Saturday, June 15, 2013

A Prince And A Pauper

Prince Charles as a future king of England is forced to attend all sorts of press shows and say all sorts of nonsense to all sorts of cringing, sycophantic journalists but even he must have felt a little sick at this utterance. 'The Prince, known in Scotland as the Duke of Rothesay, met recovering servicemen and women at the Edinburgh House personnel recovery centre.  .... Among those he met was Paul Lambert, 32, who lost both legs in Afghanistan in 2009. The Prince praised him as a "great example".' (Times, 14 June) You own absolutely nothing. You go into a conflict that has nothing to do with you. You have both your legs blown off. Your life is ruined. A "great example" of working class stupidity is what we would call it. RD

1 comment:

ajohnstone said...

“His Royal Highness Charles Philip Arthur George, Prince of Wales, Duke of Cornwall and Rothesay, Earl of Chester and Carrick, Baron of Renfrew, Lord of the Isles and Great Steward of Scotland” has spent £38m on an industrial depot in Milton Keynes as part of a £102m series of confidential property deals.

The purchase of the vast supermarket warehouse through his estate – one of the single largest acquisitions by the Duchy of Cornwall in its 670-year history – was completed 18 months ago but has been kept from being made public. A recent judicial ruling declared the Duchy to be a “public body” potentially liable to freedom of information rules. But Clarence House has repeatedly refused to disclose any details of the expensive acquisition due to what the Prince’s officials said was the Duchy’s “private” status.The Duchy is exempt from capital gains and corporation tax, saving it millions of pounds a year.

The Duchy, which is one of Britain’s largest private estates and owns more than 50,000 hectares of land. The Duchy’s holdings of land and property form the bulk of its assets, worth £693m, and stretch across 23 counties, including most of the Scilly Isles, Dartmoor Prison, the Oval cricket ground in central London, a Holiday Inn in Reading and the Prince’s private homes such as Highgrove. Despite the global downturn, the Prince has defied the prevailing economic winds to grow the Duchy’s income every year since at least 2008 – to £26.5m last year. His estate’s total value has risen by 15 per cent to £764m.