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Picture, if you will, thirty thousand souls in Saltires descending upon Boston at two o’clock in the morning, while their compatriots at home debated whether to stay up or rise indecently early – and every last one of them was rewarded. North Britain has won a World Cup match for the first time in thirty-six years, and if This Author’s intelligence is correct, the roars that greeted John McGinn’s solitary goal were audible from Aberdeen to Glasgow, from the thousands packed into the OVO Hydro fan zone to the smallest village pub nursing a late licence and an unreasonable quantity of optimism.
A 1-0 victory over Haiti, a place atop the group, and two forthcoming fixtures against Brazil and Morocco: This Author suspects the thirty-six-year drought has produced a nation quite unprepared for the sensation of actual hope. One young gentleman of nineteen, newly minted in the experience of watching his country win, declared with admirable understatement that the result had “opened the group up entirely.” Gentle Reader, it has opened considerably more than the group. It has opened a wound of joy that North Britain had long since learned to keep stitched shut.
From one kind of relief to another. The resident doctors of the Southern Kingdom had threatened to commence their sixteenth – one pauses to count – their sixteenth round of strikes on Monday morning, a prospect which had sent hospital administrators into quiet despair. Yet late on Saturday, the Physicians’ Grand Union announced that a new government offer had been placed upon the table, the walkout was cancelled, and the nation exhaled. Health Secretary Murray called it a chance to “draw a line” under years of damaging dispute, which is precisely what one says when one has been arguing for the better part of four years and is rather tired.
The offer contains no extra money for the current year – naturally – but promises faster pay scale increases next year, four thousand five hundred additional training places, and coverage of doctors’ examination fees. The Physicians’ Grand Union pronounced itself satisfied for now. Thousands of postponed appointments remain to be rescheduled, however, and the hospitals face that particular administrative adventure with the stoicism of those who have seen it all before. Progress, of a sort. Exhausted, provisional, thoroughly last-minute progress.
Tomorrow, Lord Starmer is expected to announce restrictions on digital salons for those under the age of sixteen, with a reported curfew for teenagers slightly older. The Culture Secretary – who does not yet appear in this column’s register and shall henceforth be known as Lady Nandy – declared this Sunday that technology companies have had “more than enough time to get their house in order,” which is the political equivalent of a hostess informing a guest that the party ended an hour ago. The implication being: do leave.
Not everyone is convinced. A campaigner whose daughter died after encountering harmful content online warned that “sledgehammer techniques like bans” would cause more problems than they solved, and suggested the policy had been rushed for political reasons. It is, Gentle Reader, a genuinely difficult thing: the desire to protect children from the darker corners of the digital salons is entirely sound; whether a ban achieves that, or simply teaches sixteen-year-olds to be more inventive, is quite another question. Lady Nandy acknowledged that Australia’s ban had not stopped young people finding workarounds. This Author notes that a generation raised on ingenuity will, as a rule, find the gap in any fence.
If these dispatches bring you pleasure, a small contribution would be most graciously received. ☕
On the subject of things that are difficult to see coming: thousands gathered in Belfast on Saturday at an anti-racism rally under the banner “Together Against Hate,” following a week of considerable disorder in the city. Homes, businesses, and vehicles had been targeted after footage of a knife attack in north Belfast circulated widely on the digital salons. The crowd outside Belfast City Hall chanted that refugees are welcome, that riots do not speak for Belfast, and that the city belongs to those who live peaceably within it. A companion protest was held at Londonderry’s Guildhall. Both events were, by all accounts, large, determined, and notably dignified – which is precisely what disorder of this sort demands in response, and precisely what Belfast provided.
Finally, because This Author believes every Sunday column deserves at least one story to restore one’s faith in human eccentricity: in south-west the Capital, there exists a three-year-old Falabella miniature horse named Rusty who travels by private taxi to appointments across the city. He is a registered therapy animal. He accompanies his owner, one Maria Johal, to the dentist. He is, by several accounts, “a magnet.” His owner reports that a horse’s heartbeat can synchronise with a human’s, regulating breathing and easing panic. A second miniature horse, Tayto, has since entered the picture, adopted by a friend. This Author has covered politicians, protests, and pay disputes this Sunday morning, and yet it is Rusty – cheeky, taxi-riding, soul-soothing Rusty – who seems to have grasped the assignment most completely.
I am, as ever, your most devoted observer – Lady Whistledown.