YOUR VIEWS

I was most surprised by Mr Phil Green's response to my letter which you had kindly printed.
As to Britain being financially impoverished, I guess we must have different views as to what constitutes a truly parlous financial state. Britain's national debt is £1.7 trillion. The interest alone on this colossal debt is around £50 thousand million pounds per annum. Our annual borrowing requirement is approximately £120 thousand millions per annum. On top of that, The Bank of England is engaged in ‘quantitive easing' (in other words, printing money) to the tune of several hundred billions every year. I call that ‘skint‘ Mr Green even if you do not. I did not dream up these figures. They are taken from statements made in the House of Commons. As to payments to the monarchy, I think Mr Green misunderstood my letter. I am not anti-monarchy: I am pro democracy. And a fundamental basic of democracy is the right of the people to elect - or vote out - their leaders. Whilst Britain continues to deny the people the right to vote for their head of state, it cannot be seen as a true democracy. As to the £36 millions civil list payments we the people pay our Queen, I was merely suggesting that she identifies with her suffering people (and most people in Britain are battling to keep their heads above water), by telling the Treasury that she will temporarilly pay this out of her own pocket. We will still continue to pay the additional £80 -odd million per annum for her security, the aircraft of the Queen's flight and other travel costs as well as many other of her expenses.

But the civil list, costing us about £1.2 million pounds every week to cover her household costs etc, could be paid out of her own pocket until we are out of the woods financially. This would always be her decision of course. I do not wish to upset Mr Green or anyone else: but it does occur to me that the cost of two people living in a 300 room palace with 19 state rooms and 75 bathrooms, could be brought down considerably if the Palace was reserved strictly for state occasions and the Queen and Prince Phillip were moved into smaller but equally luxurious accommodation. We are skint Mr Green. David Cameron said so. George Osborne said so. In these terrible circumstances is it not time to have to think outside the box?

Sincerely,

David Lee