Another modest proposal

Oh, dear, oh, dear—evidently the House of Windsor’s house is not at all in order. Queen Elizabeth II has overspent on household maintenance, and she’s down to her last £1MM in reserves. (Question: Couldn’t she just check between the sofa cushions? Gotta be a few million quid there—she must have a lotta sofas, no?)

Horrors!

And even with the profligacy, royal residences are said to be in poor condition, and HM needs more dosh to attend to the deficiencies.

The parliamentary report recommends that the Queen (well, her minions, really) should do more in the way of cost-cutting—by which they actually mean “lay off employees”, keeping the public sector (well, I dunno—is the Royal Household considered “public”? Oh, never mind) in line with private sector strategies of not bothering with improvements or innovations when you can just sack the staff.

It actually used the phrase “do more with less”, which has to eat the Royal Lunch.

There’s also a recommendation to increase revenues, and one suggestion was that Buckingham Palace should be opened to more paying visitors during times when HM is not in residence.

Well, let an American product manager who has no qualms about thinking outside the box propose they go a couple of steps further. I’m talking Bucks House B&B. This is not even an untried idea—the French have done it with one of the sub-palaces at Versailles.

Of course, they’re probably serving better food, but still.

Really—there are all kinds of tourists with more money than brains who’d pay premium prices to spend a night at the palace and shoot out selfies at a rate of knots. And I’m sure there are plenty of spare bedrooms that could be dusted off and hawked on hotels.com or Room 77.

Although—I’m wondering how many of the bedrooms have en-suite bathrooms? How would said tourists feel about paying £700 per night for a single bed and a loo down the corridor shared with yahoos from Utah, Uganda and Uzbekistan?

Then there’s the breakfast of cornflakes and cold toast under the beady stare of HM’s serving staff. (Well, more likely underemployed yoofs brought in on zero-hour contracts and tricked out in livery to look like the real thing. But they’ll be trained to get the snoot effect down.) What the hell—charge extra if they want an actual meal—it’s the palace, for heaven’s sakes; you could get away with £65 for the full English, including VAT.

Yeah, I know—they’d have to worry about folks nicking the towels or the spoons. Although, look—you’ve got their credit card details; just tack on £35 per spoon and £100 per towel. You can really revenue-spin the hell out of this. And you’d keep the linen and cutlery factories going, so a bonus on the employment front.

(Unless, of course said factories are in Bangladesh. Um.)

Okay—we do have to work out some details, including shaping HM’s head about the concept of sharing. It seems she was pretty cheesed off by police on patrol eating the palace peanuts. And we know this because she marked the level in the bowls of nuts around the place (yes, with her own royal hands and an imperial Magic Marker) and then let it be known that she was not amused.

But look—package up said peanuts in two-ounce packets stamped “By Appointment to the Queen” and sell ‘em for £5 a pop. It’s all good.

And, Windsors—you’re welcome.