British Royal Family

[billybunter]

Tourists come to see real castles, and ancient monuments like stonehenge and new grange over here. I mean does the Queen run outside and say welcome to my Kingdom

[Mal Hombre]

Exactly,Only a small minority of tourists will actually see any of the "Royals" and if They do it will be from a considerable distance.

[mizlaplan]

Originally Posted by Mal Hombre

Exactly,Only a small minority of tourists will actually see any of the "Royals" and if They do it will be from a considerable distance.

Oh Lordy!!!
Imagine seeing some of the "Royals" close-up.
They, they....they might actually look like what us normal folks look like
You'll be intimating next that the "Royals" are just Homo Sapiens and not superior to us common, vulgar clods.
Laughable.
Miz ( proud of his common, vulgar, clod-ness )
On a more serious note, the fact I can post something like this shows just how important to modern British Democracy the Royals have been.
Something to remember about Republics. Folks have been overthrowing them since Julius Caesar declared himself Emperor.

[billybunter]

Originally Posted by squigg58

Strewth! The Illuminati, the Freemasons, and David Icke's Lizard People ... forget the BBC ... they should have shown the Jubilee celebrations on the Sci-Fi Channel!

HMQ is one of the illuminated ones. For years she had Daddy Rothchild as her advisor. Nearly every British prime minister was/is a 33 degree mason. Fact.

[mizlaplan]

Originally Posted by billybunter

HMQ is one of the illuminated ones. For years she had Daddy Rothchild as her advisor. Nearly every British prime minister was/is a 33 degree mason. Fact.

No b*llsh*t
BB?
Where are you going with this?
I'm interested.

[tamsmith]

Originally Posted by billybunter

Tourists come to see real castles, and ancient monuments like stonehenge and new grange over here. I mean does the Queen run outside and say welcome to my Kingdom

Sorry billy and mal hombre but whilst I am not a Royalist I totally have to disagree with your views about the tourism benefits of the Royal Family.

For the past 19 years I have worked in the tourism industry in the UK and I know for a fact that foreign tourists are far more interested in Royalty than our "castles and ancient monuments". Most come to see something they do not have.

Yes there are Royals in some other countries but do they have the WORLDWIDE presence of "Else" and her family??

True, tourists will come to see the mountains of Wales or Scotland, our unique shopping extravaganzas. Avail themselves of our World renowned cuisine. But not many.

As for comments that they, tourists, wish to see our "castle and ancient monuments". They go to see them because that is on the itinerary. A Castle is just another Castle and Stonehenge is just another Callanish. Remember other countries also have places to visit that are a little bit more AWE inspiring.

Tourists come to the UK for our history and the Royalty is the part they wish to see. They certainly do not come for our weather or hospitality.

Uk tourism will drop considerably if there was no Royalty.

[billybunter]

But they don't see the royals unless it's trooping of the colour or something. They come to see where they live and see London get photo of a guardsman or beefeater.

Please explain how tourists see the royals.

[otokonomidori]

Originally Posted by billybunter

HMQ is one of the illuminated ones. For years she had Daddy Rothchild as her advisor. Nearly every British prime minister was/is a 33 degree mason. Fact.

What's so bad about being a Freemason? When I was playing in club bands I played in dozens of Masonic Halls - apart from the goat they didn't seem any different from any other venue I'd been in.

They seemed like perfectly reasonable people and they always paid cash.

I did once found a fiver floating along the piss trough in Falkirk Masonic Hall gents lavatory.

[sintrovert]

Originally Posted by billybunter

Tourists come to see real castles, and ancient monuments like stonehenge and new grange over here. I mean does the Queen run outside and say welcome to my Kingdom

Yeah, there's plenty to do and there's more to the UK than London.

Originally Posted by Mal Hombre

Exactly,Only a small minority of tourists will actually see any of the "Royals" and if They do it will be from a considerable distance.

Yeah. I don't really get the appeal, but each to their own.

Originally Posted by mizlaplan

Oh Lordy!!!
Imagine seeing some of the "Royals" close-up.
They, they....they might actually look like what us normal folks look like
You'll be intimating next that the "Royals" are just Homo Sapiens and not superior to us common, vulgar clods.
Laughable.
Miz ( proud of his common, vulgar, clod-ness )
On a more serious note, the fact I can post something like this shows just how important to modern British Democracy the Royals have been.
Something to remember about Republics. Folks have been overthrowing them since Julius Caesar declared himself Emperor.

I'd like to see Kate Middleton close up

I'm amazed that royalty exists in a democracy really. In a way, it's directly against the spirit of democracy that someone can be born superior and that's it, it's the facts of life.

Originally Posted by tamsmith

Sorry billy and mal hombre but whilst I am not a Royalist I totally have to disagree with your views about the tourism benefits of the Royal Family.

For the past 19 years I have worked in the tourism industry in the UK and I know for a fact that foreign tourists are far more interested in Royalty than our "castles and ancient monuments". Most come to see something they do not have.

Yes there are Royals in some other countries but do they have the WORLDWIDE presence of "Else" and her family??

True, tourists will come to see the mountains of Wales or Scotland, our unique shopping extravaganzas. Avail themselves of our World renowned cuisine. But not many.

As for comments that they, tourists, wish to see our "castle and ancient monuments". They go to see them because that is on the itinerary. A Castle is just another Castle and Stonehenge is just another Callanish. Remember other countries also have places to visit that are a little bit more AWE inspiring.

Tourists come to the UK for our history and the Royalty is the part they wish to see. They certainly do not come for our weather or hospitality.

Uk tourism will drop considerably if there was no Royalty.

I know the Royal Family is of interest to some people, I don't really understand why but it is what it is. I disagree that they're the main pull though. People will come from all over the world to see Man U or go to The Beatles Experience in Liverpool. Yeah, the Royal Family is historical but now we've got newer histories based on popular culture that I think are massive draws and more identifiable for a lot of people. When we're not getting the overexposure of last week or last year's wedding, I feel that generally interest in the Royal Family is less noticeable. Nobody stops going to The Beatles Experience because they split up, nobody stops wearing football shirts or going on stadium tours because the season's over. Popular culture is much more far reaching. Even if The Queen was to be the last monarch, we've still got over 1200 years of monarchy history for people to look at. Just because something's old and traditional, doesn't mean it's a good thing or appropriate today. I went to a slavery museum last week.

Maybe foreign visitors are more interested in the Royal Family than the natives. Maybe people do come to see something they haven't got, but there's plenty of that anyway. We don't have a dictatorship but that doesn't make me want to go to Zimbabwe :P I doubt we'll find out for sure in our lifetime, but I really don't think tourism would suffer at all for a lack of an incumbent Royal Family.

[squigg58]

Originally Posted by billybunter

But they don't see the royals unless it's trooping of the colour or something. They come to see where they live and see London get photo of a guardsman or beefeater.

Please explain how tourists see the royals.

It's not just about seeing the Royals in person, although I'm sure a lot of tourists expect (or at least hope) to see Liz wandering around Buckingham Palace or Windsor Castle when they visit, and public appearances do draw huge crowds, many of whom are foreign tourists.

As you say, people like to see where the Roylas live, and if they didn't live there any more, people couldn't see where they lived!

History plays a huge part in Britain's tourist industry, but one of the key things is that we've kept a lot of history and tradition alive. The Guardsmen and Beefeaters aren't actors recreating what used to happen ... we still have them, and that appeals to people. There's no logical argument to say that we need them in today's world, just as there's no logical argument to say that Black Rod should have the doors of Parliament slammed in his face, or that we need to troop The Colours every year.

The Monarchy plays a huge part in our history, and the fact that we've retained them has a huge appeal to tourists. The argument that we should get rid of them because they're no longer "relevant" is, in principle, like saying that it's not "relevant" for the Household Cavalry to wear bright uniforms and wander around on horseback!

The argument that we should get rid of the Royals "because they're rich" is, in my opinion, pretty lame! After all, it's not as though the Queen can sell up, lash out £1million on a Bugatti Veyron, buy a villa in Spain and say "Sod this ... I'm off to somewhere sunny!"