Posted by Janet
on 12/9/2009, 15:18:20, in reply to "PoW accused of commercialising the royal family"
86.150.217.157
To say that any commercialisation is acceptable if the proceeds go to charity.
I have no real strong feelings on this matter, the monarchy is already very commercialised (if I have the money I can book to stay at the Prince of Wales’s residence in Wales, I believe there are holiday cottages to rent at Sandringham and I recall Balmoral has even been rented out for private commercial events) but there is a slightly different issue here with the heir to the throne essentially agreeing an exclusive deal with a major UK retailer. It creates the possibility for the heir to the British throne to be dragged into any future scandal involving Waitrose.
I’m not expert on Waitrose, I gather it has something of a middle class image which is perhaps understandable given the ridiculous prices of Duchy Original products but many leading supermarket chains in the UK have been accused of squeezing local and foreign producers to the breakpoint in order to provide cut price products for their customers. For a man who has claimed to always be promoting British agriculture and fair trade, I hope he has ensured that Waitrose don’t have any dirty skeletons in their cupboard in this regard!
I’ve read some alarming things about the American food chain Walmart and their practices, similar accusations have been made at UK chains such as Tesco and Asda (owned by Walmart) I think the monarchy has to always be conscious of what companies it is creating commercial links with, its not enough to simply say never mind the proceeds are going to charity.
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