Prince William selling the Big Issue

Glorianny Couldn’t agree with you more.

"Secondly, to understand what its like to sell the Big Issue on the streets. So a sort of "Henry V mixes with his army the night before battle" vibe there. That's possible."

He's not going to understand what it's like to be homeless from spending half an hour standing around pretending to sell a few magazines though, is he? But good on him for raising the Big Issue profile.

What would cost the country to turn Buck House into flats

What was it if it wasn't a stunt?

In marketing, a publicity stunt is a planned event designed to attract the public's attention to the event's organizers or their cause.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Publicity_stunt

Calling this a stunt really demeans it. It's not in William's gift to open any palaces for housing the homeless, as I'm sure you well know. Nor is it ever likely to happen.

Grany you can post as many examples as you like but I have not seen anything so far that would persuade me that an elected Head of State would be preferential to the monarchy.

What a stunt.
If he really cared, several of the many royal palaces would be opened as shelters for the homeless.

GrannyGravy13

Grany

Big Issue’s annual income is approximately £3m a year. William spent more than £4.5m of taxpayers’ money on renovating his Kensington Palace home before moving in. Charles spent a similar amount on Clarence House. The monarchy costs us at least £345m a year. #AbolishTheMonarchy

Mr. Johnson has wasted far more, abolish him and keep the monarchy.

???

William could also have been doing it to shame the government into taking more positive measures to help those in need in our society

Okay understand queen is respected she took office early fifties many years ago things were different then. She fulfilled her role as she knew how mainly by keeping quiet, never complain never explain.

But monarchy is broken and can't be fixed.
queen is able and Charles to vet legislation for their own benefit. Get laws changed to suit her. There is no FOI RF exempt, no accountability.
queen gives all power to PM so he has more power than US president.
Monarchy works for royalty and government not the people.

It's a public role public money!

Three old men given job for life after queen goes Charles William George. Are they even suitable as our Head of State? Is that the best we can do.

RF costs £345 million

£87 million Sovereign Grant
£104 million security
£44 million two duchies Charles and queen.
Transport costs, private jets, helicopters, private train
Local councils pay for royal walkabouts.

Abuse of public money every day as they spend hardly any time visiting charities as Giving Evidence found out.

In public office for private gain.

GrannyGravy13

Grany

Big Issue’s annual income is approximately £3m a year. William spent more than £4.5m of taxpayers’ money on renovating his Kensington Palace home before moving in. Charles spent a similar amount on Clarence House. The monarchy costs us at least £345m a year. #AbolishTheMonarchy

Mr. Johnson has wasted far more, abolish him and keep the monarchy.

James O'Brien: 'If you think it's bad Boris Johnson is spending 88 grand decorating his flat when people are using food banks in this country, how the hell do you square a royal family?'

Grany

Big Issue’s annual income is approximately £3m a year. William spent more than £4.5m of taxpayers’ money on renovating his Kensington Palace home before moving in. Charles spent a similar amount on Clarence House. The monarchy costs us at least £345m a year. #AbolishTheMonarchy

Mr. Johnson has wasted far more, abolish him and keep the monarchy.

jacqrose

So William was “spotted”, more like an arranged photo shoot. Also no mention of how long he was there for, half an hour, an hour or just long enough to get his picture taken?

Absolutely!

I’ve seen articles where journalists have posed as beggars and written about their experiences, and TV articles with hidden camera footage, so maybe he thought he would do it to better understand how it felt, so he could talk ( and listen) to people at Centrepoint . It may always have been the plan to publicise it, probably through the Big Issue, but, who knows?

( I’m surprised nobody has quoted the old story of the Big Issue sellers parking their BMW round the corner, then driving to their home in a leafy suburb! Has that one gone away?)

Diamond Lily
Or ?' how the other half lives' ?
Try it again say middle of winter.?

Big Issue’s annual income is approximately £3m a year. William spent more than £4.5m of taxpayers’ money on renovating his Kensington Palace home before moving in. Charles spent a similar amount on Clarence House. The monarchy costs us at least £345m a year. #AbolishTheMonarchy

I think a better idea would be to have a Big Issue seller do William's job for a day

Prince William would be a better King to take over from Her Majesty in my opinion- at least he genuinely seems to care about the public and he's more in touch with them and with the younger generation.Prince charles cares about conservation, yes- but as for everything else it seems like he just says whats been written down for him by the PR office.

As for jobs- well maybe if the job centre (government) did not charge £180 a time for employers to advertise a job they might have more unemployed seeing a job they could apply for/get and less on UC! (Thats not a one off payment for however long it takes either!its for each month its up on the notice board!) Why not let prospective employers advertise the job for free? Or for a very nominal sum? Especially for small businesses.Its ridiculous how money grabbing the DWP are- its an outrageous amount to charge a small business to just put a blinking card up on a notice board to advertise a job! If it was free or cheap then that might ultimately lead to more unemployed off the dole.

Yes Prince William did well for that man, but he can't be there every day, helping every seller..Hats off to him for trying to get more interest from the public for it- but really its not going to help long term- more folk bought one so they could say "i bought this from Prince William" but next week will probably rush on by not bothering- or they won't be able to afford it because of the rising cost of living- its not a long term fix is it.But yes his mum would have been proud of him for trying.?

My cleaner (who i pay 2hrs a fortnight for out of my PIP, as i can no longer stand & vac&mop) is self employed- pays tax, insurance, accountant etc-she cannot claim any WTC or UC or anything even though her working hours are getting less and less due to her customers/clients either can't afford her any more, or she can't work more hours due to her having medical problems of her own as well- there really is nothing to help her from this gov't! And i won't be able to afford her either if i went on UC..Also, she cant employ anyone else- she's tried- NO ONE wants the job! And if she advertises the job in the job centre office they charge £180 to do so.?

He certainly does seem to take after his mum in his ability to mix with people.

I read that Dave Martin, age 60, showed Prince William the ropes. Mr Martin said the prince's new role was organised for an article featuring William, which will be published in the magazine a week on Monday.

Mr Martin said: 'People started to accumulate after a little while. I managed to sell all my magazines. Well, he sold them. Not me. Prince William certainly helped me make more money.

'He was really good at talking to people. He seemed just like a regular guy. He was chatty and really laid-back.'

I think Diana would be proud of her son.

Gransnet used to be a fun, friendly and useful site. So sad to see it taken over by the cynics.