Just Facebook nowadays. Mostly grandchild pics and cats.
I don’t know the answer to that specific question, but after the patriation of the Canadian constitution in 1982, several Canadian officials who had contact with Her Majesty said that she was better informed on the nuances of the Canadian political debate than most of the British politicians they had to deal with.
Not in this jurisdiction anyway.
While the Australian Governor General is the Sovereign’s representative in Australia and is is appointed by the Sovereign, the Governor-General is in no sense a delegate of the Queen.
The Australian Constitution places all constitutional powers (other than the appointment of the Governor-General, in the hands of the Governor-General;
the Governor-General exercises these constitutional powers in their own right,
and that the Governor-General’s powers can not be exercised by the Sovereign, even when they are in Australia.
Apparently Her Majesty can exercise her powers in person when she’s in Australia, but only because she was granted that ability by an act of Parliament.
The role of the monarchy in each Commonwealth Realm really does vary enormously. Obviously in the UK the Queen has a direct presence and so more visible role, but in other Realms the monarchy’s activity ranges from being the ‘boss’ of the Governor-General to being little more than the person on the money (if that). That’s because each Realm is a fully sovereign, independent state, and Elizabeth is monarch of each Realm separately, not by virtue of being simply monarch of the UK.
That was done so QEII could act as Head of State during a royal visit, she didn’t at that time and that allowance has since been revoked.
It seemed to slip the attention of British PMs advising Queen Victoria (and a fair few Australian Ministers) that a peculiarity in the then proposed Australian Constitution was that the reserve powers and functions of the state were vested in the GG, rather than the Monarch (as say in Canada).
In 1900 Queen Victoria signed documents relating to the constitution of the Commonwealth of Australia and included Royal Instructions to the Governor-General on their constitutional duties. There was a learned school of opinion at the time that these Royal Instructions were unconstitutional.
The early Governors-General were British civil servants appointed by the Sovereign on the advice of British Ministers with the role of representing. British interests. The first major shake of the tree was in 1930 with PM Scullin’s insistence on the right to recommend Sir Isaac Isaacs as Australia’s first Australian-born Governor-General.
In 1953 PM Robert Menzies wanted to involve QEII in some of the formal processes of government during the Royal Visit in 1954. Advice was provided that this could not be done without constitutional change. So as Plan B the Royal Powers Act 1953 was passed to enable the Queen, whenever in Australia, to exercise the statutory power of the Governor-General when advised by her Australian Ministers
But the 1953 Act also stated that the Governor-General would continue to exercise any of their statutory powers even while the Queen was in Australia.
QEII did not act under this authority during the visit (which would have arguably meant Australia had two Heads of State) and as it turns out the Queen has never performed any duties as Australia’s Head of State.
In 1984 the Hawke Government asked QEII to revoke the anomaly of the Royal Instructions of 1900.
The Queen continues perform the constitutional duties of Sovereign and Queen of Australia; the Governor-General performs all of the duties of the Head of State.
Also it should be made plain that no Commonwealth Realm apart from the UK pays any tax money to the monarchy.
Except for when there’s a royal visit, of course. But the relevant government has to approve those in advance.
And in the UK, accounting trickery is used to try to make it look like none is spent there either (treating the revenue generated by the Crown Estate as something other than public funds, assigning costs to other entities whenever possible, and so forth).
Yes, but then it’s like a visit by a foreign Head of State, which is also paid for by the host country.
I’m not sure what you mean. The Crown Estate is a portfolio of property and the revenue from that is handed to the Treasury annually (and a cut from that goes to the Palace for costs). What’s wrong with that? No other country to my knowledge funds their Head of State this way, and it (arguably, I’m not insisting upon it) replaces funding via taxation. And as for assigning costs to other entities, could you elaborate? Are you referring to, for example, travel costs being through the Department for Transport?
Nothing’s inherently wrong with it. It’s just that most explanations of the Crown Estate seem to gloss over the meaning of the first word. It gets treated as some kind of magnanimous gift by the Queen to her Treasury for which she’s only partially remunerated, rather than the revenue generated by crown (i.e. state) property being correctly assigned to the body that handles the crown’s money.
Basing funding for the monarchy on a percentage of the Crown Estate’s haul (as is now done under the Sovereign Grant system) is fundamentally no different than tying it to a percentage of the income tax collected by the Inland Revenue, or to the visa application fees collected by the Home Office, but there is no (largely apocryphal or at least misunderstood) story about George III ruefully giving up his right to keep visa application fees in exchange for the civil list so that would never go over well.
Yes, and to some extent it’s unavoidable and everybody does it*, but just security alone likely costs double or triple the amount given in the current Sovereign Grant but is buried in the allocation given to (I think) the Home Office.
*The president of the USA is officially given a paltry $100,000 annually for official travel and another $50,000 for other expenses.
Except for when there’s a royal visit, of course. But the relevant government has to approve those in advance
[/QUOTE]
When the Canadian government pays for travel and security expenses for a Royal visit in Canada, that is not a tax paid to the monarchy. It’s a federal government expense, with the money spent here in Canada. No money is shipped overseas to Her Majesty or the British government.
Ah, I see what you mean. Yes, it’s not a selfless gift but a mutual agreement to achieve personal aims, indeed. 
I understand that’s because there is no dedicated security for the royals, but it’s pooled into the same service as that which protects Ministers of the Crown, as well.
The Queen doesn’t even have her own train or yacht these days, let alone a private jet.
On a similar note, the British press ‘silly season’ is in full swing, with the latest scoop being a Twitter video of the Prime Minister being caught eating Pringles on a budget airline while flying back from his Portuguese holiday.
One aspect that no-one’s mentioned is that the Commonwealth countries do all maintain diplomatic links, albeit called High Commissions rather than Embassies, and I’d imagine the Foreign and Commonweath Office would work with her own staff to pass on summaries of their regular reports from British High Commissions as with all the other information coming in to them. Plus, no doubt, the Commonwealth High Commissioners in London would be invited in for receptions and garden parties and the like, just as the representatives of any other country would be, but possibly more often and in a more relaxed way.
But I don’t think there are any published statistics on that.
Paprika flavour too! What’s wrong with good old British cheese and onion, eh? Bloody EUSSR etc etc etc
They also get some additional perks like more horses pulling their diplomatic carriage when they come to Buckingham Palace to hand over their credentials 
The Crown Estate, however, originated in the era when the king and the state were effectively the same. Income from the king’s own manors was lumped together with income from land taxes, judicial fines, etc., to pay the costs of the king’s own entourage, his military, his judicial system, and the other costs of civil government. What the king earned as a landlord was paid in the Exchequer just the same as what his tax collectors gathered, and it might be used to buy a new warship or a new wardrobe for the queen: it was all one single pot of money.
It was only gradually that the king’s personal household separated from the machinery of government. Until the reign of George III, however, the king’s personal income still went into that big pot, and under the arrangements made between Parliament and the later Stuarts, the king received a “Civil List” out of which he paid his own expenses AND many of the expenses of civil government. (That’s where the term originated: military expenses came out of a separate pot, but the king’s Civil List appropriation paid for the civil servants and judges and ambassadors who kept the state running.)
George III cut a new deal: he’d give up the income of the Crown Estate in return for a new Civil List allotment that only had to pay the expenses of the royal household, and Parliament got to fund the civil government directly. The Sovereign Grant Act recognizes that the process of establishing the Civil List allotment had become politicized and divorced from economic reality (the 2010 allotment was the same amount as in 1991, e.g.), and so reverted to the concept of giving (a portion of) the income from what had been the personal property of the monarch back to the monarch.
Visa application fees never belonged to the monarch personally, nor did Inland Revenue’s income taxes, but the Crown Estate originated as personal property, so yes, there is a distinction.
The High Commissioners come ahead of the Ambassadors in the order of precedence - it’s High Commissioners in order of seniority (determined by date of accreditation to London, Ambassador of the Republic of Ireland, other Ambassadors in order of seniority.