The Queen Running Out of Too Much Money!

Italian daily La Repubblica reports that Queen Elizabeth II (pictured left in a chair so old it's practically falling apart) has asked the British Parliament to increase her royal stipend, drawn from the Civil List, as she fears that she may soon no longer have far too much money for one person. Her worries were sparked by the fact that the savings she had built up over the past 20 years have dwindled to almost nothing, due to her chronic inability to spend within the enormously ample means afforded by the placid, uncomplaining, increasingly poor British taxpayer.

Her Civil List is intended primarily to cover the cost of her personal assistants and servants, and clocks in at about £7,900,000 a year. This is quite apart from the money which goes towards preserving the luxuriant excess of the monarchy as a whole, which costs about £41,000,000, and includes maintaining the palaces of Windsor, Buckingham and Balmoral.

The Queen claimed that she was forced to dip into her savings to the tune of £6,000,000 a year because nearly £8m did not cover the costs of the parties and ceremonies she wished to hold. Let's also not forget that the Queen's fantastic wealth is buttressed by personal earnings she accrues from her vast land and farm holdings.

Queen Elizabeth II asked for her Civil List provisions to be expanded in the 1990s, as well, but this was refused her. It seems she's chosen the financial crisis as the perfect time to reiterate her request not out of any real need for money, but to gleefully remind the struggling British taxpayer how unsoundly rich she is, and to spark a public debate that will let everyone know that eight million pounds is simply not enough for her, her parties, and her platoon of corgis (one of which pictured above, being boarded onto a plane swaddled in cloths probably more costly than a misdiagnosed mole.)