Revealed: Royals spent more than £13million of public money on private flights and helicopter journeys in less than a decade
Revealed: Royals spent more than £13million of public money on private flights and helicopter journeys in less than a decade
32 comments
13 million…when I think I get paid around 24k a year that’s like 540 years worth of wages.
Well the Royal Squadron (32 Sqn) isn’t called that for fun, that’s it’s primary role.
Tbh a lot lower then I would of thought it would have been
What % of that was just Andrew flying to tell his nonce friends in person that he couldn’t hang anymore?
Well…in heads of state terms, what is that? We already know our future ones, I suppose, so it’s a bit different
The article states this is paid for out of the Sovereign Grant, but also looking at the article they were work trips. They also usually travel with staff and journalists so it’s not just the one or two people.
This looks like it’s bait for outrage, people working on the worlds stage travel. Wow.
^edit ^spelling.
Sounds like pretty good value, given the security requirements.
This is pure rage bait, nothing more. I’ve looked into this a bit before and they often end up saving money by taking the helicopter, as it cuts down massively on security/policing costs. They fly in military aircraft from one secure area to another, avoiding the cavalcades and rolling road blocks they need on the ground.
I really think we should abolish royalty entirely but while we have them they need security.
A family spends 1.3m a year taking helicopters and private jets whilst dedicating their life to the public service… That’s like 2p per person per year… How terrible!
13million is literally f all when you’re talking about a family in that position
Pay wall – is this on a private company or RAF Flights?
/u/Nikhilvoid What was your purpose in posting this outrage bait? And why do the mods keep allowing these garbage articles?
My God this OP is not conversing in good faith at all
And with all the anti-royal family articles cropping up over the last week, someone’s clearly got an agenda to push.
Do better people.
Based on the comments here, I assume you hate the royals
This is just bait rage.
Yeah like it’s a lot of money, but over 10 years and the amount of ‘work’ they do for the country pays itself back.
Look at is this way. Tory government gave A friend £125 million contract for covid. And then they did this a further 10 – 20 more times; who knows. Literal billions of our money has gone straight into the hands of tories in just 1 year.
£13 million over 10 years vs BILLIONS of our money in 1 year……. Stupid waste meaningless article. Pennies in comparison.
If this makes you angry wait until you find out how much the Tories gave to their mates during the pandemic
Let me tell you how much I dislike the elites but I love the royal family and their entire astrocratic system. But I don’t like the elites. Ya know the ones I’m talking about the ones in their 20s who spend half their wages on rent, fucking hate those elites.
See all these sort of anti monarchists posts on Facebook all the time. “Royal family renovate Buckingham palace with £10 million of taxpayers money”.
They are complete bull and are only out to cause outrage. If you actually look into the facts, the royal family bring in millions, if not billions of pounds through tourism etc to the UK economy. That not including all the other stuff they do for the UK.
Okay great clickbait headline. I assume that the truth is that it’s out of their allotted fund AND it’s a bloody decade which is ironically considering their role quite a low sum
Typical old shite.
The Royals do get money from Tax payers. However they generate vastly more to the economy in tourism than they take. Like all business transactions, there are expenses. The bigger the gain, the bigger the expense bill.
Absolutely wild that I was like “oh wow that’s so much less than I would’ve guessed.”
Head of state uses sovereign grant for secure transport on work trips. Literally isn’t news.
This is peanuts compared with the amount of money that the Tories have siphoned off for their mates.
Boris McCuntflap, has wasted £14,7 billion since becoming PM in botched deals that never progressed.
Only £13 million? Over a decade? That’s a bargain. Plus that’s come from the Sovereign Fund which is funded partially by the hundreds of millions of additional funds they brought into the country.
Firstly I note that the examples given all seem to say “…official FCO visit…”, so were probably at the behest of the Government. Also, at an average for the stated period of slightly under 1.7 million per year, then given the cost of chartered flights that isn’t actually that much.
Definitely work needs to be done to reduce the carbon impact of this travel though, but frankly the timing and wording of this makes me wonder what the Independent is trying to distract us from…
Airforce 1 cost 0.2milion per flight, 13m/decade is embarrassingly small, other world leaders must talk jokes about the UK
Wow so what they are the royal family and not civilians
They use to have their own cruise ship (sorry yacht) but after the Dianne debacle and with the public turning against them they had to reinvent themselves. Bye bye ship (sorry yacht) Then for the next 20 years they used her kids to create a more caring, family orientated image. Now they’re after another cruise ship (sorry yacht)
I’m just going to guess some stuff here, just as a thought experiment;
* 13 mil over 10y is 1.3 mil over a year on average.
* Now, let’s assume the ‘royal family’ counts for all the major forms of royal person, and for fun, let’s assume there are 10 such royals.
* So each royal has an annual flight budget of about £130,000 (pure guestimate)
* I’m going to guess they fly first class or .. shock horror … via private flight.
* let’s 50/50 of the costs of those things, 1st Class London – New York is about £2000 … private is about £50k, so on the 50/50 let’s call each trip £26k
* With their individual budget of (estimate) £130k that means each ‘royal’ can make about 5 or 6 trips each year…
And honestly… That doesn’t seem too bad considering their modern role of ‘statesman’ per the UK’s interests.
All numbers are just pure guesses, no actual research on the matter, I just wanted to think through the ‘shock’ headline of BIG NUMBERS SCARY.
Can you imagine any of them surviving on £2,000/month??
I’d be curious to see how much was for Andrew.. And has any of his pleb sponsored flights involved child sex trafficking or private taxi for his outstanding mates.. now thats “rage baiting”.