Dearest Gentle Reader,
This Author had scarcely set down her morning tea when a most sorrowful dispatch arrived from Canterbury, and the cup has not been lifted since. There are days when the gossip flows like champagne and days when it tastes of ashes. Today, alas, leans rather towards the latter.
The ancient city of Canterbury finds itself in the grip of a most alarming outbreak of meningitis, and This Author must report with genuine heaviness that two young lives have already been lost. A sixth-form pupil of Queen Elizabeth’s Grammar School in Faversham perished on Saturday, followed by a student of the University of Kent. Eleven souls have fallen gravely ill, and the Crown Health Security Agency is now contacting more than thirty thousand students, staff, and their families. In-person assessments at the university have been suspended. This Author implores any reader with connexions in Kent to heed the physicians’ counsel without delay. Some losses are beyond even wit’s power to soften.
From grief, we turn to disgrace. The Travelodge Inn, a chain of lodging houses patronised by the budget-conscious traveller, has been forced into “immediate changes” after a guest was sexually assaulted by a man to whom staff simply handed her room key. The villain, one Kyran Smith, received seven and a half years in gaol, yet the establishment’s initial response to its traumatised guest was a thirty-pound refund. Thirty pounds! One might receive more generous recompense for a lumpy pillow. The Inn’s chief executive, Lady Boydell, has now issued a full apology and decreed that replacement keys shall henceforth require the occupant’s explicit permission. That this was not already the policy beggars belief. This Author does hope the victim’s courage in speaking publicly spares others a similar ordeal.
Now for something altogether lighter. The Office for National Statistics has refreshed its basket of goods used to measure the Kingdom’s inflation, and the additions are simply delicious. Alcohol-free beer, houmous, motorhomes, dashboard cameras, and – hold your lorgnette – pet grooming. Yes, Gentle Reader, the nation’s hounds are now professionally coiffed with sufficient regularity to warrant economic tracking. Wild rabbit, which graced the original 1947 basket, could not be reached for comment. This Author suspects it was removed years ago, having fled in terror from rising prices.
Meanwhile, the government is dangling three thousand pounds before any employer willing to hire a young person aged eighteen to twenty-four who has languished on benefits for six months or more. Lady Kendall, the Secretary for Work and Pensions, calls it a “vital first step on the career ladder.” With nearly a million young souls neither employed nor in education, one might observe the ladder has been missing several rungs for quite some time. Still, sixty thousand placements over three years is nothing to sniff at, provided the Treasury can locate the funds beneath its sofa cushions after the last round of National Insurance rises.
Finally, a study from King’s College reveals that care leavers given a no-strings-attached grant of two thousand pounds were markedly less likely to become homeless or enter prison. They spent twelve percent less on vices and reported higher spirits. Imagine: treating vulnerable young people with trust and dignity yields positive results. Revolutionary. This Author trusts the Grand Assembly will take note, though she shall not hold her breath.
I am, as ever, your most devoted observer – Lady Whistledown.