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Dressing this Wednesday morning, This Author reached for her gloves and found, tucked beneath them, a copy of the morning dispatches. She had intended a quiet day. The dispatches had other intentions entirely.
We begin with a verdict that the Kingdom’s courts delivered in May, and which demands to be spoken plainly. Mr Holder, co-founder of that once-fashionable purveyor of crumpled linen and oversized logos, was sentenced to eight years in gaol for raping a woman in her own home after she had the misfortune of sharing a taxicab with him following work drinks. The victim, known to us only as Gemma, has now spoken to the Broadcasting Society for the first time, revealing that she was his employee at the time, and that she was compelled to return to the office on the Monday morning and face him, while he addressed her, in her words, precisely as he would have done the week before – as though nothing had happened. This Author does not reach for wit on this occasion. The court called it a despicable piece of sexual violence. Eight years seems to this Author a sentence to be weighed carefully against a lifetime of damage. That Gemma has spoken at all speaks to a courage most of us will never be called upon to demonstrate.
A second story of grievous harm to young women draws this Author’s attention to Hampshire, where a two-day hearing commenced this very Wednesday at the Royal Courts of Justice. Two teenage girls were attacked by boys who were fourteen years of age at the time. Three boys left court in May carrying ten rape convictions between them and not a single custodial sentence. The public outcry that followed was, one understands, not wholly surprising. A young woman who goes by Jazmine has offered a statement that deserves to be read in full by anyone tempted to consider sentencing a merely technical matter: she wakes with it, attends school with it, sits her examinations with it. The Vanishing Dispatch, it seems, was used to lure and then to broadcast. That a sentence review is now underway is, at the very least, a signal that justice retains some sense of shame. This Author watches the court with considerable attention.
To the corridors of power now, where Sir Mason of the Broadcasting Society has performed the considerable public service of explaining what Lord Starmer‘s much-delayed Defence Investment Plan actually means in practice. It means, in essence, a bill of £4.7 billion bequeathed with all the generosity of a man handing his successor a smoking fireplace and departing for the weekend. Lord Starmer, heading dutifully to the Ankara summit next week – his final grand foreign engagement as Prime Minister – wished at least to arrive with something to show. The plan has been published. Lord Burnham, widely expected to inherit the Prime Minister’s Residence next month, has not commented. A wise silence, perhaps, from a man who will shortly discover that silence is a luxury reserved for those not yet holding the bill.
And so to matters domestic, for every household in England, North Britain, and The Principality is today greeted with a 13% rise in energy prices, courtesy of The Energy Regulator‘s revised price cap. Gas bills climb by 24%, electricity by 5%, which equates – the Broadcasting Society helpfully quantifies – to an additional £18 per month for a household of typical consumption. The Energy Regulator has also revised downward its estimate of what constitutes typical usage, presumably on the basis that the population has grown so accustomed to cold rooms and strategic jumper-wearing that frugality has become the national standard. The Cornwall Oracle predicts a 0.5% dip in October – a figure so modest it barely merits a raised eyebrow, let alone a celebration. Householders without smart meters are urged, with some urgency, to submit a meter reading today. Do not, under any circumstances, allow last month’s cheaper rate to be quietly consumed by this month’s more expensive one. This Author has submitted hers already, and recommends the practice warmly.
Finally, a matter of some regulatory comedy. The Press Association has taken it upon itself to investigate whether major retailers are advertising e-scooters for use upon public roads – a practice that is, let us be clear, entirely illegal in this Kingdom. The answer, naturally, is yes. Amazon recommended one model for urban commuting. Argos was found, even on Tuesday, to be promoting commuter e-scooters via a sponsored search result, despite having informed the Press Association they had removed it the previous day. Currys, not to be outdone in the art of the non-apology, announced it was reviewing its website to ensure no listings implied that e-scooters could be ridden in public. They may wish to be brisk about it: the Advertising Watchdog banned one of Currys’ own e-scooter advertisements in 2025 for precisely this offence. One would have thought that sufficient instruction. One, apparently, would have been wrong.
I am, as ever, your most devoted observer – Lady Whistledown.