I noticed also the comment above about PW and PH finances.

Yes PW is allowed up to £300,000 per annum from his inheritance until he is 30 years of age.

Harry will get same at 25/30 respectively, however both PW and PH receive an annual allowance from the Income from the Dutchy of Cornwall courtesy of Prince Charles.

I’m sure that they do not have to worry too much about pocket money although I have heard that KM has frequently paid lunch and dinner tabs with her credit card as PW doesn’t seem to carry cash or card.

How normal is that !

I hope everyone saw Sky news this AM.

Anyone notice that as PW boarded ship he saluted the quarter deck as per tradition.

However, he saluted as an Army Officer with palm facing front.

The RN salute on boarding is with the palm facing downwards.

No doubt his father and grandfather will certainly tell him off for that as will his CO.

Not that that detracts from the work he is doing but it would be a point that any naval or ex naval officer would notice immediately.

Also interesting interview on ITV with News of World Royal editor.

Anyone catch it ?

A friend of William and Harry said: “This is a move they’ve been thinking about for a while. Now Harry’s being taken more seriously after Afghanistan and William’s about to take up full-time royal duties they thought it was time.

“They’re not children any more and they want to have more control over their lives and a more modern, open relationship with the press. They’ve had relatively normal lives compared with previous generations and they see things differently.

“They think people expect them to be a bit less secretive and distant and they wanted someone who could help them manage that kind of relationship with the public. They were impressed with how this new guy handled Harry’s stint in Afghanistan and they like him, he’s fun.”

A MoD source said Mr Head had secured a “cracking job”, which he was “very excited” about.

He is the kind of man increasingly seen around William and Harry. He is known for his dry sense of humour and he is streetwise. He was brought up in the London suburbs and attended Bancroft’s, a small co-educational public school on the east London-Essex borders.

One of his first major tests is expected to be the announcement of the engagement between William and Kate Middleton. The attractive and likeable Ms Middleton has the potential to bring back the Diana factor and Head knows it. But the mix of royal romance and PR is a volatile one and will have to Diana factor: William and Kate’s PR will be a big challenge be handled carefully. Paddy Harverson, head of the Clarence House press operation, will be keeping an eye on him.

If, as many expect, there is an engagement before the spring of next year William’s contribution to the Firm, as Prince Philip calls the royal family, will change dramatically. Demand f or William is likely to explode and Kate, as his fiancée, will be expected to accompany him on official engagements.

The paparazzi are already slavering at the prospect. There is excitement, too, over t he couple’s f uture domestic arrangements. When the Duchy of Cornwall bought the Harewood End estate in Herefordshire in 2000 architects were commissioned by Prince Charles to draw a house to replace the original Georgian Harewood Park mansion, demolished in the 1950s.

The stables and chapel survived and the architects, Craig Hamilton, a classicist practice admired by Charles, drew on the original inf luences. They produced three designs; the first two were huge, f ull- blown palaces. One was described by the architect as having “a synthesis of Greek and Roman references”. Then a third, more compact design was produced and this was the one that was eventually granted planning permission.

THE house, with a hall, dining room, drawing room, sitting room, library and orangery on the ground f loor, has six bedrooms. It is also classically styled, with a triumphal arch motif taken from the surviving 19th-century stables. Wags have described it as William and Kate’s “starter palace” and work on it is due to be completed soon.

Will it be the couple’s future home? Clarence House will only say it is being built for the “open rental market” and it is certainly true the duchy has built and refurbished properties for rental. So far, however, none of them have been palaces.

Kate is reported to have said she would like a home that was not dependent on the royal family. Security arrangements alone are likely to rule that out, at least while they are in London. But the new departure for the royal princes has been accompanied by other efforts to underscore their independence.

William has taken charge of his own financial arrangements since he inherited the first part of his mother’s legacy last year. Diana left £21 million to the princes, who had to pay £8 million inheritance tax. It left them around £6.5 million each — which has now grown to an estimated £9 million.

When William turned 25 last June he was allowed to draw part of the interest on his share of the money, around £ 300,000 a year. Harry will be able to do the same when he is 25 in two years’ time. When the princes are 30 they will be given the capital sums. Meanwhile, Charles has been subsidising them, although William is probably now in a position to fund his own household if he wishes. He is allowed nothing from the Civil List and since provisions for the royals are not due to be reviewed until 2011, he will have to manage on family money until then at least. He still has his £22,000 a year salary as a junior officer in the Blues and Royals, but that is unlikely to have been uppermost in his mind when he mulled over the jewels in the Cartier concession at Selfridges.

The background of these two men says much about the kind of operation William and Harry want for their generation-specific roles. Neither Matthews or Head conform to the traditional image of a palace courtier. Matthews, who has extensive contacts in the entertainment business, used to run the commercial arm of the National Gallery.

He is gregarious, with a warm personality, and was described as “very bright”. He graduated from Trinity College, Cambridge, and had an early career in the Irish Guards. He is chief executive of Harry’s charity Sentebale, dedicated to helping children orphaned by Aids in Lesotho, Southern Africa. His job at Clarence House is described as “project manager”.

The project, put simply, is the future of William and Harry.

The princes have firm ideas about how they want to fulfil their royal duties and, if the project works, their father, Prince Charles, might well be remembered as the last of the old-style royals.

Matthews is tasked with creating the framework within which the princes’ public personae will be polished. The royal family and its advisers know change is inevitable. Whereas, a generation ago they commanded deep affection and respect, those sentiments are now mainly reserved for the Queen and Prince Philip while a large section of the country has adopted an attitude of indifference.
These “floating voters”, Palace advisers believe, can be wooed back if they see in the young princes men whose lives are more relevant to their own than previous royal figures.

Head, 30, the new press officer, has the job of selling this idea to the public. He has been chosen carefully, with input from both William and Harry.
He worked his way to the top of the MoD press officer hierarchy after starting there in his early twenties. At one point he was seconded to Downing Street during the last months of Tony Blair’s second term.
His contact with the royals came when Harry was secretly slipped out t o Afghanistan to fight the Taliban, an operation that gave the royals their biggest PR coup of recent years. Head had the delicate task of liaising between the MoD and Clarence House on the 10-week deployment and there was a perception that he made a big contribution to the successful handling of the episode. He also came to know Harry and built up a rapport, earning the trust of both princes.

Royal insiders say the appointment of the first dedicated spokesman for the princes is “highly significant”, marking a determination by William, 26, and Harry, 23, to step out of their father’s shadow and mould their own media images. Head joins the new Clarence House team at the end of the summer. The brothers currently share press officers with Charles at Clarence House, a position they apparently feel is untenable in the long-term as their independent public profiles grow.

William and Harry are a very different type of royal for a new age — and they are already planning to take control of their own lives and their public image

THE tall young man browsing the Cartier rings in Selfridges’ designer jewellery boutique was instantly recognisable. He was wearing scuffed shoes and there was a hole in the elbow of his pullover, but staff in the store’s Wonder Room knew they were looking at Prince William, the future king. At one point he lingered over a display of antique jewellery, but then walked on. “He seemed to be window shopping,” an assistant told the Standard. “He didn’t ask to look at anything specific.”
William’s ancestor Edward VII once described Cartier as “the jeweller to kings”, but Queen Victoria’s son, and the first monarch of the family that was to become the House of Windsor, might have had difficulty recognising the kind of king William is shaping up to be.

As the visit to Selfridges a few weeks ago suggests, this is a royal who feels very much at ease among his people. Indeed, William and his brother Harry are unlike any other princes before them. The point was strongly made this week when Harry was photographed in Africa, working on his Sentebale project. Pushing a wheelbarrow and mucking in with his army comrades, the third in line to the throne revealed the quantum leap that has been made in the way the royal princes run their lives.

Indeed, they have made a conscious decision to inhabit what they call “the real world” and, as the Evening Standard reveals here, they are carving out a future that may change forever the way the royal family is perceived.

The princes’ quiet revolution is being run from an office in Clarence House, the St James’s home and London headquarters of their father, Prince Charles, and Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall. Two i mportant f i gures have been recruited t o work specifically f or William and Harry out of an expanding bureau dedicated to the princes.

One is Geoffrey Matthews, a management s pecialist who worked with McKinsey, the business strategy consultants. Matthews is shortly to be joined by Miguel Head, one of the Ministry of Defence’s top press officers.

The two men will play important parts in William’s career as a full-time, working royal. The task begins in earnest next January when William finishes his military training. The Clarence House office is also taking charge of Harry’s work outside the Army. His engagements and charity duties are being masterminded by the team that includes Matthews and Head.