When people mention just how hard the Queen works and what a tough gig it is being a royal, it's telling that in the whole history of the British throne, there has only ever been one voluntary abdication

We wouldn't sponk a fortune of money on a whole family of people who it appears the only justifiable contribution to the country is a few foreigners like to take pictures outside of their big house. Which we sponk a fortune on maintaining.

There is nothing to say the royal properties would not continue to be a tourist trap without a family of spongers in there.

show me the figures.

The first difficulty come in determining just how the figures are calculated.

Are the Royal lands & properties her own personal wealth or do they belong to the nation? Prince Andrew has just trousered £3m from the sale of a house that was given to him by the Queen as a wedding present. The Royal estates are major beneficiaries of CAP grants, would that be added to the "support" she receives?

The lack of clarity on what is personal and public wealth suits both sides of the argument and that won't be resolved anytime soon.

But gerald grosvener and the church are also similarly endowed with land and property thats debatably theirs. get rid of them too? they bring less to the nation than the Queen.........

I'm a republican, but wouldn't wanna make a decision without knowing all the ins and outs.

Well, I'm sitting here with a union jack top on (that I actually bought in the States) looking forward to going along to a jubilee street party that is going to be held in a local church hall because the weather is crap, and I'm doing it all because I think Liz is terrific. One reason that I think she is terrific is because of what she symbolises to me: stability, dignity, respect and adaptability. I think she has also been a great ambassador for our country and we have needed that many times, not least when the politicians have chosen to undermine our image abroad through decisions like war in Iraq (to name just one recent example).

She has had to make a lot of changes in the last 60 years but has done so without public complaint or melodrama (unlike her offspring). She gives the impression of either instructing or listening to her advisors with wisdom and confidence as she has managed to reinvent the monchary in recent times to such a degree that two opinion polls over the last few weeks have suggested public support for the monarchy is at its highest for 20 years (the latest one, by Mori, giving it at 73%). When St Helens Council puts bunting up in the town centre to celebrate a royal occasion (a town centre which looks like a replica of some eastern bloc hellhole), everyone should know that the monarchy is officially popular.

Forelock well and truly tugged.

wearing a union jack doesn't have to mean you support the royal family, the two don't have to be intrinsically linked - I will wave the famous flag to support GB in whatever sport and I would fight for Britain but I don't have to support the royal family. I would fight for my country but not my queen and especially not the hundreds of hangers on...

the four qualities "stability, dignity, respect and adaptability" exist in France (as well as other republics ) also and the people disposed of it's monachy 200 odd years ago !

yes, she has been a great ambasador for the country but it's a pity about her her old man Phil the Greek who has been nothing but an ambarasment to the country and as for the others in the family ? well.............not exactly shining examples are they ?

If 'Liz' is so great then why did she allow the Iraq debacle as well as the Falklands conflict and not mention the horrors of Afghanistan to go ahead ? She is powerless and a complete nondescript figurehead politically.

regarding St Helens town centre why not write to Her Majesty and ask for a small slice of her billions to tart the place up a bit ?

Charles Kenedy made a good point earlier on a show I watched.

"If it aint broke don't fix it".

Still drinking, then.

Looked like he is

Can you be sure those Americans go to London to drool over the baubled one, or do they just prefer London over Paris and Berlin because we speak the same language (and we're [iquaint[/i)?

No idea, again, until I see some genuine polls of visitors and why they come I can't really make judgement, all I know is scanning through the news channels tonight, SKY, Fox, CNN, NDTV, France TV, Al Jazeera, they are all covering it to different degrees.

People also seem to think getting rid of the monarchy would mean we could grab their palaces and gas fields etc,...... they are very much mistaken.

Land owage of the Queen, not the Government is almost 6.6 billion acres of land worldwide including Great Britain, Northern Ireland, Canada, Australia and on and on........


I understand peoples problems with them, especially in times like these, but I'm not sure how you can make much change and come out better for it.

I guess it's a paradox the Aussies go through every few years too..... Scotland may end up nether here nor there over the coming years, electing to leave the union but being bound by international land ownership law that would still mean the Queen hold them to ransom.

I'm a republican and would get rid of the lot of them on principle, regardless of any possible financial impact. I certainly wouldn't stop at the major royals either - all the landed 'gentry' should be stripped of their assets and offered council houses in some of our less well-off parts (that is after they have qualified through a suitabke waiting period).

I always find comments in support of the monarchy to be hugely embarrassing. What people are really saying is that there are people in this world who are better than they or their children could ever hope to be through the simple fact of being born or married into a particular family. Its utter cr*p and IMO demeans everyone who buys into it.

How wonderful it has been to see people showing a sense of national pride back home, without being labelled something by the thought nazis. Still, we'll see if the same people will be called xenophobic or racist if they dare display such a sense of pride outside these allotted days.

France is Europes most visited country by a long way - that's a fact which any tourist poll or travel company will tell you

I also believe it is the no.1 destination in the world for tourists but can't be sure of this fact

You seem to be quoting directly from the Ex-Pats Weekly News & Moans with your stories of illegal flag waving and thought Nazis - its really not like that here you know.

Anyone able to answer this?

It always seems to me that the objections to the monarchy are all theoretical. People don't like the idea of being subjects and the Queen (in theory) having huge amounts of power. Of course in practice she has no power and being a subject of the Queen means little more than some fancy wording on things like passports.

What we have is something that works very well in practice if not in theory. A completely apolitical and powerless head of state who does a great job of representing this country. I don't see a better alternative.

Quote ="BrisbaneRhino"I'm a republican and would get rid of the lot of them on principle, regardless of any possible financial impact. I certainly wouldn't stop at the major royals either - all the landed 'gentry' should be stripped of their assets and offered council houses in some of our less well-off parts (that is after they have qualified through a suitabke waiting period). I always find comments in support of the monarchy to be hugely embarrassing. What people are really saying is that there are people in this world who are better than they or their children could ever hope to be through the simple fact of being born or married into a particular family. Its utter cr*p and IMO demeans everyone who buys into it.'" I'm a republican too. But you have to admit that the queen has done a good job. Not interfering in politics although I'm sure she must have been sorely tempted sometimes - like in 1968 when there was the plot to get rid of Wilson and replace him with Mountbatten - after all she does have the power to sack her PM (ask the Aussies) of course if she ever used it I've no doubt they'd take it away from her. I've read that her true political views are fairly similar to the right wing looney she's married to but can't prove it. But TBF Lizzie has been pretty good for the institution of monarchy. Given how long her mother lived I'd be surprised if I live to see her successor. But if it's Charlie boy I give the monarchy 12 months. I watched the flotilla yesterday - what a load of unctious twaddle the commentators were speaking. I watched it for one reason and one reason only - my daughter's brother in law (if that's not too tortuous) had a boat in it -called Spider T. www.spidert.co.uk/

Quote ="BrisbaneRhino"I'm a republican and would get rid of the lot of them on principle, regardless of any possible financial impact. I certainly wouldn't stop at the major royals either - all the landed 'gentry' should be stripped of their assets and offered council houses in some of our less well-off parts (that is after they have qualified through a suitabke waiting period). I always find comments in support of the monarchy to be hugely embarrassing. What people are really saying is that there are people in this world who are better than they or their children could ever hope to be through the simple fact of being born or married into a particular family. Its utter cr*p and IMO demeans everyone who buys into it.'" I'm a republican too. But you have to admit that the queen has done a good job. Not interfering in politics although I'm sure she must have been sorely tempted sometimes - like in 1968 when there was the plot to get rid of Wilson and replace him with Mountbatten - after all she does have the power to sack her PM (ask the Aussies) of course if she ever used it I've no doubt they'd take it away from her. I've read that her true political views are fairly similar to the right wing looney she's married to but can't prove it. But TBF Lizzie has been pretty good for the institution of monarchy. Given how long her mother lived I'd be surprised if I live to see her successor. But if it's Charlie boy I give the monarchy 12 months. I watched the flotilla yesterday - what a load of unctious twaddle the commentators were speaking. I watched it for one reason and one reason only - my daughter's brother in law (if that's not too tortuous) had a boat in it -called Spider T. www.spidert.co.uk/

Isn't that because its a /the major destination for holidaying Brits and we travel more than most?

TBH I thought that would have been Spain. Unless it's all the RL fans going to Perpignan. But I must admit I've been to France quite a lot. And I'll probably be going again in September.

Well, it might stop scenes of mass sycophancy etc, which make it all the more ironic when we scoff at the likes of North Korea.

The monarch does have some powers (via the Privy Council).

I have no particular personal axe to grind with Brenda - although goodness, looking at some of the others, it's little wonder that the monarchy as a whole seems to have become a glorified, taxpayer-funded soap opera about a large, dysfunctional family.

But the sycophancy - and there is a veritable orgy of it going on in much of the media at present - is tedious in the extreme.

It is not some sort of a miracle that an elderly woman, who has the best health care possible; who has never had to worry about unemployment; who has never had to worry about what to give the children for their tea or whether she can afford to pay the bill for the fuel to cook it; who has never had to darn and wash her family's clothes, is in (apparently) good form at her age.

It is not 'unpatriotic' to point this out - indeed, to pretend otherwise is to put one's critical faculties entirely on hold, which one would hardly think would be a good thing for the country as a whole. (See the point above about North Korea)

Does the country need a 'figurehead'? Maybe, maybe not. Is a monarch the best solution? Perhaps, perhaps not. But regardless of which side of that argument one comes down on, such uncritical sycophancy is nauseating.

More widely: there are plenty of countries that do get by perfectly well without a monarchy. The tourism argument is as flawed as it is old. Paris has already been mentioned. There are plenty of other cities in republics that have no shortage of tourists - try Venice as another example. And so on.

Back in the 1980s, I did voluntary work with Campaign for the Arts. The stats produced then have never been proved to be inherently false or outdated: the majority of tourists visit the UK for the culture and not the monarchy.

That is not an argument [iagainst[/i monarchy: but the argument that the monarchy is the most significant reason for visiting the UK is incorrect. Odd, too, to hear it spouted by people who would readily accuse others of 'underselling' this country - because that's precisely what it one's in viewing the country through the prism of the monarchy.

France is second, after Spain, according to [url=http://www.101holidays.co.uk/top-10-holiday-destinations/this[/url.

It's about nationalism and national pride. Nationalism in England is suppressed. We're allowed to be "British" via the monarchy and wars. Not had a popular war for a while and our sports teams (that other outlet for nationalism, especially English) aren't too good. So the monarchy provides a safe, harmless outlet for national pride. Can't see that as bad thing myself. On this particular occasion, it's also about Her Majesty personally and I think people respect her irrespective of their views on the monarchy. Again, a bit of humanity is a good thing I think.