I try not to comment on the Guardian

website. Actually the Guardian website irritates me. I look at it sometimes because someone alerts me to an article or there is something going on and it is useful to see what their rolling coverage has to say compared with my other sources of information. And  yes, it tends to be sensationalist rather than accurate.
It is scarcely surprising when someone on the Guardian staff has a shot at the monarchy. It is that sort of news site.
Now what I think of the monarchy is irrelevant here but I went to law school at what was then regarded as the law school to attend in Downunder if you were in the slightest interested in international law, constitutional law, maritime law, or various other specialist law areas.  It is still seen that way. It turns out lawyers for the public service. People go on to be barristers and members of parliament or they work in the diplomatic corp. I went to law school with three former senators, one of whom is now an ambassador in Europe. Some years later I appeared in front of a major parliamentary inquiry and he was on it. He interrupted another Senator trying to give me a hard time for my (opposing) point of view and suggested they listen to what I had to say because I had, like him, been taught by someone everyone in the room respected for his knowledge of constitutional law.
And it is that knowledge of constitutional law and constitutional lawyers which came into question in a recent Guardian article. Our Professor, a republican if ever there was one, had good words to say about the present Queen Elizabeth. She is, he told us, an expert constitutional lawyer. No, she hasn't been to university. She has managed to gain her skills and knowledge on the job so to speak. Of course she would seek advice if she needed to know more but she can also offer advice - and many a Prime Minister has been glad of it and the way it has sometimes saved them embarrassment and humiliation. 
It's much too easy to assume that the Queen and other members of "the Firm" simply turn up, read a speech that someone else has written, listen to other speeches, take an artificial interest in what they are being shown and go away again. Nothing could be further from the truth. The Queen still works hard. Other members of the family work hard too - in ways that the public never see. Their fund raising capacities - as I have cause to know - are an essential part of charitable life. They listen and lobby and often a word from them can get something done before it gets out of control - again, something I have cause to personally know about.
Life behind the scenes in the palaces and castles and other residences is not opulent. It is almost austere. I've seen the evidence for myself.  There is a vast difference between the "royalty" the public sees and their actual lives. I'd loathe the sort of demands made of them.
So, whatever we may think of the monarchy, we need to realise that there is far more to it than the "glamorous" side. It is tedious and tiring - and it requires far more knowledge and hard work than most people would even contemplate gaining or doing.  
But, this seems to make little difference to the anti-monarchy brigade. All they see is what appears to be a "rich and privileged" family born into a role rather than earning it.
It is rather like the reporting of another case in the British media recently - that of an apparently intelligent and privileged university student who received a suspended sentence for stabbing her boyfriend. The media made much of that - and they didn't let the facts get in the way of the criticisms of the judge for the sentence handed down. That the real culprit in that crime was almost certainly someone else was of no interest to them.
I of course was roundly criticised for trying to point this out to the Guardian readership. It's my own fault.