And this Crown Estate malarkey and the Duchy of Cornwall: by what right do these inbred pillocks come to own all these riches? There is nothing more powerful than owning land, yet no-one on the planet ever made a single acre of land (though I suppose you could make half a case for building dykes to reclaim land from the sea...) If you own vast tracts of land, it's almost certainly because your ancestors enclosed it to keep the riffraff out. Stole it, in other words, then got rich by becoming squires, landlords and tithe-takers.

For the sake of accuracy: The Queen's official expenditure decreased by 5.3% from £33.9 million in 2009/10 to £32.1 million in 2010/11 according to the royal public finances annual report.

Do look it up!

As for Her Maj's workload, she spends months every year relaxing on vast estates out of the public gaze, and always has done. Go through your list again and cross off the "jobs" that wouldn't exactly cause the world to collapse around our ears if she just dropped them. Gosh, these monarchists are the finest on the planet when it comes to suspension of critical thought! Except for believers in God, of course...