linky

The “duchy” has raked in more than £60 million in such funds over the last decade, which it has claimed was being donated to charity. But “internal duchy documents” (yes, this is a real thing) show that much of the funds are actually being used to renovate the king’s real-estate holdings, some of which are then rented out for his own profit

Apparently, Queen Elizabeth II approved using these bona vacantia funds for upgrades in 1987 and again in 2019. Such renovations include double-glazed windows (nice!), log burners, and new roofs. In one case, an old farmhouse was renovated partially using these so-called bona vacantia funds, only to be rented out as a four-bedroom home for £1,450 per month.

The feudal-era practice was signed into law by the Parliament in 1925 but, as The Guardian reports, “why this was done is not known.” Meanwhile, it has helped King Charles, a landlord, amass a private fortune that is estimated to be worth £1.8 billion.

    • Great_Leader_Is_Dead
      ·
      7 months ago

      He had a really bad video defending the British monarchy cuz "muh tourist money". Ignoring French killed their monarchy and still get buckoo tourist bucks.

      He also took a Telsa to the "most dangerous road in America" to test out the self driving. Said road was a well paved two lane in Kentucky that's only dangerous cuz it attracts a bunch of motorsports enthusiasts, and he was clearly there at a time where there was hardly anyone there. So yeah the autopilot works okay on bendy well paved roads, Whoopty Doo! Even his fans kinda called him out on that one.

      I'm sure he's a perfect pleasant human being but he's clearly a naive tech bro lib who thinks everything would be awesome if le epic science nerds ran everything.

      • Kosh [she/her]
        ·
        7 months ago

        Buckingham palace is a dump too.

        Versailles is fucking really nice and it comes with the bonus of knowing that the family that lived there all got got.

      • Infamousblt [any]
        ·
        7 months ago

        Oh yikes. Libs can make treats if they keep their lib shit to themselves but...sounds like he can't manage that.

      • Wheaties [comrade/them]
        ·
        7 months ago

        Since we're talking about him;

        I kinda think he's pivotal to a lot of techbro brain-worms getting treated as though they're the default common sense position. Like, his neutral classroom-friendly presentation acts to cover and launder a lot of ideology. The Simple Solution to Traffic is probably the most obvious example, and I'd guess it's the one with the largest impact (hint: he doesn't think trains are the 'solution'). Perhaps the most egregious, though, is Why Die? and it's companion video Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant. The former argues the usual techbro nonsense about the end of death being just around the corner -- maybe even within your lifetime! And the latter is a narrated animation of a children's book written by Nick Bostrom.

        It's not just limited to specific videos. Usually the topic is well researched and educational, but the brainworms leak in through visuals and tangential comments. Go back through the archive, he used to throw in references to bitcoin whenever he could (doesn't do that one so much now, interestingly...). There's these two videos, How to be a Pirate Captain and How to be a Pirate Quartermaster, which are actually a really interesting look at how pirates organized themselves in the early/pre-modern era -- but in one of them he just flat out claims that DNA decides your personality.

        • jack [he/him, comrade/them]
          ·
          7 months ago

          I think Versailles is the most popular tourist destination on Earth. It gets more tourists than every British Royal thing combined

          • SoyViking [he/him]
            ·
            7 months ago

            It makes sense as the absence of royalty makes the places publicly accessible.

            What would appeal to you the most as a tourist?

            • Look at this nice palace. King Bob lives there, or
            • Look at this nice palace. The Bob dynasty used to live there but now it is a museum where you can go and see all the pretty artwork and artifacts.
      • CrushKillDestroySwag
        ·
        7 months ago

        I got to ride in a Tesla recently, the autopilot literally failed within thirty seconds of pulling away from my house where it tried to cross the double yellow on the road right outside my neighborhood. After that my uncle said that it really only works on the highway and he didn't try using it again lmao.

        • Great_Leader_Is_Dead
          ·
          7 months ago

          Some More News video on self driving cars is one of their better videos

      • GrayBackgroundMusic@lemm.ee
        ·
        7 months ago

        He had a really bad video defending the British monarchy cuz “muh tourist money”. Ignoring French killed their monarchy and still get buckoo tourist bucks.

        Whoa, I don't remember this. Which video?

    • zed_proclaimer [he/him]
      ·
      7 months ago

      Yeah he’s an absolute empty headed turbo lib who regurgitates liberal ideology

    • DamarcusArt@lemmygrad.ml
      ·
      7 months ago

      A bit late on this, but no one else has mentioned it, he made a pair of videos called "Americapox" where he uses Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs and Steel" as his only real source and uses it to talk about how the reason the native Americans were "at the bottom of the tech tree" (paraphrased) was because they didn't have superior European animals and metalsmithing. He basically calls them primitive savages, just using video game terminology.

      Jared Diamond's pop history book has come under intense scrutiny by historians, as it claims incredibly racist things like the Incas being too "primitive" to know what an ambush is. He blames this "primitiveness" on their lack of metalworking and domesticated animals, but it is just recycled 19th century rhetoric cleaned up for a late 20th century audience. And Grey used it all completely uncritically.

      And when Grey was called out on this terrible source, he did the usual internet shitbag thing of pretend it was all just a prank bro, and people shouldn't take him so seriously. Weirdly enough, he only says this when people call him out, he never tells people who believe his nonsense that he's just messing around.