The whole point about using a link to a source is that readers can trace and check it for themselves if they wish. If you’d clicked on the link I posted you would have found this:
If you want to claim that Glorious Britain don’t know what they’re talking about or can provide contradictory information that’s fine. But the fact that you personally haven’t heard of the attractions listed is of no significance, and you shouldn’t make unqualified claims on behalf of the American public generally. The one’s I’ve seen on the London Eye or shopping in Covent Garden have certainly heard of them.
If I’d claimed that Hampton Court was only three percentage points behind Windsor without providing the figures to back it up then I may very well have given a misleading impression. As it is you can all see for yourselves what the full breakdown was and draw any conclusions that are appropriate.
Joetimg: I’m not being deliberately argumentative, but you’ve missed the point of what I’ve said. You can’t just say that “most people are interested in seeing [Buckingham Palace] if they are nearby” without explaining what you mean by “most people” and where you’re getting your information from. Personal opinions without backup are OK in the IMHO forum, but this one is supposed to provide factual answers to questions raised, so even if what you’re saying is a commonly-held point of view, or if you and I both agree with it, it’s still not appropriate for this forum.
I think that we are all agreed that the cost of keeping Queen Elizabeth as head of state is quite small, compared to the balls-ups that Tone makes us all pay for.
I am a royalist, a happy subject of Her Majesty, her idiot son, and so on.
One argument in favour of all Brits thinking like me is to consider who Tone has to replace Her Majesty as head of state.
Lets see…there’s Kinnock, Hattersly or Prescot from the Labour hall of fame. From business, Sir Bernard Ecclestone or Sir Richard Branston. Or a worldwide superstar, Sir Mick Jagger, David Beckham pehaps.
And the winner is…ye gods!!!..Peter Mandleson.
So we won’t have to change the National Anthem.
Actually, everton, the Windsor Castle/Hampton Court comparison is an interesting one, but only if you use reliable statistics. Stopping a random selection of tourists and asking them what sites are ‘cool’ proves next to nothing. What matters is where they spend their money. The latest comparable figures for visitor numbers that I can find for both Windsor and Hampton Court are from 1998, in other words, pre-BSE, pre-foot and mouth, pre-9/11. (It’s finding later figures for Hampton Court that’s the problem - the annual reports of the Historic Royal Palaces don’t give detailed breakdowns.) The figures were 1,495,000 for Windsor and 605,000 for Hampton Court.
I’m fairly certain that, as a rule of thumb, Windsor attracts about twice as many tourists as Hampton Court. Why? Neither is in central London and yet both are relatively easy to get to. The costs are similar. Arguably, Hampton Court even has the edge over Windsor in resonant historical associations, as it has the whole Henry-VIII-and-his-Six-Wives thing going for it. Since the early 1990s the HRP have marketed Hampton Court very aggressively, much more so than the Royal Household ever does for Windsor. It is therefore difficult to avoid the conclusion that one of the magic ingredients in Windsor’s success is the fact that the Queen still lives there.
That’s a circular argument. The only reason people think that she’s worth £250 million or whatever is by assuming that she’s making a profit on her investments. What information there is - such as Lord Airlie’s statement in 1992 that she was worth significantly less than £100 million or the analyses that have been done of transactions by the Bank of England Nominees Ltd (the company through which she makes her investments) - actually suggest that her investment income is nowhere near as bouyant than is usually assumed. One explanation is that, as Northern Piper has pointed out, she, not the taxpayer, has to subsidise the minor members of the family.