could ruin the public perception of Prince Charles' political neutrality and "seriously damage his future role as king"! So according to Tory party logic, the public mustn't be allowed to know how the royal family have undermined democracy to further their own interests, because if they did know, they would be so outraged by the revelations that the royal family might fall as a consequence!

One must wonder what a secretive veto over parliamentary legislation could be worth in financial terms. It is clearly impossible to subtract the financial benefit of a secretive legislative veto from the supposed "net benefit" the royals provide, since the government won't even disclose what laws have been tampered with, let alone in what ways. If it is impossible to know exactly how the royals have benefited from such anti-democratic meddling, it's also impossible to estimate how much financial harm may have been inflicted on the wider UK economy simply in order to appease royal whims.

In January 2011, shortly after the ridiculous decision to veto disclosure of these anti-democratic royal interventions on the most spurious of grounds, the Tory party introduced new legislation to exempt the royal family and their staff from the Freedom of Information Act entirely. Even if disclosure would clearly be in the public interest, the Tories have now hidden the royal finances and their political interferences behind an impenetrable veil of secrecy. Here's what the former member of the Public Accounts Committee Ian Davidson said:

"I'm astonished that the Tory led Government should find time to seek to cover up royal finances. When I was on the PAC, what we wanted was more disclosure not less ... Every time we examined royal finances we found extravagance and indulgence as well as abuse of expenses by junior royals ... Everywhere we looked, there were savings to be made for the Government. This sends the wrong message about public disclosure and accountability."

One must wonder why such a conspicuous veil of secrecy over the royal finances is necessary. If the royal family really are the "net contributors" that royal sycophants endlessly claim that they are, then surely they should be proud to demonstrate their "net contribution" in an accountable manner, rather than deliberately hiding it from public scrutiny.

Given the exemption from inheritance tax, the extremely dubious "increased tourism" claims, the secretive powers to influence parliamentary legislation and the cloak of official secrecy over the royal finances, I believe the only people who would actually be taken in by the fantastical £160 million "net benefit" figure would be intellectually lazy ideological royalists in search of some big looking numbers to feed into their personal confirmation biases.

 Another Angry Voice  is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.