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Dearest Gentle Reader,
This Author confesses to having stared at today’s dispatches for rather longer than is becoming, searching in vain for a single thread of comfort. Tuesday has, once again, elected to make itself thoroughly disagreeable. Petrol thieves, arsonists, and the solemn shade of a departed Queen – and it is not yet noon. Brace yourself, dear reader, for we proceed forthwith.
The roads of the Southern Kingdom, it transpires, have become something of an open bazaar for the light-fingered. Petrol theft has surged by a remarkable 62% compared with a year ago, driven in no small part by the ruinous rise in fuel costs since the American Colonies and Israel’s conflict with Persia sent prices skyward. The cost of filling a family motorcar with petrol has risen by £14; diesel by a further £27. One forecourt proprietor – a Josh of the southern counties, who wisely declines to surrender his surname lest his staff be further abused – reports five drive-offs per week at each of his five garages, at a ruinous £2,000 weekly loss. A white Porsche SUV, dear reader. A Porsche. This Author hardly knows whether to weep or applaud the audacity. The government has thundered that fuel thieves “must face the full force of the law”, which one assumes is rather more persuasive in a press release than on a forecourt at half past four in the morning.
On a note altogether more dignified, today marks the centenary of the birth of the late Queen Elizabeth II, and His Majesty the King has delivered a most tender video tribute to his “darling Mama”, recorded at Balmoral. He observed with quiet gravity that “much about the times we now live in” he suspected would have “troubled her deeply” – a remark of such measured understatement that this Author feels it deserves a small monument of its own. Meanwhile, the final design of a 9.84-foot bronze statue – depicting the late Queen in the ceremonial robes of the Order of the Garter, inspired by a 1955 Annigoni portrait – was presented to His Majesty and Queen Camilla today. It will stand upon an 11.15-foot plinth in St James’s Park, there to regard the world she served with rather more serenity than it presently deserves.
This Author must turn now to a matter that admits of no levity whatsoever. A seventeen-year-old from Brent has been charged with arson following an attack upon Kenton United Synagogue in Harrow last Saturday night, where a figure in dark clothing was filmed setting light to a bottle of liquid and hurling it through a window. Minor damage was caused; mercifully, no-one was injured. A nineteen-year-old was separately arrested on suspicion of arson reckless as to whether life was endangered, and has been bailed. The Metropolitan Constabulary‘s counter-terrorism unit is now investigating six separate incidents targeting Jewish sites across the Capital in recent weeks, with a suspected Persia-backed group claiming responsibility for most. That such attacks continue upon places of worship in this city is not a scandal to be raised with an eyebrow – it is an alarm to be raised at full voice.
On cheerier, if rather technical, terrain: Lord Starmer and his Energy Secretary Lord Miliband have announced a grand shakeup of electricity pricing, pledging to sever the maddening link between gas prices and electricity bills within the year. At present, when gas prices spike – as they have done most enthusiastically since the Persian conflict – electricity bills follow dutifully upward, regardless of how merrily the wind turbines are spinning. The government also announced an increase to the windfall tax on certain electricity generators. Analysts caution the savings are likely to be modest. Lord Starmer declared he wished to get off “the fossil fuel rollercoaster”, which this Author considers a fine ambition, provided the ticket price of dismounting does not itself prove ruinous.
Finally, this Author pauses to mark the passing of Frank Chester of Ludlow, Shropshire, who died on Sunday at the age of 109 – nine days after his birthday – and who may well have been the oldest surviving veteran of the Second World War. Awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for, as his daughter Ruth Pole described it, “continuous bravery in the face of ongoing danger”, he served throughout that dreadful conflict on Arctic convoy duties, stoically enduring seasickness upon his corvette with the same cheerful resolution with which he apparently endured everything else. He was, his daughter reports, a man who was “very, very modest” and never once lost his temper. In an age of rather a great deal of intemperate noise, this Author finds that the most heroic detail of all. He is gone, and the world is the poorer for it.
I am, as ever, your most devoted observer – Lady Whistledown.