REGARDING ‘Wedding launched a new Royal era.' (SA, May 10, Mary Ratcliffe). Mary Ratcliffe penned the same predictable, gushing garbage during all the previous Royal marriages and look what happened to that lot, divorce, divorce, divorce!

It's a shame that the tax payer had to spend tens of millions on security for the couple when it would have been money better spent on supplying the majority of us with anti-nausea tablets.

Why should citizens have to bow and curtsy to a Royal just because of that person's bloodline? The British monarchy is the font of all snobbery, an orgy of deference, snobbery and worship for the hereditary principle. In short, simply because of their unearned, boring, talentless bloodline.

We are fed the nonsense that the Windsor family is great for tourism. In fact, of the top 20 tourist attractions in Britain, only one is related to the Royal family - Windsor Castle, at number 17.

Then we are advised that the 'monarchy is a great defender of democracy.' As several distinguished biographers have observed, the last monarch but one, Edward V111, conspired with Hitler to run this country as a Nazi colony. Did European monarchies stem the tide of Fascism during the last world war? No, they went under!

The monarchist spin-machine, the media and the souvenir industry have created a pair of fictitious characters for us to cheer and of whom we know nothing. Think back to the 1981 wedding of Charles and Diana and you realise how little we know about these people that women and children get weepy over.

The monarchy today is a rolling media roadshow selling nothing but itself. The couple's chance of a lasting marriage would be much improved if William gave up his Royal status and they became an ordinary couple. Alas, this couple will remain aloft on the stinking heap of privilege and wealth that only a British monarchy can offer.

J Adams Bloomsbury Swindon