[user104658]

I'm torn. I think the monarchy is a waste of time so I think £1 spent on them is a waste, especially for a vanity project. On the other hand, I also hate it when people fail to actually rationally scale things and clutch pearls in a way that looks a bit daft... that sort of "But £8 million is A LOT OF MONEY!!!" mindset.

£8 million is an absolute fortune to one person, absolutely. £8 million in terms of the budget of every council building, police force, school and other government facility in the UK is an absolutely minuscule part of the budget. like to put it into perspective, if you divided it up between everyone in the UK, we'd get 12p each. Even if being somewhat more reasonable and dividing it up between everyone who is on Universal Credit - it's something like £1.25 each.

Now would I rather everyone on UC get £1.25 extra in their next installment than have pictures of Charles everywhere? Obviously, yes, but I think it's important to remember that £8 million is not a large amount of money in a national budget.

Because if you argue that it IS a large amount of money, when you know it isn't a large amount of money, then you have time arguing for essentials that are going to cost a lot of money ... e.g. providing free school lunches for every child in the UK would cost something like £300 or 400 million every year. I absolutely think it's something they should be doing. But how do you lobby a £400 million annually from the govt. when you've just screeched at them that £8 million as a one off ringfenced fund - 2% of what you're looking for every year - is a huge amount of money.