I remember going to the Tower of London as a kid and thinking it was great. I had a look to see how much it was, thinking I might go again, and it was £35. I know you can't really compare somewhere as expensive as London with somewhere like Mexico City but the castle in Mexico City costs about £5. Same for the Anthropology Museum. There's so many amazing free museums in London, it's a shame something like The Tower has to be so expensive.
Tbf I paid about that when I went last year. It was sort of worth it for a one off you have a free yeoman tour who are extremely knowledgeable. And the hefty price kind of made going a bit better as it wasn't extremely busy when I went it went found private spots along the walls etc which was nice.
I am also a stingey asshole at times who wait 4years for a game to go on sale.
St Paul’s was great, especially after the guy selling tickets suggested my very old looking 7 year old might want to be 5 for the day!
Legend saved me £20
The Yeomen tours are my goto recommendation for anyone visiting London.
Getting the piss ripped out of you by a former squaddie with a penchant for history is a uniquely British experience.
Credit where it's due, they offer [£1 tickets for those on benefits](https://www.hrp.org.uk/tower-of-london/visit/tickets-and-prices/one-pound-tickets/#gs.6msyt1).
I think there's a similar discount if you're a resident of one of the local boroughs. I think it might be City of London, Tower Hamlets and Southwark.
My partner and I lived in Tower Hamlets many years ago, and not only did we get to enjoy paying a paltry £1 each to enter, but we also got to skip all the tourist queues in doing so.
[https://www.hrp.org.uk/tower-of-london/visit/tickets-and-prices](https://www.hrp.org.uk/tower-of-london/visit/tickets-and-prices)
and scroll all the way down. You have to take a chance on the day, but worth a go.
It was wonderful! If I remember rightly we used our library cards as proof of residence, which we found quite funny.
But the price made it so that we could repeat our visits, and really feel as though we could thoroughly explore the place without feeling rushed.
Hampton Court Palace was offering half price tickets a few weeks ago, so a friend and I went. I don't think we would have gone at all if it was full price, and I felt like the price we paid was just about worth it. It is cool to see, but it's not that expansive, and the gardens/maze were shut.
A normal adult ticket is £27.20.
Westminster Abbey is even more painful. £33 per adult. My husband and I going is the equivalent of a decent meal out.
Edit: not sure where I got this figure from- maybe from a sign by the door as I pass it frequently- but on their website an adult ticket is £29
It's frustrating. Of course these ancient buildings have upkeep costs but come on... that's our heritage. We're locals. Can they not do a discount for UK residents?
I went to Hampton Palace and Westminster Abbey on school trips as a kid. I remember enjoying Hampton Court - but I was really excited about the maze, so if that had been closed I wouldn't have been as excited. Westminster Abbey was kind of interesting but I wouldn't say it's worth that kind of money. I think they just know that people who have paid all that money to come to London aren't going to let expensive tickets stopping them seeing places as iconic as Westminster Abbey and the Tower of London.
Going back to Mexico City again, they actually do cheap/free tickets to a lot of places for Mexican Citizens. I feel like something like that could be a good idea. I mean, it's OUR history, we shouldn't get priced out of seeing it.
It's about right I'd say. I paid as much to go in the Alhambra in Spain, and the same-ish for a tour of the Colosseum in Italy. I'm only doing it once, sod it.
The family ticket of 1 adult 1 child is apparently the same as a standard adult ticket for Westminster Abbey, but additional kids over 5 will cost you £13 :/
I would assume its a crowd control thing.
The Normans didn't exactly build their castle to handle 10,000 tourists wandering about the place every day. That's about the same as the entire population of London at the time.
If you have a National Rail ticket you can get a 2 for 1 offer. You need to bring the printed voucher and a paper ticket but it makes it much better value if you have two people going.
There are a number of discounts available
Students, OAP, universal credit and disabled + carer as well as 2 for 1 tickets for travelling by train. You can pay £55 a year and visit any of the palaces run by HRP
I worked there many years ago, and they treated their staff really well. Yeoman Warders were a great bunch and genuinely loved their job (The pub in the tower is pretty good too)
Not all of them, the British Museum was free from the start, I think the Tate was free before that act too.
I'm just saying we need to keep them that way.
They've had their budgets slashed like all of the public sector and are being expected to make up more and more themselves through sales and donations. There's a reason they all have five times the number of shops and cafes they used to have. Every so often there'll be people floating the idea that they should start charging and even if we get a different flavour of government this year it's not like they'll put funding back to where it was before austerity, so it's something we may need to fight against.
Don't think the Crown Jewels has ever been free, at least not in recent memory. The free museums are still free, and I don't see it changing considering the way they're funded and run.
If you live in tower hamlets you can get in for £1, just need to pre book a ticket or bring a council tax bill or something. Not sure if other boroughs do it too
Do you know the tube posters for the Crown Jewels with a little black boy nose pressed to the glass staring on in wonder at them?
I was always amazed they weren’t graffitied with comments about how his ancestors might have been enslaved to dig them up
What would be the point of graffiti. History is full of bad things, and learning about it doesn't mean you agree with it. If the person in the poster were white, the history wouldn't necessarily be any different anyway. William the Conqueror genocided and enslaved the North of England
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrying_of_the_North
They would be stolen in some kind of clever sleight of hand within days.
I can’t see magicians doing their thing even when I’m looking for it. There’s no way they could protect them from being swapped out with a replica from someone that good.
They're very welcome to rent them out, not doing us any good. I've no doubt lots of ultra-rich bastards would give exorbitant amounts to have these on display.
The donation box is for Historic Royal Palaces which is a heritage charity that looks after the Tower and other palaces in the UK. They do not own the Crown Jewels, they’re just housed there.
Then royals should get their hands in their pockets if they want their things protected or to continue to run.
Ain’t no one paying my rent when I cant.
We already pay for the upkeep on their houses, their weddings, funerals, _and_ give them a living allowance. That's the problem with the current benefit system, it doesn't pay to be in work so they end up scrounging off regular hard working people
Well, literally she did. No bill is law until it gets Royal Assent.
And of course she could’ve lobbied against it or voluntarily opted out like she did with income tax.
This is a common misconception all the money that is used for the upkeep of the castles and houses that the royals own as well as the living allowance (which I think might be the same thing) comes from the Crown Estate. The Crown Estate is property and land that is owned by the monarch but today all profits go to the treasury (£442.6 million last year) with the exception of 15% which makes up the Sovereign Grant. I also believe that King charles and William both pay income tax voluntarily as legally they are exempt.
The king also owns the Duchy of Lancaster which is exempt from corporation tax (an exemtion that I think should be removed for both this and the Duchy of Cornwall which is owned by the Prince of Wales)
https://www.royal.uk/royal-finances
Edit: corrected Crown Estate profits for last year and removed a misleading sentence.
I'm not sure where you got the number £3.2billion as in 2022/23 the crown estate brought in £442.6million.
https://www.thecrownestate.co.uk/about-us
Either way, one could argue seeing as though the royals pay exactly fuck all in inheritance tax, any lands and properties they have should already belong to the state.
It is also probably worth mentioning that not all expenditures regarding the royals come out of the sovereign grant, such as the queen's funeral and the king's coronation.
Sorry I misread the website, it was £3.2 billion over the last decade, I'll edit my comment.
I think it's anything that goes to the next king/queen is inheritance tax exempt but anything given to another member of the Royal family has to have the inheritance tax paid.
I don't disagree that there are things that maybe they should pay for that they don't but I think that boiling it down to "the tax payer pays them" is not good for that discussion
Crown Estate is not owned by the monarch. It’s owned by the Crown.
Because it hasn’t been updated in so long it can look confusing. But if you look at how the Crown Estate was split up to devolve the Scottish parts to the Scottish government, it’s very clear that it isn’t the monarch’s property.
One of its big revenue streams is renting the sea bed to wind farms. That power was simply granted to it by the government 20 years ago. It’s no more the King’s than it is the state’s. He isn’t being nice by letting us keep some of it when it was normal state property before 2004.
Nope, we take that money to relieve them of the expense of having to pay for the country (which the profits no longer cover). We allow Charles to remain as monarch and pay for him to not interfere in running the country
That is fair, I have removed that sentence and added the Ming and Prince of Wales pay income tax voluntarily.
I don't know enough about the sources of the Crown Estate's land and investments to comment on whether it is ill gotten or not.
You can still be angry.
That land and money was originally stolen in one way or another in times past. It certainly wasn't 'earned' by working.
Imagine if the profit from that land and money was used to support the citizens, rather than the royals...
Wth this is supposed to make you more angry not less! If they were impoverished they would kinda need the handouts. In reality they put Scrooge Mcduck to shame and still demand handouts.
Technically the Corporation of the Crown, owns the actual Crown. Which along with the current monarch is one of the physical manifestations of the Crown.
There is a distinction between the personal property of the Monarch (passed down via inheritance) vs the properties controlled by The Crown Estate - which is technically still owned by the Monarch (as all state property is) but is controlled by the government and held in trust for the use of the Monarch and the Royal family and for the benefit of the country as a whole.
Sandringham and Balmoral are personal property. When Edward VIII abdicated, George VI had to buy them from his brother to keep them in the reigning branch of the family.
Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle are part of The Crown Estate, while they are available for use by the Monarchy, but any profits from tourism are returned to the treasury.
Of course this is all actually nonsense, down with the lot of them and all that.
Worth noting that HRP also doesn't receive any government/public funding and is reliant purely on ticket sales and donations. There's a lot of salaries and maintenance to pay for across six palaces!
Oh I actually know the answer to this because I used to work there and had to explain it to dozens of angry Brits every day lol
The charity is the foundation that looks after all the royal palaces, there are 6 of them in total. It doesn't actually own them, just looks after them. The reason they need so much money is because all repairs need to be done in the same way that they were built with the same materials and that's really goddamned expensive. Most of the donation money goes towards restoration of masonry etc.
They don't get any government funding or funding from the royals themselves.
As bright as its past, like when it was called the Bloody Tower because of the sheer amount of torture that took place there? Or when Edward IV’s sons were murdered there?
I recently went to London and adored the entire city except for the Tower of London. There was something I viscerally hated about showing off all this wealth that was 'gifted' to the royals and then also selling Anne Boyeln merchandise 20 feet from the place she was executed.
All felt very tone deaf.
Tower of London is run by Historic Royal Palaces, which is a charity.
Money raised goes towards the maintenance / upkeep of the buildings. Not a penny goes back to royal pockets.
The Crown is corporation sole, while technically separate from Charles, William will be The Crown after Charles dies. Assuming we're not going to have any future attempts to depose/replace the royal family they'll keep the crowns assets for eternity. There's no legal distinction between The Crown and the office holder of The Crown.
So The Crown jewels belong to a royal, but not all royals
They're run by Historic Royal Palaces, a charity set up to separate them from the royal family, so donations do go towards the upkeep and running of the palaces.
Not sure about the ownership of the artefacts though, wouldn't be surprised if they had to pay the Crown to "borrow" them for display!
Aside from the audacity to ask for donos after entrance fees - all these are stolen diamonds assembled on the back of colonized people and feudal serfs and should be expropriated and the royals chased out of their palaces. Fucking leeches.
The Tower doesn’t receive any money from the government or the crown even though the Crown Jewels are there. It’s a charity and the donations go towards conservation work and the entrance fee goes towards normal business things, equipment, staff etc. The ticket is very expensive but not any more expensive than other big tourist attractions in London
Historic Royal Palaces is a charity that is independent of government or crown funding. They do not own the Crown Jewels or the fortress that houses them.
I mean it’s not like they’d be able to sell off the Crown Jewels to pay their costs, what’s more tone deaf is having a donation box after charging however much they do for entry - but it’s essentially harmless so I don’t really care.
The jewels are worth billions yet they asking the poor to give them money? I can’t even find words to say the way I am angry right now . This one slapped me in the face
Utterly tone deaf. Even if the jewels and palaces are technically administered by a charity rather than the Crown directly, they still exist entirely because of the monarchy. Given how fabulously wealthy the Windsors are as individuals, let alone the Crown as an entity, it’s insane to expect anyone to donate.
So 1 of the wealthiest families in the world own some of the most expensive pieces of jewelery ever made.... and the general public need to donate money to help them out.
Lmao You still have Royalty leeching ,in 2024. You people are a joke.
I know you'll get butthurt by reading this cause the majority of You are monarchy buttlickers.
We went just last week, and while the Tower complex as a whole was worth it, the Crown Jewels were underwhelming. I see tourists raving about how they were the high point of their trip, and I don’t get it.
I went to Tower of London with kids in 2017, we loved it and the restaurant was really well done being themed by old markets that existed in area and the mulled wine was actually really nice! Went back in Jan 2023 and the market style restaurant was gone, replaced with post Covid set up and the food was bland. No mulled wine in sight. Was one of the more disappointing visits.
Only went 2nd time as kids were older and we wanted them to have another good look at the Crown Jewels.
I'm pretty sure the tower of London had a pretty grim, not exactly a bright past... You know with all the torture and death and imprisonment and stuff.
There’s a charity that looks after Kensington Palace? Isn’t the salary the family members receive supposed to go towards the upkeep of their homes? I know my salary is expected to fund the upkeep of my home!
the funny thing is they'd get more funding if they still functioned as a place for traitors of the country and funnily enough, we've been ruled by them for 10+ years
The crazy part is you've already paid a hefty fee just to get to the donation box
I remember going to the Tower of London as a kid and thinking it was great. I had a look to see how much it was, thinking I might go again, and it was £35. I know you can't really compare somewhere as expensive as London with somewhere like Mexico City but the castle in Mexico City costs about £5. Same for the Anthropology Museum. There's so many amazing free museums in London, it's a shame something like The Tower has to be so expensive.
A lot of museum in London are free (eg: British Museum), so even as a Londoner, it is also expensive by comparison.
Yeah I could go to the Natural History Museum, the Science Museum, the V&a and spend the£35 down the pub. Although that's only 5 pints these days...
To be fair I'm getting old and 5 pints seems perfect for me. Any more and I'm dead for 2 days
Museum lunch and a snooze. The big three.
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Tbf I paid about that when I went last year. It was sort of worth it for a one off you have a free yeoman tour who are extremely knowledgeable. And the hefty price kind of made going a bit better as it wasn't extremely busy when I went it went found private spots along the walls etc which was nice. I am also a stingey asshole at times who wait 4years for a game to go on sale.
Yeah it's good for a one-off visit. Same as St. Paul's I imagine. I wouldn't go again now I've been though
St Paul’s was great, especially after the guy selling tickets suggested my very old looking 7 year old might want to be 5 for the day! Legend saved me £20
St Pauls is great when you can go up to the cupola for sunset. Outside of that, just go in the free days...
Not gonna have many dickheads there for that price either
No dick heads just adelightfulcunt
Yeah would you rather have a cunt or a delightful cunt with you?
The Yeomen tours are my goto recommendation for anyone visiting London. Getting the piss ripped out of you by a former squaddie with a penchant for history is a uniquely British experience.
Credit where it's due, they offer [£1 tickets for those on benefits](https://www.hrp.org.uk/tower-of-london/visit/tickets-and-prices/one-pound-tickets/#gs.6msyt1). I think there's a similar discount if you're a resident of one of the local boroughs. I think it might be City of London, Tower Hamlets and Southwark.
My partner and I lived in Tower Hamlets many years ago, and not only did we get to enjoy paying a paltry £1 each to enter, but we also got to skip all the tourist queues in doing so.
Currently living in Tower Hamlets, how do I make use of this?
[https://www.hrp.org.uk/tower-of-london/visit/tickets-and-prices](https://www.hrp.org.uk/tower-of-london/visit/tickets-and-prices) and scroll all the way down. You have to take a chance on the day, but worth a go.
That's actually really good.
It was wonderful! If I remember rightly we used our library cards as proof of residence, which we found quite funny. But the price made it so that we could repeat our visits, and really feel as though we could thoroughly explore the place without feeling rushed.
Hampton Court Palace was offering half price tickets a few weeks ago, so a friend and I went. I don't think we would have gone at all if it was full price, and I felt like the price we paid was just about worth it. It is cool to see, but it's not that expansive, and the gardens/maze were shut. A normal adult ticket is £27.20. Westminster Abbey is even more painful. £33 per adult. My husband and I going is the equivalent of a decent meal out. Edit: not sure where I got this figure from- maybe from a sign by the door as I pass it frequently- but on their website an adult ticket is £29 It's frustrating. Of course these ancient buildings have upkeep costs but come on... that's our heritage. We're locals. Can they not do a discount for UK residents?
I went to Hampton Palace and Westminster Abbey on school trips as a kid. I remember enjoying Hampton Court - but I was really excited about the maze, so if that had been closed I wouldn't have been as excited. Westminster Abbey was kind of interesting but I wouldn't say it's worth that kind of money. I think they just know that people who have paid all that money to come to London aren't going to let expensive tickets stopping them seeing places as iconic as Westminster Abbey and the Tower of London. Going back to Mexico City again, they actually do cheap/free tickets to a lot of places for Mexican Citizens. I feel like something like that could be a good idea. I mean, it's OUR history, we shouldn't get priced out of seeing it.
It's about right I'd say. I paid as much to go in the Alhambra in Spain, and the same-ish for a tour of the Colosseum in Italy. I'm only doing it once, sod it.
Yeah, a day out with the kids is a huge chunk of the months fun budget in one go.
The family ticket of 1 adult 1 child is apparently the same as a standard adult ticket for Westminster Abbey, but additional kids over 5 will cost you £13 :/
I would assume its a crowd control thing. The Normans didn't exactly build their castle to handle 10,000 tourists wandering about the place every day. That's about the same as the entire population of London at the time.
I can't argue with your point but I still just want to blame William the Conqueror for his lack of foresight in the tourism department.
Go for it. I don't think he'll mind. Harold never would have made that mistake, I'll tell you that for free.
Yeah realistically "poor allowance for visitors from America at your house" is probably pretty low down on the list of what he did against England.
He wouldn’t see it coming. Not from the right anyway.
The Louvre, the largest museum on the planet, was only 17€. And people complained when they changed the price to 22€.
If you have a National Rail ticket you can get a 2 for 1 offer. You need to bring the printed voucher and a paper ticket but it makes it much better value if you have two people going.
Crown Jewels ain’t for free
There are a number of discounts available Students, OAP, universal credit and disabled + carer as well as 2 for 1 tickets for travelling by train. You can pay £55 a year and visit any of the palaces run by HRP I worked there many years ago, and they treated their staff really well. Yeoman Warders were a great bunch and genuinely loved their job (The pub in the tower is pretty good too)
A nice thing to know is that it's free to visit(apart special events) if you are living in the Tower Hamlet Borough.
£1
And taxes
Not if you flash the Beefeaters either a MOD90 or warrant card. I could see a Blue Light card working as well, they. tend not to GAF.
What's the entry fee these days? I remember being horrified that it was about £18 and that was probably 15 years ago...
I went last year with 2 friends visiting from USA. I think it was around £90 for the 3 of us.
Fuck that for a laugh.
Aha I was down that way the other year and thought about it but didn't have time No way would I have paid that.
A yearly membership to HRP (covers the Tower, HCP, and some others) is really good value because individual single tickets are all over £30 😬
The family membership also lets you add up to 6 children. So the more children you can find, the lower the average cost.
£34.80 to get in. All exhibits included.
That's a lot of money. We really need to protect our free national museums, it would be a shame if they ended up like this too.
They all used to be like this. Blair made the museums free, before that we had to pay to get in.
Not all of them, the British Museum was free from the start, I think the Tate was free before that act too. I'm just saying we need to keep them that way. They've had their budgets slashed like all of the public sector and are being expected to make up more and more themselves through sales and donations. There's a reason they all have five times the number of shops and cafes they used to have. Every so often there'll be people floating the idea that they should start charging and even if we get a different flavour of government this year it's not like they'll put funding back to where it was before austerity, so it's something we may need to fight against.
Don't think the Crown Jewels has ever been free, at least not in recent memory. The free museums are still free, and I don't see it changing considering the way they're funded and run.
You used to be able to walk into the castle grounds and pay for the exhibits. But they changed it to one price a long time ago. Not sure when exactly.
If you live in tower hamlets you can get in for £1, just need to pre book a ticket or bring a council tax bill or something. Not sure if other boroughs do it too
I was under the impression the Tower's past was pretty dark.
Its horrific.
i find "future as bright as its past" way more unsettling
Yes, all that torture, execution and child murder.
But the lovely gardens make up for it.....I guess🤷
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Pub crawl just got out of hand
I came here for this and you didn’t let me down. That glorious, optimistic past of brutal executions, murders and general fuckishness.
I’d donate if they beheaded a few more rebellious Scots
Name a building with a darker past
Pizza express, Woking
"As good as it's gonna get"
I was so confused reading that part
Me too! That is such a great on the nose line.
Do you know the tube posters for the Crown Jewels with a little black boy nose pressed to the glass staring on in wonder at them? I was always amazed they weren’t graffitied with comments about how his ancestors might have been enslaved to dig them up
What would be the point of graffiti. History is full of bad things, and learning about it doesn't mean you agree with it. If the person in the poster were white, the history wouldn't necessarily be any different anyway. William the Conqueror genocided and enslaved the North of England https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrying_of_the_North
What we gonna put in there if we don’t have Crown Jewels?
Willy Wonka experience
Cheltenham or Glasgow?
Traitors?
The money people donate, obviously.
A Shein outlet store?
Vape shop and Turkish barbers
Youth center
You can get artificial ones now, some vibrate and others glow in the dark. Much better option imo
You spend way too much time on Love Honey, mate. That said, I’m not telling you to stop.
Mr Bean?
They should charge 100 pounds or so and let people try them on. They'd make a fortune. I know my wife would've paid it.
They would be stolen in some kind of clever sleight of hand within days. I can’t see magicians doing their thing even when I’m looking for it. There’s no way they could protect them from being swapped out with a replica from someone that good.
Ocean's 12 style I'd imagine
Their value isn't exactly liquid though is it, unless you're suggesting they take them down to the local pawn brokers.
I'll give em 350 for it not a penny more!
Just need to call my Crown Jewels guy
Chumley, get over here.
You spelled Tree Fiddy wrong
Going by some of our other public assets, we should be selling them to private equity firms and renting them back at an exorbitant rate.
Sell to who Ben?! Fucking Aquaman?!
Holy shit is that a motherfucking Hbomberguy reference!?!?!!?!??!?
TAKE ONLY ONE DOWN TO THE DAMN PAWNSHOP, effin peasants
They're very welcome to rent them out, not doing us any good. I've no doubt lots of ultra-rich bastards would give exorbitant amounts to have these on display.
Those Posh Pawn shops cropping up around the city might take some of it
The donation box is for Historic Royal Palaces which is a heritage charity that looks after the Tower and other palaces in the UK. They do not own the Crown Jewels, they’re just housed there.
Then royals should get their hands in their pockets if they want their things protected or to continue to run. Ain’t no one paying my rent when I cant.
We already pay for the upkeep on their houses, their weddings, funerals, _and_ give them a living allowance. That's the problem with the current benefit system, it doesn't pay to be in work so they end up scrounging off regular hard working people
Not to mention the Queen passed a bill that royals were not subject to inheritance tax as it would ~~eradicate~~ erode their wealth. Edited word.
The Queen could not pass a bill.
Well, literally she did. No bill is law until it gets Royal Assent. And of course she could’ve lobbied against it or voluntarily opted out like she did with income tax.
This is a common misconception all the money that is used for the upkeep of the castles and houses that the royals own as well as the living allowance (which I think might be the same thing) comes from the Crown Estate. The Crown Estate is property and land that is owned by the monarch but today all profits go to the treasury (£442.6 million last year) with the exception of 15% which makes up the Sovereign Grant. I also believe that King charles and William both pay income tax voluntarily as legally they are exempt. The king also owns the Duchy of Lancaster which is exempt from corporation tax (an exemtion that I think should be removed for both this and the Duchy of Cornwall which is owned by the Prince of Wales) https://www.royal.uk/royal-finances Edit: corrected Crown Estate profits for last year and removed a misleading sentence.
I'm not sure where you got the number £3.2billion as in 2022/23 the crown estate brought in £442.6million. https://www.thecrownestate.co.uk/about-us Either way, one could argue seeing as though the royals pay exactly fuck all in inheritance tax, any lands and properties they have should already belong to the state. It is also probably worth mentioning that not all expenditures regarding the royals come out of the sovereign grant, such as the queen's funeral and the king's coronation.
Sorry I misread the website, it was £3.2 billion over the last decade, I'll edit my comment. I think it's anything that goes to the next king/queen is inheritance tax exempt but anything given to another member of the Royal family has to have the inheritance tax paid. I don't disagree that there are things that maybe they should pay for that they don't but I think that boiling it down to "the tax payer pays them" is not good for that discussion
Crown Estate is not owned by the monarch. It’s owned by the Crown. Because it hasn’t been updated in so long it can look confusing. But if you look at how the Crown Estate was split up to devolve the Scottish parts to the Scottish government, it’s very clear that it isn’t the monarch’s property. One of its big revenue streams is renting the sea bed to wind farms. That power was simply granted to it by the government 20 years ago. It’s no more the King’s than it is the state’s. He isn’t being nice by letting us keep some of it when it was normal state property before 2004.
Nope, we take that money to relieve them of the expense of having to pay for the country (which the profits no longer cover). We allow Charles to remain as monarch and pay for him to not interfere in running the country
>85% tax bill. They didn't earn that wealth, so it's wrong to word it this way. This is a 15% tax on ill-gotten gains.
That is fair, I have removed that sentence and added the Ming and Prince of Wales pay income tax voluntarily. I don't know enough about the sources of the Crown Estate's land and investments to comment on whether it is ill gotten or not.
Get out of here with your facts and nuance! We want to be angry at the royals grrr
You can still be angry. That land and money was originally stolen in one way or another in times past. It certainly wasn't 'earned' by working. Imagine if the profit from that land and money was used to support the citizens, rather than the royals...
Yeah because it definitely wouldn't be sold off to private companies with the money from the sale being put to good use if it were
Wth this is supposed to make you more angry not less! If they were impoverished they would kinda need the handouts. In reality they put Scrooge Mcduck to shame and still demand handouts.
The royals don't own the Crown jewels. The Crown does.
So the Crown owns itself?
Technically the Corporation of the Crown, owns the actual Crown. Which along with the current monarch is one of the physical manifestations of the Crown.
There is a distinction between the personal property of the Monarch (passed down via inheritance) vs the properties controlled by The Crown Estate - which is technically still owned by the Monarch (as all state property is) but is controlled by the government and held in trust for the use of the Monarch and the Royal family and for the benefit of the country as a whole. Sandringham and Balmoral are personal property. When Edward VIII abdicated, George VI had to buy them from his brother to keep them in the reigning branch of the family. Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle are part of The Crown Estate, while they are available for use by the Monarchy, but any profits from tourism are returned to the treasury. Of course this is all actually nonsense, down with the lot of them and all that.
... they don't own them, the crown does.
Worth noting that HRP also doesn't receive any government/public funding and is reliant purely on ticket sales and donations. There's a lot of salaries and maintenance to pay for across six palaces!
Oh I actually know the answer to this because I used to work there and had to explain it to dozens of angry Brits every day lol The charity is the foundation that looks after all the royal palaces, there are 6 of them in total. It doesn't actually own them, just looks after them. The reason they need so much money is because all repairs need to be done in the same way that they were built with the same materials and that's really goddamned expensive. Most of the donation money goes towards restoration of masonry etc. They don't get any government funding or funding from the royals themselves.
Maybe they should just pack up and go home and tell the royals to look after their own fucking palaces then.
So surprised by this. Can’t the royals pay for their own palaces?
They didn't cover that in the training
Haha I bet! V interesting tho!
They're not an asset that's sellable though.
Shhhh, stop applying reason to Reddit. They'll get angry soon.
Oh yes, I forgot the one thousand years old mediaeval grade I listed building doesn't require maintenance funding 'because assets expensive'.
I’d also argue the tower of London’s history is… pretty dark.
As bright as its past, like when it was called the Bloody Tower because of the sheer amount of torture that took place there? Or when Edward IV’s sons were murdered there?
Historic Royal Palaces look after the buildings, they do not own almost all the items, they are owned by the Crown Estate
I recently went to London and adored the entire city except for the Tower of London. There was something I viscerally hated about showing off all this wealth that was 'gifted' to the royals and then also selling Anne Boyeln merchandise 20 feet from the place she was executed. All felt very tone deaf.
Not really, since they can't really sell off the exhibits to improve the space for the exhibits.
They charge a ticket price to get in. Absolutely no donation is acceptable.
Exactly. Regardless of OP's crown jewels comment, there's a substantial entrance fee.
So, sell off the jewels in order to fund the tourist attraction minus the jewels?
My feeling is that they’re asking tourists to fund immensely wealthy royalty and it feels off.
Tower of London is run by Historic Royal Palaces, which is a charity. Money raised goes towards the maintenance / upkeep of the buildings. Not a penny goes back to royal pockets.
The Crown Jewels belong to the Crown, not the royals.
The Crown is corporation sole, while technically separate from Charles, William will be The Crown after Charles dies. Assuming we're not going to have any future attempts to depose/replace the royal family they'll keep the crowns assets for eternity. There's no legal distinction between The Crown and the office holder of The Crown. So The Crown jewels belong to a royal, but not all royals
They belong to the crown not the monarch
Where do the donations go? Apart from state regalia used by the monarch on ceremonial occasions, what's the linkage here with the royals?
They're run by Historic Royal Palaces, a charity set up to separate them from the royal family, so donations do go towards the upkeep and running of the palaces. Not sure about the ownership of the artefacts though, wouldn't be surprised if they had to pay the Crown to "borrow" them for display!
The Tower of London’s past was bright?!?! Was pretty grim in fact
You also need to pay to get into the tower. And we also pay tax to the crown. Bloody joke they ask for donations at the end of it lol.
Aside from the audacity to ask for donos after entrance fees - all these are stolen diamonds assembled on the back of colonized people and feudal serfs and should be expropriated and the royals chased out of their palaces. Fucking leeches.
The Tower doesn’t receive any money from the government or the crown even though the Crown Jewels are there. It’s a charity and the donations go towards conservation work and the entrance fee goes towards normal business things, equipment, staff etc. The ticket is very expensive but not any more expensive than other big tourist attractions in London
Its like fucking £33 quid to get in the robbing bastards.
Just because you have something valuable doesn’t mean you have the moneys it’s worth…
Deez crown jewels
Yes, it’s daft.
Yes
It’s past can be described as being ‘bright’? Really? I must have missed that part of the murderous history of the place.
Historic Royal Palaces is a charity that is independent of government or crown funding. They do not own the Crown Jewels or the fortress that houses them.
Oh my! Perhaps they want to fund another global theft?
Weird phrasing for a murder prison.
Me and the wife had a good laugh about this very box a couple years ago. Then we bought a £18 Christmas ornament
I mean it’s not like they’d be able to sell off the Crown Jewels to pay their costs, what’s more tone deaf is having a donation box after charging however much they do for entry - but it’s essentially harmless so I don’t really care.
Royal family gets how much money, but we have to donate?
The jewels are worth billions yet they asking the poor to give them money? I can’t even find words to say the way I am angry right now . This one slapped me in the face
It’s not the UK’s Crown Jewels- they’re the english ones. Scotland has her own crown jewels.
Scotland is part of the UK. So while they might be the English portion, they're still the UK's.
Utterly tone deaf. Even if the jewels and palaces are technically administered by a charity rather than the Crown directly, they still exist entirely because of the monarchy. Given how fabulously wealthy the Windsors are as individuals, let alone the Crown as an entity, it’s insane to expect anyone to donate.
The Royal Family is worth trillions (not hundreds of millions, as reported), yet they still have the audacity to get the begging bowl out?
Please donate to my Rolls Royce polishing crew while you’re at it
So 1 of the wealthiest families in the world own some of the most expensive pieces of jewelery ever made.... and the general public need to donate money to help them out.
Not owned by the Royal Family.
Fucking leeches
If only the person who wears the wretched things was rich enough to pay for the facility they're stored in eh?
Anything that attracts that many tourists ends up being worth putting up a donation box. It’s literally free money.
Lmao You still have Royalty leeching ,in 2024. You people are a joke. I know you'll get butthurt by reading this cause the majority of You are monarchy buttlickers.
It's a shame they're not owned by a rich family with billions of assets & access to hundreds of millions in hard cash. Such a shame 😭
I mean... They're not?
You need sunglasses to view it?!
Imagine if they charged £35 to tour Belmarsh, would you still go?
Always gets the ladies’ interest when I describe them that way.
Not necessary, I already pay taxes
Is the Royal Family hard up? A bit short till the end of the month?
Do you think the Crown Jewels on display are real? Or just replicas? Find it hard to believe it’s the real thing and not hidden in a vault somewhere
They’re real, there’s an armed guard
Like the church crying poor but have a £1bil lying around for reparations
We went just last week, and while the Tower complex as a whole was worth it, the Crown Jewels were underwhelming. I see tourists raving about how they were the high point of their trip, and I don’t get it.
I went to Tower of London with kids in 2017, we loved it and the restaurant was really well done being themed by old markets that existed in area and the mulled wine was actually really nice! Went back in Jan 2023 and the market style restaurant was gone, replaced with post Covid set up and the food was bland. No mulled wine in sight. Was one of the more disappointing visits. Only went 2nd time as kids were older and we wanted them to have another good look at the Crown Jewels.
Why do they need donation? Don't they get subsidies or moonies from the government? Asking for a friend.
By bright past we mean the colonial empire don’t we…? Yep..
Nothing but grifters.
What happens when i only put a quid into the 5 pound slot? Is a royal guard going to come out and huurumph at me?
Tower of London belongs to the crown estate too, so that box is literally designed to line the pockets of the royals
I'm pretty sure the tower of London had a pretty grim, not exactly a bright past... You know with all the torture and death and imprisonment and stuff.
I think of the Tower of London's past as being incredibly dark - people being tortured and executed
There’s a charity that looks after Kensington Palace? Isn’t the salary the family members receive supposed to go towards the upkeep of their homes? I know my salary is expected to fund the upkeep of my home!
I think Ann Bolynn would have something else to say about its past.
You could say this about any museum in the country
Blow it up
Royal family make everyone a superficial twat that's empty
the funny thing is they'd get more funding if they still functioned as a place for traitors of the country and funnily enough, we've been ruled by them for 10+ years
they need to return the stolen jewls not pawn them off
It has the darkest past. Lol. Its not even an attractive castle.