Roz is surely right when she points out that our royal family appears to be a good deal bigger, more expensive and more influential than other surviving European monarchies? Given the current economic crisis, now might be a good time to do a little pruning. After all, as that nice Mr Cameron keeps telling us, "we all have to make sacrifices; we're all in this together".

Of course, no-one can really justify the retention of the monarchy - even if it does generate a surplus for the British economy. (So did the slave trade.) The question is what you would put in its place. An elected President? If we'd had a Presidential system since the war, we might well have had both Thatcher and Blair as Head of State. Worse still (if that's possible) the next Presidential election would probably be between Boris Johnson and Simon Cowell!