Pope's visit to UK to cost taxpayer £10-12million!!

[pcfreak]

We are facing absolutely brutal cuts to our public spending budgets by our new government. This is something I believe to be necessary for us to pull ourselves back from the brink of bankruptcy. Our national decifit is shocking.

I have just read a news report that made my blood boil though, our government is planning on spending a massive £10-12 million on the forthcoming Pope's visit to the UK. This is for non-policing costs, so the true figure, when the cost of policing is taken into consideration, is going to be much more. He's only here for 4 days too!!!:eek:

Why the hell should we all (the taxpayers) be paying for a foreign dignitary to visit the UK. Surely the catholic church should be footing the bill? If we are facing public spending cuts like we are, then events like these should be the first to go, not vital nursing, police and other essential public service jobs as is going to happen!

(Source of story: http://news.uk.msn.com/uk/articles.aspx?cp-documentid=154038036)

[juxtaposed]

agreed, this is absurd. another thing that ticks me off is when obama does the same thing, but for vacation. we are expected to let him charge the american people 1 million for every time he takes off to be able to do things like flying to hawaii to go relax. spend spend spend, i don't know why officials want to spend so much. talk about being out of touch with reality

[Rafal Dudek]

Where is the money going to? I would like to see a breakdown instead of a number being pulled out of their ass. A 4 day visit by pope does not cost that much. You think we in Poland can afford such visits when he comes around? Someone is pulling numbers out of their ass because they got some kind of grudge against catholic church.

agreed, this is absurd. another thing that ticks me off is when obama does the same thing, but for vacation. we are expected to let him charge the american people 1 million for every time he takes off to be able to do things like flying to hawaii to go relax. spend spend spend, i don't know why officials want to spend so much. talk about being out of touch with reality

Your G. W. Bush did the same thing and every president before him so it's a moot point.

What people fail to realize is that when you pay for someone's security, that security is always funded. Whether they go on vacation or not because that security is always required. I'm talking about presidents vacation here. Pope has it's own security for the most part. The only security that pope will require during a visit that he was INVITED will be a few police officers to clear the road when he's traveling to whatever place he visits. Those few police officers don't cost 14m pounds which is like what? 20m USD? I call shenanigans.

[pcfreak]

Where is the money going to? I would like to see a breakdown instead of a number being pulled out of their ass. A 4 day visit by pope does not cost that much. You think we in Poland can afford such visits when he comes around? Someone is pulling numbers out of their ass because they got some kind of grudge against catholic church.

Raf, it was the UK government who gave out those estimates, and they first estimated the non-policing costs to be around £8m, and have now said it's likely to top £10-12m. I can't see the government willing to spend more cash because they have a grudge against the pope. As I said, factor in the policing costs too, and the figure goes even higher.

Also Raf, you seem to think that the policing of events like this are small scale affairs. You are wrong. Our intelligence services go into overdrive long before and also during these events. Police forces have to accomodate the massive demands placed on them, and this generates massive costs with it. It isn't just a case of a few bobbies directing traffic, we have large scale police operations on any event like this. You should remember that there have been assassination attempts on the pope before, so any host country has to be able to show that they have taken every precaution against another attack happening. This cannot happen on a shoestring budget! There are threats to the pope's safety, even here in the UK, as every nut job on this island would love to take a pop at the pope, it's pretty ignorant to play that down.

[pcfreak]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/religion/7797988/Popes-visit-to-Britain-in-disarray-as-costs-spiral-to-14m.html

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8692756.stm

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/5b3d54cc-883c-11df-a4e7-00144feabdc0.html

There's a few more stories which go a bit more into detail. Here's a quote from one of the articles:

Chris Patten, the former Conservative minister who has been asked by the government to take charge of planning the September visit, said it would now cost between £10m and £12m, up from the previous estimate of £8m. Lord Patten said: “Those [previous] estimates were made in good faith but I think they underestimated the complexity and sophistication of a visit which pulls together both the normal aspects of a state visit and the pastoral aspects which are so important.”


I should also stress to you that this figure is nothing to do with the policing/ security costs. These costs have not been declared yet, but are expected to be much greater than the non policing/security costs.

[Rafal Dudek]

There are threats against him while he is in Vatican as well, and so far Italy has not gone bankrupt having him there all the time. I highly doubt the investigation offices go into such a high overdrive of workforce.

Also, the local Archdiocese will cover quite a bit of that bill as well.


This is just a big huge coverup on to where that money is really going. Every government does it.

[shizakapayou]

Eh, the Queen's visiting the US this week, probably costing us twice as much. Heck, it's probably creating some work, at least temporarily.

I'm not opposed to the President taking a vacation - it's a stressful enough job as it is.

[pcfreak]

I disagree Raf. I think the costs are real enough. There are massive implications on our travel networks, public safety issues etc etc, that all cost massive amounts of money to provide solutions. I also think £12m is hardly going to bankrupt the UK, and considering US presidents visits can run into $70-80 million, we are getting off lightly. Having said that though, we are being told daily by our new government that we must expect dramatic cuts ot our public spending budgets, and then we hear that they are potentially looking at spending £20-30 million on a papal visit (with policing/security thrown in). The best of it is England is predominately a Protestent country.

[pcfreak]

Eh, the Queen's visiting the US this week, probably costing us twice as much. Heck, it's probably creating some work, at least temporarily.

I'm not opposed to the President taking a vacation - it's a stressful enough job as it is.

I would be just as pissed at my tax contributions being spent on the queens visit too if I was an american and our government was telling us that nurses, firemen and police jobs were going to be lost. I'm not one for hypocrisy.

[Rafal Dudek]

Meanwhile the British Government would spent £15m on the state events such as the pope's reception by the Queen at Holyroodhouse, Edinburgh

GTFO

It's not like he forced his holy butt to come. He was invited by your queen.

[pcfreak]

Yup and I would bitch slap her for doing so too, if I had the chance:p: It wasn't actually the Queen who invited her, it was the British government. That's the whole point of this thread Raf, our government is claiming that we do not have the money to sustain the public spending budgets, which puts public service employees jobs (nurses, firemen and police amongst others), and then decides to spend £20-30m on a papal visit!!! Hypocritical to say the least!!

[Rafal Dudek]

Yup and I would bitch slap her for doing so too, if I had the chance:p: It wasn't actually the Queen who invited her, it was the British government. That's the whole point of this thread Raf, our government is claiming that we do not have the money to sustain the public spending budgets, which puts public service employees jobs (nurses, firemen and police amongst others), and then decides to spend £20-30m on a papal visit!!! Hypocritical to say the least!!
Got it.

You got to make it more clear by blaming government instead of someone that was invited to come :p:

Then again, it will create some temporary jobs, but there is always some kind of a political agenda behind these things.

[juxtaposed]

raf i know they have all done it, and its ridiculous either way. if a president wants to go on vaca, they should pay for the whole expense, not force us to do that because they want some beach time. and why can't video conferencing be used more often, no security needed, very low cost. the pontiffs presence is not necessarily needed is it?

i have to side with you stu, i think this whole spending binge is absurd when times are so tough

[NotSoFast]

The Vatican has more money that anyone else in the world. Why can't they pay for their own security and other expenses? If it were a Baptist minister or a Jewish Rabbi, no one would give a rats behind about paying their expenses. The Pope is overrated.

[Bruenor]

Happens everywhere. Canadians just paid $1 Billion on the recent G20 meetings.

Now we're footing the bill for the Queen to come visit and praise us for being good little colonials.

As bad as it sounds, I'm basically immune to it these days.

[pcfreak]

It never really bothered me, but our government telling us to expect up to 25% cuts on public services spending budgets, and preaching that we all need to tighten our belts in this economic crisis, and then going and spending stupid money on a religious leader's jolly boys outing to the UK just feel like they are giving us the bird already.

The best of it is that the pope has some serious questions that need answering in his involvement in the cover up of the recent paedophilia cases that hit the catholic church. I don't feel that it's appropriate for our country to be spending all this money when there are so many unanswered questions, and some blatant lies being told too. My first and foremost concern though is that we can't justify spending that amount of money when people are facing losing their jobs, and we are facing reduced standards of public services.