I think, with all respect Al, that you are confusing the system itself with those with the responsibility for working it. No doubt, in the royal family as anywhere else there are all sorts, from the hardworking and dignified and controlled keeping-of-her-thoughts-to-herself present Gracious Lady, who seems to me all-in-all to make a worthwhile job of the responsible postition she got landed with, to her obnoxiously stupid & snobbish & spiteful late sister, who seems from all accounts to have been a right royal king-size [implication intended? not sure] pain in the arse. So your choirboy friend would doubtless have seen & heard all aspects of such.

But the system itself, I say again, doesn't seem to me to be any more broke or in need of fixing than any of the others they have formulated &/or developed elsewhere ~~ all have the virtues & faults of their natures. If there is a faultless one, I repeat, where is it? Why has nobody ever succeeded in finding it? If not, why bust ourselve trying to fix the one we have rather than just striving to make the best of it, in all senses?

~M~