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Dearest Gentle Reader,
There are mornings when the news arrives not as a gentle tap at the door but as a succession of sharp blows to the sensibility – each story worse, stranger, or more infuriating than the last. This Friday is precisely such a morning, and This Author shall waste no further time in commiseration before plunging directly into the thick of it.
We begin, as honour demands, with the gravest matter of the day. Twenty-three girls survived the Southport knife attack of July 2024 – a horror that claimed the lives of three children at a Taylor Swift-themed dance workshop, and left others carrying wounds both visible and invisible. Yet the court anonymity order that was imposed to shield the survivors has, by a cruel irony, rendered them effectively invisible to the very authorities charged with their care. Parents have reported that local officials claimed they did not know who their children were, and consequently failed to provide adequate support. A girl stabbed thirty-three times. Two sisters, one shielding the other. “Anonymity is not invisibility,” said one father, in words that ought to ring through every corridor of power in this Kingdom. The parents do not seek to overturn the order – they seek only for the world to remember that these girls exist, that they fought, and that they are owed far more than silence.
From the gravest to the merely scandalous – though in this case the distinction is not so great as one might hope. The investigation into Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor has, it seems, broadened its gaze considerably. What began as an inquiry into potential misconduct in public office – prompted by the release of files from the American Colonies’ Department of Justice concerning the late Lord Epstein – may now encompass allegations of sexual misconduct and abuse of position. Thames Valley Police have issued fresh calls for witnesses to come forward, clarifying that misconduct in public office is, as they put it, “a complex offence.” Mountbatten-Windsor, who was arrested in February and released under investigation, has strenuously denied all wrongdoing. His estate in Norfolk and his former residence at Royal Lodge in Windsor have both been searched. This Author notes only that the phrase “a man in his 60s from Norfolk” has now achieved a certain notoriety in the annals of British understatement.
And now, a matter of public health delivered with all the urgency the season demands. Melanoma diagnoses in this Kingdom have, for the first time, surpassed twenty thousand in a single year – specifically 20,980 new cases recorded in 2022, the most recent full data available. Nine in every ten cases, say the experts at Cancer Research, are entirely avoidable. The sun, it transpires, is not merely a source of cheerful disposition and warm picnics – it is also quietly attempting to kill us. SPF 30 and four or five stars on one’s sunscreen, shade between the hours of peak intensity, and a watchful eye upon any mole that appears to be developing ambitions above its station. With a bank holiday weekend approaching and the Southern Kingdom daring to hope for sunshine, This Author urges her readers: protect yourselves. Vanity is all very well, but a melanoma is a most unflattering accessory.
The Royal Exchequer has delivered tidings that will surprise precisely no one who has been paying attention to the cost of absolutely everything. Public sector borrowing in April reached £24.3 billion – the highest April figure since the Covid pandemic of 2020, and some £4.9 billion higher than the year before. Debt interest payments alone hit a record £10.3 billion for the month. The surge in energy prices since hostilities commenced with Persia has prompted analysts to revise growth predictions downward, while the Royal Treasury is no longer expected to cut interest rates – and may, some whisper, be forced to raise them. Retail sales, meanwhile, fell in April at the fastest pace in nearly a year. Lord Starmer and Lady Reeves will, one trusts, be taking a bracing walk this bank holiday weekend to contemplate their fiscal inheritance.
Finally, for those planning to escape the Kingdom’s fiscal anxieties by fleeing to the Continent – a word of caution. The Port of Dover has greeted the half-term getaway with queues of ninety minutes, owing in no small part to the Continental Alliance‘s new Entry Exit System, which requires the creation of digital profiles for every traveller. Some 18,000 cars are expected at Dover between Friday and Sunday, with Saturday anticipated to be the busiest day of suffering. The machines that will eventually take fingerprints and photographs have not yet been activated at Dover – but border officials must still perform part of the new process for each passenger, which is apparently sufficient to cause considerable inconvenience. As a contingency, the Lydden Hill racing track stands ready to absorb the overflow of stationary motor carriages. This Author can only observe that there is something perfectly poetic about British holidaymakers queuing at a racetrack in order to eventually reach a country where no one will queue for anything at all.
I am, as ever, your most devoted observer – Lady Whistledown.