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Two empty chairs. That is the image that stopped This Author cold on what has proved to be a Tuesday of considerable sorrow. At the Heaton Park Synagogue in Manchester on Monday, some eight hundred souls gathered to remember Melvin Cravitz and Adrian Daulby, murdered on the second of October last year by an attacker who came, as Sir Ephraim Mirvis put it, feeling quite comfortable in his hatred. Two seats bore their names. The rest of the hall was full. Lady Rayner, Communities Secretary, was among those present, which is to say that the government sent its sympathy in person, which is something, if not everything.
Sherelle Dresner, speaking for the family of Melvin Cravitz, described the existence of the bereaved as “a club that no-one wants to be a part of.” She has also received antisemitic abuse since the attack – a detail that ought to make every member of society set down their morning tea and feel appropriately ashamed. Rabbi Daniel Walker observed that the Jewish community now feels less safe than it did in the immediate aftermath. That is a sentence worth reading twice. One does not generally emerge from a terrorist attack feeling less protected than before. Something has gone badly wrong, and no quantity of memorial chairs will fix it.
In Grangetown, near Middlesbrough, a court appearance of less than five minutes has done its grim administrative work. A young man of three-and-twenty, one Jaden Wright, appeared before Teesside’s Petty Sessions charged with the murder of Miss McDonald, aged thirty-four, and her seven-year-old niece Miss Foster, who perished together in a house fire in the early hours of the twenty-sixth of August. He is additionally charged with multiple counts of grievous bodily harm relating to the six people who were present in the house when the blaze took hold. He was remanded in custody. The hearing lasted less time than it takes to boil an egg – which is not a complaint about judicial efficiency, merely an observation about how swiftly the machinery of the law can process the very worst of human affairs.
And now, if the Gentle Reader will permit a brief excursion into the theatre of the absurd, we arrive at the matter of laundry rooms. The War Office for Justice has announced that one hundred and ten million pounds from existing budgets shall be spent converting unused office space, storage rooms, and – yes – laundry rooms within existing prisons into cells, in order to address the rather pressing problem of overcrowding. One pictures the linen cupboards of Bure Gaol undergoing a dramatic change of purpose. The Justice Secretary assured the Broadcasting Society that prisoners released early would face restrictions including tagging and bans on attending football matches, which will doubtless console the nation greatly. The Chairman of the Prison Officers’ Association raised the rather salient point that one may convert as many cupboards as one wishes, but prison officers remain in woefully short supply, as nobody, it seems, is particularly keen on the profession at present. This Author cannot imagine why.
Across the border in North Britain, First Minister Swinney has declared it “time to embrace change” – a phrase that has launched a thousand political speeches and delivered rather fewer actual changes. His programme for government, presented to the Scottish Assembly this afternoon, proposes reducing North Britain’s fourteen territorial health boards to as few as two on the mainland, a reform so sweeping that one trusts it has been thought through more carefully than the phrase “embrace change” would suggest. The island territories of Shetland, Orkney, and the Western Isles may see their health boards merged with local councils entirely, producing what one supposes would be institutions responsible for everything from appendectomies to bin collections. Admirably comprehensive, if nothing else. Consultation is promised before final decisions are taken, which means the cupboards will be emptied and the laundry rooms converted long before anything is settled in North Britain.
Finally, the Meteorological Office has released its storm names for the 2026-2027 season, for today, the first of September, marks the beginning of meteorological autumn – and with it the Kingdom’s annual appointment with gales, amber warnings, and the sort of weather that makes one’s hat a liability. The first three names on this year’s alphabetical list are Austen, Boelo, and Chloe, which sound less like incoming catastrophes and more like guests at a moderately fashionable dinner party. Austen was named in honour of the first director of the Irish Meteorological Service, which is a touching tribute and one that will feel considerably less touching when Storm Austen removes one’s garden fence in November. More than forty thousand names were submitted by the public last year. The Meteorological Office chose Austen. This Author reserves judgement.
I am, as ever, your most devoted observer – Lady Whistledown.