Monday 18 June 2012

Here's a copy of an interesting article and my reply to it. I wonder whether my comment will survive - at least one other didn't!

The source is http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=6&storycode=49508&c=1

Are British journalists failing the republican minority?

18 June 2012

The BBC was heavily criticised this month over its coverage of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, which was described by one MP as “celebrity-driven drivel”.

But none of those complaints – at least not those published in the national press – suggested the coverage was lacking impartiality.

That is the claim levelled at the corporation by Graham Smith, chief executive of anti-monarchist group Republic.

In an interview with Press Gazette, Smith claimed the BBC’s relationship with the Palace was so cosy that it banned the use of footage showing the Queen knighting disgraced former RBS chief Fred Goodwin.

Smith says he was told by BBC producers that a “banned list” had been circulated that also included embarrassing footage of “It’s a Royal Knockout” from 1987.

“If anyone else asked them to do that the BBC would say, ‘Sorry but this has news value and therefore we’re going to broadcast it’.

“It’s our public broadcaster filming our head of state conferring an honour on Fred Goodwin,” he adds, “It shouldn’t be a matter of private deals between the BBC and the Palace.”

Smith believes the BBC “completely fails” in its impartiality obligation when it comes to coverage of the Royals, rarely giving voice to republican sentiments.

“It’s just incredibly, obviously pro-royal,” he says. “We have people within the BBC telling us they’re sick and tired of how the BBC operates and they’re very frustrated.

“I don’t think it’s a conspiracy, I think it’s a cultural, institutionalised bias, which they just don’t seem to realise is a problem.”

Boaden: 'One rarely pleases all the people all the time'

The Palace declined to comment on Smith’s claims, but Helen Boaden, the director of BBC News, insisted that it regularly included the views of Royal critics, including during the Jubilee celebrations and last year’s Royal wedding.

“Specifically, we reflected republican views on the main TV and radio news bulletins before the Jubilee last Friday and during live radio and television coverage of events over the weekend,” she said.

Boaden says it is “simply inaccurate to portray BBC News as unquestioningly ‘pro-royal’”, but added: “In that process one rarely pleases all the people all the time and the BBC makes no complaint about that.”

Boaden said it was wrong to claim the BBC operated a “banned list”, adding: “We don’t. But nor do we own the copyright to all the film we might like to use and, even where we do, we are often bound by complex contractual arrangements concerning re-use.

“However, there are occasions where we would use contractually restricted material in a news context if there was a strong justification – for example, we have on occasion used clips from the Grand Knockout Tournament to illustrate news stories.

“We would do so again if the story merited it.”

Smith, meanwhile, also believes the UK’s national newspapers routinely display the same kind of “institutional” bias toward the monarchy.

Polls consistently show that between 20-25 per cent of the UK population do not support the monarchy.

“That’s quite a substantial proportion, and that doesn’t really get reflected,” says Smith. “I think the key thing is that the whole coverage is incredibly superficial.”

One of Republic’s biggest gripes is the lack of scrutiny into the cost of the Royals.

The figure usually reported by the media is between £30-£37m.

But a report released by the group last year put the annual cost of funding the monarchy at £202.4m – around five times the official figure published by the Royal household.

'A fair crack at the whip'

Perhaps unsurprisingly, one man who disagrees quite strongly with Smith’s assessment of the British media is Stephen Bates, who until very recently was The Guardian’s royal editor.

“I don’t think we’re inherently biased towards the monarchy,” he insists.

“I confess to a certain degree of scepticism at Graham’s views because he sees absolutely nothing positive in the monarchy whatsoever and I think he’s frankly a bit juvenile in the way he presents Republic’s case.

“We can’t just publish stories which say that the monarchy is rubbish because A, that’s not the case and B, it’s the source of stories of interest to our readers, whether they are pro-monarchy, pro this particular queen and her family or not.

He adds: “Other papers are more slavishly pro-monarchy than the Guardian, but if there is a big event, like the Jubilee, then newspapers have a duty to report it and that’s what we’ll continue to do.”

One of those “slavishly pro-monarchy” papers that Bates refers to is probably the Daily Express.

Yet its Royal editor, Richard Palmer, sympathises with Republic and says it fulfils an important function by “raising issues that do need airing”.

“I think one of the things we try to do is examine how they spend public money,” says Palmer.

“And one of the points that Republic has made quite eloquently, I feel, is that the figure that the Palace gives each year for the cost of the Royal family – and they always do it by the average cost per person – is really only one part of the picture.”

He adds: “I think it’s useful to maintain dialogue with anti-monarchy groups because they do raise some important issues. And personally I’ve got some sympathy with them when they say the broadcasters aren’t giving them a fair crack at the whip.”

This article was first featureed in Press Gazette Journalism Weekly.

COMMENTS

Showing 1 comments

Joe Eldren

I agree with both Stephen Bates and Richard Palmer. Yes, there is and should always be a place for public scrutiny of the monarchy as part of our system of government. However, the nature of that scrutiny needs to be much more grown up. One has only to see the articles carried daily it seems by the Express and Mail - which I suspect are produced only because of the click-though interest they attract - to see the level of criticism, most of which consists of denouncements of wealth, inheritance, 'privilege' and 'deferment' (whatever those are supposed to mean). Where are the serious articles considering the constitutional issues behind where we are today? Answer: nowhere. I accept of course the general reader may not care to read a lengthy tome by an expert over their morning coffee and this is where Graham Smith seeks the low ground, by pushing populist nonsense in the hope that an overly simplistic analysis will strike some sort of chord with the disaffected.

The report referred to, costing the monarchy at over £200 million annually, is fundamentally flawed by egregious assumptions and multiplying one-off costs across a whole set of circumstances; no decent media outlet bothers to repeat it - in fact it was severely criticised in the Express last year. It HAS however been picked up by the virulently anti-British Iranian PressTV which continues to attract sharing and positive comment from Republic Campaign's Facebook supporters.

Perhaps the most juvenile of Mr Smith's claims is the level of support of republicanism he continues to repeat ad nauseam in the face of all evidence to the contrary. Both Ipsos MORI and ICM (the latter used by both Republic Campaign and the Guardian) have shown a year on year fall in support of republicanism in the UK; funnily enough this fall coincides precisely with the redesign of the Campaign to become a more active group. One might think there is a lesson is this. Ipsos Mori very recently published its annual research results - part of a multi-year survey - which showed that support for republicanism had dropped to around 13%. However, only today and in response, a writer for the Campaign intoned that "Republic's position is that the baseline support for electing the head of state varies between 20 and 25 percent with blips either way and has been very stable over very many polls so we don't get over excited about the odd poll that is below this level. Republic thinks that the real majority position in the country is disinterest and passive acceptance" It is hard to see how one can deal with such hard-headed intransigence and denial of real-life actualite other than by dismissal.

There are also serious questions to be asked of Mr Smith - which have been asked, but never answered - about some other claims of his, such as the actual number of members of Republic Campaign. Only last year he stated that the number of 'supporters' exceeded 18,000, yet later admitted this figure included 12,000 Facebook 'Likes' and a supposed 2000+ turnout at their street party. They now claim over 20,000 'members' although I have seen elsewhere in the press that the number of actual paying subscriptions is more like 10,000 or so. It may well be that they have doubled their paying membership, but why not just say so? What have they to hide?The answer and perhaps the most troubling question lies in their stated purpose. On the one hand the Campaign's stated objective is to be a non-political force for change. Fair enough. However, their current crop of directors - indeed, nearly all their previous ones - are mostly seriously left-wing political activists (e.g. the president of the Campaign has written a book about the Communist Party of Great Britain) and their support base is seriously skewed to the left - one can frequently find comments on Facebook (the Campaign's website is closed to comments) such as "there can be no republic without it being a socialist republic" - along with the usual nonsensical exhortations to reclaim "the land/money/etc that was stolen from us". The occasional republican Tory is dragged out and feted as an example of how non-partisan they are and it makes a sorry sight indeed. As one commentator noted the other day, "there is an air of intellectual dishonesty about the Campaign" and they "have made a soapbox but built it on quicksand".

Thursday 7 June 2012

Shattering the myth of Republic Campaign's credibility

This article originally appeared in the Daily Telegraph and was written by:

Brendan O'Neill

Brendan O'Neill is the editor of spiked, an independent online phenomenon dedicated to raising the horizons of humanity by waging a culture war of words against misanthropy, priggishness, prejudice, luddism, illiberalism and irrationalism in all their ancient and modern forms.

My hero Thomas Paine must be spinning in his grave. No, not necessarily because there is still a monarchy in Britain, something he was fighting tooth-and-catapult against 250 years ago. But because the political creed that he espoused with such vigour and clarity – republicanism – has now been co-opted by the most miserabilist, misanthropic, killjoyish sections of society who wouldn’t recognise a political principle if they were accosted by one in an alleyway. Once upon a time, being a republican meant trusting in the people, seeing in the mass of society the potential for reason and self-governance. Now it means precisely the opposite: distrusting the people, sneering at them for being an easily brainwashable mob of forelock-tugging freaks.

The great irony of the Diamond Jubilee celebrations is that the most overt snobbery emanated, not from the House of Windsor or its posh cheerleaders in political and media circles, but from so-called republicans. It was them, these embarrassments to Tom Paine, who looked with horror and derision upon the great hordes of modern Britain. They pronounced themselves “aghast” at all the little people “happily buying Union Jack cups and bunting”. They mocked the masses for obediently heeding the “message from on high” telling them “not to worry about increasing inequality and its accompanying social problems, but to clap your hands, smile and applaud”, like good little children.

They railed against the “infantile emotions” of the public, who apparently squeal: “Oh look here is the Queen! In yellow! In a hat!” They told us that“never are the peasants more revolting than when tugging their forelocks”. They informed us that certain groups of people – rough translation: the thick and uncultured – have been swallowed up by an“orgy of deference” to the Queen. And these thickos don't even understand that the Queen-oriented “cult of personality” has been sinisterly designed as a “diversion from more serious issues”, like the recession. What the dainty-minded ordinary people fundamentally don’t get, apparently, is that royal events like this are, in the words of a Mirror columnist, “magnificent pleb-pleasing distractions”, “psycho-spectacles”designed to make the “plebs” forget about their hardships. And the reason these plebs can so easily be made to forget that they are poor and wretched and downtrodden is because they have been“brainwashed on an Orwellian scale” into loving royalty.

What an historic turnaround. Today it isn’t royalists who look down their noses at everyday folk, viewing them as a malleable mob without a brain cell between them. Rather it is republicans, or “republicans”, who do that. In their very elitism, they reveal that they aren’t real republicans at all, for republicanism is about believing that the public is capable of great and wondrous political things. All that these shallow republicans believe with any intensity is that the public are “infantile” and “brainwashed” and easily swayed by “psycho spectacles”, and as a consequence are beyond both reason and hope. They sound less like Paine and more like his nemesis Edmund Burke, who described the people as a “swinish multitude”.

~o0o~

What is most amusing is the reaction of those same "miserabilist, misanthropic, killjoyish sections of society who wouldn’t recognise a political principle if they were accosted by one in an alleyway" - here's an extract discussing the article from Facebook on 6 June 2012:

Republic Campaign ... We are not the ones whe believe this is an issue only for elitist chattering classes, that is the likes of O'Neill. He is being hypocritical and snobbish himself. He is also clearly ignorant of the issues at hand...
Conrad Brunstrom O'Neill lazily misquotes Burke, who never described "the people" in general as a "swinish multitude" - only that "swinish multitudes" do sometimes exist. As a full time eighteenth-centuryist, I'm professionally obligated to point that out.

The Burke misquote is typical of a very lazy piece of writing. Without having met us, or spoken to us, he describes us as "miserabilist". Now I'm not miserable at all. I'm jolly and upbeat to believe that Britain deserves (and will get) something less tedious and undemocratic as the hereditary principle to express its own sense of sovereign identity.

It was important that Republic demonstrate by the Thames because the media constantly talk about the nation being "united" in its monarchism - that "everyone" is celebrating the monarchy. Republic would have been failing in its most obvious responsibilities if it hadn't organised some sort of visible refutation of this fallacy.
Republic Campaign ... O'Neill is appallingly hypocritical, suggesting that 'real' republicans have to be quoting from Paine and limiting their views to the chattering classes, then calls us snobs. His article has no credibility and is entirely predictable and typical of his writing.

Oooooh! Catfight! LOL

Just goes to show how Republic's "campaign" has backfired on them disastrously. They were desperately looking for any avenue to up their public profile from the occasional articles in the Grauniad and other left-wing publications. But having become a focus for wider attention, their widely-held fantasy that the media and the population at large would simply fall into line behind the standard bearers of "democracy", when they can't even use the word in the same way as the rest of the world, has proved to be hollow. Some of us knew that all along, of course!

Saturday 2 June 2012

British Republicanism Captured- to a 'T'

I'm copying here the text of an online blog post (http://www.ybf.org.uk/2012/06/guest-blog-monarchists-should-be-grateful-for-republicans/) which appeared recently on the Young Britons' Foundation site. Excellent article!

"YBF Research Fellow Nick Hallett has written a very sound blog to commemorate the Jubilee celebrations

Now it’s time for the Diamond Jubilee, I’m reminded of the common cliché that during the Civil War the cavaliers were wrong but romantic and the roundheads were right but repulsive. Looking at those who call themselves republicans these days, I’m tempted to agree with Professor Kenneth Minogue that they embody the worst aspects of each side: they are wrong and repulsive.

Alongside the popularity and dignity of the current monarch, one thing monarchists should be eternally grateful for is the modern republican movement. A shambolic collection of hard-line leftists, north London chattering-class liberals and various other cranks and eccentrics, they are a movement for the excessively ideological, the overbearingly rationalist and the eternally miserable.

All of this shows through in their campaigns. When the government announced a public holiday to celebrate William and Kate’s wedding, republicans called for it to be scrapped. When the Duchess of Cornwall launched ‘Cook for the Queen’, an attempt to get primary school children baking and thus teach them cookery skills, republicans called it indoctrination. And whenever the celebrations come round, a gaggle of self-satisfied leftist commentators invariably indulge themselves in denigrating the event and mocking the people who turn out to celebrate.

In fact, you may notice some this weekend, holding their placards and maybe shouting their slogans. Sullen, angry faces among crowds of joy. They may occasionally manage a smile, but it will only be a sneering one. The group Republic are even organising a protest against the jubilee flotilla, no doubt shouting political clichés and angry bile at the gathered crowds.

Telling the public they shouldn’t have a day off work, telling schoolchildren they shouldn’t bake cakes, protesting against a national celebration and insulting the intelligence of all those who join in with that celebration: the bad PR just writes itself!

None of this should surprise us, however. Republicanism borrows heavily from its cousin, Marxism. In particular, modern republicans have adopted the idea of “false consciousness”; just as the proletariat are indoctrinated by their bourgeois masters into loving the capitalist system, so the masses are indoctrinated by the media and institutions into loving the monarchy. If only this indoctrination were removed, everyone would see how “unequal”, “irrational” and “anachronistic” it all is.

This idea is astonishingly insulting. It assumes ordinary people have absolutely no critical thinking skills, and are just passive receptors of whatever propaganda is thrown their way. The word “sheeple” is often used. This view is ironically elitist, and it also undermines one of the key pillars of republicanism: if the general public are really that stupid, why on Earth would you trust them voting for a president?

A further irony is that the only method republicans have of remedying this is their own propaganda. The difference is, very few people are enthused by shouty, grumpy, holier-than-thou campaigning. Can anyone remember a successful political campaign that preached at and insulted the electorate?

The words of C.S. Lewis are most appropriate here:

“A man’s reaction to Monarchy is a kind of test. Monarchy can easily be “debunked”; but watch the faces, mark well the accents, of the debunkers. These are the men whose tap-root in Eden has been cut: whom no rumour of the polyphony, the dance, can reach – men to whom pebbles laid in a row are more beautiful than an arch. Yet even if they desire mere equality they cannot reach it. Where men are forbidden to honour a king they honour millionaires, athletes, or film-stars instead: even famous prostitutes or gangsters. For spiritual nature, like bodily nature, will be served; deny it food and it will gobble poison.”

Perhaps one day, if the popularity of the monarchy decreases, people may be open to republican ideas expressed calmly and sensibly. Until then, the best thing republicans can do for their cause is just keep quiet."

I wish!

Saturday 30 July 2011

British Republicanism: Fact-Lite As Usual

Post removed as the main link no longer works. This is the ONLY reason the post has been removed, since I am unable to provide the reader with the source material I quoted so that they can check my statements for themselves.

Tuesday 5 July 2011

Reasons To Be A British Republican - In Their Very Own Words!

These are all ACTUALLY SAID on their Facebook page and website (my commentary follows in italics)

Inheritance is theft (umm, who from exactly? Oh, you mean someone gave their stuff to their kids instead of YOU? For shame...)
Britain is worse than North Korea for personality cults (in relation to the Royal Family of course - what, you thought they were referring to the Blessed Simon Cowell?)
Prince William's photos are photoshopped to hide his 4 foot nose (erm ... yeah .... whatever, you twerp)
The Queen Mother was dissolute and her bronze 'image ... should be removed' (never mind the million people who went to pay their last respects, eh? Still let's get rid of those idolatrous images by all means. Any other Biblical punishments you want to inflict on the rest of us? I bet stoning's high on the list...)
It's OK to have Gaddafi (as president), because then we would be a democracy (said by someone not living in Libya, what a surprise)
Prince William should wear a T shirt and be unseen 'like the rest of us' (this is because he wore a suit to Wimbledon. Suit wearing - the last bastion of monarchy! Part of his job is TO BE SEEN. I know you don't like it ... man up and deal with it.)
The Queen uses money collected for charities she is a patron of, to defray her own general expenses (have you ever heard anything more spiteful or Just. Plain. STUPID?)
Monarchy is keeping the UK behind in the global economy and is the premier cause of today's broken society (failed sociology student; also lives in a broken middle eastern economy supported by erm ... British aid amongst others.)
Jet fighter bills, paying for royal families how much more! (No, I don't understand it either)
Too much forelock tugging must hurt after a while (what IS this British republican fascination with tugging on body parts? Didn't your parents warn you you'd go blind?)
The public don't really care about the state of our political system, as we saw in the AV referendum (I rather thought they did actually care which was why they majorly kicked it into the long grass LOL)
This country should change its national anthem I can't sing the current one as it idolises the queen (Let's all idolise T. Blair, M. Thatcher, Sir C. Richard, S. Cowell, C Cole then shall we?)
Their life is nothing but fun, unlike the rest of us who have to work (from someone who thinks that anything other that checkout till work isn't 'work')
The Royal family are "Thieving inbred sex offending dossers" (Ah, libel laws, wherefore art thou? Isn't it great to be able to hurl anonymous insults at people who can't answer back. Manly men indeed!)
Russians got it right (that would be shooting men, women and children dead in front of each other and without due process, so that's OK then. Bring on the Republik making Britain a better democracy! Oh wait....)
We live in a socialist state (oh, really? Must be that whole North Korea thing you've got going there....)
It's ridiculous that we have a queen. We're basically saying we're no more sophisticated than bees. Bees have a queen, and she actually does something. She goes round collecting honey and stuff! (Erm, actually no, the queen bee produces eggs. Speak to your Biology teacher, since you're still at school)
I'm paraphrasing. Those weren't her exact words (basically I made it up to make my comment look good)
The Crown Estate belongs to the nation. (No it doesn't, much as you might like it to; nor will it give you more benefits to claim)
why is she written as Queen of Canada on Canadian Passports? (err ... because she is. FAIL)
"I was posting on (a newspaper site) as 'Lucy', writes 'Elizabeth' (no, not Queen Elizabeth lol. Why exactly? Does this come under the same heading as another republican who outed herself accidentally as having at least two profiles that are used to make pro-republican statements in newspapers? I think we should be told...but we probably won't be.)
heading straight for a hospital to pose with child cancer victims - how crass is that? Can you imagine their aides ringing the hospital and saying, have you any child cancer victims we can send these people to be photographed with? (No, I can't. I CAN imagine the aides asking who would benefit most from a visit. To suggest that one of the most photographed couples in the world have a need to seek out cancer victims for a photo opportunity - now, THAT'S crass!)

Saturday 14 May 2011

A Rebuttal To The Republic Campaign's Claims Of Poor Conservation And Cataloguing Of The Royal Collection

The Republic Campaign (the actual author is anonymous) recently posted a comment on the Royal Collection. You can read the article here.

A quick read of this might leave you a little unsettled – so many artefacts poorly catalogued and suffering from poor conservation because of a lack of money; only a privileged few get to see the Collection; and any criticism means you get struck off the list of people the Collection will lend to, so Republic says.

Doesn't sound very good, does it? Perhaps, you think, there is a case for transferring ownership to the government who will care for the items 'properly'.

Well, let's deconstruct the article and see what our author - who dare not speak his name - is actually saying (and we'll be correcting a few rather glaring errors on the way, gentle reader, so bear with me!) Statements by Republic Campaign are italicised; those by the Royal Collection and others are emboldened.

“The Royal Collection is a vast collection of art assembled by monarchs over the last 500 years. It includes around 150,000 paintings by artists such as Rubens, Rembrandt, Mantegna, Titian and Raphael. The Collection's total value has been estimated at £10 billion.”

Well for a start there aren't 150,000 paintings! The Collection confirmed in an email to me that they hold only around 10,000 paintings (including miniatures). There are of course a considerable number of other items – furniture, ceramics, clocks, silver, sculpture, jewellery, books, manuscripts, prints and maps, arms and armour, fans, and textiles. The valuation Republic gives appears to be a straight lift from an undated Wikipedia entry rather than anything based on a professional view; this also seems based on an estimate by an individual who didn't actually see the Collection!

“The bulk of the Royal Collection was assembled by Charles I and dispersed throughout the country at the time of the Commonwealth. During the Restoration, Charles II was able to reassemble the majority of the collection, although a number of pieces were sold to European museums such as the Prado in Spain.”

Once again a rather large error here. The Royal Collection's website clearly says “The Collection has largely been formed since the Restoration of the Monarchy in 1660. Some items belonging to earlier monarchs, for example Henry VIII, also survive. The greater part of the magnificent collection inherited and added to by Charles I was dispersed on Cromwell's orders during the Interregnum. The royal patrons now chiefly associated with notable additions to the Collection are Frederick, Prince of Wales; George III; George IV; Queen Victoria and Prince Albert; and Queen Mary, consort of George V.”

'Dispersed' means of course seized and sold off – Cromwell and the Puritans were the cultural philistines of their day. It is rather dismaying to read the same short-sighted postings by Republic's supporters, arguing that a national and cultural treasure should be sold off for short-term financial gain; clearly there is a lack of investment in our cultural heritage. As Harold Macmillan once noted, it's akin to selling off the family silver.

Republic campaign places a link to the Royal Collection's website; such a shame they didn't seem to follow it themselves.

“The Royal Collection is "held in trust by the Queen as Sovereign for her successors and the nation, and is not owned by her as a private individual". In other words, it is owned by us - the people of Britain. It is unclear whether the royal family fully understand what this means, however; until relatively recently the Royal Collection website claimed that it was the private collection of the Queen.”

Dear oh dear, where to start with this?

To paraphrase: “It is not owned by the Queen as a private individual, therefore it is owned by 'us'”. Oh, really? Did 'us' pay for it? No, 'us' did not – the money was spent by the Monarch from a combination of own resources and money voted by the state for the upkeep of the Royal Household. Republicans will of course immediately argue that as taxpayers they are the source of funding and so 'ownership' ultimately resides with them. First off this is factually incorrect – the acquiring monarch may well (and often did) use private funds. Secondly, to argue that ownership belongs with the original source of the funding is quite fatuous. As an example, imagine that your employer comes to you one day and says, 'Hey, that house, that car, that nice stereo – they all belong to me, because I paid your wages!” Clearly absolute nonsense. Once the money has been handed over it is up to the recipient how they spend or invest it. That the monarch spends private money to enhance the Collection for the benefit of the nation as a whole is something to be celebrated, not condemned through ignorance or plain mischief.

“It is unclear whether the royal family fully understand what this means” - which is of course a generalised statement with absolutely no meaning or relevance, but designed to throw a little mud and see if it sticks in the reader's mind. I could as easily write 'It is unclear whether the republican campaign fully understand what this means' in relation to ownership. I'll give another example of their playing with words later in this piece.

“Around 3,000 objects in the collection are on permanent loan to museums. Other pieces are on display in former royal residences such as Hampton Court.”

The rest of the Collection is stored away from public view and is notoriously difficult to access, even for academics and art historians. The only people with regular and unfettered access to the Collection are the royal family and their employees.”

No collections, whether public or private, save for a very few small ones, place their entire stock on public display. Allowing people 'unfettered' access to this or any other collection is simply not something that happens for goodness' sake – to do so would mean one would very shortly not have a collection at all! Securing a collection is standard practise and it is rather nonsensical - but rather typical - to point a finger at the Royal Collection for adhering to such.

“The maintenance and care of the Royal Collection is the responsibility of the Royal Collection Trust (established in 1993 and chaired by Prince Charles).”

Well, they got that right at least!

“As a charity, the trust receives no government subsidy and maintains the collection using only the income generated by visitors.”

And this is wrong how exactly? It is an essentially private collection made over in trust to the nation, it costs the taxpayer nothing at all. Again, something to be celebrated, not denigrated when government is looking to cut costs.

“This means that we are denied a stake in our national art collection and, unlike the works housed in the National Gallery, we have no way of ensuring proper standards of conservation and cataloguing are maintained.”

It is NOT a 'national' art collection, nor is it 'ours' however much Republic would like it to be misrepresented as such. Details of conservations are routinely published in the Annual Reports of the Collection, available online here. The past 5 years for example have seen literally hundreds paintings fully or partially conserved. Many items of course have already either been conserved in the past or do not require actual conservation in any case.

At this point I'll enter a quote from the London based Social Affairs Unit: Finally, a word about the catalogue. There are plenty of ways in which other British art collections might be well-advised to emulate the Royal Collection. There's the high morale of the staff, for instance, who from the security guard on the door to the coat-room lady to the Surveyor himself, come across as unfailingly welcoming, helpful and keen to make every visit a success - or the exhibition spaces, which from the formal entrance area to the galleries to the baby-changing room, for heaven's sake, are well-designed, functional and aesthetically pleasing - or even the shows themselves, which, as with last year's excellent George III exhibition, somehow work both as crowd-pleasers and as serious curatorial events. Indeed, while sour-faced republicans periodically make noises about delivering this collection 'back to the people' (presumably with as much success as Cromwell or the Paris mob, this being republicanism's track-record in action) it would be far easier to frame an argument as to why more public collections should be offered to Her Majesty, if she could promise they would all be run as efficiently, effectively and as selflessly as her own Collection has been.

“Like the royal properties, the Royal Collection appears to be suffering due to lack of funds. Curators and art historians are concerned about the impact the Trust's lack of money is having on conservation. Few are prepared to speak out openly, however, for fear that the Trust will refuse to lend items to other museums and galleries.”

Of course, no actual evidence is produced to support this. Academics are notorious for complaining when historical items they have an interest in are in some way at risk – yet none can be found to make any sort of public statement. Academics abroad are even freer to make some comment; again, none can be found. One academic might hesitate to criticise; but a group of them? Hardly. This sort of approach is very typical of the Republic Campaign and akin to ringing a doorbell and running away – the poor householder is left puzzled at the intrusion, whilst the mischievous urchin stands sniggering around the corner watching the disruption he's caused.

Following on from my point above about spurious statements, I could also just as easily write here that “some republicans are concerned that, over the last few years since their campaign took on a full-time official, their standing in opinion polls measuring support for a republican form of government has fallen (which is true by the way). No-one appears able to speak out against this damaging trend” (which is also true, but an opinion rather than a verifiable fact). Placing the two together gives a much more damaging interpretation, a cynical ploy the spokesman for Republic Campaign is rather over-fond of using and which of course his followers swallow hook line and sinker.

“There is disturbing evidence that the Collection is at risk due to the stubbornness of the royals. It appears that, as with the royal properties, there is fierce resistance to bringing the collection under full public ownership - and to the greater public access this would entail.”

So, what is the 'disturbing evidence'? As we have already seen, there is NOT ONE shred of it. As for “... resistance to bringing the collection under full public ownership...” (aka compulsory nationalisation) this is otherwise known as resisting an outrageous attempt to recategorise one's private goods and chattels as belonging to the 'state' - or 'us' as Republic would have it. Note also that compensation has not once been mentioned – reminiscent of Cromwell's approach and which should leave you shuddering with fear as to what would actually happen to YOUR wealth and your planned inheritance to your children should they ever get their republican way – which, fortunately, is a VERY long way off.