Prince Philip says ‘tourism is prostitution’

Media reports in the UK say that 87 year old Prince Philip has made another gaffe by saying that countries which promote tourism are prostituting themselves.

His outburst apparently occurred last week during the Queen’s state visit to the Slovenian capital of Ljubljana  when he told Dr Maja Uran a professor of tourism, “We don’t need tourists – they ruin cities” and “tourism is national prostitution,” with Dr Uran, saying: “I couldn’t quite believe he used that word.”

Anti-monarchy group Republic said: “At a time of recession Britain needs all the tourism it can get and the prince is telling people to stay away.”  â€œIt goes to show the royals are fairly lousy ambassadors.”

With the Royal Family one of Britain’s biggest tourist attractions, helping bring in £9billion to the economy every year, the gaffe comes at the a time when Visit Britain, the UK Government international agency for promoting Britain overseas have had their budget slashed, resulting in jobs around world being cut.  Visit Britain’s Australian operation moved from the CBD a number of years ago to North Sydney to save costs and has since undertaken reduced levels of consumer activity and very little trade activity together with reportedly closing its public information presence in North Sydney.

Prince Philip’s comments come despite royal aides regularly stressing the importance of tourists to Britain’s economy – with one million visiting Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle each year and follows other infamous faux pas by the Prince – including telling a British student in China he would get ‘slitty eyes’ and asking Aborigines in Australia: ‘Do you still throw spears at each other?’

Dr Uran, associate professor of tourism at the University of Primorska, was among four groups of experts who met Philip last Tuesday at the Hotel Union in the Slovenian capital of Ljubljana.

She told Philip she wanted to organise a network of people with local knowledge to help tourists, to which Dr Uran said “He laughed and said”,  â€œTourism is just national prostitution.”

“I couldn’t quite believe he used that word and we all collapsed in embarrassment.”

Dr Uran does appear to have fallen under the spell of the aged Royal, claiming afterwards though that a lot of what Philip said ‘made sense’, adding, “I think the Prince was charming and very funny”  â€œHe had a twinkle in his eye and I thought he was very handsome”  â€œAs a younger man, I’m sure he was very good-looking”.

“I think he is an amazing person to go round meeting people for more than 50 years.”  â€œSometimes it must have been very boring, but he looks as though he makes a real effort to take an interest.”

The Queen did not hear his remarks because she was carrying out duties elsewhere in the city.

Ashley Walton, co-author of the book Duke Of Hazard: The Wit And Wisdom Of Prince Philip, said last night, “I think it’s fantastic that the Duke is still cracking jokes and making people laugh at his age”.

“He is a national treasure and we ought to appreciate him more”.  â€œVery occasionally he might upset someone but he doesn’t mean to offend and it’s refreshing to find a public figure who is not afraid to be politically incorrect”

A Buckingham Palace spokesman said,  “We would never discuss anything Prince Philip might have said”.

Comment on various web sites include:

Reddit.com

“His comments come despite royal aides regularly stressing the importance of tourists to Britain’s economy – with one million visiting Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle each year.”

Since the monarchy and all its expensive trappings are quite the tourist attraction, perhaps he’d like to spearhead a movement to get rid of the monarchy.

Which would make Phil the Greek what?  Head pimp?

The Royal Forum

He’s just branded his entire family pimps and ***s.

Have no love at all for the Royal Family, but, in this case, he’s not far off the truth I think…where cities have catered for tourists, they’ve lost an awful lot of their original character…they become full of attractions solely for tourists, but we need tourism to maintain our economies so not much we can do about it…he and his son do seem to be able to put both feet into it and stand there relatively unscathed because they’re the Royals…if anybody else had said some of the things they say, there would be uproar…

A Report by The Mole