Rule Britannia! The Queen owns the seabed.

[grannieonabike]

Heard this on the news. She'll get all the profits from offshore wind farms, I believe. Made me wonder what else she owns.

March on the Palace anyone?

You still don't comprehend it. Zero reference by you to the people - national anthem God Save the People for example. As far as the Crown being the state - the point here is that the association between Crown, royals and the Monarchy is undemocratically seamless, and should be reformed.There was no mention of a President Politician in my comment - the usual silly stuff that monarchists hark back to. I have no objection to Prince Charles or any of his siblings being elected to the position of Head-of-State, as long as we have a statutory term of office in place. Your contempt for successful Republics is deplorable, blinkered and prejudiced. A question I frequently put before children, teenagers and their parents is this: "would you like a choice of becoming Head-of-State in Britain"? The reply varies between - no I would hate it, to yes but I don't have the choice, or no, but I would like to be given the choice anyway". OK be picky about a spelling error - with scores of email answers on my website to deal with sometimes errors creep in.

I don't have contempt for 'successful' republics - I just am not really aware of any republic that doesn't have problems. The unelected 'presidents' I was referring to are 'presidents' of the European Council and the European Commission, both bodies form part of the EU which you must admit is undemocratic and unaccountable in the extreme. I note that Van Rompuy was 're-elected' this week for a further two year term...how democratic, and representative of the people as I didn't get a vote, did you? The Queen has very little real power; presidents tend to have more - look at Mugabe and Amin; Assad and Gaddafi also spring to mind.

I fail to see how the association between the royals and the monarchy could be anything but seamless, as one is born royal, and thus into the monarchy.

I think countries with monarchies perhaps have a greater sense of identity than some Republics - Belgium is till hanging in there by a thread, whereas if it were a republic it might have split along it's language border years ago. The Latvian republic is having problems at the moment and splitting between Latvians and ethnic Russians. Argentina isn't doing very well, and neither is Greece.

I do comprehend 'it'; however, the current political arrangements suit the UK; there is no great groundswell of opinion wanting this to change and to get rid of the monarchy; and I am a great believer in 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it'. I see no reason in change for changes sake. Not wanting a republic is neither deplorable, blinkered or prejudiced, it is a position I have held for many years, and I have seen nothing that would make me want to live in a Republic.

Yes, the crown estates belong to us, the people. We got them in a very bad deal many years ago, after we had to bail out reckless gamblers, a bit like the banks, but back then it was the royals.

Well, they did belong to us but David Cameron wants to give them back to the queen like a big freebie. Why? I expect it is because he is a twit.

So now, the queen get 15% of all profits they make. Its a huge amount of money and if Dave Cam gave a shit about government finances he wouldn't have given it away, but he sees it as his own personal treasure trove to raid/give away (like our forests).

and the NHS