Elect a president instead of keeping the monarchy says David Broughton (Letters, January 25).

He lists several candidates: Arthur Scargill, Gerry Adams and Vanessa Redgrave.

Why did he not mention the higher profile presidents from poor backgrounds, such as Hitler with his concentration camps and gas chambers, Stalin with his labour camps and salt mines and Idi Amin, among many, with their acts of genocide.

Hitler, of course, is the prime example of presidential power - the swastika stinks of misery and death says David. How very contradictory he is.

I would remind him that, when the UK became a great global power, we were a real monarchy, operating under a system which he'd no doubt refer to as exploitative aggression.

True to a degree, but these countries are now self-governing and no longer among the lower echelons of the deprived nations.

When I travelled abroad in the Fifties, Sixties and Seventies, I was proud to be British, a nation accepted as a world leader in constitution, law and order, banking, insurance, technology, medicine and so on.

We taught people who learned well, so well they overtook us.

Now we are world leaders in drink and drug addictions so I no longer advertise my nationality.

Fifty years ago we were an overwhelmingly monarchistic nation but now we are drifting downwards towards the 50 per cent mark, helped no doubt by people like Prince Harry, in his childish insensitivity.

He's trying to show he is a man of the people - but perhaps people of the type who mirror our national decline towards republicanism and, with it, our national pride.

-Cyril Wall (ex 8th Army 1941-1946), Worthing