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Dearest Gentle Reader,
It being a Tuesday, one might reasonably expect the affairs of society to conduct themselves with a modicum of restraint. One would, as ever, be entirely mistaken. This Author has barely set down her second cup of Darjeeling before the despatches arrived, each more alarming than the last. Pray, settle in.
The most pressing matter first – and there is nothing so clarifying to the mind as a sacking. The Broadcasting Society has confirmed, with the particular terseness of an institution hoping no one will ask further questions, that Lord Mills is “no longer contracted” to grace its halls. His final programme concluded on the 24th of March with the cheerful valediction “Back tomorrow” – a sentiment that has aged, shall we say, poorly. The Metropolitan Constabulary has since clarified that the teenage boy at the centre of their historical investigation – begun in 2016 and closed in 2019 for want of sufficient evidence – was under sixteen years of age, with alleged offences reported to have taken place between 1997 and 2000. The Broadcasting Society insists the director general of the time, one Tony Hall, was entirely unaware of the matter. This Author makes no further comment, save to observe that Sir Davies has stepped in to host the breakfast show, and there is something uniquely Tuesday about that.
To the corridors of power, where Lord Starmer has issued the physicians of the Southern Kingdom an ultimatum of the most theatrical variety: abandon your planned six-day Easter strike within forty-eight hours, or forfeit one thousand coveted training places. One imagines the letter was delivered with a considerable flourish. The strike in question would be the fifteenth walkout in this long and weary dispute, prompted by the Physicians’ Grand Union rejecting an offer of a 3.5% pay rise, additional expenses, and expedited progression through pay bands – a package that Lord Streeting notes would carry the most experienced resident doctors to basic pay of £77,348, with average earnings exceeding £100,000. The physicians say this is insufficient given that pay has not kept pace with inflation since 2008. Lord Starmer, writing in The Times with the gravity of a man who has memorised the word “reckless”, deployed it to devastating if repetitive effect. This Author observes that a nation arguing over its doctors’ wages whilst Easter approaches is a particular species of British self-sabotage.
This Author sets aside all attempts at wit for a moment. The terms of reference for the statutory independent inquiry into grooming gangs have been published, and the testimony of those who suffered demands to be heard plainly. A survivor known as Penny – groomed from the age of twelve, sold for sex, and subjected to violence she describes with a quiet devastation that no column can adequately convey – told the Broadcasting Society that hundreds of her abusers remain free. The inquiry will examine cases spanning thirty years in the Southern Kingdom and the Principality, and will not, its chair has pledged, shy away from questions of culture, ethnicity, or religion. Oldham-upon-Hill has been confirmed as among the first areas to face local investigation. This Author trusts the inquiry will proceed with the urgency these survivors have deserved for far too long.
From the gravely serious to the magnificently farcical: new rules demanding weekly food waste collections from all households in the Southern Kingdom came into force today – and approximately one in four councils, it emerges, is not remotely prepared to oblige. Some seventy-nine councils failed to meet the 31st of March deadline, citing shortages of specialist vehicles and funding difficulties, despite the Crown dispensing over £340 million in grants for precisely this purpose. One or two councils cannot even provide an approximate start date. This Author finds a certain poetic justice in the notion that the boldest recycling overhaul in twenty years has itself been deposited, with ceremony, directly into the bin.
Finally, to matters of property and purse. Nationwide reports that house prices rose by 0.9% in March, pushing the average dwelling to a princely £277,186, with annual growth leaping to 2.2%. One might uncork the champagne – were it not for the rather sobering caveat that the ongoing conflict in Persia has sent energy prices surging, upended expectations of interest rate cuts, and prompted lenders to raise mortgage rates with unseemly haste. The average two-year fixed rate has vaulted from 4.83% to 5.84% since the start of March alone, adding nearly £1,800 annually to a typical loan. The Royal Treasury, which was to have cut rates twice this year, is now expected to raise them instead. Owning a home in this Kingdom, it seems, is an aspiration best pursued with both optimism and a very stout constitution.
I am, as ever, your most devoted observer – Lady Whistledown.