Let them eat swan...

The BBC recently told us that the British monarchy cost every man, woman and child in the UK £0.69 per year. This figure was meant to show us just how little our monarchy costs, and that this was amazingly good value. Just think of all the hand waving and ribbon cutting we get for our money.

But this isn’t the whole story, is it?

Firstly, this figure includes every man, woman and child in the UK. If we restrict the numbers to just us taxpayers, it then shoots up to £1.33 each. “But that’s still a tiny amount of money”, the monarchists cry. True, but it’s a whole lot of tiny amounts of money. If my underfunded education taught me anything about arithmetic, when you multiply a small number by a big number you end up with, approximately, a shit-load.

The total cost of the Queen and the civil list to the taxpayer was £41.5m in 2008, but it’s not enough - the Queen wants more! To show us that she’s ‘one of us’ and that, like her subjects, she’s not immune to the credit crunch, she apparently had to dip into her £330m reserve (excluding the £10 billion Royal Collection) and cough up another £6m just to balance her books last year. That’s either a major cocaine habit, ma’am, or one will need to consider shopping at Lidl.

And £41.5m is still not the whole picture. This number doesn’t include the cost of military or police security. It’s their duty, “for Queen and country”, so it apparently doesn’t count.

If you ask anyone currently being treated for MRSA they caught in an NHS hospital, the parent of any child who didn’t get a place in their closest school, any student going through the education system, or any pensioner trying to heat their home on their meagre winter fuel allowance this winter, I’m sure they could think of a couple of things that they might consider more worthy investments of £41.5m before they wonder who will fund the royal train, the royal garden parties and state banquets.

If we decide to look further afield than the UK, according to the adverts £2 a month could make a real difference imagine; help a eliminate avoidable blindness, or could help families in Africa feed themselves or could help to provide clean water to some of the poorest people in the world. Just think of the difference we could make to the world for the sacrifice of having to come up with a new picture for the £5 note.

Actually, there’s an idea. If we, as a nation, decide we will spend our £0.69 a year each on something more useful than an insanely privileged few, the Queen could feed her family through modelling. No, really! She could license her image to the Royal (or Federal) Mint, or Royal (Federal) Mail. If she got desperate enough, I’m sure Nuts or Loaded would pay a fortune for a couple ‘off the shoulder’ shots – and what would Playboy pay for a centrefold...

...actually, maybe that’s not the best idea, but it would certainly modernise the Royal family more than a stint on ‘It’s a Royal Knockout’.

This year for my £0.69 I’ll have a Greggs cheese and onion pasty. The blind kids can wait until next year.