I read some very sad news yesterday in the Toronto Star.  Apparently the Queen …

… is in need of some money! 

(Kind of ironic given that her picture is on so much of it, no?

But, alas, already I digress.  Back to the main rant programme.)

In fact, according to the article, puir wee Lizzie had to dip into her very own bank account to the tune of $11.5 million last year. 

The $15 million provided to her and her family by the UK government to pay expenses didn’t quite cut it, apparently.

Now, this begs the question (yea, it begs a LOT of questions for me): where did the £££ in Lizzie’s wee piggy bank come from anyway? 

…the Queen took $11.5 million over the past year from her own state-funded reserve account [emphasis added]…

You guessed it – the good old taxpayer (plus probably a few hundred thousand serfs, seven or eight hundred years ago)! 

But seriously, I really should show some compassion.  I mean, if Lizzie needs to keep hitting the piggy bank at the rate of $11.5 million a year, apparently she will be out of money by 2012!  (Never mind that if I were to hit my piggy bank at the same rate, I’d be broke by… um… well, less time than it took me to type this sentence, really.)

Besides, her house…

… or, rather, her houses…

… are falling apart and need millions of dollars in work.

Hey!  That gives me an idea!  The Queen should phone up Mike Holmes!

I bet, given her dire plight, that he’d do repair work at Buckingham and Windsor Palaces for cost. 

Another fundraising idea for the Queen: apparently she spent three quarters of a million dollars this year relaunching her website.   It shouldn’t cost all that much more to stick a PayPal button up there and ask for donations!  Hell, I’d even shoot her $10 just for the pleasure of sending in that donation receipt to Revenue Canada…

Then again, maybe I wouldn’t.   I mean, take a look at some of the ways they’ve been spending their money!

Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall spent £33,400 on a private jet to visit the Bushmills whiskey distillery and other engagements in Northern Ireland; the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh spent £14,515 to travel one way from Euston to Liverpool on the royal train – a journey that costs £74 first class when booked in advance on Virgin Trains; and Prince Andrew spent £55,269 on a one-way flight from London to the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh to co-chair the World Economic Forum.

I mean, really.  You’d think they could afford a couple or three cars to drive around, no?

Oh – I forgot, they’re broke. 

Heartbreaking, isn’t it?  The more I think about it, the sadder I get.  So, I’ve gone around the office and taken a collection.  However, this is all that my hard-hearted colleagues would come up with:

I guess every little bit counts.

JJ, being a proud Jimmy   wee guy from Glesga  Scot, did not wish to contribute any cash to the Lizzie Fund.  This was his reaction when I asked.

Marginally better, mind you, than his reaction to reading the article about Lizzie’s plight in the first place.  The only publically printable words I could glean were:  cold day, Hell, inbred wankers, and Sassenachs.

When he calmed down, he did, however, have a couple of useful suggestions for Lizzie:

Sell the bloody palace to that al Fayed bloke – him who bought Harrrrrrods.  Or tha’ Gates computer guy wanker in America.  Ah reckon one a them wuid snap it up in no time.  Also, did ye know that if ye catch a sturgeon in the UK the Queen has first dibs on it??  Mebbe she should just start keepin them and set up a stall at the fish market. 

(Lest you think the sturgeon crack is a bit out there… (a) it’s true; and (b) we were watching Iron Chef America: Battle Sturgeon at the time.) 

Anyway, I’m now off to consult eBay to see if I can pick up any discount tiaras   check the Landlord and Tenant Board Dockets to see if Liz Windsor or Philip Mountbatten are scheduled for eviction hearings today  do some work. 

Cheers,

Kristina