Affordable Homage

One of the country's most just-about-managing families is to receive a sixty-six per cent increase in its welfare benefits, courtesy of the taxpayer. Buckingham Palace, ostensibly a public building, will remain occupied by an immigrant family while various repairs are carried out; the on-site staff will receive custom-built temporary accommodation, presumably not of the G4S variety, to prevent their livery being sullied by excessive contact with the plebs. It remains as yet unclear why some of Betty Battenberg's private assets, which are thought to be extensive thanks to decades of tax-dodging and are affected only minimally by the bedroom tax, could not have helped with the bill. Doubtless the explanation, as is usual in these matters, relates to the sublime wonders of Britishness and (for this week, anyway) a bit of rah-rah for our boys at the Somme.