"What needs to be done is to give the queen and her mates a salary of a million quid. take their wealth and get those people who sit in the dragons den and and can recognise a decent business idea to invest the money. Run the rotyal estates and art collections as businesses" - big Al Whittle

Oddly enough Al the Queen does not need the £1 million you offer. The Queen and the whole of the Royal Family do not cost the British Tax Payer so much as one penny, in fact as contributers they pay in a great deal in tax. Amazing display of ignorance on your part Al - particularly liked "Run the royal estates and art collections as businesses" - I think that you find that they already are - and very successfully too in 2011 they put over £242million into the pot. Pity that the Government wasn't as good at running things.

Royal family - pay freeze since 1991 - and they have managed to reduce costs and create a contingency fund of over £31 million in the process.

Don T is quite correct and oddly enough it was Canadian Premier Pierre Trudeau who pointed out that taxing the rich (top 10% pay something like 55% of total tax collected) till the pips squeak (a-lá Denis Healey) means that using the example Trudeau used:

1: You are rich - you can either pay 15% in Canada or 20% in the USA - where do you take your wealth and live?

2: I implement your suggestions - The rich can now pay 25% in Canada or 20% in the USA - where do you take your wealth and live?

If I take your advice and raise taxes and target the rich - we end up collecting less tax than we did before.