Flinging a pot of paint at the Royals

There is no better image of the conflict between unearned wealth and young people whose education is being made more expensive than the paint attack on Charles and Camilla's car.

The attack or protest highlights a question not even being discussed on the rigged slate of what is on the chopping board. It is a given that the state can continue to give support the Royal family but in order to reduce the deficit it has to take away from the much less well off.

The Crown Estate, nearly 700,000 acres of land, generates an income that goes to the government, of which some is given back to the Queen as a grant known as the Civil List. If you find it hard to imagine 700,000 acres, the average private homeowning family who has just 0.18 of an acre for their home.

As Kevin Cahill wrote in his book Who Owns Britain:

"The Queen an her immediate family of just eight people, believe that to be comfortable they have to have, for their use in one way or another, a quarter of the land needed to house 45 million poeple in the private sector."

The government made no savage cuts to this Royal grant. In the June budget it was frozen at £8 million per year. To that annual cost we need to add extra state expenses for travel and security totalling approximately £120 million. This is balanced by a net income to the Treasury from the Crown Estate of £200 million. The Royal family is at best revenue neutral.

The Prince of Wales personally receives revenues form 140,000 acres of the Duchy of Cornwall. This earned him a post tax income of £17 million in 2009-10. As his annual accounts tell us, he pays tax 'voluntarily on the surplus of the Duchy of Cornwall' and generates £100 million for charity each year. As we're all in this together can we look at the part-privatisation of Royal land assets?

Flinging a pot of paint at a car is something the Suffragettes would have done to draw attention to their cause. I don't know what the thoughts and beliefs of the paint flinger are, but they've drawn attention to an elephant in the room.