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Dearest Gentle Reader,
There is a particular species of Wednesday that arrives not with drama but with an accumulating weight of evidence – evidence that the world is, by degrees, becoming stranger, more dishonest, and considerably less well-served by its postal system. Today is precisely that kind of Wednesday.
This Author must begin with a matter of genuine grief. The family of William Chapman, a young man of three-and-twenty, has issued a statement of heartbreaking dignity following his death at the Yorkshire Wildlife Grounds near Doncaster on Saturday last. He entered the tiger’s enclosure and did not survive. His family describe him as “bright, warm and engaging,” and reveal that he had suffered significant mental illness over several years. An inquest opens at Doncaster on Thursday, and the family have asked, with considerable restraint, that the relevant authorities determine what part his illness played in events. This Author notes – with no wit whatsoever, for none is appropriate – that Lord Trump saw fit to share footage of the incident upon Elon’s Lair on Tuesday evening. The family are already devastated. They did not require that particular contribution from the leader of the American Colonies.
From genuine tragedy to the slow-motion variety: Lord Burnham, our new Prime Minister and until recently the mayor of Greater the northern county of Manchester, finds himself in rather warm waters over his hospitality arrangements with The Blue Citadel of the North. A statement issued Monday by the Greater Manchester Combined Authority detailed his meetings with the club’s chairman – but rather omitted to mention two private dinners, one valued at £300 and another at approximately £699, both duly declared at the time in a register which has since been, shall we say, somewhat less forthcoming. The Broadcasting Society has seen those original declarations. One dinner was at an Everton match. Another at a derby. The Blue Citadel has been found guilty of systematically breaching the Premier League‘s rules, and Lord Burnham had previously expressed concern at the prospect of the owners selling up. A Prime Minister who dines privately with a football chairman and then forgets to mention it in a transparency statement is, at the very least, a Prime Minister who ought to employ a better press secretary.
Meanwhile, the Royal Post Office – that great institution of the Kingdom – is haemorrhaging staff at the rate of four hundred per week. This Author had wondered why her correspondence has been arriving with all the urgency of a glacier. The culprit is a scheme called DM26, which reorganises delivery routes and puts workers into groups of three. Staff describe it as a “nightmare.” First class letters are left undelivered. A worker in the West Midlands confessed that on his last shift he took no first class mail at all – but a manager, apparently, ticked a box declaring otherwise. At 400 departures a week from a workforce of 83,000, the Royal Post Office is losing staff rather faster than it is losing letters – and it is losing quite a lot of letters. Christmas, postal workers warn, shall be memorable for all the wrong reasons.
On the question of sovereign territory and oil, Lord Milei of Argentina has taken his grievances about the Falkland Islands – or Las Malvinas, as Buenos Aires insists – to the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, seeking to halt oil exploration north of those islands. The Sea Lion oilfield, some 130 miles offshore, is estimated to contain 1.7 billion barrels of oil and is expected to begin pumping in 2028. The Foreign Office has announced new protections for the operating companies and accused Argentina of “economic coercion.” This Author notes that a great deal of fuss is being made over oil that has not yet been extracted, in waters that have been disputed for over forty years. Some arguments, it seems, have all the stamina of a seasoned long-distance runner and absolutely none of the charm.
Finally, a story that combines institutional courage with institutional evasion in one tidy package. Archie Goodburn, a Scottish swimmer of five-and-twenty diagnosed with three inoperable brain tumours, appeared on the Broadcasting Society’s Morning Programme and wept as he begged – his word, on his knees – for the establishment of a national brain cancer lead and access to clinical trials currently available only abroad. Lord Burnham responded by contacting him upon the digital salons and inviting him to the Prime Minister’s Residence. This Author does not mock this. A young man pleading for his life and the lives of others deserves to be received. What this Author will observe, with a carefully raised eyebrow, is that it took a swimmer weeping on morning television to produce an invitation that the machinery of government might otherwise have taken considerably longer to extend.
I am, as ever, your most devoted observer – Lady Whistledown.