ninme

This is hilarious. Go Chuck!

Telegraph - Perhaps Prince Charles should run the NHS. By Alice Thomson

Isn’t it time MPs were more scrutinised? They are off on another three-month holiday, their pensions are among the best in Britain, they receive generous petrol allowances, first-class tickets to their constituencies, subsidised canteen food and second homes, free central London parking, and, in the case of the Prime Minister, wonderful holidays from Italy to the Bahamas.

If the House of Commons were a business, they’d cut the number of MPs in half, increase the sitting hours and slash their expenses.

Ooh, here too, please.

But instead it’s the Prince of Wales again. The Public Accounts Committee has been auditing the Duchy of Cornwall. They are appalled that the Prince of Wales seems to have been managing his affairs so well. The revenue from the estate has almost doubled from £6.9 million in 1999, to £13.2 million in the last published accounts.

Yes!

So why do they want the Prince to step down from running the duchy?

Eight years ago, the report would have been timely. Cool Britannia ruled. Britain wanted the new not the old and the country was embarrassed by its kilt-wearing Prince. Now the Royal Family has cleaned up its act. The minor royals pay rent. The Prince of Wales pays income tax of 40 per cent. And Britain wants its old institutions again.

I think they’re jealous.

The MPs insist on meddling but while the Royal Family may call itself the Firm, the duchy is not a public company. The estate was created by Edward III in 1337 with the specific aim of securing financial independence for his son. It incorporates 56,000 hectares of residential, commercial and agricultural land, including the Oval, farms and prisons, estimated to be worth about £500 million. It’s more like a family trust.

It already has a system of checks and balances, and is more transparent that any government department. Prince Charles does not have access to the estate’s capital. He draws the surplus revenue which he uses to pay for both his private and public expenditure. The estate must ask the Treasury for permission for any capital expenditure over £200,000.

And organic!

The committee is complaining that Prince Charles exerts too great an influence on how much revenue the estate yields. He personally hires those responsible for managing the duchy. What they are really irritated about is that he is making so much money. He’s become a surprisingly good businessmen. He has an astute team of directors. He’s turned Duchy Originals - his organic food range - into a commercial success. It now makes £1 million a year profit, which goes to charity.

See? Organic. My mother told me years ago that the one time she ever actually heard something Prince Charles said (in those days Diana tended to monopolize that relationship’s press) he said something about environmentalism that was bordering on insanely-off-the-wall. So good for him for making money and having the brains to make a sustainable environmentally beneficial business!

If he is doing so well he should be paying corporation tax and capital gains tax, according to the PAC. But if they do this they are treating the estate like a multinational. Prince Charles already pays income tax on the money that he takes out of the duchy, and 70 per cent of the revenue goes on official and charitable duties rather than his butlers and Savile Row suits. What businessman is expected to cut so many ribbons or open so many shows?

Prince Charles receives no income from the Civil List: he funds everything, except his travel arrangements, from the Duchy of Cornwall. And he uses some of his revenue to run his charitable ventures. Over the years, he has helped to raise £109 million for his causes.

If Prince Charles were a playboy prince who had let the duchy run to rack and ruin he would have been fair game. If he suddenly starts spending his inheritance on gambling, then the Chancellor and the MPs should get involved. But the Chancellor has made it clear this week that he has no gripes, and the Prince of Wales is looking far more hardworking than many MPs.

Yeah! Take that!

He is seen as a fuddy-duddy but he has shown remarkable prescience in some of the causes he has championed over the years. First is his interest in Islam. He has never been a proponent of multi-culturalism, preferring to encourage newcomers to engage with Britain, but he has been determined to learn about their faith, and to make Muslims feel included. Suddenly everyone is talking about Britishness but Prince Charles has been promoting it for years. With David Blunkett, he encouraged the rise of citizenship ceremonies.

Tony Blair has recently started talking about “respect” and issuing Asbos to counteract the “hoodied yob culture”. Prince Charles, through his Prince’s Trust, has spent decades trying to help disadvantaged children break the mould. The Prince was obsessed by the environment long before every heatwave led to a discussion about global warming. He was railing against bad food in schools years before Jamie Oliver sucked his first turkey twizzler.

I think he’s terrific. I like him more and more with every year. Who saw his cameo appearance on Ground Force? I thought that was sweet.

The Royal Family are particularly good in a crisis (as long as it’s not of their own making). After years of meeting victims of disasters and atrocities, the Prince knew what to say when he visited those injured in the July 7 bombings.

But what about the marriage which started so inauspiciously, a day late, at Windsor register office? One hundred days later, it is looking pretty rosy. The new Duchess of Cornwall may be in her fifties, but she has managed to rejuvenate the Firm. Camilla has even been credited as the next style icon. “Move over chavs, it’s time to dress like a duchess,” says The Times fashion editor. “Are we witnessing the tender blossoming of a Camilla fashion moment?”

I think so.

Designers suddenly think she can’t put a foot wrong. Azzedine Alaia summed it up, saying: “She’s starting to look rather wonderful, isn’t she?” The Daily Mail calls her the next Queen Mother and admires her array of suits and matching shoes. She has proved surprisingly good at opening fetes and wearing hats.

I never thought she looked bad. Newspapers always liked to use bad pictures of her next to lovely ones of Diana. Like those before and after pics of anti-wrinkle cream in bad magazines, where the girl is scowling in the “before” and sunnily smiling in the “after”. It kept the narrative going.

The Prince of Wales can be criticised for other things, his love of grandeur, his notes to his secretaries. But not his business sense. At the rate he is going with the duchy, we should be making him chairman of some other ailing British institutions - the NHS for a start.

Thank you, Alice.