On this one, I am at odds with the consensus.

Regardless of what we think about the monarchy as either an institution or indeed the present incumbents, or rather the media image drawn up of them...

1. Far better than having someone who wants the job. (Our Aussie friends made that clear the last time they debated republicanism.)

2. I have been a businessman trading in all four (and the rest) corners of the world. There is a reason why many Johnny Foreigners want to trade with us, visit us, fawn over us, despite our Empire stain. We have everything to not offer them as Belgium does. What's the difference? Can you tell what it is yet?

One of the largest manufacturing orders I ever closed, resulting in 30 sustained new real full time well paid jobs, was to a company in Texas. To this day, I am convinced that my reassurances over prospective quality of goods, delivery schedules and technical support were secondary to the photos of me at a recent Buckingham Palace tea party. That's when he went from being a hard ball CEO to wanting to be my best mate ever....

Royalty sells. Lose it and we are left with fish & chips, drizzle, moaning gits and ill conceived sporting expectations.

Mind you, of course the government are spending more on it than they could have gotten away with, and of course they see it as a distraction to real problems. If that didn't work, we wouldn't have bread and circuses, or soap operas and Hello magazine, as they are now called.