How fortunate our royal family and the Church of England were in recent weeks to have been out-trumped by what was going on across the ocean. Both the 253- page Makin Report with its horrific stories of abuse, and the untaxed wealth of our royal family, so vividly fleshed out In The King, the Prince and their Secret Millions, were buried under an avalanche of news which could herald the end of the world as we know it.
Should one laugh or cry at finding President Elect Trump, himself a convicted felon, appointing another convicted felon to high office, handing the nation’s health to a numbskull who looks as though he is carved out of redwood and the health of the world to a prize dimwit who does not believe in climate change.
Surely, an administration as lunatic as this will self-implode but what, if anything, will ever persuade our Royals to give up their wealth or, at the very least, pay taxes and use it for the public good. The Church, presently licking its wounds, may emerge more fit for purpose.
So incensed was I by the film about the royal family’s millions and how little outrage it appears to have evoked that I actually wrote to the Guardian suggesting that the King and Prince William could start by taking over from the government the immediate reimbursement of the postmasters and mistresses and the casualties of the infected blood donor scandal. On reflection, could they not also transform the lives of the several million of their subjects still trapped in buildings with dangerous cladding . . .
But it seems the wealthiest not only want to hang on to their wealth but also increase it, vide Elon Musk and the King’s silence.
