Ditch the royals and spend the money on our cash-strapped NHS

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Royal rip-off: the monarchy already costs us a fortune, never mind shelling out for Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's big day (Getty)

Like millions of others across the country, I will not be watching the royal wedding on Saturday. The royals are an institution which should have been done away with centuries ago and which most countries around the world shun. There are 195 independent countries across the world and, according to the latest figures, just 22 per cent have a monarch. The other 152 countries get along quite well without one.

Not only are monarchs seen as unnecessary and old-fashioned, but they are also very expensive. Research conducted by the UK anti-Royal campaign group Republic estimated in 2017 that the monarchy cost us £345m. That’s the equivalent of £19.1m for each of the so-called “working royals", making them the highest paid public servants in the world.

In these times of austerity, just imagine what difference more than a third of a billion pounds a year could make to our cash-strapped NHS.

Time is undoubtedly up for this dysfunctional medieval circus we call the royals.

Ian Driver
Broadstairs

Governments can always find cash when it smells a PR opportunity

Improved funding for brain tumour research is to be welcomed, of course, but it’s interesting to see how cash-strapped governments can always seem to find money when it suits their opportunistic purposes.

Dr Anthony Ingleton
Sheffield

Keen reader Sturgeon is creating her own fiction

Nicola Sturgeon advises us that she likes to read to relax after her work. I wonder whether Sturgeon is a fan of fiction? She must be, having authored Scotland’s Future, the SNP’s 2013 white paper.

Jill Stephenson
Edinburgh

Location tracking technology has an upside – fighting crime

There have been a number of recent media reports concerning Google Android's user tracking technology. This data is then used for targeted ads, but there are other potential uses, including fighting crime. For example, the location changes of a car driver over a specific distance could reveal its speed. If cars are exceeding the legal limit, there is potential for fines which could potentially generate profit. There are many other possibilities to consider. My own life, however, is moderately boring so you can remove me from the data collection.

Dennis Fitzgerald
Melbourne, Australia

Populist nationalism poses far greater risk than EU

Ben Chu’s article, The EU is not a ‘neoliberal conspiracy’, and the Labour Party needs to realise it, makes interesting reading. I wonder what Rüstow, who coined the term neoliberalism, would have made of the EU as it stands currently?

Varoufakis’ book And The Poor Suffer What They Must is also fascinating reading but, as I understood it, seems to draw conclusions contrary to those drawn by Chu – even though some of the information upon which both draw is similar.

Varoufakis writes (and I am open to correction) that the EU, arising as it does from the Coal and Steel Pact, was and remains a neoliberal commercial cartel that is fundamentally pro-capital and anti-labour with all the asocial consequences that we see around us. Further complexity arises from the iron domination that the Bundesbank exerts over EU fiscal policy even though the German fear and loathing of fiscal instability is well founded.

The EU, a regional supra-national collaboration of nation states that operates to optimise the lives of all the people, is the only sane future. Radical reform is clearly needed but populist nationalism, which is chiefly the spawn of the elites who have most to gain from neoliberalism as currently operated, is resurgent and constitutes a far greater hazard than anything else at present.

Steve Ford
Haydon Bridge

European dream team

David Miliband, Yvette Cooper, Nick Clegg, Vince Cable and Jeremy Corbyn.

Good basis for a new party to keep us in Europe.

D Hazell
​Exeter