Those Who Inform Themselves Are In A Position To Make Good Decisions!

Those who inform themselves are in a position to make good decisions!

Those who vote have a voice, don't let them take it away from you.

One voice is silent, but a million is not!

Register and vote, those who say you only have to vote once and never again are just trying to silence you!

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Democracy needs citizens to strengthen it, and that means having a voice. VOTE

What a great, rich lady! She was lucky enough to receive a little state support.

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We would absolutely be grinning from ear to ear if the state were to give us so much money.

The British royal family is seen as an integral part of established class society and its continued existence is supported by an annual state subsidy. It is believed that without this financial support, the royal family would not be able to maintain their lifestyle.

What a load of bullshit.... they even have a voice in the house of lords when it comes to taxing the royal family. Full insight into the potential legislation beforehand.... fuck is that cool, or course with veto right.

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What the British pay for their monarchy.

Profits from leasing land

The more complicated calculation looks somewhat different. This is because King Charles III has other income than just the direct state grants. He has income from the Duchy of Lancaster. These are profits from the leasing of land and other property. The Duchy yields around £20 million a year. The royal family also owns the Duchy of Cornwall, which also generates profits of a similar amount that are distributed to Prince William. A special feature for the King: he does not have to pay any taxes, i.e. neither income tax nor capital gains tax or even inheritance tax. Since 1993, however, the Queen has paid taxes on a voluntary basis.

The ‘Republic’ organisation, which campaigns for an end to the monarchy and for an elected head of state, presents a completely different account. In 2017, the pressure group presented a report in which the authors came to the conclusion that the royal family costs taxpayers £345 million (393 million euros) per year. The calculation also includes the costs of securing the royals and the properties. It also includes the costs of buildings that are owned by the state but used by the royal family, for example.

Monarchs.

Estimated assets of two billion euros

In recent weeks, there has been widespread reporting on the King's wealth. The Guardian newspaper has worked with a team of reporters and wealth specialists to calculate how much Charles III owns. According to the report, the king has 1.8 billion pounds (2.05 billion euros). He owns a fleet of 23 cars, numerous works of art, very valuable jewellery, horses and shares in companies. The family owns Balmoral Castle in Scotland as well as the seat in Sandringham and the Duchy of Lancaster. There are no official figures. The palace did not comment on the estimates, but called the figures ‘a creative mix of speculation, assumptions and inaccuracy’.

In the debate about the king's finances and the costs of the monarchy, one thing stands out above all else: There is a lack of transparency

In the 2024 financial year, which ended on 31 March of that year, the British royal family received state remuneration of around £86.3 million. This means that state remuneration remained constant compared to the previous year.

All the king's wealth

Charles III inherits a considerable fortune from his mother - tax-free. The royal family owns entire duchies, lucrative roads and dilapidated palaces.

The operating costs for the British monarchy are primarily met by the Crown Estate, the management company for the royal estates. These are the properties that belong to the monarchy as an institution and not to the monarch personally - and which make a tidy profit.

These include, for example, estates and properties such as the entire high-priced Regent Street in the heart of London, but also offshore wind farms off the coast, collections of paintings and shopping centres. The total value of the Estate's assets is estimated at more than 15 billion pounds, the equivalent of more than 17 billion euros.

More money for a dilapidated palace

Normally, 15 per cent of Crown Estate profits go to the monarch, which is usually the equivalent of around 50 million euros a year. This is used to finance staff, travel and palace maintenance - as well as facilities that the monarch supports. This 15 per cent rate was increased to 25 per cent in 2017 - which currently amounts to almost 100 million euros. A hefty, temporary supplement to renovate Buckingham Palace.

If the British government's report on the state of the palace is to be believed, the palace is now a shambles: in some of the 775 rooms, buckets are reportedly already being used to catch the drips from the ceiling. For 60 years, too little has been done in terms of maintenance, and now the craftsmen have to get to work, for ten years and around 430 million euros - financed by the Crown Estate. The electrics are outdated, the heating urgently needs to be replaced, as does the pipework, otherwise there is a serious risk of fire and water, says the government.

King Charles III owns a total of 92 properties - and they are extremely valuable

How much is too much?

According to Forbes, King Charles III's property portfolio now consists of 7 palaces, 10 castles, 12 houses, 56 holiday homes and 14 ancient ruins - which also have a high value. However, as the media rightly emphasise, he does not own the properties directly. They belong to the Crown Estate, the Duchy of Lancaster and the Duchy of Cornwall and are administered by the Crown. However, four estates are owned by two trusts that the Regent established when he was still Prince. Two of these estates are in Rome, the others in the United Kingdom.

One might be forgiven for questioning the collective intelligence of a people who would choose to engage in such an activity.

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Today marks the second anniversary of the death of Queen Elizabeth II -September 8th 2024.

Two years ago (on September 8th 2022), The late Queen died around 3pm at Balmoral Castle in Scotland.

You are incredibly missed. Thank you for everything Ma'am!

Perfection is sometimes also the death of the crass anarchy of creativity.

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The journey from the roots to today also reflects the technical possibilities and the evolution of viewing habits of ever new groups of viewers, ultimately a great development but also a loss.

But that is always in the eye of the spectator.

Animation cels from The Simpsons, back when they were still nice and ugly, and part of the Tracy Ullman Show. Circa 1987.

The interesting thing is that nobody is allowed to forge your passport or ID card and it is illegal to steal your identity, but you are not granted data sovereignty.

So we don't have the right to see all the data of everyone here, for example the boss of Toyota, their movements, their driving behaviour and so on. .... was a joke, which of course was also meant for the tech industry.

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If you had the choice, it would be nice to have the choice to sell your data yourself, or simply not make it usable and therefore not sell it.

No, you don't have data sovereignty, it's the gold of the present and the future to make us look at even more crap. To make us a tailor-made offer in our data bubbles.

You're driving on the motorway and suddenly your smartphone, controlled by the car and other factors, tells you to drive out of here because there's exactly the food you like so much, or you get a crappy insurance rate because your car has transmitted your driving behaviour to the insurance company.

The data octopuses create professional behavioural profiles and you really have the illusion of being free when you are so predictable and predictable. The wolves know what the sheep are doing and even make money from them without pulling the wool over their eyes.

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It needs to be established internationally at the UN that personal data belongs to the individual and that you have to ask them if they want to sell it.

I don't know of any company that would give up their data if they didn't have to, and it's just data!

They all cast about for customer data, citizens.... in order to be able to calculate them in the good case they just want to sell something in the bad case they use your behaviour against you..... social scoring in China this is how you control sheep that could become dangerous to the wolf.

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The best thing is that almost the app we use sucks our data and we even voluntarily allow this because we are simply too lazy to read the small print and to configure the rights accordingly, which said, no, only technically necessary data nothing more.

The Israeli Minister of Defence has announced the commencement of a new phase of hostilities.

Explosions of walkie-talkies have been reported in Lebanon, resulting in casualties.

Israel has described this as a new phase of the war. Following the detonation of pagers on Tuesday, further explosions occurred in Lebanon. It would appear that walkie-talkies were the source of the explosion. As was the case the previous day, numerous members of the pro-Iranian Hezbollah were reportedly affected, according to information provided by Lebanese security sources.

What is the number of victims? The Lebanese Ministry of Health has thus far reported 14 fatalities and 450 injuries resulting from the walkie-talkie explosions. However, it is possible that the number of victims may continue to rise overnight.

In a dramatic turn of events, the Israeli attack on Hezbollah fighters has left everyone on the edge of their seats.

The manufacturer of the communication devices has stepped forward to deny any responsibility, adding another layer of intrigue to this fast-developing story.

New paper more or less

Now the next stage of escalation management, to really provoke a war that will drag the whole region down with it, only needs one more drop.

What Israel has done here is unprecedented and will probably be used in the future as a measure by anyone who wants to get rid of unwanted people.

It is an unprecedented breach of the blueprint that manifests power.

They could have detonated the pagers at night when all the people they were targeting were asleep. After all, people keep their telephones, or in this case pagers, within reach by their beds.

But no, that would not have been the message Israel wanted to send. A dead man in bed at night is just too unspectacular. It has to be a public show of force, a manifestation of horror, we'll get you and the population should see it!

The inhuman military strategists are not interested in innocent victims. This is accepted as a matter of course to show that they are well fortified and will stop at nothing to show it.

Unfortunately, the sword has two edges: violence begets counter-violence, and by the same means.

Every Israeli citizen in the world is now a target, every embassy, every Israeli company and institution. It used to be local, but now it is everywhere, because it was a manifesto in front of the world.

Israeli institutions have always been at risk, but now these actions have created a new security challenge for everyone involved.

Hats off. With Gaza and this affair, Israel has done itself no favours. It's a Pyrrhic victory if things go badly.

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Instead of defusing the conflict, the Israeli government is doing everything it can to create clear camps so that each nation will have to decide which side it is on when the real fighting begins in the Middle East and the Mediterranean.

What they are doing in Gaza is impressively inhumane and will create hatred for generations.

It may have once been good against evil, but it is no longer good when those who consider themselves good can use the means of evil, you can assume that the difference no longer exists.

Hatred and revenge will be the harvest, not security and freedom.

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حماك الله من كراهيتك

שאלוהים ישמור עליך משנאתך

We hope you find it in your heart to forgive and forget.

Sometimes all you really need is someone to sit under the tree tops with you.

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And maybe one more pink drink to make the end of the summer a little more bearable.