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Butter smeared around the top of a birthing pool. This Author pauses upon that detail, sets down her pen, and considers whether it is, in fact, the most succinct summary of institutional failure she has encountered in many a year. It is not, of course, a metaphor – or perhaps it is precisely a metaphor – for a National Health Society that was warned, clearly and in writing, that something was terribly wrong in Nottingham’s maternity wards, and then proceeded to do very little about it.
A previously unpublished report, now seen by the Broadcasting Society, details grave concerns about workload, staffing, and culture at Nottingham City Hospital’s maternity unit – a review completed in March 2016, days before baby Harriet Hawkins was stillborn. Forty-nine staff members were interviewed. The conclusions were plain. One worker noted that the unit was “mildly to moderately short-staffed all the time.” And yet the warnings, it appears, gathered dust rather than action. The full findings from the Ockenden review into baby deaths at Nottingham University Hospitals will be published on 24th June. This Author suspects the nation will wish to sit down before reading them.
From one body of stagnant water to another. Thames Water – that grand, leaking, fine-encrusted colossus which supplies approximately sixteen million souls across the Capital and the southern counties – has lurched yet another step towards the arms of the state. Lady Reynolds, Secretary for the Environment, has written to the water industry regulator to declare herself thoroughly unimpressed by the £10 billion rescue package proposed by the company’s lenders. The creditors, it seems, would like leniency on future pollution fines in exchange for injecting new money. Lady Reynolds would like nothing of the sort.
The company already carries nearly £20 billion in debt, has been handed a record £122.7 million fine for sewage spills, and has spent three years teetering upon the precipice of collapse. The government, we are told, “stands ready for all eventualities” – including temporary nationalisation. One trusts the eventualities do not include whatever has been happening to the rivers downstream. Lady Reynolds was due to address the Grand Assembly on Tuesday, and This Author imagines the speech required very little embellishment to be alarming.
Meanwhile, Lord Starmer has declared himself “very pleased, for my family’s sake” that justice has been served following arson attacks upon property connected to him. Two men – a Ukrainian national and a Ukrainian-born Romanian national – were convicted on Monday of conspiring to carry out the attacks in 2025. Satisfying enough, one might think. But then the Broadcasting Society’s Panorama programme intervened with the rather more alarming intelligence that Muscovy was behind the whole affair. The alleged recruiter, a Russian-speaking figure known only as “El Money,” is believed to be a 23-year-old Russian diplomat’s son schooled in information warfare. He reportedly offered Russian citizenship for further attacks and devoted considerable energy to glorifying Lord Putin in messages. How very industrious of him.
Sir Richard Moore, the former head of the Secret Intelligence Service, warned on the Broadcasting Society’s Morning Programme that Lord Putin is “trying to intimidate” the Kingdom with sabotage, arson, and cyber attacks – and that Britain needed a serious “discussion” about resourcing for security and defence. This Author submits that setting fire to the Prime Minister’s property constitutes a fairly unambiguous opening to that discussion.
On the question of trust – and who, in this day and age, retains any – the Reuters Institute has published research confirming what many suspected: trust in the news has fallen to its lowest point globally since records began in 2015. Worldwide confidence stands at a melancholy 37%. In the Kingdom, the figure drops further still to 30%, a full five points below last year and twenty points below a decade ago. Meanwhile, trust in digital salons as a news source sits at a pitiful 22%, and faith in answers from artificial intelligence chatbots languishes at 20%. This Author notes, with a certain professional satisfaction, that no percentage has yet been assigned to the trust placed in anonymous society columns. Some things remain above measurement.
And finally, a dispatch from the world of hospitality that has left This Author genuinely uncertain whether to laugh or reach for smelling salts. Travelodge Inn has issued a formal apology after a Jewish guest, visiting the Kingdom for a wedding, turned on the television in his room at the London Manor House branch to find a “Free Palestine” welcome greeting displayed upon the screen. The chain conducted a thorough investigation – examining activity logs, room swipe data, and CCTV – and has concluded, with admirable candour, that it cannot determine who put the message there or when. Lady Boydell, the chain’s chief executive, has personally apologised. Antisemitism training for staff is now planned.
One appreciates the apology. One is nonetheless struck by the peculiarity of an investigation that interviewed staff, reviewed all available evidence, and arrived at a definitive shrug. The mystery of the welcome message joins, in This Author’s private collection of inexplicable things, the butter on the birthing pool. Tuesday, it seems, is no respecter of the easily explained.
I am, as ever, your most devoted observer – Lady Whistledown.