THE British monarchy is a disgrace. In fact, disgraceful is not the word to describe it. I think the sooner we have a democratically elected presidency, the better for each one of us.

It's surely a disgrace that every British child has to grow up knowing that they will never be "good enough" to become their nation's head of state. It's a disgrace that patriotism has been turned into a system of personal homage to the Queen - take our absurd National Anthem, a song about an 80-year-old rich woman, wishing her even more.

It's a disgrace that our society demands deference to a group of people purely because of their social status - who says fascism was ever defeated?

It's a disgrace that our top executive office is little more than a genetic lottery, since even the dullest or stupidest prince is the social superior of someone like a Nobel laureate.

It's a disgrace that when millions of families and pensioners are struggling to make ends meet there is an hereditary family living a life of luxury and extravagance at the state's cost.

It's a disgrace that a family which has an estimated private fortune of £20 billion or more (in the form of land, properties, capital, investments, art and stamp collections, horses and stud farms etc) can still ask an already overtaxed nation to fork out more than £60 million each year to "support" it.

I could go on and on all day, of course. But as it upsets me (a patriot) to write these things, I will stop.

Aled Jones, Mount Crescent, Bridlington, East Yorkshire.