Don - in response to your post of a day or two ago, in which you wrote:

O.K. Will, let's assume that you are right.

When we strip the Monarchy of all their property, land and money, sell it and distribute the proceeds equally among the poor, two questions arise.

1. What will you spend your five quid on?

2. How will all the newly unemployed ex workers of the Duchy of Cornwall and the Crown Estates avoid starvation?

Don T.

This was in response to my retort to Bonzo, which went as follows:

Bonzo: The poor are out there, we feel sorry for them, but there it is.

Me: ... and of course nothing can be done about it except wring our hands and weep crocodile tears...

You obviously missed what I had written in an earlier post:

I'm with Richard [Bridge] in that a hereditary head of state, such as we have now, seems a reasonable figurehead to represent the country.

You wrongly conflated my response to Bonzo with some of the anti-monarchical, strip-the-monarchy-of its riches posts in this thread. I was merely making the point, in my riposte to Bonzo's vapid sentences, that - given the will and the humanity and the commitment - some of the inequities in our society can be changed. I'm not suggesting that we parcel out Royal property to the population as a whole. BUT - if we have the wit and the will and the intelligence and the necessary "go" to, say, wage wars in places like Iraq and Aghanistan - if we also have similar intelligence and resources for other projects which (for example) bring work to people without work - then it's possible. What's needed is the motivation and an underlying assumption that it's worth doing.

Here's a random example - probably impractical but worth a second's thought: How about giving tax incentives to firms who employ call centre staff in this country rather than places like India, thus giving work to our people and supporting a local service?

I'm not an anti-monarchist but - given the growing imbalances in our society - I would personally prefer expenditure on, say, the scale of the Swedish monarchy. Anything is possible given the will.