The Queen is 90! Her official birthday celebrations took place last weekend at the Trooping the Colour Parade. The flamboyant display required weeks of preparation, with thousands of soldiers, gun salutes, and a 50-boat flotilla down the Thames led by a million-pound barge with five-time Olympic gold champion rower Sir Steve Redgrave aboard.
Whenever there's a significant royal celebration like this a big question comes up: how much do we really need the monarchy?
Having a family of royals at the helm of a nation doesn't come cheap, but there are wildly different figures depending on who you ask. Buckingham Palace's 2015 report puts it at £35.7 million each year, or 56p per person. However unsurprisingly the anti-monarchy group Republic have a higher calculation - an eye-popping £200 million, factoring in travel expenses, security for events and public relations. Then there are additional costs like the delivery of baby George in a luxurious birthing suite at St. Mary's hospital for £10k.
The Queen alone earns almost £40 million a year paid for by the Treasury, i.e. taxpayer's money. This means her hourly salary is a hard-to-believe £23k, a fair few notches above the National Living Wage. But is her job, as one BBC correspondent put it, as "physically demanding" as her paycheck warrants?
As the head of State and the Commonwealth, her typical day involves reading the papers and parliamentary proceedings, responding to letters and attending formal engagements; she also does a lot of meeting and greeting with dignitaries at home and abroad despite not having any real political power. She's the patron of over 600 charities, and over the course of her reign has helped them raise £1.4 billion.
The Royal Family bring in a substantial amount of money to the UK. Weddings, babies and jubilees mean merchandise - people really do buy egg cups with little Prince George's proud face on them. But their biggest contribution is to the tourist industry. According to the British Tourism Agency they generate £500 million every year as visitors flock to Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle.
But would they still visit the palaces if the royals weren't around? Or is the fairytale notion of queens, princes and princesses what draws them here to snoop around their homes?
Are the Royal Family value for money? Leave us a comment on Twitter, Google+ or Facebook.
