HARD TIMES ?..

Now as one myself I really don`t want to begrudge any pensioner a rise in their annual income, especially as we are all in it together as we struggle to survive on our fixed incomes in the most severe of financial climates.

So it was with some passing interest that I noticed Her Majesty the Queen has been handed a £5million increase under new `rules` recently introduced.   As a result, her tax free, taxpayer funded Government grant for 2013/14 has risen from £31million to £36.1million.   

The new `Sovereign Grant` replaces the old Civil List and grants-in-aid and this change results in the Queen receiving 15% of the profits from the Crown Estates two years earlier.   So, as the Crown Estates made a profit of £240.2million in 2011/12, the grant figure for 2013/14 comes to £36.1million.

A nice little tax free earner.   A Buckingham Palace spokesperson said that "the majority of the grant will be spent on the backlog of property repair works to the royal palaces."  So that`s OK then and as I have a soft spot for Her Majesty - after all she is an 86-year old national treasure - I find it difficult to be in any way critical.   

But I do wonder whether she really needs all those royal palaces that require so much repair works and whether if, for example, just one of them were to be flogged off, the taxpayer funded, tax free grant might just come more into line with the kind of financial discipline we`re all having to adopt?

I`m pretty sure there must be a wealthy oil rich sheik or even a Premier League footballer out there somewhere willing to take Sandringham or another of the collection off her hands.