Great work, monarchists! Your desperation for a celebration hospitalised a 91-year old man, but don’t feel bad about it. So you’re desperate to see senior citizens float up and down on a golden boat in the drizzle to the point that one of them becomes seriously ill? That doesn’t make you a bad person. It doesn’t hurt anyone. Except the people with bladder infections.

Because I’m going to take you at your word. I’m going to accept that being monarch is a hard, thankless task, requiring immense skill and boundless energy. Why then, in the name of all that is human, do you insist on its being foisted on people who never asked for it?

Is it good, is it decent, is it human to demand that we impose soul-crushing duties on any person who hasn’t explicitly asked for it? That’s the system you’re championing. Enforced, endless servitude until the day they die.

Because that’s what you want on your stamps.

I’m more than happy to give my opinions on whether there should be a Queen. You’re quick to add hashtags to give yours. You know whose opinion is never asked? The Queen’s.

As ever, Jake Yapp put all of this much better than I could in an interview with Elizabeth Peacock (1:46 of audio): http://soundcloud.com/jakeyapp/elizabeth-peacock-on-the

And that’s what you’re reduced to. “Is it fair to force someone to do a job they cannot leave because you want to be a subject rather than a citizen?” “Why not?”

I wonder what the Queen wanted to be when she grew up.

Because there’s no way out of the job. You don’t get to give it up except by an extraordinary act of Parliament. Or by being kept in Pontefract Castle until you’re so delirious with hunger that you sign the Crown over to your cousin. Fewer people have managed to get out of the job than there are fingers on your left hand. (Unless you are missing more than one finger on your left hand) Of them, one was starved to death, one executed, and one chased to France. The other was sent to the Bahamas for being “well-known to be pro-Nazi” [Lord Caldecote to Winston Churchill]. But let’s not spoil a lovely weekend by bringing all that up…

If you wish to see a woman in her ninth decade soaked by cold, Thames drizzle so that you get an excuse to wave a flag, fine. If you don’t care that the succession meant that Charles couldn’t marry the woman he loved, fine. If you have no concern over the fact that Edward must just look at himself each morning in the mirror and weep blood, good for you. Don’t pretend, however, it doesn’t make you a dick.

We must abolish the monarchy now. For their own good.