Wily Willy & Cheating Charles

Written November 2024

In what is perhaps their worst PR move since the photoshopped photographs, the royals have churned out a two-part documentary, via ITV, about Prince William’s alleged efforts towards ending homelessness. The programme is unimaginatively named Prince William: We Can End Homelessness, although a more honest title I suggest would be Prince William: I Can End Homelessness in One Fell Swoop Using My Vast Personal Fortune, But I’m Not Going To. You see, William’s personal wealth is in excess of £1billion, but the irony appears to have been lost on him, and indeed on all those involved in the programme.

From the get-go, this misguided endeavour to paint William as the altruistic frontman of a campaign to end homelessness fails, as it opens with a shot of the outside of 500-roomed Kensington Palace, in all its opulence, before cutting to a beautiful room inside the palace where they have filmed the prince talking to camera about his care and understanding of the issue of homelessness. He’s got some chutzpah; we can give him that. Will waxes lyrical about his apparent concern for the homeless, and even speaks of seeing homelessness ‘every day in our lives’. Where is that, then, William? Where do you, personally, see homelessness in your everyday life? When you pop out to Tesco for a loaf? No, I didn’t think so. He elicited a further derisory laugh from me when he spoke of talking to his children about homeless people on the school run. Such a blatant attempt at making them seem ‘just like us’ when they are anything but. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the children were carried to school in sedan chairs carried by poorly paid servants.  

The ITV documentary is almost entirely utter fluff, a propaganda piece focussed on heaping praise on William, it seems, as opposed to providing any in-depth information about his supposed crusade against homelessness. Interspersed with footage of the pampered prince emerging from his chauffeur-driven Range Rover as he arrives at various events, there are interviews with various people who are allegedly already involved in ‘helping’ homeless people, and who the prince is calling upon for suggestions and advice. The CEO of Shelter, Polly Neate, for example, who, like a star-struck teen, chimes in to describe the prince as a ‘super celebrity who everyone wants to meet’. (As an aside, and driven by my deep suspicion of all major charities, I looked up Ms. Neate’s salary - £122,500. Nice work, if you can get it.)  

The hypocrisy inherent in William’s involvement in this documentary, and more widely the homelessness project he is fronting, is not the only issue causing the royals a PR headache right now. There is another problem afflicting them too. Just two weeks or so after the release of the ITV programme, a Channel4 Dispatches investigation revealed that both William and his dad, Not-My-King-Charles, are each earning a considerable income stream from the profits made on the back of the business activities of their private estates, the Duchy of Cornwall and the Duchy of Lancaster. And, while William is banging on in the ITV programme about how compelled he feels to ‘do something’ about homelessness, his Duchy spreads over 52,449 hectares across more than 20 counties, with Not-My-King-Charles’ estate a further almost 45,000 hectares. In a further stab in the back to us plebs, these Duchies are run as private estates, meaning they are exempt from corporation tax, and capital gains tax, despite their commercial activities returning enormous combined profits of around £50million per year paid personally to the monarch and his heir.

Piling on with the piss-take, much of the profit made by the two Duchies is garnered from rent paid by taxpayer funded organisations who occupy their land, including the NHS, state schools, the prison service, and even the Ministry of Defence. Other organisations paying rents that go directly into the back of the Farahs of this thieving pair include many charities, such as Comic Relief, Marie Curie, and Macmillan. All three, by the way, enjoy royal patronage. Things starting to become clear yet? It is a scam, embezzlement, a wealth transfer, and we, the people, are paying for it. Oh, and one more thing, neither William nor Charles is obliged to pay Income Tax. That’s right. Remember that next time you look at a payslip and see the obscene number taken from your own hard-earned salary. In yet another smoke and mirrors move, however, the dodgy duo voluntarily pay Income Tax, but only on what they self-declare is left after spending on public activity. You can bet your bottom dollar that some very creative accounting goes on at year-end in their private offices, to keep this figure at the bare minimum.

So, while presenting as a pearl-clutching philanthropist, who is so desperately concerned with the plight of the poor homeless of this land, Wily Willy is, as we say down my way, a robbing bastard. As is his sausage-fingered father. It is worth remembering, too, that the eyewatering money received from the profits of their private estates is in addition to the money paid directly to the royal family by us, the taxpayers, via their sovereign grant, which, perhaps because they simply cannot manage on their current income, poor lambs, is increasing by over 50% this year. I wrote about that here.

Do not be fooled by this crooked family. They are not like us. William chucked some hoops on a basketball court with a few disadvantaged poor kids in Sheffield, and served Christmas dinner to a hall full of homeless people, all filmed, of course, for the documentary. Well, so what? How has that changed any of those people’s lives for the better? The patronising prince still went home to his palace, shouted at some servants, and ate a hearty meal of all the finest foods money can buy, before being tucked into a four-poster bed with the finest linens, all safe and warm. And all paid for by us, at the expense of those poor, disadvantaged people who truly need helping. The royals are on the take at every possibly opportunity, despite already having more money than they could ever spend in a lifetime. While the so-called King’s government impose crippling taxes upon the rest of us, ‘the people’, remember how these royal cretins are living: in absolute splendour, never having to go without anything, and never having to worry about how the bills will be paid. The Dispatches programme includes this excruciating clip from back in 2020 of Charles and Camilla participating in the horrendously embarrassing ‘clap for the NHS’. They look like a pair of gormless idiots, clapping like seals, but in light of what we now know, no wonder they were applauding, unable to keep the deranged grins from their faces. They’re making a fat packet of £11.4million from the NHS! That’ll keep Camilla in hair dye for a bit longer I should think. The royals are laughing their Fortnum & Mason finest cashmere socks off at us. If ever there was a time to call for their abolition, it is now.