Read the Queen’s financial accounts, published today, at face value and you may assume that the Sovereign needs more money to keep her, and her entourage, in the manner born. But if Her Majesty reads the looks on the faces of those thousands of subjects enduring financial hardship just now, she will conclude that she must cut the Royal cloth.

The documents posted today suggest that the Royal household, just like any well-run business, shows some signs of wanting to be leaner and meaner. Analysis is complicated by the fact that Queen's cash comes from several sources, but it is clear that the Royal household can be, and should be, more lean and more mean.

Take travel. Exactly 12 months ago today, on the June 30, 2008, the Queen spent £11,258 on a charter flight from RAF Northolt to Edinburgh. Leave aside the question of whether she needed to take up residence at Holyroodhouse. Just wonder why the exercise cost the equivalent of six months’ pay for the average working Briton.

And what about those palaces? No doubt the royal properties are national treasures, in need of repair and maintenance. Fees collected from tourists also provide a welcome cash crutch. But if money is tight, and it is, why risk public outrage? Would it not be better to quietly get the mothballs out? A total of £8 million was spent last year on Buckingham Palace – 35 per cent more than the year before. Did we really have to spend another £1.7 million down the road at St James Palace?

And when almost every employer under the sun has realised that the cost of gold-plated pensions is an extravagance, should the Royal purse be making pension contributions equivalent to a quarter of employees’ salaries? Some corners have already been cut but the Royal cost of pensions remains hard to bear.

Fortunately there is a tidy sum of cash in the Royal piggy bank, set aside in the good years, to cover shortfalls in Civil List expenditure. But rather than suggesting that we dig deeper to make up the shortfall, the reserve gives the Royal household time to adjust and cut its cloth with the minimum of fuss.

The alternative may see the expenses of Buck House put in the same uncomfortable limelight so recently reserved for that Duck House.

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