Yep - Windsor Castle is owned by the The Crown Estate

So, pray tell, why didn't the obscenely-wealthy Crown Estate stump up after the fire? actually, you need to check your facts here.

Frankly, using Windsor Castle as your private home in every possible sense, including housing 500 of your staff there, holding state banquets there, using it as her weekend retreat, frequently entertaining foreign big-knobs in it, allowing the state to pay for its upkeep, yet wringing your hands when it get damaged and letting other people pay for it, is a bit like keeping most of your fortune offshore. All of the benefit, none of the responsibility!


Opening up Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle to the public and charging an entrance fee paid for the rest.

Tight-fisted gits! Yet they won't open them all the year round, which would raise even more revenue. Odd that The White House manages to do it.


So, not taxpayers but tourism which, according to ""Detractors 'r Us"" is a myth put about to hide the robbing of taxpayers.

If that's supposed to mean me, I didn't say that tourism was a myth, simply that it has never been demonstrated that tourism is increased by the existence of the royals. Windsor Castle is the only royal connection in the top 20 tourist attractions, coming in at a miserable 17th place, and France, which has no monarchy, gets almost three times as many tourists as we do.

To quote www.republic.org.uk, which see, There is a great deal of confusion in the media, and in public perceptions, about what property belongs to the Queen and what belongs to the taxpayer. The royal rule of thumb is simple: it's theirs when they want to use it, it's ours when someone has to pay for it.