Recently financial accounts were published showing just how much it costs the British taxpayer to keep the Monarchy. It appears that over the last financial year the cost of raising these over-privileged scroungers (privileged just by accident of birth!) has increased by no less than £1.5million to a staggering £41.5million. Bargain!

What is even more remarkable about this huge sum of taxpayer money given to the inhabitants of Buckingham palace (...and their families, butlers, drivers, security etc. etc.) is that this sum of £41.5million looks set to increase when in a widely speculated move the Queen will ask for a significant increase in her Civil List (this is a list of individuals to whom money is paid by the government). This reveals that every individual in the United Kingdom pays 69p a year to keep these hereditary spongers!

We in the Anarchist Federation realise that the cost of caviar, Bollinger champagne and gourmet restaurant meals have increased dramatically and we sympathise (honestly).. but we are shocked that they have the audacity, during what is termed the 'worst financial crisis since WW2' to ask for more money! 100, 000 going unemployed every month, job seekers allowance at a measly £45 quid a week and the Royal Family get millions of our money to fund their lavish, care free lifestyle.

How much it costs ordinary working people like us to uphold this family of spongers however is irrelevant, they should go just like all other useless and power-gorging Lords, MP's, Bishops, aristocrats and suchlike. But what makes this family particularly notable is the extent of their theft from the taxpayer – retaining their undeserved positions of unmerited social standing and unearned wealth and we foot the bill!

What other family do you know that has:

• “Crown Estate” property to the value of £7.6 billion
• A head (in this case the queen) with a personal fortune estimated at £650 million
• 484,000 square feet of castle (Windsor) and another at 65, 000 acres (Balmoral)
• Five Palaces
• £15 million given to them by government for upkeep of residences, complemented by approximately £18 million to cover costs of travel
• £20 million in cash and investments
• An estimated £1 billion worth of artwork
• £130 million worth of jewellery

and the list goes on.. and on.. and on..

More sinister however is not that fact that this wealth was unearned or even the fact that a significant proportion of the monarchs wealth is taxpayer funded. But what is striking about the whole scam that is the British monarchy, is the lengths our less-than-loved MP's and political elite go to, to protect them. This article for instance could land the author in prison, after all according to the (still standing) Treason Felony Act 1848, it is treason if "any person whatsoever, within the United Kingdom or without devise or intend to deprive our most gracious Lady the Queen from the style, honor or Royal Name of the Imperial Crown of the United Kingdom.". This coupled with a barrage of mainstream media, pro-Monarchy propaganda is enough to make anyone curious as to just why our political representatives are so quick to defend a job that descends by birthright though the inbred descendants of some long-dead murdering megalomaniac. Could it be because their own jobs are equally as useless, costly and archaic?

Collecting together some of the rough estimate of the tax-payer cost to fund the Royal Family (they're very secretive about their finances – wonder why?) the total cost comes to approximately £75million! That would pay the University tuition fees of 75,000 of the poorest students, fund 25 new secondary schools, or pay for the running of an entire hospital. When people are forced to sleep on the streets, to work several jobs to feed themselves and their families or forced to work in insecure, monotonous jobs, a bill of £75, 000, 000 for a relic is insane!

We in the Anarchist Federation don't want a cheaper Royal Family, or a nicer Royal Family. We don't hold that by accident of birth anybody should sponge off decent working people. Their only use is to promote the myth of the perfect nuclear family, look down on us common folk, wave alot and to whip up nationalism and 'British Empire' nostalgia. And all for the bargain price of just £75 million? Not in our name thanks.

Parents have reoccupied Wyndford Primary School and physically prevented the council removing equipment and furniture in a bid to keep a primary school in their community.

Read more: Glasgow School Occupied in Defiance of Council Cuts

Thousands of workers across Britain have shown solidarity with construction workers sacked at the Lindsey Oil Refinery (owned by Total – the petroleum and energy supplier) expansion project by taking wildcat, or spontaneous 'unofficial', strike action against their bosses. Some may remember the Lindsey Refinery workers from the series of wildcats that took place earlier this year, wildcats which the mainstream media misleadingly portrayed as racist and nationalist due to slogans used by a minority of the workers, despite the fact that foreign workers had come out on strike with their fellow workers, and demanded to help unionise and increase the working conditions of these foreign labourers.

Read more: Lindsey strikes again!!!

* From Madrid the anarchist group Star, linked to the Iberian Federation of Anarchists Youths (Federación Ibérica de Juventudes Anarquistas-FIJA-), has raised questions whose answers will let us know today and in detail what is doing and saying the known Venezuelan anarchist spokesman.

Read more: Interview with the newspaper El Libertario (Venezuela)

Since the Iranian election on June 12th hundreds of thousands of Iranians have taken to the streets to protest the results of the election, widely believed to have been rigged to ensure victory for the incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. And there is good reason to believe that the hard-line and reactionary President was not the victor - not only were there reports of missing ballots and coerced voting on behalf of the Ahmadinejad campaign but Iran also has a strong history of rigged elections. It's all part and parcel of the single-Party dictatorship in Iran: any show of democracy is a façade.

Read more: The situation in Iran