Royal Household finances always cause a 'ripple'
- Published
The Queen could move out of Buckingham Palace to allow maintenance work costing £150m, officials say
It's the fantasy of many a royal official that their annual accounts will be published and cause barely a ripple.
The reality, once again this year, is very different.
First, at Buckingham Palace there was the suggestion - denied robustly in both London and Edinburgh - that with more devolution Scotland might pay less towards the Queen's upkeep.
Then in Berlin - where the royal press pack is in residence for the Queen's state visit - an official was questioned about the year-on-year increase in taxpayer funding the monarch is enjoying.
He said the funds were needed to address a backlog in property maintenance.
The official raised the spectre of the head of state being one palace down for a few months while its ageing plumbing and wiring was sorted.
This year, for the royals, their "financial cloud" has a silver lining - there has been less focus on the money some of the Windsors spend on chartering private jets.