Letter: Why Britain would be better off without the royals

HOW RIGHT you are in your leading article about Charles Windsor ('Silence is the key to his survival', 16 October). More and more, he and his wife are becoming the denizens of a degenerate soap opera. Unfortunately for them, this is not the way future heads of state should behave. They may be in the prison of their own foolish actions, but it really has nothing to do with the rest of us, who have problems of our own. Many people now believe that the way forward is to have a president. This is the only solution and one which would bring prosperity and dignity. Even Russia, in its present turmoil, has elected Boris Yeltsin, through two harrowing uprisings. We are not a volatile nation; perhaps we should become so. When the indiscretions of two disparate personalities is agonised over far more than the rights of the people to have full and gainful employment, then something is dangerously wrong.

The antics in the playpens of the Windsors should tell us that the hereditary principle should be recognised as the sorry sham it always was and a mere excuse for the survival of our pernicious class system.

Dorothy E Gresty Manchester