The Murdoch press has been cutting a bit of a swathe through the rich and famous in the last couple of weeks. First came the News of the World's tawdry revelations about Wayne Rooney's sex life; then, very much at the other end of the scale, we learned from The Times how Prince Charles's wish to save a Scottish stately home "for the nation" had blown a big hole in his charitable enterprises. Only one of these stories is really newsworthy, and it doesn't concern football.
There's something that Rooney and HRH have in common, and it helps to explain how they've each got into these scrapes. Like many professional footballers (heirs to the throne), Wayne (Charles) has a prodigious amount of money, but not much to do. Every little need is taken care of by Manchester United (a retinue of servants and advisors). Playing football and training (cutting ribbons and shaking hands) don't take up a whole lot of time. Result: a dangerous combination of entitlement, boredom and underdeveloped decision-making skills (a dangerous combination of entitlement, boredom and underdeveloped decision-making skills).
For Wayne Rooney, as for so many sportsmen in the past (and no doubt in the future), the combination of time on his hands and money to burn inevitably led to sexual indiscretions. This has happened so many times (there are two other well-known footballing names cowering behind press injunctions right now) that it's surprising that it still titillates the tabloids and their readers. For all his money, Rooney is a man of no real power or importance, and in an ideal world his marital shenanigans would be a purely private matter between him and his missus.
Some of Prince Charles's forebears, stuck waiting for the throne to become vacant, have also whiled away their time in the beds of assorted floozies. Charles has avoided that (sort of); in casting around for something to do, he long ago settled on becoming a major philanthropist, which is all very commendable. The problem is that he hasn't been satisfied just to make donations from his prodigious personal wealth. Instead, he has tried to fund his giving by setting up a series of enterprises designed to generate profits that can then be used for eleemosynary purposes.
The problem is that Charles is, not entirely surprisingly, not much of a businessman. This is, after all, a man who famously failed to recognise a five-pound note when it was waved at him by a reporter many years ago. His flagship business, Duchy Originals, is losing millions of pounds a year trying to peddle the world's most overpriced sausages and marmalade. It's just had to be rescued by the John Lewis Partnership.
And now there's the stately home, in Dumfries. The former owner, the vaguely raffish Earl of Bute, wanted shot of the place. Up stepped Charles with a £20 million cheque, committed with almost no due diligence and backed by the funds in his charitable foundations. The plan, supposedly, was to pay back the money by carving up some of the lands that came with the mansion for development purposes, but the economy and the credit crunch have put a stop to that. Although the home, with its Chippendale furniture, is now open for viewing by a grateful nation, Charles's charities are financially holed below the water line, with no rescue in sight.
Where were Charles's retinue of advisors when all this was going on? They're lining up now to blame it all on the recession, but here's a flavour of the kind of advice the Prince may have been getting.
Charles's main source of income is the vast Duchy of Cornwall. The Duchy owns Highgrove House, Charles's favourite residence. Charles pays a handsome rent to the Duchy for the house (in excess of £300,000 per year) but of course, since he is the only beneficiary of the Duchy's income, he is actually paying rent to himself. Even so, the Duchy likes to claim that Charles's willingness to pay rent contributes substantially to the Duchy's financial viability. Presumably if he were to pay £1 million a year in rent, or what the heck, a million a month, the Duchy would be in even peachier shape.
If this is the quality of advice that his advisors provided when he was looking into the Dumfries property, it's no wonder the whole thing has gone pear-shaped. Thing is, living in his little cocoon of wealth and luxury, Charles is in no position to sort out the good advice from the bad. And when the heir to the throne is showing all the financial acumen of a five-year-old, and using charitable money to boot, that's surely a much more serious national issue than the sex lives of the potato-faced.
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