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King Charles’ €500K lobster dinner blows hole in French presidency’s budget

A decadent dinner costing nearly €475,000 for the U.K.’s King Charles III helped push France’s Élysée Palace — the office of President Emmanuel Macron —to a record high deficit last year.

France’s love for grand gestures and opulent dining are fully in evidence in the pages of a damning yearly audit of the Élysée’s budget, released on Monday by the Cour des Comptes, France’s top audit court.

The Élysée’s spending, which includes costs related to the president’s diplomatic and presidential duties as well as administration, personnel, security and estate management, reached a whopping €125 million, plunging the books €8.3 million into the red.

Among the biggest deficit drivers were two luxurious state dinners, with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and King Charles III.

PumpkinEscobar ,

I guess this solves part of the mystery about why the French rioted when they raised the retirement age last year

Beaver ,
@Beaver@lemmy.ca avatar

France should’ve elected a left wing majority. Now you’re stuck with Macron’s classist attitude.

ieatpwns ,

Why didn’t the king foot the bill he’s the king and he’s rich.

Let the heads roll.

kirbowo808 ,
@kirbowo808@kbin.melroy.org avatar

Another reason why the monarchy should not exist

jordanlund ,
@jordanlund@lemmy.world avatar

Missed the “K” in the title and thought for a minute “well, I don’t know, that sounds reasonable…”

I’m going back to sleep now.

cygnus ,
@cygnus@lemmy.ca avatar

This works out to 2500 euros per person, which is expensive but not that bad in context. It’s easily possible to drop hundreds at a restaurant in my medium-sized city, and an event like this is obviously at a whole other level.

nightwatch_admin ,

Let him eat cake next time!

TacticsConsort ,
@TacticsConsort@yiffit.net avatar

What. How do you even spend that much on a dinner, even for 1000 people.

And like. It’s King Charles. I loved the Queen and thought she was iconic, and even I don’t really care about Charles. All of my friends in my circle actively despise him and what he represents. Literally why are you trying to curry favour with him that hard.

ArbitraryValue ,

for 1000 people

$500 per person would be quite cheap for this sort of thing, given that a middle-class wedding often costs around $250 per person. (I’m guessing each guest at this dinner drank well over $500 of wine alone.)

TaTTe ,

I have no clue how you define “middle-class” but not even the fanciest weddings I’ve been to have spent even close to $250 per person. That kind of expenditure sounds quite a lot more like upper-class to me. Assuming you invite 100 people to the wedding, an average Joe will not have 25k to spend on one party.

ArbitraryValue ,

the national average cost of a wedding in 2023 was $35,000

Source.

The average American wedding cost $29,000 in 2023.

Source.

The average cost of a wedding is $33,000 in 2024.

Source.

I assume that these estimates are based on different datasets, and my guess is that they’re biased upwards, but they do roughly match what I know from personal experience.

TaTTe ,

The issue with these statistics is that they look at the average, which is heavily boosted by the exceptionally expensive weddings of the higher upper-class. The median is significantly lower.

silkstemcollective.com/median-and-average-wedding…

Also I’m not American, maybe people there just spend a lot more on weddings in general than what I’m used to.

ArbitraryValue , (edited )

You’re correct, but even the median (with inflation) is still probably over $20,000 right now (based on the assumptions that it was $18,000 in 2019 and 2020 is not representative). I think my broader point still stands.

I know a person currently planning a relatively small wedding, and she’s trying very hard to save money. One cost-cutting measure was booking a space on the fourth floor of a building without an elevator. (She asked me whether or not it would be possible for strong guests to carry elderly guests up the stairs.) Her budget is still $10,000.

Quacksalber ,

Imagine you get a dish worth probably tens of thousands alone and you don’t like it.

octopus_ink ,

Well they seem to have saved a lot by not providing reasonable quarters for the Olympic village so it probably works out in the end.

reagansrottencorpse ,

Why would you waste all that money on a king who is a figurehead at best ?

bobs_monkey ,

Because it’s big club and we ain’t in it

Pooptimist ,

A few hundred years ago they chopped heads off of kings and queens for spending too much on everything, and now they do it for them

andrewta ,

I’m all for eating a nice dinner. But how do you get to a dinner bill that size?

catloaf ,

Mark up everything by 500%

MenacingPerson ,

Do you mean 500x? Because that looks like 500x.

saltesc ,

Well, la de da with your fancy regular €100K dinners.

jqubed ,
@jqubed@lemmy.world avatar

Step one is probably hosting it at the Palace of Versailles

Bassman1805 ,

Famous chefs who have more people requesting them than they have time in the day, so they go to whoever pays the most.

Like, Gordon Ramsey still does private events, but only if they pay more than he could be making with his TV deals.

bluGill ,

Meanwhile just as good chefs that didn't get the fame break (or possibly better but their personality means they shouldn't be let out of the kitchen) are struggling to make ends meet.

TriPolarBearz ,

Gordon: welcome to my fancy private dinner experience. What can I make for you?

Guest: I would like your finest grilled cheese sandwich please.

Gordon: oh fuck, oh shit!

andrewta ,

Lol I can hear him saying that.

Also for good measure

“for dessert I’d like, a banana freshly peeled with a small glass of grocery store orange juice.”

Glowy ,
@Glowy@lemmy.world avatar

You may have to be more specific with the definition of grilled cheese for him.

Ramsay’s “ultimate” grilled cheese

deranger ,

What the fuck was that?? I was hoping for some chronic grilly chee but that was an abomination. I’ve seen children make better grilled cheese sandwiches.

funkless_eck ,

same as it ever was.

Pick an industry that is also the case. In marketing There are people earning 7 figures for configuring a Google ads deck that a talented undergrad could do in half the time

In acting you can just throw a dart at the SAG directory.

Painting, music, business administration, politics. You name it.

andrewta ,

Good point

Deestan ,

They felt they had money to burn after cutting pensions?

andrewta ,

I misread that at first and thought you said “cutting peasants”.

bobs_monkey ,

Close enough really

tiefling ,

Hand fished, gold coated lobster: $1,000 Cooking the lobster: $474,000

snooggums ,
@snooggums@midwest.social avatar

Perfection costs a whole lot more than really, really good because costs go up exponentially.

You need multiple times the staff on hand to cook and server everything at the same time, and they should be highly paid professionals. You need to be able to discard the majority of your food supplies, which already cost a lot more than normal, to have the perfect version of every dish. The setting probably costs a lot to set up and clean up after, and attention to detail costs time and money.

It is a huge waste, but that is why it costs so much.

andrewta ,

Good explanation. Still having a hard time on seeing that much, but good explanation

MediaBiasFactChecker Bot ,

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naught ,

Curious why this bot gathers downvotes - can anyone say?

breakingcups ,

I dunno. I think it adds something of value without being obtrusive.

Deestan ,

I think it rated a news outlet as “moderately credible / left bias” causing some to feel attacked.

sensiblepuffin ,
@sensiblepuffin@lemmy.world avatar

The usual complaint that I see people bring up is that the people behind it have a pro-Israel bias. But for a quick glance, it’s fine. The issue is that on Reddit, you’d have like 5 bot replies for 1000 human replies, and on Lemmy you’ll have 3 for 15 of the same, so they stand out more. In my opinion, anyway.

RCTreeFiddy ,

Personally, it’s absolutely maddening to see this long ass reply in every thread. I know I can block it, but I choose to downvote instead. Perhaps the bot creator could shorten the reply to a single line and a link?

Just my $0.02

FlyingSquid ,
@FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

It’s only a long reply because whatever client your using doesn’t parse spoiler tags.

This is what it should look like:

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/c05b9d99-fc38-4bb5-803f-d8b0f31741bb.png

Not one line, but also not especially obtrusive.

RCTreeFiddy ,

Good point. I guess several mobile clients are having issues with the spoiler tag.

snooggums ,
@snooggums@midwest.social avatar

People question the ability for it to be objective due to it being created and run by a single person combined with being an automated process that implies it is authoritative in the context of the communities where the bot is automated.

I think MBFC is about as good as is available, kind of like Snopes. Both have a history of trying to be objective even if they aren’t perfect.

catloaf ,

Although Snopes’ verdicts are far less important, being on things like urban myths.

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