With Prince Harry happily married to his sweetheart Meghan, It's time to ask the question; was the wedding worth the extensive costs and whether the Royal Family are of benefit to the country itself?
The total cost of the wedding was a substantial 31.4 million pounds. 94 percent was spent on security alone. According to the Department of Health, a patient to staying in a hospital for a day, presuming they have an operation and a consultation, will cost on average £2000 per person. Based off that, surely the nation has denied treatment to 15,000 people on an ever-lengthening waiting list for NHS services.
The morality of those planning the wedding must come under scrutiny as there have been reports that Police officers have been removing belongings of the homeless around the streets near Windsor castle, asking them to move with a promise of returning their possessions after the event, according to the BBC. Would a more moral solution not be to feed and house those that have been displaced, as appose to completely ignore the problem itself and just moving it out of sight?
The facts
Consider the power that the Royal Family actually has: The queen is head of state, Supreme Governor of the Church of England and Commander and Chief of the armed forces. The Daily Mail noted that she had a net worth of £300 million in 2015, along with the best private healthcare in the world.
The queen owns two palaces and three castles. Her crown has 3000 diamonds encrusted in it. This is one family in a country of 65.4 million. They live a complete life of luxury paid for by the unquestioning taxpayers - being you and me.
This leads me to question whether we actually live within an uncorrupted democratic system, when there are people within that system that hold so much power and influence within a society, purely down to a birthright?
Their influences will most likely include politics, with the prime minister regularly meeting with the queen, who also gets frequent updates from the Civil Service regarding economic and domestic issues.
There is a divide of support and criticism among the public regarding the royal wedding. One such criticism is shown below (tweeted by Sophie, someone who's clearly not a fan of the wedding), who makes a very good point on the priorities of the powers that be.
Apparently the royal wedding cake cost 50k. 50k. Imagine how many families could be fed for 50k. The injustice sickens me.
— Sophie (@Fifijane83) 18 May 2018
A business perspective
For the sake of ambiguity, the Royal Family do attract notable levels of tourism in the form of 500,000 people a year who visit Buckingham Palace. This has a ripple effect on other industries including; hospitality and food. However, when compared to another part of the British tourism industry. According to the Chester Zoo website, they get just under two million visitors a year, four times that of Buckingham Palace.
In France for example, (who notably haven't had a head of state since 1792), there are more tourists that visit the Palace of Versailles than Buckingham Palace and combined.
If we look at this from a business perspective, how can the Royal Family possibly be justified, when we aren't even getting a return on our investment?
It is unclear to me as to how we can keep a Monarchy for the sake of pride and tradition alone when NHS waiting times are at an all-time high. We can no longer afford suitable police numbers. The gap between the rich and the poor is getting wider and homelessness is on the rise. And yet, we as a society, have 300 million pounds a year to spend on one family while millions struggle. They are living proof that we still live in an elitist society and this is what I believe is holding our society back. I believe progress will be impossible without serious changes to the structure and priorities of our society.
