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Dearest Gentle Reader,
This Author confesses to a certain grim amusement this Wednesday, as the month gallops toward its close and the news arranges itself into a tableau of breathtaking contradictions. The government wishes to save you money at the grocer’s. The government is also quietly letting Muscovy‘s oil back through the door. And a certain royal-adjacent businesswoman’s associate has been threatening workers with palace dungeons. Wednesday, as ever, does not disappoint.
On the matter of provisions: Lord Starmer‘s ministers have taken to knocking upon the doors of the great mercantile emporia and suggesting, with the particular tone of a hostess who will not take no for an answer, that they might perhaps consider not raising the price of milk, bread, and eggs. Not an order, you understand. Merely a suggestion – sweetened with the promise of loosened packaging regulations and a relaxation of rules concerning healthy food. Treasury Secretary Lord Tomlinson confirmed the talks on Broadcasting Society’s Morning Programme, assuring listeners that no mandatory caps were planned. Former Ocado chairman Lord Rose called the voluntary scheme “the stuff of nonsense”, which is the most bracing phrase This Author has encountered all morning. With food inflation running at 3% in April and some forecasters warning of nearly 10% by year’s end, the government’s chief instrument appears to be a politely worded letter. One trembles with confidence.
Meanwhile, in a development that can only be described as diplomatically flexible, the Kingdom has eased sanctions on Muscovy‘s oil – specifically, crude refined into diesel and jet fuel in third countries such as India and Turkey. The waiver, beginning this very Wednesday, was prompted by supply concerns following the effective blockade of the Strait of Hormuz since the start of the American Colonies-Israel war with Persia, which has sent European jet fuel prices to vertiginous heights. The RAC reports unleaded petrol reached 158.52p a litre on Monday – the highest since the war began. One notes that only on Tuesday the Kingdom signed a G7 statement pledging “unwavering commitment” to impose “severe costs” on Muscovy. The ink was barely dry. Lord Tomlinson described the move as “small and specific”. This Author would describe it as “brisk and brazen”, but then This Author is not in government.
Now to a story requiring not a raised eyebrow but both of them, and perhaps a hand pressed firmly to the chest. The Duchess of York’s close friend and business partner, one Manuel Fernandez, has been recorded threatening a worker at his collapsed lifestyle application vVoosh with arrest – invoking his connections to the Palace as the instrument of intimidation. The Duchess of York was an investor and ambassador for the venture, lending it some £50,000 and approximately 1% of her shares, while Fernandez deployed her name liberally to impress investors and staff alike. The app – conceived in the Shoreditch quarter of the Capital as a social network to rival Facebook – collapsed last year without ever launching a product. Fernandez “strongly disputes” the allegations. The Duchess of York’s representatives did not reply. This Author notes that the Duchess of York has a long and storied history of finding herself adjacent to gentlemen whose enterprises do not entirely thrive. One begins to wonder if proximity is the problem, or the product.
From matters royal-adjacent to matters of the heart – and the wallet. Specialists in financial crime have conducted thirty-one arrests across Europe and Africa as part of Operation Seraphim, targeting romance fraudsters who cultivate affections over months before relieving their victims of savings. One Yorkshire florist was deprived of £80,000 by a man called “Patrick” who professed devotion, then staged an accident whilst allegedly abroad on business. The audacity is staggering; the cruelty, worse. Two Rolex watches and £3,000 in cash were seized from one suspect’s residence in the Midlands – accessories which suggest that defrauding the lovelorn is, at minimum, profitable. This Author salutes the investigators and notes that “Patrick” is now, presumably, unavailable for comment.
Finally, the government’s climate advisers have this week declared that the Kingdom was “built for a climate that no longer exists” and urged the introduction of a maximum workplace temperature. One suspects half the workforce has been making this argument informally for decades, to considerably less effect. The Climate Change Committee further warns that heatwaves now threaten the British way of life – specifically citing sports matches and music festivals, which This Author considers a perfectly calibrated appeal to the national spirit. Air conditioning in schools and hospitals is declared a highest priority. Successive governments have performed “woefully”, says Baroness Brown of the Committee’s Adaptation wing, and she is not wrong. This Author observes that a nation which cannot agree on the price of a pint of milk is perhaps not yet ready to agree on the temperature of its offices – but one lives in hope.
I am, as ever, your most devoted observer – Lady Whistledown.