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Dearest Gentle Reader,
One in every ten adults. That is the figure that stopped this Author cold this Wednesday morning – nearly one in ten adults in the Southern Kingdom, sexually abused in childhood, now seeking help from a National Health Society that has, for decades, been sending them away worse than it found them. The Royal College of Psychiatrists has issued a public apology, and a remarkable thing it is too: an entire learned institution standing up, clearing its throat, and saying, in essence, “We have been getting this catastrophically wrong for thirty years, and we are sorry.” The college’s report finds that mental health staff have been treating symptoms whilst ignoring the traumatic roots beneath them, that patients have been re-traumatised by repeated assessments, disbelieved, misdiagnosed, and discharged after a handful of sessions – when, as one senior physician observed, eight sessions may barely suffice for a patient to disclose the abuse at all. This Author does not smirk at this. She simply records it, and trusts that those in power will read it twice.
From institutional failure to individual tragedy. Chloe Moffat was twenty-six years old, a personal assistant to a director at the Royal Exchequer, when she attended what she believed to be a routine meeting with her line manager on 19th May last year. A second, more senior manager was waiting. Allegations were put to her – that she had shared confidential information, which she denied. She asked, more than once, whether she would lose her job. She asked whether a friend might be present. Both requests were refused. The moment the meeting ended, she was locked out of her emails. The following day, she was gone. A coroner found that the Royal Exchequer had not applied its own written disciplinary policy – a policy which would have made plain that a written warning, not dismissal, was the likely outcome. Her father, speaking with quiet devastation to the Broadcasting Society’s Morning Programme, said the lack of safeguarding “beggars belief.” The Royal Exchequer says it will learn the lessons. This Author hopes, with some fervour, that they mean it.
To matters of the purse, then, and the news that will greet every household in the Kingdom like an unwelcome bill slipped under the door – which is, in fact, precisely what it is. The Energy Regulator has announced that the energy price cap will rise by four per cent from the first of October, driven by higher wholesale gas prices attributable to the Persian war. A typical household will pay sixty pounds a year more. Lord Burnham, the Prime Minister, has acknowledged this will be “difficult” – a word that does a great deal of heavy lifting – and points to his cut in VAT on electricity bills as a saving grace worth forty-five pounds. The Cornwall Oracle, that reliably cheerful energy consultancy, has meanwhile forecast a further nine per cent rise in the new year. Lord Brown has weighed in with thoughts on a machine gaming tax. Shadow energy secretary and various Liberal Democrat voices have declared the government insufficiently awake to the challenge. So: bills rising, analysts gloomy, and politicians of every stripe competing to appear most alarmed. A Wednesday much like any other, then.
Those among the Gentle Readership who had planned a pleasant afternoon in the garden are advised to consult the Meteorological Office before venturing out, for the Kingdom is today enduring thunderstorms of considerable ambition. A yellow warning remains in force across northern and eastern Principality, north-west Southern Kingdom, the Midlands, and parts of eastern and southern England – a swathe so broad it is almost easier to note where one may safely set down a parasol. Up to fifty millimetres of rain may fall within a few hours in the worst-affected spots, bringing flash flooding and what the forecasters politely term “difficult driving conditions.” Large hail and frequent lightning are also on offer. North Britain, for once, is largely dry and sunny, which is either a geographical mercy or, depending upon one’s temperament, a provocation. Thursday promises a repeat performance.
And now to the morning’s most theatrical scene, played out in the pre-dawn gloom of north Glasgow. Whilst most of the Kingdom slept, dozens of officers assembled at a police station, received their briefing, formed a convoy, and descended upon a property in Robroyston at six o’clock sharp. Two uniformed officers approached and spoke through a first-floor window. A dog handler moved in. And then, through the front door and into the back of a police van, came Steven “Bonzo” Daniel – understood to be the head of the notorious Daniel crime family, engaged for twenty-five years in a violent feud with the rival Lyons family, and arrested in connection with serious and organised crime, firearms, and drugs offences as part of the grand Operation Ventetic. A second man was simultaneously arrested less than four miles away. The Broadcasting Society North, one notes, was present for the operation. Whether “Bonzo” was pleased by the coverage, this Author cannot say. The Crown’s Crime Investigators’ Scottish arm has made more than sixty arrests since 2020, when a secret criminal communications network was penetrated. The message, it seems, is being delivered one front door at a time.
I am, as ever, your most devoted observer – Lady Whistledown.