Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2021 May 8

= May 8 =

Harry and Meghan
The couple's Saturday wedding (which wasn't actually a wedding as they had been married privately under canon law the previous Wednesday) is reported to have cost 35 million dollars (most recently by Virginia Blackburn on page 13 of Thursday's Daily Express). How could one event cost so much money? 95.148.229.85 (talk) 09:20, 8 May 2021 (UTC)


 * Such figures are typically inflated to include costs that would be incurred anyhow, also if the event they are assigned to would not have taken place. For example, for security personnel, one should only include overtime cost, but it is customary to include the full "hourly salary" cost times number of hours, even when the employees involved are paid a monthly salary that is nominally the same regardless. Also, streets need to be swept, roads repaired, and so on, activities that will be performed anyways but are perhaps scheduled earlier, and then these costs are included in the calculation to their full amount. So much of the reported amount is essentially an accounting redistribution of public expenditure. --Lambiam 11:21, 8 May 2021 (UTC)


 * They had not been married on the Wednesday, I don't know why people continue to propagate such rubbish. DuncanHill (talk) 11:30, 8 May 2021 (UTC)


 * I think you'll find that Harry and Meghan know more about canon law than you.  Read the unanimous decision of the House of Lords in  Beamish v Beamish (1861) 9 HLC 274; 11 ER 735. 95.148.229.85 (talk) 11:53, 8 May 2021 (UTC)


 * Ludicrous, that case applied the English common law as it stood before 26 Geo. 2, c. 33, and furthermore not even Meghan has claimed they followed the form of solemnization of marriage. DuncanHill (talk) 12:44, 8 May 2021 (UTC)


 * That date points to 1753, the year of the Clandestine Marriages Act.  I quote:

Nor did the Act apply to members of the British Royal Family. Indeed, members of the Royal Family have been consistently exempted from all general legislation relating to marriage since this date, which is why doubts were expressed in 2005 about the ability of Prince Charles to marry Camilla Parker-Bowles in a civil ceremony, civil marriage being the creation of statute law.


 * If you read our article Oprah with Meghan and Harry, in the section titled "Private exchange of vows", you will see this:
 * Meghan said that they had in fact married three days before their public wedding, with a private exchange of vows on May 16 in front of the Archbishop of Canterbury.[69] Harry supported this by commenting "Yeah, just the three of us".[70] This earlier exchange of vows was not an official religious or legally recognized marriage, both of which require at least two witnesses.[71][72] Later in March, a spokesperson for the couple confirmed that they merely exchanged "personal vows", and the private event was neither a "legal" nor "official" service.[73] The couple's official marriage certificate also shows that they were married on May 19, with Harry's father and Meghan's mother as witnesses.[73] The Archbishop of Canterbury also clarified their claim, stating "The legal wedding was on the Saturday [May 19]. I signed the wedding certificate, which is a legal document, and I would have committed a serious criminal offence if I signed it knowing it was false".[74] As is customary for clergy, Archbishop Welby refrained from commenting on the nature of any private meetings with the couple, but added he "had a number of private and pastoral meetings with the duke and duchess before the wedding".[74]
 * If you know better than the Archbishop of Canterbury, please update the article. --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  17:43, 8 May 2021 (UTC)


 * For a breakdown of costs (not sure how reliable though) see The Exact Cost Of Prince Harry And Meghan Markle's Royal Wedding Makes Our Eyes Water - it mostly went on "security". Thankfully for us British taxpayers, the wedding fripperies themselves were paid for by the Royal Family. I'm not sure if the security costs include the large number of Armed Forces personnel that were involved, since if there was no wedding, we'd only be paying them to march up and down somewhere else. Alansplodge (talk) 00:31, 9 May 2021 (UTC)
 * This is a link to the Express article that was the basis for that in Elle. Not particularly known for meticulous fact checking, the number it gives for the total is hedged by "is believed to have cost" and "was previously reported to be". The reported estimated security cost, 30 megaquid, is a far cry from what our article states: "By the end of May, it was estimated that the security costs were 'between £2 million and £4 million'. The police and crime commissioner could also apply for special funding if the costs were to exceed 1% of the Thames Valley Police force's annual budget, but at the time the cost was 'well below the £4 million required to make a claim'.[49]" The 32 million number for the overall cost is also mentioned in our article, sourced to an item on the website of The Telegraph, which calls it "an estimated price tag", referring to an estimate by UK wedding planning app Bridebook.co.uk, £31,969,873. The latter gets to the security cost estimate as follows: "Separate from the wedding are the security costs. A whopping £30 million was spent for the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge's wedding in 2011. This year's Royal Wedding will not take place in central London, however, but considering the number of members of the public attending this year's Royal Wedding and the threats that have been made against the bride-to-be, the security is sure to still be tight, with the expected cost being upwards of £30 million." To rack up such a huge number, most of the cost has to be labour cost. 30 million British pounds is in the same ballpark as 42 million US$. Assuming a cost per person hour of $50, some 800,000 hours need to have been spent on security, which seems implausible; spreading this out over a full 40-hour workweek would imply the continued deployment of 20,000 personnel equivalent. --Lambiam 09:40, 9 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Article updated. 95.148.229.85 (talk) 12:20, 10 May 2021 (UTC)

Naked photoshoot in Turkey
I read a news that said stated that there is outrage in turkey after photos of 6 models naked at a beach during photoshoot goes viral, See https://www.india.com/viral/turkey-6-models-caught-posing-naked-nude-photoshoot-on-luxury-boat-during-ramadan-outrage-deported-4645770/, where are those photos? Who are the models? Only photo in this news is a blurred one. Also it cites the news from lider and east2west but I am not able to find those news websites -- Parnaval (talk) 13:09, 8 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Here is the news item in Lider. I have the impression that East2West (also spelled using the Latin alphabet on Russian sites) is a Russian news agency that has no web presence but distributes sassy news items to subscribers, apparently mainly the tabloid press. Unblurred nakkid pix were not hard to find. --Lambiam 19:37, 8 May 2021 (UTC)