Government bails out Mrs Windsor !!!

The economy is not very good, but yet the bastards in the scumbag 'nasty party' can fine monies to bail out Mrs Windsor because her estates have 'suffered' due to Covid - 19 !!!

This could be yet another incentive to ditch the monarchy altogether and have a Republic !!!


Queen to receive government ‘bailout’ to top up income after Crown Estate hit by economic slump
‘This royal bailout will be tough to stomach for people who love the Queen but have lost their jobs,’ says Tax Justice UK

Adam Forrest@adamtomforrest
1 day ago
18 comments

Boris Johnson’s government has confirmed it will top up the Queen’s income following a significant slump in the Crown Estate’s revenue during the coronavirus crisis.

The royal family takes in rental receipts from shops in London’s Regent Street, alongside malls and retail parks around the country – but the value of its portfolio has fallen by more than £500m since the pandemic hit.

The Treasury said it would provide the estate with extra money to meet any shortfall in profits and make sure the Queen’s sovereign grant remains at its current level.

“In the event of a reduction in the Crown Estate’s profits, the sovereign grant is set at the same level as the previous year,” a spokesperson said told The Independent.

“The revenue from the Crown Estate helps pay for our vital public services – over the last 10 years it has returned a total of £2.8bn to the Exchequer. The sovereign grant funds the official business of the monarchy, and does not provide a private income to any member of the royal family.”
More details on the next sovereign grant are expected to be set out on Friday – but legislation governing the formula prevents the overall amount given to the Queen from ever being allowed to fall.

Graham Smith, of the anti-monarchy campaign group Republic, described it as a “golden ratchet”, adding: “Once the grant goes up it can never come down, and the taxpayer loses out.”

Robert Palmer, the head of Tax Justice UK, added: “This royal bailout will be tough to stomach for people who love the Queen but have lost their jobs and businesses during the pandemic.”

Any profits made by the Crown Estate are passed to the Treasury which, in turn, hands 25 per cent of the profits back to the Queen through the sovereign grant.

However, the Crown Estate announced last week a fall in the value of its rental portfolio by £55m to £13.4bn – a drop of 1.2 per cent.

An agreement with the Treasury means the estate has begun making “staggered” revenue payments to the government.

Dan Labbad, the Crown Estate’s chief executive, said: “The current economic and market disruption has led us to take the precaution, with the agreement of the Treasury, of implementing a staged process for the payment of the whole of our net revenue profit.”



Contrast the wonderful news for Mrs Windsor, with the bad news for the rest of the population !!!


Coronavirus: Millions of poorest families to lose £20 a week as Rishi Sunak fails to extend support
Uplift to payments worth £1,000 a year ends in March 2021
Six million of the UK’s poorest households could suffer a £20-a-week hit to their income as a result of yesterday’s winter economy plan by chancellor Rishi Sunak.

As he set out plans for an estimated £5bn support for jobs and businesses, Mr Sunak made clear that he was not extending a temporary boost to universal credit payments introduced for the coronavirus crisis and due to end in March.

As a result, families dependent on benefits – and those who lose their jobs in an expected wave of redundancies as the chancellor’s furlough scheme ends in November – could face a loss of income of around £1,000 a year.

The move comes despite the chancellor telling MPs that it was now clear that the impact of Covid-19, which had been expected to be temporary when the welfare boost was implemented, will result in a “permanent adjustment” to the UK economy.

And it comes at a time when ministers are acting to ensure that heavily Conservative-backing pensioners do not lose out from the crisis, by legislating to ensure them an inflation-busting rise in the state pension.

Legislation introduced on Wednesday will override rules which prevent pension hikes at a time when wages are falling, allowing ministers to deliver a 2.5 per cent increase for the elderly in April under the “triple lock” arrangement.


The Resolution Foundation think tank said the chancellor’s decisions would inflict a “major living standards squeeze” on the worst-off this winter, at a time when unemployment could be at its highest level in a generation.

“Those flowing onto universal credit will not only see much larger hits to their incomes, but the chancellor yesterday missed the opportunity to avoid a further shock by extending the temporary boost to universal credit beyond March,” said the think tank.

And Louisa McGeehan, director of policy at the Child Poverty Action Group, said: “The £20 increase in universal credit has been a lifeline to many families during the pandemic. It will continue to be needed well beyond next spring given the bleak economic outlook.

"To remove this increase in UC would lead to 350,000 more children growing up in poverty. The children of the pandemic deserve more given how much they have lost in education and other opportunities.”

Mr Sunak was urged by SNP employment spokesman Neil Gray to make the uplift permanent.

Universal Credit failing millions as current design ‘punishes poorest’, says Lords report

But he responded: “The temporary increase in universal credit lasts all the way through to the end of March next year already and for those who are most vulnerable, as I previously said, we’ve provided significant enhanced support through the welfare system.

“As our analysis showed in the summer, the interventions that this Conservative government has made over the past several months have made the most difference to those on the lowest incomes.”

Foundation director Torsten Bell also challenged the design of the chancellor’s job support scheme, which will replace furlough arrangements from November, providing state support only for workers able to do a third or more of their normal hours.

The scheme requires employers to pay one-third of wages for unworked hours by staff on short-time, with the state picking up the bill for another third and the employee losing the rest. It means that overall employers will pay at least 55 per cent of wages for staff working as little as 33 per cent of their normal hours.

But Mr Bell said that this would often make it more cost-effective for firms to keep on one full-time worker rather than two on short-time arrangements.

Resolution Foundation analysis found that it would cost a firm £1,500 to employ one full-time worker on £17,000, but over £2,000 a month to employ two half-time workers on the same full-time equivalent salary. One full-time worker on £10,000 would cost £800 a month, compared to £1,100 a month for two half-time workers.

A similar scheme in Germany has “a track record of encouraging firms to cut hours rather than jobs” because it does not require employers to pay wages for hours when staff are not working, the think tank said.

But the Treasury said that the Foundation’s analysis did not reflect the real world, in which most businesses would prefer to keep staff on because of the value of their skills, experience and attachment to their company.

Mr Bell said: “While the chancellor has rightly aimed to create a European-style short-hours working scheme, design flaws mean that the new job support scheme will not live up to its promise to significantly reduce the rise in unemployment. Those mistakes could be addressed by scrapping the poorly targeted £7.5bn job retention bonus, and using those funds to ensure the new support scheme gives firms the right incentives to cut hours rather than jobs.

The Foundation estimated that the job support scheme could cost £4.2bn over six months if three million workers take advantage of it while working half their usual hours.