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There are days when the news arrives like a magician’s handkerchief pulled from a pocket – one thinks one has grasped the whole of it, and then another astonishing item unfurls behind it, and then another. This Tuesday has been precisely such a day.
Let us begin with the matter that has left This Author clutching her smelling salts with genuine purpose. The Secret Intelligence Service’s own watchdog has concluded, after a secret inquiry, that the Secret Intelligence Service was fully aware that one of its informants – a neo-Nazi operative known only as Agent X – was, in the watchdog’s own measured language, “obsessed” with violence, “openly misogynistic,” and connected to a movement devoted to the exploitation of women. One does not wish to alarm the Gentle Readership, but this is the organisation trusted with the defence of the realm. Agent X had used a machete against his then girlfriend – a lady known publicly as Beth – and had, in full view of his handlers, boasted of his preoccupations. And yet no review of his suitability was conducted. No alarm was raised. He was, in fact, defended in court by the very government that employed him. Beth has since asked, with a composure that shames every person involved, for a full apology. This Author suspects she shall be waiting rather longer than nine years – which brings us neatly to our next affair.
The Duke of Sussex has returned to these shores, bringing with him his causes, his legal proceedings, and the particular air of a man who has misplaced something and suspects the Palace of having moved it. The Duchess of Sussex and the children remain in the American Colonies on account of security concerns – which is entirely understandable, though This Author notes with mild amusement that the Duke himself has apparently fewer such concerns, or perhaps simply a higher tolerance for the peculiar. There was the small matter of the bed: the Duke‘s team announced he had accepted an invitation to stay at the Palace, only for the Palace to demur, noting that the invitation had been extended but not answered in time. The Duke will, one imagines, be perfectly comfortable wherever he lays his head – though the optics of being turned away from one’s childhood home are, one concedes, less than ideal. Tuesday also brings the verdict in his privacy case against the Mail’s publishers, which he brings alongside, amongst others, Sir Elton John and Baroness Lawrence. Whether he prevails or not, one cannot deny the Duke a certain dogged persistence in these matters.
From ducal dignity to student despair. A report from the Exchequer Committee has declared that comparing student loan repayments to a thirty-pound-a-month telephone contract “amounted to mis-selling” by the government. This Author pauses to savour that phrase. The government, it seems, presented teenagers with glossy presentations comparing their future financial obligations to the cost of a cinema ticket, when the reality – for higher earners in particular – was considerably less cinematic. Lady Reeves, as Chancellor, then froze the repayment threshold at £29,385 until 2030, ensuring that graduates begin repaying sooner, or pay more as inflation rises around their stationary threshold like a tide around a sandcastle. The government says it is “already taking decisive action.” The Student Advancement Office recognises the “importance of clear information.” Both responses suggest an institution that has just been caught selling a horse and is now very interested in accurate equine descriptions.
In rather more mechanical chaos, the cost of injuries caused by e-scooters and e-bicycles has now topped £110 million, with the single largest individual payout reaching a remarkable £20 million. It has been only seven years since the first such claim was made – a speed of accumulation that would impress even the fastest of these wretched contraptions. One Alison, not her real name, suffered a broken pelvis, wrist, and finger when struck upon a pedestrian crossing in Coventry on what she describes as, with heartbreaking optimism, “a lovely sunny day.” The Motor Insurers Bureau now wishes to see better regulation and in some cases outright prohibition of such vehicles. The ordinary carriage-owning public, meanwhile, finds its insurance premiums rising to cover bills it did nothing to incur. Progress, as This Author has observed before, frequently arrives at speed and leaves others to settle the account.
Finally, a dispatch from the realm of science that carries both hope and a certain bracing candour. New research, drawing on the cases of 1,774 women, suggests that fertility treatment using donor eggs encounters a notable decline in success rates from around the age of forty-nine – not because of the eggs, which are young and obliging, but because of changes in the womb lining itself. The live birth rate falls from 46% to 32% beyond that age, while the risk of miscarriage nearly doubles. The lead researcher, writing from an Italian assisted reproduction institute, assures us that success rates remain “meaningful even at advanced ages” and that women ought not to be discouraged. This Author, who has never wished to discourage anyone from anything sensible, notes only that the body, like a great house, has rooms that no amount of fresh furnishing can entirely restore. The news that the womb lining may one day be treatable is, however, genuinely encouraging – and one hopes the relevant physicians are already applying themselves to the problem with some urgency.
I am, as ever, your most devoted observer – Lady Whistledown.