I [used to] do a lot of photo manipulation, and when I find myself trying to decide "do I really want that there, or am I being too lazy to clone it out", I ask myself the question "if it wasn't there, would I add it in" - sometimes the answer is yes, and sometimes it's no - either way, it allows me to move on, either finishing the image or adding it to the do later pile.

Anyway, one day I asked myself that question about the royal family...

Obviously, we can't get rid of them because they're single handedly responsible for global tourism - without them, nobody would travel to look at buildings and then the entire world economy would be in ruins - and so we need to wave enough flags so that never happens.

Your text has a splendid colour with which I agree.

Deference to the monarchy has waxed and wained. I'm not advocating a solution such as the one favoured in 1649, but I see no reason why the public should continue funding this absurdly wealthy and massive family or why they should have any exemptions whatsoever from law and tax. I would also like to see some attempt to recoup losses to public assets that have accumulated as private wealth within the family as a result of their past exemptions from law and tax, say by levying a much higher rate of taxation for 25 years on anybody wishing to retain any kind of royal title. 
 

I built a summerhouse down the allotment. Then turned up for a few late beers as the nearby street party was winding down, it was nice to see a few people and chat but if there was any Royal business going on at all, I thankfully missed it.

My local (Labour-run by a huge majority) council spunked more than £180,000 on Coronation-related stuff. Obscene!
https://flo.uri.sh/visualisation/13654494/embed
 

Where did that data come from?

There's a couple of zeros where I would have expected there not to be.

I believe the authors FOI'd the councils, hence several of them not having any data/reply yet. I've not looked deeply into it though.

I was at work, which was quiet except for about half an hour shortly after the coronation ended when everyone decided they had to shop /right now/.
The helicopter flyover actually passed right above us so we all rushed out to watch that - the highlight of the day.

Heh, I live North of Aberdeen and we get about 20 helicopters a day flying over us to the oil rigs, so novelty is limited here. Saying that, I couldn't have cared less about the coronation, although an extra day off work was OK I guess.

Didn't watch any. Didn't get an extra day off work.
And for some reason it made this week feel like the longest week in existence.

Sorry to hear that. I still haven't watched any of it, apart from a couple of still shots of pre-protestors being arrested and 30 seconds of the king bloke in a Disney carriage with subtitles from a lip-reader.
How come you didn't get the free day? Seems like that was the ONLY good thing for a normal working person. Like one of those things where you go "Hey, can't we celebrate that really wonderful thing like Jesus personally healing those 5 million children" and the govt says, "Soz, no MONEY TREE" and then it's like "Oh, the Saxe-Coburg-Gotha hat-ceremony. YAY, a day off all round (except for Ant)".

The group I work for decided they didn't want to give it. Not contractually required and most sites would have been operating anyway, so it would have been an extra day holiday for another time.
Tight bastards.