A well-spoken and well-preserved grandmother, Mrs Elizabeth Windsor, made a speech earlier this week in which she suggested that her colleagues, or, as she prefers to call them, "subjects" should cut back on the excesses of modern living and save for a rainy day.
Speaking while wearing a rather impractical hat said to be worth many millions of pounds - or £43.50 'buy it now' on ebay, and don't forget the commission to PayPal - she stressed the importance of matching 'one's lifestyle to one's income'.
She said that even she and her husband were using only 135 of the rooms between them at their home "Buck House", and in sympathy with her hard-pressed "colleagues" in the banking profession she was going to change its name by deed poll to "Passthebuck House".
To much applause from the people in the room, or at least those who had the courtesy to put their expenses claim forms aside for a few minutes to listen to her, there were shouts of "here here" from the crowd and "order order" from a short man in a schoolmaster's gown.
A tall gentleman, thought to be of Greek origin and the well-spoken grandmother's husband, was later seen asking the men and women on the benches in the room "And what do you do?", which is a question the public have been asking for decades.
