A little perspective is needed on this thread. It doesn't matter what the royals do, there will always be a chunk of the population who think they're lazy 'parasites' living the high life at our expense. Take Charles, who is the hardest-working of all the royals, who gave up his foreign ski holiday and rarely, if ever, holidays abroad gets accused of what William and Kate have here. No matter how many engagements they undertake, some will just never believe that what they do is 'work'. Even if William and Kate took just one holiday per year, people would still be saying the exact same things. They're damned if they do and damned if they don't.
Also, let's remember that for decades the Queen and DoE have been taking a months-long holiday at Balmoral and a similar holiday at Sandringham every single year. During both periods they undertake very, very few engagements. Before people get all up in arms about how old they are, remember they haven't always been this old. They've been taking these breaks for their entire married lives. I'm not saying they're lazy in any way, but they enjoy holidays of a duration that 99% of the British population can only dream of. That's before we consider that the Queen paid £300,000 to hire a cruise ship for 14 days (and only used it for 10) more than once for her summer holiday.
Anyone taking the comments at the bottom of a Daily Mail article as reflective of anything is clearly lacking in brain cells. To start with, the large majority (over 70%) of the DM's traffic comes from outside the UK. Secondly, anyone who has ever spent any time perusing the DM comments, will know that it tends to be populated by racist, sexist, xenophobic, bullying wastes of space.
As an example, the DM had an article last year about Prince Philip with photos of him lifting a piece of heavy equipment at the Windsor horse show (I think). The comments consisted largely of people stating that he was skiving off work, asking why he wouldn't just hurry up and die already, that he looks like a walking corpse, that he obviously wasn't all that ill when he was admitted to hospital at Christmas and that it was obviously just the hospital giving him special treatment. Oh, and that the royals are lizzards who are controlled by the Illuminati/the Rothschilds.
The DM comments section is so notorious that several bloggers provide a running commentary on the worst of them. Case in point:
Most Priceless Daily Mail Comment: have we a winner? | Life and style | guardian.co.uk
In the end, the monarchy is more popular than it's been for at least the last 60 years. A poll in November showed
Prince William is the most popular member of the RF as far as Britons are concerned. Even after her jubilee, William is actually much more popular than the Queen. There's very little for William and Kate to worry about.
At least until Wednesday. Although last year they stayed for two weeks so they could only return on Friday or during the weekend
