The price of everything...

I once had a colleague who, as a student, had worked for the family of the Queen Mother. She talked about having to learn how to press ball gowns so that the holes in the ancient fabric wouldn't be seen when the ladies stepped out on the dance floor at the summer ball. They were as poor as church mice, the Bowes-Lyons. And every penny was a prisoner. That is to say, they had a castle and a place in London and a whole lot of debt, but they also had connections and a place in a society that almost all of us would be excluded from. It was no surprise that she married the younger brother of the future king. It's like she'd been groomed for it.

I was grateful to this colleague for giving us first hand info about these people. She reduced the staffroom to silence. If she hadn't spoken up, I'd have had to go on listening to teachers discussing the royal family as if they were their next of kin. You know the style: Poor Princess Margaret - and later on, Poor Diana.

The QM wasn't groomed for the job of queen, of course. That kind of fell into her lap. And boy, did she make the most of it. The very nice tax deals the house of Battenberg-Mountbatten-Windsor had till quite recently were negotiated by the QM after her husband took the throne and she was still doing deals well into her daughter's reign. Negotiations were conducted over tea - or maybe a dry sherry - between equerries and cabinet secretaries, and all they ended with the royals making a ton of money.

It's all very different these days. Of course, our political life is still infected by people like David Cameron - Eton and Oxford, married into the Astor family who, among other things, own a fair bit of the island of Jura. Sadly, David has proved to be a bit of a failure, having lost the EU referendum thanks to an overdose of optimism, a lack of nous and some pretty shaky political decisions.

And then there's George. George comes from "trade." His family make wallpaper. Posh wallpaper. Very pricey. They are quite rich. But still if you asked them they would have to say they make wallpaper. As far as I can see, George has no talent for anything much. Taught English in Japan for a while after university. Got an internship with a London newspaper but showed no talent for writing. Became an MP and - mirabile dictu (bless my cotton socks - for those of you who don't have the Latin) - got appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer by his mate. In his time as Chancellor, George and his pals in government ran up a bit of debt - £1.7 trillion worth of debt and extended the deficit in the UK's import-export balance so far it's out of sight. But since George resigned as Chancellor, things have changed for him. He still has his MP's salary and he gets a bit of a pay-off for losing the extra wages that went with being Chancellor. And then he started racking up other jobs, so many that he is now reckoned to be earning £1.7 million a year:

- He's a speaker at the Washington Speaker's Bureau, where he has a lucrative contract to perform after-dinner speeches around the world
- He's a chairman of the Northern Powerhouse Partnership
- He's an advisor to the American fund management firm Blackrock. He's thought to be paid £650,000 a year (yes, you read that right) for working one day a week for the company (yes, you read that right as well)
- He's a fellow at the McCain Institute, an American think tank
- He will be (as of mid-May) the editor of London's Evening Standard newspaper .

There's only one problem with all this: George has a day job - he's an MP - so while he's jetting off to the USA to talk at dinners, who's looking after his constituency?