The death of His Royal Highness, The Duke of Edinburgh leaves bereft, his family which included the Duke as husband, father, grandfather and great grandfather. Many others outside the Royal Family are also greatly saddened, namely huge numbers of citizens of this country and indeed around the world - may he R.I.P.
My own view, probably moulded from having had East End of London parents on the one hand coupled with a Roman Catholic public school education on the other, is that the monarchy is overall ,a positive feature of life in this country which saves enormous amounts of money, time and effort spent on electing new presidents every few years that occurs in many other countries.
Of course, many presidents are not even elected or like Premier Putin have extended their probable time in office by decades. I am not sure which camp the late President Mugabe fell into, as originally he was the Prime Minister of Zimbabwe but he treated most of that country's population appallingly and caused that nation to fall from being one of the African continent's main food growers. Whatever his formal position may have been, he acted as a dictator.
Then there are other elected presidents who seem unappealing at least to yours truly. Thus President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has a Turkish electorate, members of which have to be over 40 and had higher education. I am not sure how the Turkish age criterion would go down in parts of the UK where age 16 applies. My view is that 21 is be a fair age for eligibility to vote, given that many men are hardly mature even then. Xi Jinping, the current 'president of China' is hardly elected by the people of China and the Chinese system is another which is unappealing, again to me.
As to the President of Turkey; his humiliation of European commission President Ursula von der Leyen last week, by not providing her with a chair during his meeting with EU dignitaries whilst affording one to the European Council President Charles Michel, probably revealed more about the Turkish president's attitude to women than anything else. None the less, the President of the European Commission and indeed the President of the European Council are fine examples of presidents who are unelected by the people yet paid handsomely by the people.
The Presidents of France and the USA are of course elected by the people every half dozen years more or less at vast expense. Apart from the huge costs entailed, another disadvantage of those type of presidential elections, is the absence of any real choice for the electorates. Thus in France if by the time of their next presidential election, President Macron's popularity falls further than it is now, there could be a real risk of right winger Marine Le Pen being elected.
The UK parliamentary system is far from perfect but is in my view the least worst. The people elect members of parliament; the successful political party's leader then visits the Queen or King usually at Buckingham Palace, where the prime minister's role is formally confirmed by the monarch, who asks him or her to form the government.
There is no need in the UK at present, for the cost or energy, involved in regular presidential elections though the Scots may show us how such may occur, in years to come..
Of course the monarch is not an elected person but given that in the UK, the monarch has very limited powers, that seems to present little difficulty.
Generally, throughout my own lifetime, the Queen and HRH The Duke of Edinburgh have been hugely popular.
However, looking at the TV programme "The Crown" before the late Duke's death, it is apparent that he had quite a life when young but grew into his role or in other words matured, as he became older.
Queen Elizabeth will be bereft, as indeed was one of her predecessors, Queen Victoria, who was queen from 1837to 1901, after the death in 1861 of her consort Prince Albert.
God Save the Queen.
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