Buckingham Palace, Clarence House and Kensington Palace released their accounts on Wednesday, and all of the palace spokespeople were throwing out a lot of numbers, hoping that people wouldn’t focus on… any of it, really. The inability of the royals to travel like regular people or take commercial flights or public transportation is really infuriating. Don’t let individual event costs go unnoticed – even for something as stupid as “the royals attended the big No Time To Die premiere,” the burden on the British taxpayer was extraordinary.

The Queen will continue to tighten her belt as a post-pandemic credit crunch bites even at Buckingham Palace. Sir Michael Stevens, the monarch’s Keeper of the Privy Purse, said yesterday that while her annual review reflected ‘something of a return to normality’ for the royal household – with travel, investitures and garden parties starting up again – it also continued to be a ‘challenging’ time for the monarchy.

Expenditure was £102.4 million last year – a rise of 17 per cent – with the majority being siphoned off by the major ten-year-programme of building works going on at Buckingham Palace. There was a 41 per cent increase in spending to £54.6 million on the renovations alone. The Sovereign Grant – the pot of taxpayers’ money provided by the Government to cover the cost of the Queen’s official duties and residences – remained static at £86.3 million.

£32,000 was spent on travel for the royals to the premiere of Daniel Craig’s last James Bond movie No Time To Die in September 2021.

£31,769 was spent on the royal train being used to ferry the monarch to the G7 summit in Cornwall in June 2021.

£28,036 was spent on a charter flight for Charles and Camilla to visit the memorial service to the Battle of Britain in September.

The Queen’s trip to Scotland on the royal train for Royal Week in June 2021 cost more than £46,400, while William and Kate’s charter flight and helicopter journey for a visit to Scotland in May 2021 amounted to nearly £45,200.

Royal aides recognize that there is a “tension” between the royal family’s desire to cut carbon emissions and their environmental work — like William’s Earthshot Prize and Charles’ sustainability and climate control efforts.

“Travel is an important part of members of the Royal Family, whether it’s visiting communities or overseas travel at the requests of government. It is part of the core role of members of the Royal Family,” a senior royal source says. “We will take advantage of some of the things we have learned during the pandemic like virtual engagements, but there isn’t any substitute for the physical engagements.”

[From The Daily Mail & People]

Clarence House openly briefed the media about how Charles is “allergic” to using royal helicopters, perhaps emphasizing the fact that William and Kate use helicopters constantly, for work and for their private travel. Charles’s allergy to private transport doesn’t extend to private planes and chartered flights though, and clearly William and Kate never use public transport or even just… cars. And the rare moments they do use cars, it costs the taxpayer £32,000 for the royals to travel a few miles to a London movie premiere. WTF??

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.