Abolish the Monarchy! - A response to CGP Grey

hello everyone today we're gonna be talking about the British monarchy and why I think it should be abolished that's right I want to fire the Queen and him and him and all the little children Royals as well they're all fired pack up your things so long your services are no longer required sorts of thing so I guess I should make my case for that opinion and it's a rather simple one to be honest I don't like hereditary hierarchies I don't think it's right that someone should be born into a position of power over other people now you might say well the Royals don't actually have any real political power anymore and this is kind of true to an extent but they still inherit at Birth a position of enormous privilege and wealth and this is in a country where the Conservatives austerity politics have led to continued increases in food bank usage cuts to child welfare have led to an increase in a number of children living in poverty and so on and it is completely indefensible to me that one child could be born into a manufactured poverty while another could be born into the wealthy royal family now one of the ways the Royals do still have some political power is via the Queen's speeches such as the State Opening of Parliament in which she reads a statement outlining government policy my ministers will continue to bring the public finances under control so that Britain lives within its means and to move to a higher wage and lower welfare economy where work is rewarded that's a clip from the State Opening of Parliament 2016 there where the Queen read out a pro austerity speech while sitting on a golden throne and wearing a hat with 2,900 precious gems in it including one of the largest diamonds in the world now nobody wearing this hat should be able to say Britain should have to live within its means without getting sucked into an irony black hole the Royals are wealthy and privileged not because of anything they've done to earn it but because they were born into it at the expense of and this is wrong now okay if you're a regular viewer of my channel I'm probably preaching to the choir here you're probably on board with me being outraged about the country having to bear the enormous cost of this one particular family who did nothing whatsoever to earn it well this video is not really aimed at you I'm sorry to say this video is aimed at people who when I mentioned the enormous cost of the royal family scrolled down to the comment box and started typing actually I think you'll find that the Royals bring in more money than they cost us yeah they're a benefit to the economy it turns out haven't you seen that CGP grey video the true cost of the royal family explained it's really interesting you should check it out so this video this is what I want to talk about today now before we get into it I just want to stay by I'm not attacking old CGP grey here often on my youtube channel I talk about Nazis and alt writers and fascists and racists and I just want to make a note here to say CGP grey is to the best of my knowledge anyway not that I have in the past enjoyed several of his videos and I've often shared his video on gerrymandering in particular which is a really useful easy-to-follow visual explanation and I'd actually encourage you all to give it a look so I'll link it below so why am i responding to this video today well the fake answer is that it's got 4.5 million views it's the top hit on YouTube if you search for royal family cast and it's spreading a bunch of easily disprovable lies and oversimplifications the true reason though is that back in my pre YouTube days when I was reduced to arguing unseen on dying internet debate forums any mention of the cost of the monarchy would inevitably see someone post this video and then we'd all have to argue about whether it was right or wrong all over again these days though I have a youtube channel and a platform and I'm gonna use it self-serving Glee to get the last word in and retroactively leeuwin all of those arguments I'm in mad scientist mode here full disclosure they'll see the all sake and all Wow back to the present day let's compare the profits and losses by using a tenner to represent ten million pounds the cost to maintain the royal family today is 40 million pounds per year but the revenue paid to the UK from the Royal lands is 200 million pounds per year 200 million in revenue subtract 40 million in salary costs equals a hundred and sixty million pounds in profits that's right the United Kingdom earns 160 million pounds in profit every year from the royal family so then first off here I'd like to admit a bit of bias even if these numbers were remotely true I'd still support abolishing the monarchy such as my disdain for hereditary positions of power luckily for me though they're not remotely true there are massive problems on both sides of this equation let's start with the quotes salary cost of the royal family which CGP Grey puts at 40 million pounds and I should note here that this video came out in 2011 prior to the sovereign grant Act which reformed the way the monarchy is paid by the government had these days they're paid a percentage of the revenues from the Crown Estate the sovereign grab for the last year was 76 point 1 million so they've had quite the increase in the last few years err but since CGP grey uses the 40 million figure let's talk about that now the problem is this salary cost is only a fraction of the actual cost of the monarchy CGP Grey fails to include lots of other costs that are separate to any money that is paid directly to the Queen such as security costs if the Royals travel somewhere they do so with a security detail and this is paid for by the state the security costs for big events like Prince Harry's wedding to mega Markel earlier this year run into the millions and that's all paid for by the taxpayer the travel costs themselves are also not mentioned if the Royals go and visit somewhere to cut a ribbon or whatever the costs for the trip fall on the local governments of wherever they went the refurbishment of royal properties is not mentioned Buckingham Palace is ongoing renovation is estimated to cost 369 million pounds and it's the justification given for the recent large increase in the sovereign grant so since their house needs fixing we gave them a raise to pay for it ie we're paying for it and after all that this forty million figure here seems fairly ridiculous most estimates I've seen for the true cost of the monarchy are in the low hundreds of millions annually and I'm being intentionally fuzzy with the figure here because when it comes to this some none of what I just said actually matters because the real problem here isn't the forty million in costs it's the two hundred million in quote revenue from crown land because here's the thing if tomorrow all the Royals just evaporated or fell off the air for something that land would still exist it's not going anywhere is it it doesn't need the Royals around to be present in our dimension you know it's not tied to their spirits or something without a monarch on the throne all the trees would wither and die or something no the land and our ability to do profitable things with it would still be there without the monarchy a more accurate sum here is 40 million pounds against nothing you know why not kick the Royals out and keep 100% of the revenue you might ask but perhaps it's not enough for you because you're a real greedy user why not kick the Royals out and keep 100% of the revenue because it's still their land King George the crazy wasn't crazy enough to give up everything just the profits but it wasn't only him every monarch since King George the third has voluntarily turned over the profits from their land to the United Kingdom if the government stopped paying the royal families living in state expenses the Royals would be forced to take back the profits from their land and your taxes dear monarchy haters would go up not down so there's a lot going on in this clip first off I'd like to note the backing away from the initial question which was why not kick the Royals out so the much softer scenario of the government simply stopping paying for their expenses after which the Royals would apparently be forced to stop turning over the revenue from the Crown Estate my first issue with this is that CTP grades version of kicking the Royals out appears to arbitrarily leave them with all their land and wealth and also the apparent ability to negotiate from a position of power with the British government and I have to ask why he's imposing these measures you see although CGP grey says it's still their land the Crown Estate is not actually the Monarchs private property they cannot do with it as they wish if they were to be able to quote take back the revenue from the property overseen by the Crown Estate this will involve renegotiating the arrangement with the government and coming away with private ownership of everything which is ludicrous although to be fair given how the brexit negotiations are going maybe it's not you see my version of kicking the Royals out involves confiscating all their stuff because it's not really their stuff at the end of the day they inherited it from someone who inherited it from someone etcetera who claimed ownership of it by killing everyone who disagreed with them it wouldn't exactly be kicking the Royals out if we left them with sole ownership of huge parts of the country would it CGP grey is basically saying after we abolished the monarchy the monarchy will then respond by saying etc and no after we've abolished the monarchy they've been abolished they don't get a turn this is a particular sort of bad faith argument that I've seen a few times let me give you another example do you support an increase in green renewable energy and I imagine most of you would say yes unless you happen to be oil barons or something now what I'm going to do is fixate on that one opinion of yours and extrapolate from that way more than is logical or necessary so you support an increase in green energy which means you support the decrease of the use of fossil fuels which means you support the current employees of the fossil fuel industry being made unemployed and how cruel of you just before Christmas and everything you classist monster and before you can protest that you also support I don't know job guarantees for fossil fuel workers or various welfare systems or a universal basic income or something like that I've already run away with my fingers in my ears saying la la la I can't hear you you classist monster now I'm speaking from experience here because I've had this happen to me reality isn't turn-based however we can support and do multiple things at the same time so in this case my bill to abolish the monarchy would say we're no longer paying for the Royal Family's expenses and also the Crown Estate will henceforth be publicly owned and also the Royals will lose all hereditary positions and powers and also if you don't like that you can go and sit on your crown which is now ours so anyway that's the land argument dealt with there now the other common response to the argument that the Royals tossed the country is the tourism argument tourists come here just to see the Queen apparently plus 160 million is just the easily measurable money the United Kingdom makes from the royal family don't forget their huge indirect Golden Goose tourists knowing that they might be to the locals by blocking the tube and refusing to stand on the right they dump buckets of money on the UK to see the sights travel ludicrously short distances by public transport and generally act silly a long way from home sure not everything they come to see is royal but the most expensive stuff is and who are the biggest spenders the Yanks after they finished by maple syrup and cheap pharmaceuticals Tijuana and professional services and illegal pharmaceuticals where do they go next the United Kingdom Americans fly across an ocean to see a land filled with castles that aren't plastic and why do the Americans think Frances castles are so boring and stinky and the UK's castles are so awesome because real monarchs still use them the Tower of London is so stunning to visitors because the Royal Crest on a yeoman warders uniform is real it's not a lame historical reenactment or a modern LARPing quest is the embodiment of the living breathing Queen everywhere you look she's sprinkled fairy dust and banal objects to make them magically attractive to tourists 12 million of whom visit every year spending 7,000 million pounds which suddenly makes those direct profits look like rather small change so there's a lot to talk about right here where to start so the comparison with France is particularly audacious and cheeky here because as you might know France makes a lot more money off tourism than the UK in 2017 France was the number one tourist destination in the world whereas the United Kingdom was seventh with less than half of the number of individual tourists the Palace of Versailles gets vastly more visitors each year than Buckingham Palace according to a CNN travel report in 2013 Versailles had over 7 million visitors and Buckingham Palace had less than 1 million so living monarchs don't seem to be that big of a tourist attraction so how does CGP Grey get away with this France comparison well he needlessly limits himself to talking about just one group of people that happen to visit the UK modern France and that's Americans and there is absolutely no reason to do this except to give the false impression that the UK attracts more visitors than France when if you consider all tourists it's not even close also as a little aside here when CGP grey says why do Americans think Frances castles are so boring and stinky and the UK's castles are so awesome he shows pictures of two castles now the boring and stinky castle is the fortress of najuk in France and the awesome castle is Monsen Michel in no prizes for guessing this one France they're both French castles well actually this one isn't a castle but you know whatever they're both in France what CGP Grey has done is mix up this place with this place st. michael's mount which has a similar name and appearance but is actually in the UK now given that CGP grey an american can't tell the difference between a French castle and an English one that kind of this proves this point they're Hardy ha an error was made on the Internet regardless tourists don't get a cup of tea and the chat with the Queen or anything when they go to see a royal property whether the Royals are around or not doesn't matter the buildings are still gonna be there and again as we've seen more people go to see France's palaces and they got all choppy with their monarchs and that's the thing even if the actual monarchy was officially abolished the people you know the family would still exist they'd still live in the country if they're meant to be a draw by themselves that'd be nothing stopping them from being you know I'm sure they'd still be invited to events and to open buildings and whatever else you know the difference is that they'd have to pay their own way and I don't even imagine that would be particularly difficult for them they'd still be a celebrity family regardless of official status I imagine there be a lot of monarchists around who'd be willing to send them their money you know maybe they could do a GoFundMe or something to sum up here without the monarchy the land would still exist the royal estates would still exist and the people who are currently the Royals would still exist all that would change is that our government would stop funneling millions of pounds into the pockets of one particular already rich family now what else haven't I mentioned here well very quickly CGP Grey gives the impression that the Royals turn over the income from all of their lands but this isn't actually true the Duchess of Lancaster and Cornwall are administered separately from the Crown Estate and the Royals don't have to turn over the revenue from those and they're not subject to tax the Royals voluntarily how nice of them pay income tax on the income generated by the duchies less official expenditures of course however they remain exempt from corporation tax the duchies have been valued together at more than a billion pounds and this is of course not mentioned by CGP grey and that's about it for me today folks that's a short one isn't it from me I usually make longer videos than this but to be honest I just needed to get this one out of my system if you're desperate for more content I have a little announcement to make today is the two year anniversary of me joining patreon patreon and I thought I'd do a little something fun and special for all my backers over there but then I couldn't think of anything so I walled into a microphone about YouTube for 20 minutes so if you'd like to hear me talking a bunch of nonsense for a while head over there and take a look right remember to Like and subscribe and all that and follow me on Twitter or ask me a question on curious cat if you fancy brackets links below righty-ho folks see you next time

Channel: Shaun

Views: 672,801

Rating: 4.5696507 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: yiE2DLqJB8U

Length: 17min 48sec (1068 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 01 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/Thebackup30]

It's the beggining of the month and so all the breadtubers decide to upload their videos at once.

[u/[deleted]]

Someone post it to r/UK, i dare you.

[u/paulofebers]

I'm actually super curious what Grey will say about this (if anything, since he's been cutting things like YouTube and Podcasts out of his life for the time being). He's very opinionated, but it always comes from a place of observation and personal experience. In his podcast, he doesn't come off as the smug know-it-all as he does in his videos, at least not as much. Honestly, I just think the conversation between the two would be really interesting to listen to.

[u/ScreamingPhist]

Hot damn I just need Hbomb to post to get BreadTube Bingo.

[u/QuizzicalUpnod]

Well in Shaun. Peoples Republic of Merseyside when?

[u/Napinco]

My french canadian heritage appreciates this video.

[u/chr20b]

British Monarchy DESTROYED by facts and logic!

It may be cliche to post this, but I couldn't resist.

Also Jen does the best thumbnail art.

[u/GlumExternal]

As an Australian all I have to say is...

Why does an old British lady hold sovereignty over me.

[u/Kushan_Scout]

Contra and Shaun, niceeeee. Now please tell me there will be a new hbomb video soon...