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The month of September, barely past its midpoint, has already outdone itself. Gentle Reader, a cryptocurrency billionaire has handed Viscount Farage thirty-six million pounds. Thirty-six million. This Author counted the zeroes twice, set down her lorgnette, and then counted them again, just to be certain she had not slipped into a peculiar dream.
The benefactor in question is one Ben Delo, a Sheffield-born gentleman of the digital coin persuasion, who announced in the pages of a well-known daily broadsheet that he wished for a “fair fight and a level playing field.” This Author notes that a level playing field apparently requires the largest single donation in the entire history of Kingdom party politics. How very egalitarian. Delo, who received an unconditional pardon from Lord Trump after pleading guilty to a breach of anti-money-laundering laws, assures us his motives are entirely civic-minded. The Progressive Assembly is now reportedly considering a cap on donations from returning British expats, which rather explains why Mr Delo chose to deliver all thirty-six million in one magnificent heap, before anyone could say “actually, perhaps not.” Viscount Farage declared himself “honoured and humbled.” This Author wonders if he has ever been humbled by anything in his natural life, but thirty-six million pounds is perhaps a persuasive tutor.
From the corridors of financial excess to the corridors of power, where a far more solemn business was concluded on Friday. The Grand Assembly voted 286 to 270 against the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill – a margin of sixteen, which is a slender thing upon which to rest so enormous a question. The bill, which would have permitted adults with fewer than six months to live to seek assistance in ending their lives, subject to the approval of two doctors and an expert panel, has now been extinguished, at least for this parliamentary session.
This Author will not pretend to levity on this subject, for there is none to be had. Dame Esther Rantzen, who had campaigned so publicly for the bill’s passage, was unable to attend in person. Both sides wept. Both sides made speeches of genuine feeling. The bill was tabled by Lady Hardy and may yet return in a future session – politics, like hope, is a thing that persists. But for now, the Upper Chamber, having stalled a previous bill, has been spared the trouble: the Commons managed it themselves. Sixteen votes. Society will be debating those sixteen for some considerable time.
On a somewhat lighter note, the Meteorological Office has issued what might generously be called a conditional promise of warmth. Temperatures this weekend are set to climb into the mid-twenties in the south, which is several degrees above the September average and quite enough to send the entire nation into a frenzy of optimism. There is, the forecasters caution, heavy rain in the north, thunder in parts, and brisk south-westerly winds of the hat-imperilling variety. By Monday, highs of 22 to 26 degrees Celsius are possible across much of the Southern Kingdom. This Author remains characteristically sceptical. A heatwave this is not – the official criteria require three consecutive days above thresholds ranging from 25 degrees in North Britain to 28 in the Capital – but “very warm and intermittently soggy” is, one supposes, the closest thing to summer that September is prepared to offer.
If these dispatches bring you pleasure, a small contribution would be most graciously received. ☕
The authorities in Portsmouth have this Saturday morning deployed new powers under the Crime and Policing Act to prohibit the wearing of masks, balaclavas, and other face-concealing accoutrements at a planned protest in the city. The Hampshire and Isle of Wight Constabulary advises that anyone breaching the restrictions between ten o’clock this morning and Sunday may face arrest. This follows last weekend’s anti-migrant demonstrations in Dover and Portsmouth, at which masked figures caused considerable alarm. Rather conveniently, the group that organised last weekend’s event, Patriot Platform, has announced via the digital salons that none of its members shall attend today’s gathering at all. One can only speculate as to whether the prospect of compulsory unmasking had any bearing on this sudden burst of civic restraint.
Finally, and This Author presents this with all the solemnity it deserves, the Kingdom is engaged in a race to save a tiny, gooey snail. The glutinous snail – Myxas glutinosa, no bigger than a fingertip, possessed of what conservationists describe as comically large antennae resembling “big floppy ears” – has been driven to extinction across the Southern Kingdom by pollution and habitat loss. Its last known refuge is Llyn Tegid, the Principality‘s largest natural lake, in Eryri National Park. One conservationist in Ceredigion has, through what he describes as a “life-defining” mission, bred some two thousand of the creatures in homemade garden tanks. British zoos are now establishing ark populations from his stock. He compares the snails to Egyptian artefacts. This Author, surveying a week in which thirty-six million pounds changed hands in a single stroke, cannot help but think that the gooey snail is, in its modest way, rather better value.
I am, as ever, your most devoted observer – Lady Whistledown.