There follows an extract from the work of one of your own:
Don’t forget their huge indirect golden goose: tourists.
Annoying though they might be to the locals by blocking the tube and refusing to stand on the right, they dump buckets of money on the UK to see the sights, travel ludicrously short distances by public transport, and generally act silly a long way from home.
Sure not everything they come to see is royal, but the most expensive stuff is.
And who are the biggest spenders? The Yanks.
After they’ve finished buying maple syrup and cheap, pharmaceuticals, Tijuanaian professional services and illegal pharmaceuticals, where do they go next?
The United Kingdom.
Americans fly across an ocean to see a land filled with Castles that aren’t plastic.
And why do the Americans think Frances castles are so boring and stinky and the UK’s castles so awesome? Because real monarchs still use them.
The tower of London is so stunning to visitors because the Royal Crest on the Yeomen Warders Uniform is real. It’s not a lame historical re-enactment or modern LARPing.
It’s the embodiment of the living, breathing queen.
Everywhere you look she’s sprinkled fairy dust on banal objects to make them magically attractive to tourists.
12 million of whom visit every year spending 7,000 million pounds.
Which suddenly makes those direct profits look like rather small change.
But perhaps you don’t care than the monarchs are a perpetual GOLD MINE for the UK. You’re a Republican and you dislike like the royal family because of their political power. After all, the government gets all its right to rule through the crown, not the people.
And yes, I’ll grant you that back in the head-choppy days of yore, this was a legitimate concern, but the modern queen isn’t a dangerous political lion but a declawed kitten.
Her powers are limited to a kabuki theater act of approving what parliament wants to do anyway.
Remove the royal family from government and fundamentally nothing would be different except now you wouldn’t live in the magical United Kingdom but the rather dull United Republic of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. A.K.A URESWNI for short. Doesn’t quite have the same ring to it.
But, maybe I’m wrong – perhaps the queen is a political ticking time bomb, just waiting for her chance to declare random wars and devolve parliaments for the lulz.
But until that day comes.
God save the queen.
